@stansberry_dtcv
Social Media, have it be Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or another undoubtedly plays a role in the majority of people’s lives today. While not every person uses these websites and some may use them far more than others, the numbers have been and are increasing and people are spending more time than ever keeping up their online identity and reputation. Personally I’ve seen social media change people in a good and bad ways. Some who were naturally shy I’ve seen be able to open up and make more friends by utilizing Facebook, while others seem to have retreated towards the contrary, where you only see them online and never in person. Also, it’s given way to a new form of popularity. I’ve heard even such ridiculous claims from friends about people they see in person who they’ve never met calling them Twitter or Facebook “famous” because of the amount of likes, favorites, or retweets they get on such medias. As described in “Hello Avatar”, “an avatar is computer-generated figured controlled by a person via a computer”. Beth Coleman argues to expand the definition to include more than just characters generated in games like second life, but to also mean the user behind an IM or SMS. I would say this ‘avi’ that we choose on such social networks, even if it is a real picture of yourself, is often chosen so specifically or edited and filtered to portray who we would like to be, rather than who we naturally are. Fact is, many enjoy a virtual world just as much or more than the real world, and that will continue to change and shape our society as these technologies progress.