Tag Archives: social media

Look!

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Let me roll my eyes at yet another of these social media memes, sparked by Justin Bieber posting a photo of himself on a boat, his bum bare, for no apparent reason, with the title ‘Look!’ Then deleted it.

But people have, of course, got copies of it and are having fun with it.

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Now, for no apparent reason either, men’s bottoms are turning up all over social media. B(e)aring that in mind…I asked some of my SL male friends to pose accordingly 🙂

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Hugh

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Pablo (1)

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Pablo (2)

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Leeroy

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Tom

If any others respond, I’ll update as and when….

 

Ella

 

#stopbullying

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Images ©2015 Sachin Parekh via Facebook

It appears we’re in hashtag heaven/hell today.

I’ve been taken to task for what one reader sees as my blanket dismissal of social media, and she suggests that ‘social media can often do good’. I don’t think that I can argue with the messages in the images (above) that she pointed me towards, as all reflect some people’s bullying of one another and the consequences of bullying.

The final image, though, sums up my cynicism towards social media.

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A familiar ‘I bet most of you won’t claim, and the kicker that you should be part of the 1% who share. Go on, you know you want to feel good about yourself, so click that button!

I’ve written about this before: we’re looking at this all wrong. The messages in society are ‘girls, don’t get drunk and get raped’ rather than ‘boys, treat women with respect and don’t rape or assault women’. The message in respect of this social media meme should be less ‘share and feel good about yourself in doing so and demonstrate your sense of caring’ and more of ‘teach your children these values so that it’s part of our societal DNA, not something (young) people need to be reminded to do (or not do)’.

There’s absolutely nothing wrong with the messages being delivered on social media. There is something wrong where it’s social media who push things which should be learnt at a mother’s bosom before a child can walk.

I accept the reader’s premise for thinking about the issues in the manner she does, but it does not convince me that drivel like Facebook should be core to our sense of values (particularly when they seem to persist with the idea that videos of beheadings are acceptable).

Ella

#HoldACokeWithYourBoobsChallenge

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I’ll begin this post with two links. One, there’s a ‘social media campaign’ going in which ladies are invited to hold a bottle of coke, in whatever ‘imaginative’ ways they can, between their boobs. And two, criticism of the same campaign.

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As is often the case, social media appears to be the natural home for anything moronic, a place that I hope history will record as a brief phenomenon belonging to the narcissistic and shallow.

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‘Cock in a sock’, ‘no make up’ and maybe the most idiotic of all, the ‘Ice Bucket challenge’, the latter even tipping over into SL, and which we blogged about previously, these are things people indulge in.

Yes, I’ve heard the arguments that some were ‘in a good cause’, but eventually the money or awareness raising elements of them were bypassed for no other reason than people wanted to act like ‘good sports’ or ‘idiots’ on their chosen social media.

The instigator of the hashtag  is quoted as saying “We never thought it would take off like it did. But it did. And then people started posting it was for charity and it was for breast cancer awareness. We had never plan [sic] on that nor thought of it. But since that’s what people want to do it for, we said why not do something good with this. So we went with it. They can ether [sic] do the challenge, donate to their favorite charity, or both. It’s up to them. Let’s face some real facts. Not every woman does their exams or goes and gets a mammogram. Several people are on the mind set it will never happen to me, I’m to [sic] young or old for it to happen to me, my boobs are too small… and so on and so on…We tell people to get their mammograms and to donate to any breast cancer charity they want too [sic].‘

OK, so it didn’t start as a ‘charity campaign’ but as a bit of fun. Fine. And it seems that those doing it have turned it into a charitable event (maybe). Also fine. The instigators are now, in retrospect, telling people to get checks or donate to charities because a bit of fun has gone viral in a way they never anticipated. Equally fine.

But it doesn’t get away from the fact that it’s certainly exploitative of young women (again!) who may regret their participation in events like these in later life. Or maybe their narcissism and shallowness is such that these sort of things are, sadly, key highlights in their lives.

I expect the first ‘hold a coke with your boobs’ pose to turn up in SL within a week…

 

Ella

edited to add: One Mum with breast cancer goes full on about the meme in the UK’s Daily Mirror newspaper today.

Further edited to add: The bottle cap nipple pasties as displayed in the top photograph are already an SL Marketplace item. This is not a criticism of the designer (and they look to be an item that pre-dates this current internet meme). SL designers and builders merely reflect or, in this instance, pre-empt what RL sometimes does.

There are also Coca Cola cans widely available in SL, and I assume it would be relatively easy to replicate the meme’s style by choosing to attach these to the avatar’s chest or spine rather than attaching them to the hand.

Virtual Identities and Choice

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Virtual Identities and Choice.

originally posted on Kat’s blog.

An excellent argument as to why you don’t need to be on Facebook, the black plague of social media, in my opinion, although there’s not an enormous amount of difference between any of them.

It isn’t ‘free’ as they like to tell you. You ‘pay’ with your personal details. I’ve also written before about how I object to their moral compass, a world wherein videos of beheadings pass muster while ‘nude’ -or simply breast-feeding Mums- are banned. What does that say about the world in which Facebook operate?

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Kat makes some excellent points, and offers alternatives and solutions to avatars ‘need’ to operate on social media such as Facebook.

