Fame to more fame #WOKE
It is prevalent that everyone must have thought, “How can someone like Donald Trump win the election? What’s wrong with America?” When things so ridiculous like Trump winning the presidential election arises, we question how informed we really are about the world we live in. Social media plays a big role in the whole confusion most people had that night and while some may have connected the dots, some might still be demanding for an explanation. We rely on social media for updates or news of the world thinking that it helps enlighten us, but we never really gave it a thought whether the information we receive is truthful. On the basic level, of course everyone knows the positives and negatives of using social media and how those qualities influence our lives, but we choose to ignore most of it because it has become so integrated into our lives to waste our time thinking about it. However, it is important to bring those qualities into light to better explain certain phenomenon and how social media can pull someone from the shadows into fame.
So, how is social media bad? The one inseparable quality of social media that people are most concern about is privacy. No one really trusts social media. In fact, some of us don’t even trust most of the technologies out there, but we try to put it behind us because we all know that it is the price to pay for the convenience it brings. Even if we don’t trust it, there is really no other choice but to accept it because if we don’t use these technologies and social media, clearly, we will not survive and be at a huge disadvantage among our current society. Not only that, social media can also confine us within our own comfort zone and that has something to do with social media companies such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter etc. All these apps or even websites like Netflix are carefully integrated with calculated and complex algorithm allowing them to customize content based on what the user prefers.
Say we search up comments on Twitter bashing Trump. The more we search up, the more people, comments, and recommendations are catered towards the negative comments we want to see. The problem here is that we are always being fed with content that is specific to what we like and not seeing the big picture and confining us within our own filter bubble, which really defeats the purpose of social media don’t you think?
On that note, we have just somewhat explained how social media contributes to the surprise of Donald Trump’s winning the election.
Now, we established that Trump becoming president is a joke to most of us. Many of us thought that way, and maybe some of us still do. Maybe the reason why most of us never expected him to become president was because we were busy focusing on our personal opinions and clicking like to those who agree with us. We follow news on social media platforms especially Twitter, but we only follow people and comments that we resonate with therefore only engaging ourselves in activities that are interesting, extreme, or outrageous to ourselves.
Trump might be taking advantage of social media because he himself has a Twitter account, which he posts almost too regularly. But because of that, he was able to maintain so much attention even after the election. Because of Trump’s extreme ideals and his presentation of his own image, people either criticize him or praise him. The extreme extinction is evident on social media. The more extreme his words are the more likes, shares, and attention he gets. Maybe people’s responses are validation for the way he acts so he proceeds to do more of it, attracting both a ton of the love and the hate. But why does it matter? He gets more exposure either way.
This doesn’t always have to be Trump who gets the attention from both ends of the spectrum, but also many others who have become famous from merely a comment they made or a small clip. Some of these people are just so random that we ask ourselves why are they even famous, but that’s the thing with social media. We might really love or hate someone and feel the need to tell people about it, but then by doing that, he or she gets more attention. See the pattern? That is how people can leverage social media into manipulating what gets circulated on the internet. That is, if you do it right.
Well okay, social media isn’t all that bad. Of course not. We can’t deny that it allows us to connect with one another no matter where we are on the globe. Also, even we might find comments or people with the same or similar opinion, it is still a way to get to know the various ideas that others have that you don’t. It also doesn’t always produce demagogues like Trump, but also bring more fame to people who wants to make a change and hope to influence and initiate change to people e.g. legendary Oprah Winfrey that we all respect know and respect.
Social media can bring people who might be helpful to society into fame, which is what we should be doing. Sometimes we see trending topics or someone asking for support, social media is definitely an effective medium to spreading those topics to the global audience. Not only is social media becoming an effective medium for advertisers nowadays, but also politicians who are now trying to tap into understanding how to utilize social media to its fullest potential to sway public opinion.
As you can see, there both positive and negative sides to social media. It is only how we choose to engage ourselves with it that matters because if we regulate ourselves to follow topics that are out of our comfort zone, we will definitely be more informed about the world and avoid restricting ourselves in our own filter bubble. That way, we will be using social media as a medium it was intended to be.
