Thinking and Writing about Digital Media

     Over the weekend, my friend tagged me in the post of acquaintance's cousin of her; the basic premise was that the girl writing had used the last page in a journal she began writing three years ago and wanted to send the journal to a stranger, any stranger, the further the better, preferably female, PG. 13 if you're okay with that. It was the kind of social experiment my friend thought I'd be interested in. She was right. The writer was more interested in my connections overseas than she was with sending her journal one state over from Idaho to Utah, but I was able to talk to her for a while and I asked her why she was doing it.

     I think at least one aspect of social media is an attempt to fulfill this innate desire we have to be known. Fulfilling relationships are often grounded in two people's knowledge of one another, their vulnerabilities and longest wishes and major mess ups. I don't use social media very often, not because I feel I'm above it, or have any major problems with the idea behind it, I'm just not very good at updating, at knowing what to say, at having something to say that I think is worth other people's time. I'm an observer, but I don't share much myself. My facebook wall is 90% being tagged in memes and 10% advertising the poetry slams. My list on 10 media items, though I thought I was being original, reflect this consumption habit: nothing on the list invites direct interaction, they are already completed stories ready to digest. Looking at how I use media has been largely trying to pinpoint how I fulfill that desire to be known when I don't use social media and rarely have personal input on the creation of media I appreciate.

      The first question I asked in class is if media creation must denotatively involve an audience. In 2017 I made a goal to write a blog/journal entry every day of the year, and I'm ridiculously proud to have actually completed that goal, but it was completely private, password protected for both writer and any potential readers. The obvious exceptions would be the poetry slams I run on campus, where poets share their work loudly, expressively, and competitively. There's something I find really appealing about the way time works in a poetry slam. There is little to no proof that I said anything at all once a performance is completed; I'm very careful with my words and how I create myself, but I'm not bound in any permanent way to the person I present myself to be during a performance. The story I am telling only exists in the moments of its consumption. Don't make permanent shifting identities.

      Maybe I'm an analog thinker in a digital age. I'm not technologically illiterate, but I'm at a disadvantage when it comes to teaching students who will most likely have grown up with a very different relationship with social media. One possible advantage I have in a classroom is that I'm a flexible consumer; uninvested in specific social media platforms, I'm more at ease in new spaces. I'm also familiar with media forms that live independently of technology. No matter what other advances happen, I know my students will most likely have hands, have mouths, have ears. Perhaps more important, I'm very curious about where my media comes from, why it's being created. I want to share that scepticism (though no t cynicism) with my students, help them recognize media bias, help them distinguish between what media aims to manipulate and how media desires to be known.