 

Ella

 

 

#freethenipple (Iceland) No.2

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I’m always amazed just where SLN reaches. With Iceland in the news this week regarding a student being bullied online, the country’s women have taken to Twitter to object to bullying on social media by posing, in sizeable numbers, their support for top free equality.

Reader Ruth informed us that she found it surprising that this isn’t already the case in a country noted for its gender equality when we reported this story earlier in the week.

Now reader Gudrun writes and tells me that in real life she is one of the many women who have joined in with the campaign (and directed us to her Twitter page accordingly). She also said that as her real life avatar 🙂 has participated, then she should add her Second Life avatar to the list of participants.

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Ella

 

The ‘Free the Nipple’ campaign in Iceland

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I’ve read that the ‘Free the Nipple’ campaign has got some traction in Iceland, with some of the country’s women taking to Twitter to highlight the issue.

This follows a student being bullied online for organising a ‘Free the Nipple’ support day in her college, prompting a reaction from many of the country’s women.

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Björt Ólafsdóttir

One member of the Icelandic parliament, Björt Ólafsdóttir, even took to the social media outlet to be part of the campaign, being photographed with one of her own breasts bared.

Isn’t it time women were given top free equality? Equally, isn’t it time that students and others weren’t being bullied and harassed for whatever they choose to believe and stand up for, be it top free equality or anything else?

I adopt the view that, in the main, social media is a menace of the inane and pointless most of the time, but occasionally it has a viral power to react with a power of equal force, ultimately shaming those who seek to shame in the first instance. Whether two wrongs make a right, though….an argument for another day.

Ella

 

Inequality, on social media

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SLN has never embraced social media, and another incident of social media hypocrisy emerged this week when comedian and actress Chelsea Handler imitated a shot of Vladimir Putin riding a horse topless, incurring a ban on the social media Instagram to highlight its hypocritical stance on ‘the nipple’. Putin’s nipples good, Handler’s nipples bad.

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I think she has smaller boobs than Putin, too! 🙂

This comes in the same week that Facebook was forced to reinstate a photo of a breastfeeding Mum after it went viral and then claimed it was ‘a mistake’. Sure it was, you lying bastards.

Still allowing beheading videos, Zuckenberg? Lost our moral compass, have we?

There was a time when I would have argued robustly with Ella that SLN should have a social media presence, and she’d dig her heels in. She was right, I was wrong. I imagine SLN’s ‘social media presence’ remains at zero until these ludicrous rules are changed.

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Anything Putin can do, we can do better! Here’s two photos from SL, the first of my gay friend Cecil naked horse-riding at the Gay Naturist French Zone sim (any comment, Russian politicians? You’ve also been vocal this week wishing to ban Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, from the country because he came out as being gay….and might bring gonhorrea(!!!!!) into the country. I mean, WTF?) and then one of myself naked horse riding at the 7 Hills naturist sim. We look great. Chelsea looks great. Vlad looks like a twat. Mark Zuckenberg is a twat.

Pookes.

 

Scout Willis and her topless protest against Instagram

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I don’t have time for social media. By that, of course, I mean I don’t have an appetite for it, not a lack of minutes.

I don’t do Facebook (and in fact actively loathe it), and I don’t do Twitter or Instagram or any of those other ones. One, because I don’t trust them in terms of data privacy concerns (there’s no such thing as a free lunch, remember?) and two, Facebook in particular is an example of no moral compass being applied. No? Some time back FB was permitting videos of beheadings, but refusing to permit nudity of any description, including breastfeeding photos. Now, I don’t know what your definition of ‘harmful content’ is, but in mine I think it’s more harmful that children, young adults, the over-sensitive and vulnerable can readily view graphic violence while a very natural part of the post-childbirth months is banned.

Don’t imagine I’m preaching a case for nudity here. I’m not clamouring for the opportunity to be faced with breasts every time I might open up Facebook. I understand why they might not wish to open up a legal can of worms by all manner of ‘revenge’ photos being uploaded to it. I quite understand that may be the thinking and policy. But do I want to entrust my data with someone who can’t differentiate between the morality of video beheadings and a proud mother feeding her new-born child?

And so I steer clear of them all, primarily on the ‘data privacy’ issue, as I say. Bare boobs are essentially neither here nor there. Besides, does anyone really want to know I’m having spinach for dinner? I don’t think that qualifies as ‘news’ even from interesting people.

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Scout Willis, daughter of Demi Moore and Bruce Willis, decided this week to protest against Instagram’s bar on nipples by taking to Twitter (I think I’ve got that the right way around…all of these social media outlets blur into one big mess of narcissism after a while) and wandering around the Lower East Side topless. ‘Legal in New York, but not on Instagram’, she said. Which is a silly state of affairs when you think about it.

Of course, the protest is, in itself, a bit silly, all a bit ‘First World problems’, aka ‘White Whine‘. If she’d been protesting about the oppression of women in other locations around the world, using the obvious magnet of bare boobs to draw in an audience to highlight rape, female genital mutilation, starvation or something else….fair enough. But to be protesting against, well, the well established policies of a social media outlet -however silly those policies may be- is silly in itself.

Ella.