How many of us have a love-hate relationship with our social media outlets? I know I do.
I've deleted my Facebook numerous times out of frustration of friends oversharing, spam, and creepy friend requests. However, every time I delete it...I miss it after a while. And, finally, I came to the conclusion that Facebook, even with all its petty annoyances, does more good than harm for me as someone who aspires to work in the media, or at least very closely with it, when I graduate college.
Although some of us may believe the only benefit to social networking is to keep tabs on ex-loves and that cute classmate from freshman year, the truth is most people actually use social media sites to see breaking news (this is why journalists love it), share their interests and hobbies (ding ding ding advertisers!) and, my personal favorite, use it as a platform for resistance discourse.
What is resistance discourse you ask? Well, I'm glad you asked dear reader! Let me explain this fancy term for something we all do every day with an example.
Remember a couple weeks ago when Kim Kardashian tried to break the internet? If you don't let me expose your eyes to a censored version of the image you'll never be able to forget. You're welcome.
This was Paper Magazine's winter cover, and in the actual photo (the uncropped version) the most famous Kardashian sister exposes her even more famous derriere in an EXTREMELY photo-shopped picture. The cover also claimed to have a goal of "breaking the internet", a term we've used recently to describe newsworthy events that generate so much views and/or controversy that the general public of internet users basically blows it way out of proportion. This Kardashian stunt did exactly that. But...maybe not in the way Kim Kardashian expected.
As maybe with most other people, I heard about this on social media. And if I had a dollar for every opinion about it that's popped up about on my Twitter timeline, Facebook newsfeed, and even my Tumblr dash, I'd have enough money to pay for a semester of college tuition.
But why does this matter? It's a stupid publicity stunt by a stupid celebrity we made famous for no reason, right? Well, dear reader, once again I'm so glad you asked!
Actually, whether you like Kim Kardashian or not (if you take the latter opinion I can relate...) this whole public freak out about this most recent photo shoot is the perfect example of how we use social media to put our opinions of popular culture out there in the internet universe for everyone to agree or disagree with. Thus, the platform for resistance discourse is born and we learn a lot about what society thinks of certain events. These events (like a naked celebrity photo shoot) may not seem important...but reactions and opinions of people talking about it actually allow us to gauge where our society stands on issues like feminism, motherhood, and even in this case, sexual expression.
A lot of the criticism for these photos has been aimed at the fact Kim K. is a mother now, and thus, apparently that means she no longer is a sexual being or allowed to display her body. One of the other big issues people have with Kim K.'s photos are that they seem to be very racially offensive, imitating those of old photos mocking black women's curvaceous bodies with the fact her butt is big enough to hold and balance a champagne glass on it.
But for as much criticism of the cover as there has been, there's also been plenty of fun, less intense, mockery with memes and impersonations by average Tweeters and celebrities alike. Chelsea Handler, for one took to Instagram to point out how ridiculously photo-shopped Kim Karashian's body is by posting pictures of her own, unfiltered buttocks, stretch marks, tanlines and all.
Kim K. has also become the "butt" (haha see what I did there?) of altered and hilarious memes.
(Google them for some fun.)
So when you start to loose all hope with social media, and the way it makes stupid people famous, stop and think about how it also is used as a tool to MOCK those stupid people we're making famous. How it criticizes events we SHOULD be criticizing as a society, and how useful it is as a platform to talk about our thoughts about society with other people we may not have come in contact with otherwise.
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