Blog Post 1

Popular culture is a very powerful tool that can be used in both a positive and negative way. From the article Social Currency we learn that people like things that make them look good. These things are often remarkable topics that are far from boring. These topics then function  as a way of social currency. Social currency is used to achieve desired positive impressions among others. Inner remark-ability is just one of three ways the article Social Currency talks about on how to gain social currency, the other two being leverage game mechanics and make people feel like insiders. On the other hand popular culture can be used as a negative tool, demonstrated by Jon Ronson who talks about a woman named Justine Sacco who posted a Tweet she thought to be a joke that others took as racist. Justine's life was ruined in a matter of a day because of a popular culture tool known as Twitter. Popular culture also sparks what is known as moral panic, fears that are very real but also out of proportion to their actual threat. Moral panic usually stems from parents and elders not understanding why their kids or the youth are into what they like. Popular culture has it's ups and its downs, as do any other culture, but you cannot receive the positive aspects like feeling better about yourself with social currency without the negative aspects of possibly having your life destroyed in a day like Justine Sacco. You must pick and choose your battles when it comes to popular culture. 

Comments

  1. UnknownSeptember 4, 2018 at 12:08 AM

    I liked how you put what social currency was used for. I also liked how you defined a lot of vocabulary words we used in class i.e remark-ability, moral panic. I also liked how a lot of your blog talks about what we talked about in class. Reading your article gave an awesome refresher of what we learned over the last two weeks of class.

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  2. NKSeptember 4, 2018 at 8:44 AM

    I really enjoyed reading this. You brought up a lot of the major key points from the readings which help to justify your post. I liked that you added the part with the Twitter incident. I feel things like this go overlooked and need more attention.

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