Digital Culture? The millennials take over…AGAIN!!
Digital Culture is a simple concept that can be extremely complex due to the new world of social media and almost everything becoming digital. I mean really, think back to like ten years ago, I know most of us were really young back then, but think about it? Would you ever have comprehended what we have today, ten years ago? The answer is absolutely not. Texting was the big thing back then, now texting is almost irrelevant with all of the apps and online chat rooms/group messages. It is almost like unheard of what we have today. I find it interesting to think about where we are going to be in another ten, fifteen, twenty years from now. Will phones become extinct? Will we have a chip inside of us (Black Mirror reference) that we use to communicate with others? We will see right, hopefully we all will.
Digital culture is the way we think, express and communicate with each other as a society through our digital technology. It is the way we interact and what is deemed “socially acceptable” and what is not. In today’s day and age, it is not only acceptable but almost frowned upon if you do not have a Facebook, twitter and instagram. I know this first-hand, as I do not have any of the above mentioned and I get the weirdest, dirtiest looks because of it. I have my own personal beliefs on why I do not have one but still, we live in a society where if your every move is not posted than “it did not happen” right? “Snaps or it didn’t happen”, how much is that really true? Based on my experience, very true.
In “Choose Your Own Ethnography: In search of (Un)mediated life” by Danah Boyd, Boyd discusses the evolution and fast pace of technology. Boyd states, “Trying to locate myself and my questions in a fast-moving (if not exploding) phenomenon full of people moving digital and physical spaces, shifting geography and time roved challenging. Understanding culture in a networked environment requires dodging bullets Matrix-style, weaving through groups, around technologies and into in-between-spaces and times.” I found this quote rather interesting because she is talking about the unwritten rules of society, “snaps or it didn’t happen” or any other lame phrase you have heard about social media. People are struggling to find their niche or stay relevant in this “volatile social environment”. This reminds me of a quote from the film “21 Jump Street”, although this movie is a comedy, Jonah Hill’s character, Morton Schmidt, while undercover in high-school, says, “If only I was just born 10 years later, I would have been the coolest person ever”. He says that because his interests and hobbies while he was in school were considered “lame” but the future generations of “cool kids” all have similar interests.
It is interesting to look at and see how society advances. Who knows what the future may hold but for now, it is a social media takeover.
