Handbook Activities- ‘If you haven’t got anything nice to say, Don’t say anything at all’

I've missed a week of Blogs. I'm annoyed at myself. I could use the excuse that I was working and very busy and feeling under the weather too....but I ultimately think I was feeling stuck again and just decided to ignore the issue. I didn't allow myself that time to 'recover' and now I’m ill again, but at least I have decided to try and tackle this again.

I have been working through some of the tasks towards the end of the handbook so am going to Blog my findings. There is a lot of crossover between lenses and tasks:

Presentation of Self-

This blog- is the social media platform that I feel contains the biggest proportion of 'Me'. I've come to the conclusion that it is because I am engaging in a subject, and with people, that all relate to my practice and ultimately this is what I spend the majority of my time engaging in. I am lucky that I am in a position to do that. But do I leave parts of 'me' out? Of course.

I think throughout my relatively short lifetime, web 2.0 has changed and developed massively.

Facebook- I started using Facebook as a child, in secondary school. Looking back now at 'memories' from years gone by I look over my posts and honestly all I think is 'What an idiot, how embarrassing, did the world really need all that detail?' I was young and naive but so was Facebook. My view on Facebook at that point was it was new and exciting and 'cool' to be involved with... a social movement away from 'MSM' where you only communicated with 5 friends from primary school towards a way of expanding your friendship group....The making of a popularity contest.

Now 10 years on, I think Facebook is dangerous. A tool used to haunt people for being young and naive, to manipulate them or to alter their career progression. I feel lucky that I was still very young when I realized this and I actually think it was through joining a competitive dance school that my opinion on Facebook began to change.

My then teacher started 'emphasizing the importance' of posting positive outlooks on Facebook, pointing out that 'you don't know who will read it'. Actually, in reflection this was manipulation, we were forced to positively promote the dance school on social media because it created more business and a 'great image' for the school. It didn't take long to realize that 'sucking up' on Facebook lead to rewards in class. That a big social media following lead to costume and brand sponsorship. When things were going well, I loved this but I began to realize that even when things were not good, I had to pretend they were because I didn't want to be punished for them not being. I effectively lost control over my own persona on social media from that point. I would love to say that when I left that dance school and eventually went on to engage in professional training that I regained control over my persona but I didn't. It was just as bad at my new place of training except now the focus had moved from Facebook to twitter! And rather than being manipulated into posting, we were simply just bullied into it, receiving hour long telling off, punishment and removal off opportunities if we did not participate. I really, really look back at it in disdain. This was a complete false persona. It provokes the question; who else is creating a ‘false persona’?

I am quite an opinionated person and I really hate that for a good 6-7 years of my life my social media has effectively been filtered by adults who understood the power of social media but just used 'children/youth' to advantage themselves. This being said I am glad I have learnt from it and I can see what was going on, because it is all too common now for an old post to come back and ruin your life. I no-longer really post anything on Facebook other than fact, maybe the odd achievement and my Art business. My main purpose for Facebook is business promotion and audition hunting. I always think I would actually love to delete it but It does provide access and awareness of auditions and opportunities so I feel it would be detrimental to delete. 

I feel that in this line of work it is important to have an opinion because hopefully, to create an opinion you are engaging and thinking about things, but it is detrimental to post an opinion online because you just don't know who will oppose that opinion or who may be offended. It really annoys me that I actually feel restricted by this. I think, especially at current time with so many big topics in discussion, climate change, brexit, health, there is a lot of anger and aggression within society and that many people are using social media platforms to write abusive or derogatory posts as a way to vent their frustration. I dare not even defend myself out of fear that it may offend or come back to be used detrimentally, so therefore it is easier just to abstain from posting. But also, who is teaching them that it isn't OK to post 'nasty' things online!?  It’s an endless cycle. The saying ‘If you haven’t got anything nice to say, Don’t say anything at all’ Springs to mind.

So to summarize I feel like Facebook has evolved from a nice idea to socially connect, to a targeted advertising platform.  Of course, there are advantages, the long-distance contact that is available at the touch of a button. The information that can be extracted, for me auditions, and possibly the business platform. But most of this is passive usage of the platform rather than active usage and I feel when it becomes active usage there are so many political and ethical considerations that it does become a dangerous minefield. 

Twitter- My opinions of twitter are much the same as Facebook, probably because my twitter account was also abused to advantage others, however I don't really find twitter that useful for audition hunting and therefore have not used it in a very long time. I think there could be advantages to twitter but right now I value my time over allocating time to yet another social media platform.

Instagram- is my personal favourite of all the social media platforms but I think that is probably because my Instagram is private and quite 'small' or 'low key'. I admit it is my own fault that my Facebook is so open to people, I could delete all but those immediate friends and family and probably feel much more comfortable posting, but I have a business that heavily relies on Facebook orders. This could absolutely be viewed as a form of manipulation also so I suppose I should not really slam Facebook as much as I have. I still however feel that in comparison to my friends or colleagues of the same age, I barely post. My favourite thing about Instagram however is when you type 'Lorien Tear' into a google search, it acknowledges that my account content is private where as other platforms have loop-holes making you available to public viewing.... Twitter is the worst for this in my experience. However, Instagram is image based and therefore creates its own ethical considerations ranging from filtering or editing pictures to graphic content.

The original question of ‘How do we present ourselves, what parts do we ‘leave out’?

I think varies from platform to platform and who is viewing your content. But ultimately no online platform creates an all-encompassing representation of an individual and that is because it is effectively a fictional profile that is self-filtered, for better or for worse. Spotlight is a viewing platform and definitely creates a 'Persona' of you... Your best bits and that directly leads to your hiring, so in that sense your absolutely right to filter your persona. Online platforms emphasize this but this is true for ‘in person’ interactions too. I think this picture/quote sums it up perfectly….