Exercise 4

The connection between career and family had become increasingly blurred. There is the idea that corporate careers provide money and resources for the sake of the family, or so that they can be happy and thrive. Many people (myself included) spend countless hours working towards white collar jobs and careers so that they can eventually settle down and use their earning for their family

Chora space: My being is and overall personhood is affected by my decisions and work towards this goal of a good job. This time spent at a job will overtake every aspect of my life, and corporate cog will by my definition, as opposed to the person I was before I started working.

This idea is circulated through the popcycle and and if have identified a common mood. When people land jobs and internships it is a moment of victory worth bragging over. They post updates about their jobs on Facebook and talk about them in person often in a celebratory tone. People are happy when these things happen, yet there is no mention of future family goals or overall happiness. The goal is the job, and when that is achieved there is no other factors beside that. People are what high paying job they have, and that is the main factor in their identity.

This highlights the underlying value that family has fallen to 2nd place behind career aspirations. The mood of this that I have witnessed is not one of sadness or sorrow because of a loss of family and closeness with other people. This is replaced by work-friends and the satisfaction of accomplishing job related goals. The drive of working hard in a corporate world and earning money in reward is satisfying, and I as mentioned before, worth bragging over as one might brag over the birth of a child. I am no different in sharing this mood. While I do not have a job yet I am earning a degree and well on the path to white collar America. My family, who live far away from me, share this mood and are excited for my ambitious career goals. They encourage me to continue on this path which, in turn, would mean that I would see less and less of them.

The higher the pay and the higher the career achievement, the higher the praise. Because these things are a priority, the becoming of a corporate superstar becomes the person. We are what we do for most of the hours in a day, and if we work for a job for most of the hours in a day then that is our identity. This affects our thoughts, thus encouraging the process further. Brother, son, sister, friend all become less of a priority because they are encountered only after 5 PM, after 9 hours or more of work. Yet the mood of this is not sorrow. People, even if they do not know it, put there careers first and do not regret this decision.

Exercise 3

This is Bad Luck Brian. He is a famous meme, perhaps even world famous.

The purpose of this meme seems simple in my mind. It is used for humor in 95% in the occurrences in which I have found it online. While this is not by any means my favorite meme that exists currently, a meme like this can be a tremendous help to the goals in which I aim to achieve for in the group project.

PUBLIC PEDAGOGY: What I want to accomplish in the group project is for viewers and participators to actually change their actions in order to make them more environmentally friendly. Right now I won’t explain how my posts will achieve that, but I will explain how Bad Luck Brian would be able to help me. He is famous. People see this meme and know what to expect. I would use this meme solely in order to get more people to view my page, hoping that the site of Bad Luck Brian will make them want to see another funny meme that they are very familiar with. I could take this meme and, and not only create a humorous meme, but also orient it towards eco-sustainability. That way people are coming to the page because of they recognize Bad Luck Brian, but they see it oriented towards the environment so that they also know what this blog is really about.

RHETORICAL VELOCITY: Like I’ve mentioned in class, I want my blog work to be distributed as much as possible. At the same time, I am not very worried about the content being changed, being that it is so personalized in the first place. If I created an eco-meme using Bad Luck Brian, then the hopes would be that it would be distributed and redistributed throughout the funny meme matrix. This provides great exposure for my work because there is a tremendous framework of websites that involve funny memes, and they get a ton of viewers. While keeping my environmental ideals firm, I would like to use Bad Luck Brian to infiltrate this network for funny memes simply because of the amount of internet traffic, giving my site more exposure.

REMIXED MEDIA: I did not create Bad Luck Brian, and I certainly am not the poor soul who is in the picture. I am purely remixing media that already exists in whatever way I see fit. While I do not consider myself an artist in this instance, it takes creativity, and a heck of a lot of talent to create a meme that is not only funny, but also in the genre of eco-sustainability. That is my goal. I plan to take this already established piece of pop-culture, personalize it, and then distribute it to the masses. Despite the fact that it is a meme that consists of a single picture, I still find it to be a prime example of remixed media.

Exercise 2

Orality: 

Spoken word communication seems to produce, like, the most amount of conflict between people, especially when using rhetoric. Ya know? There is no time for spell check, and even less time to collect, um, er, thoughts and stuff. Example:

I was in class yesterday and we had a class discussion regarding a case study where a hospital is in danger of closing and the CEO needs to make a series of budget cuts in order to stay above water.  I was assigned to play the devil’s advocate in the discussion, and it was so much fun!

Christine: “Maybe they could partner with a local university and have some sort of, um, internship program.  That way theres, like, students working who don’t get paid as much.  Also I know a lot of universities that contribute grants and stuff to places like hospitals.

Me: “Every hospital accepts interns, so we must assume that this place also currently has recent grads working inside their walls. Also, big universities often times already have a large medical centers that are affiliated with their school, like Stanford’s hospital.  And how can we assume that there is even a university in this area?

