Weekly Viral Trend 2

I came across this trend, #rapecultureiswhen, that has been trending on Twitter about the topic of “Rape Culture” and weather it is real or not. I was amazed by what I found and how many people out there have been pressured into rape situations that society pushes aside as “not rape” or the fact that the rape victim was basically asking for it. Rape Culture is a society in which sexual violence is tolerated and over-looked.

The person that made this tweet claims that Rape Culture is when “a rapist doesn’t even know he’s a rapist.” This shows the fact that many people out there are not educated on what a legitimate rape is. People, other than men, will believe that because a girl or woman is wearing “slutty” clothing, flirting, or intoxicated that they are “asking for rape”. But what people do not know is that it is extremely untrue. As the photo says, “it could have been them”. Some people just do not see both sides of another person’s life. When an individual says, “no” to sex, it is rape, regardless of what or how that individual is behaving or wearing. Often because a person is in a relationship, he/she thinks it is allowed to have sex, but if the person says, “no”, it means no and therefore it would be rape if there is no consent.

Who is the audience that this tweet is trying to push this idea through about Rape Culture?  It looks like this trend is trying to raise awareness about rape and it being very real and how many people actually get raped and are pressured into thinking that maybe it was their own fault that they were a victim. The photo looks like the woman is trying to show this writing to parents of the rapist. Rapists are often not aware about what it means to rape someone.  It is unfair that a victim has to go through something that was not consented but have no support by society because society thinks that if you portray yourself as a “slut”, then you deserve it. That is not true. 

This is a post off of Tumblr that has been reblogged a number of times. It shows a good analogy of how people do not realize why rape is wrong. Just because someone acts a certain way that makes it rape seem right, does not make it right to rape that person without consent. This viral trend going around seems to want to reach out to those who have been raped and even those who are uneducated about Rape Culture. It seems that posts in this society say, “Don’t get raped” rather than “Don’t rape”. There is a distinct difference. Trying not to get raped only goes so far, not raping could end rape in general, though the world will most likely always have issues like this, it would be comforting to know that it is rare and can be prevented. This trend is still popular on Twitter with about five new tweets every minute. If this awareness can spread so fast on social media, it could spread fast through parents and students.

Weekly Viral Trend #1 Shampoo Commercial

This picture is a photo taken from Facebook. It is connected to a page that I previously “liked” called “I hate saying hi to people and they don’t see you and you feel stupid”. The post is saying that the models in shampoo commercials do not have a natural hair flip, but instead there is a person that is edited out of the photo (person dressed in all green attire behind the girl) to help the hair-flip appear more natural and beautiful. It is hard to know whether the posts we see on Facebook are actually true or not, so it is hard to tell if this is what shampoo commercial producers actually do. I think the point of the photo is to be somewhat comical but informing to its audience in some way as well. The top comment has 160 “likes” and it appears to be a sarcastic comment stating that she has been trying to get that hair-flip but it is practically impossible because she does not have a person standing behind her to help it move. The comment below states that the person believes that it would be useful to have one of these people helping her and a friend when they want to appear “fabulous”.

I think that the post could be untrue, but also not surprising if it is true. This would not be surprising because commercial makers do this for a living in order to get the viewers to go out and buy their products. If it is actually true, I think that commercials are portraying something that their product is not in order to make profit, just like most advertisements have done in the media for years. Was this post trying to intrigue people about advertisements in order to get “likes” and comments? The white font on the photo was placed there by someone that found that a person helps hair flipping in commercials promoting hair products. It is interesting because it makes others think about how many other commercials, other than those about hair products, use people in the commercials then edit them out. The amount of work that goes into commercials like these is extreme for the amount of time it actually plays for the audiences watching them.

This type of post seems to be looking for feedback, especially in the comment perspective. Many people are interested by this type of post because it relates to their personal lives, therefore, they respond to this type of post. I think relation within media and an individual is very important. If something is not relative, it is not as interesting or useful to a person, unless it is something extremely out of the ordinary. The issue of this type of post, though, is that some people may not realize that a large amount of what is posted on the internet is not true, especially through social networks. The reasoning behind the photo might not have been to be true, but to be comical.