Digital Derive
For my personal digital dérive, I decided to start my internet journey on twitter (since we can’t use facebook…sad). Normally I only use twitter on my phone, so it was a bit weird logging in on a computer and seeing the layout on a desktop rather than an iphone screen. I began scrolling (with a mouse) through many tweets and viral retweets. I did this for a couple of minutes and found myself struggling because I wasn’t finding any links to other places or videos that made go to another website. But I continued to scroll and I found a tweet talking about the recent drama between rappers Nicki Minaj and Cardi B. The story was familiar to me already. Long story short Nicki Minaj thinks she’s the queen of rap and that no one can compete against her. She made very rude comments about Cardi B. and even mentioned her new born child. The two were at New York Fashion Week. Cardi B got sight of Nicki and decided to chuck her shoe at her. “GASP”! Not at fashion week. That’s basically a celebrity no no! And I guess I wasn’t the only one to think so. The internet went crazy and many people decided to pick sides.
After seeing the Nicki VS. Cardi tweet that prompt me to open up another tab and google the two female rappers names. One of the first links that appeared was E! News! I clicked the websites link and BAM! There it was, one of their headlining stories: Cardi B Takes Another Jab at Nicki Minaj as Beyoncé Seems to Pick Sides. *CLICK* I began reading the story but before I could finish I got distracted by the many stories and videos linked on the side. The E! News website I would say is a combination of YouTube and the NYtimes website. There’s videos and articles, depending on what story you chose there will be a suggested one waiting for you after you’re done with the first or in my case after you see something more interesting than the story you’re currently reading.
So there I was sucked into the internets hole. I went from female rapper drama, to the Kardashians pranking their mom, and ended with a video about Julie Chen’s CBS jobs being in Jeopardy because of her husbands sex scandal. A variety of different stories and I was hooked. I could have easily spent another hour on that site.
After reflecting over my digital dérive it got me thinking, why was it so easy for me to get sucked into one website over another? I get on twitter everyday, It is one of my favorite apps. But I think using it on a computer threw me off and made it hard for me to naturally move on impulse, not to mention the layout of twitter on your desktop is completely different and you mostly float through people’s tweets or retweets and occasionally a funny video or picture. While on E! News there are so many big pictures with small text, and many videos of hot topic stories. No matter which one you clicked on there was always a video coming up next and suggested scrolling bar of more stories. With that being said I think the layout and the setup of a website really can control your digital dérive.
