My Observations of Social Media
For getting my news through social media, I stick to using a couple of the basic apps such as Facebook, Flipboard, and Apple News, and various other sites I happen to stumble upon. Mostly through YouTube is where I get my news pertaining to my passion of film. I follow, like, share a lot of what I read if I find it interesting and if I think others will find it interesting, I share. My Twitter is full of that stuff, mostly related to gaming and film news. Interacting with others can be quite challenging given the content I dive into. A lot of communities are somewhat toxic and hostile towards others who have differing opinions, and/or hate the content that a user posted, they just get attacked right away. In Facebook, I’m a part of groups that are based around each personal interest and consist of users who have the ability partake in conversations. During my time observing these groups, I’ve seen two more different types of people; those who agree, disagree, disagree to disagree, the hateful kind, and the nice kind.
On Reddit, I have noticed that the downvoting option is only used when those who comment don’t have any input to the conversation, but the most crucial thing about Reddit’s community is that being hostile will result in insults and harassment from all users. The site itself has it’s own culture, aside from Facebook. Reddit doesn’t stand for toxic environments as much, depending on the subreddit. I’ve read about stuff I wouldn’t even bother to search for, but that’s the best part about the site. You just have to anticipate what your interactions will be like once if you post or comment, but all of that doesn’t you won’t be open to hostility.
I use Twitter very frequently. As accurate statistics have proven, users on Twitter follow their favorite companies to be up to date with what they’re working on next or what they’re improving. For myself, a lot of that falls under the entertainment industry. I follow many gaming profiles who post many updates regarding their products that costumers enjoy. They take a lot of constructive criticism from general active users through Twitter. Activision, for example, a company I despise, has Twitter account to help assist players with certain problems they’re experiencing. I see them often being very supportive, but the company as a whole? That’s a different story. I have notifications turned on for various other companies, along with users who report news on those companies. The infamous CharlieIntel in the Call of Duty community Tweets countless times, promoting the news and updates from the Call of Duty developers. Usually, I engage in conversation with them, other times, I retweet what they posted. My overall experience with observing a lot of the social media I use has been positive and has taught me a lot of the culture that each site has.