Christine: “Yeah, but, like, we have to ask universities for grants and stuff because it is a source of a lot of money, and interns will take a lot less money than the doctors will.”

Within orality, I often see points in discussions go ignored because one party simply doesn’t have an answer, or the time to think of one. And plus, with face-to-face interaction there is a huge pride aspect, where no one wants to look dumb. Orality is the ultimate reflection of identity and intelligence because it is spur of the moment and the quick thinking aspect leaves little time for someone to think of ways to alter their identity.

 

 

Literacy: 

Written word, in my experience, is the final product of time spent analyzing, drafting, and re-drafting. The end product of my literacy (whether that be an email, or an essay) is always fine tuned to the goal which I am set on achieving.

Last year I was enrolled in a creative non-fiction course. Our first essay was a biographical piece, and I chose to write about the conflict that occured when I chose to play on the all-star team in my little league during one summer instead of going on vacation with my father (my parents are divorced, so vacation time was a big deal for both sides of my family). I wanted to present all aspects of the situation, including my love of baseball, my pride in being selected to the all-star team, as well as my relationship with my father and the fact that I saw him only a fraction of the time (compared with my mother).

I was able to spend hours reflecting on this experience and writting numerous drafts. I wanted the end product to be emotional, and grammatically perfect. Literacy is an extension of my own identity and experiences, combined with the chance to reflect and take a tremendous amount of time to mold that identity in whatever way I see fit.

 

 

Electracy: 

LOL 🙂 On social media I am able to to chose an online identity that might be different than my real one. But, like in the sphere of orality, there is the pride aspect because anything I do or say is linked back to me and my profile (check out my pics!  #spring break!) Because this reflection is so tightly tied to how my social media friends view me, I can change this identity and leave our parts that I don’t want people to know about.

On my Facebook page I don’t post pictures, ever. I like to wait until I am tagged in other people’s photos and then they show up on my page (#woo woooo!). This way, it doesn’t seem like I am bragging about my cool experiences, or trying to overcompensate for something. At the same time, it makes me look cool because I am tagged in other people’s photos, which shows that I have friends and a social life (all aspects of my identity that I choose to promote on social media).

*The second image on this post was created by myself on Pixlr, and the bottom meme was also generated my me.

Glassdoor? Or rather, Glasswalls and Glassceilings

For the first time, I went onto the site Glassdoor the other night. For those unfamiliar, it is a website that contains information on thousands of companies, including salaries for many different positions (ranging from intern to CEO, but the CEO’s probably DO make more than 250k a year). It used to be that one had to enter information into the site from a company that you worked for in order to access this mass display of data. Now, however, all you need to do is connect with Facebook in order for Glassdoor to access your friends, and any other information that Facebook has access to.

Within two seconds of scrolling I was already in love with the site. I was able to look at some examples of salaries for companies ranging from Microsoft, to McDonald’s, to Ogilvy & Mather. This is a perfect example of bottom up surveillance (it almost would have been more appropriate to call this site Glassceiling because you are looking through the floors of the corporation and seeing what the big-wigs make). If access to information indeed creates power, then this site puts a little bit of this power into the hands of the worker. Not only can you view the salaries of specific jobs held at specific companies, but you can also see any benefits and bonuses, what health care is provided, and even reviews made by anonymous former workers.

Of course, Glassdoor can’t operate without a little bit of data mining allowed to occur by my decision to share my Facebook information. This website is free, yes, FREE, and therefore something needs to be taken from the user in order for the reciprocal process of information gathering, information giving to occur. This just shows you how important your address, place of birth, cookies, and search history is worth to websites and companies, it can sometimes even take the place of currency! Because I didn’t enter in the salary information of the companies I’ve worked for, Glassdoor had to take my Facebook information in order to have me access it’s site. Fine, but in a way I just gave Glassdoor some currency. Who knows what Glassdoor will do with that info. Maybe they will take my Facebook search history, sell it to advertisers, and now I will see even more ads for basketball shoes on my Facebook feed.

Yes money = power, that’s a given. But in the Internet Age INFORMATION also = power. My cookies, search history; that information is power because it is a representation of who I am. That information can be used by advertisers and websites to access me better. There is a reason why basketball shoes keep showing up on my Facebook feed, I love basketball. I am constantly looking at highlights and reading news for it, maybe it’s just a matter of time before I buy another pair of shoes…

And oh yeah, then there’s Glassdoor. Information about salaries, benefits, healthcare = POWER. We are not reading reviews fed through the PR engine, this comes straight from the source, the employee themselves. Giving employees options about what companies are more profitable to work for, less stressful, is a tremendous source of power. It might even force companies to treat their employees better for fear of bad PR on Glassdoor.

But the system is not perfect. The CEO of Sungard, a tech. company, obviously makes more than 250k a year… someone messed with the system. When interpreting information created on the public domain, remember: ALWAYS USE YOUR BEST JUDGEMENT