I must start today's critical response expressing utter disappointment. The woman in the video, Johanna, first comes out and introduces the topic she is going to talk about today. However, the problem is, I didn’t quite get what the topic, the focus and the purpose of her speech was- even till the end of the video! She starts off by talking about how inaccurate the old standards the media used to implement when categorizing and analyzing the demographics of the country, and talks as if she was going to explain the new standards, the new means to “truly” analyze the demographics-the information that really tells about what kind of person each individuals were. And to some point, she does discuss the newly emerging standards that are utilized nowadays in social media to categorize its users-the “interests” and “favorites” of the people-until she wanders away from the original topic and totally loses her focus. At the apex of her digression, she hurriedly wraps up what was remaining of her disorganized, unappealing speech with an ultimate feministic claim enchanting “Women are gaining more and more power, becoming much more important and influential. Now just imagine. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to think about a world where outdated gender stereotypes no longer have any sort of influence over the environment of the social media?” Well, yes, Mrs., I certainly do think it would be wonderful, even quite fantastic, but was that what you were talking about in the first place? I thought you were criticizing the old demographic measures that used to try to understand the mass with very rigid, statistical, and also inaccurate criterions, which included gender, and the whole later half of your speech preaches about the empowering females (Sounds quite contradictory to me)? For me, it was like hearing two separate speeches from one person at the same time, jumping from one topic to another, here and there, and that was why it was seriously confusing for me to interpret the content when searching for one concentrated theme.
Well, that’s it for my anger towards the disarrayed focus of the video, so let’s talk about some substantial stuff that could be discussed in today’s response. As a matter of fact, until Johanna lost her grip delivering fiery speeches on feminism, I do think that she had a good point on the truth that we’re experiencing-the social media are experiencing a major change in the yardsticks they use to analyze demographics. I actually do agree on the point that the old criterions that used to classify the population-age, gender, race, or economical prosperity-are quite useless on defining an individual and his or her life. Because everybody is so intrinsically different from their birth and we are living in a much more individualistic society than we used to tens of years ago, information like how old you are or what country are you from, became rather irrelevant on describing your true self. As Johanna correctly pointed out, people nowadays tend to group together based on their “interests” or “favorites”, which tells me much more about what kind of person somebody is than what his or her skin color is. And this realization that the interests of the people are what matters much more than the factual backgrounds had an enormous impact on the behaviors of large corporations-including social media.
Now, social media communities care about if you are a band-lover who is impressed by the music of Oasis or a hip-hop mania who is obsessed over Eminem. They care if you like Chinese, American, French, or Korean food. They want to know if you’ve ever been to the mountains or the seas, or if you like art or architectures; if you enjoy playing computer games at home or perhaps prefer playing a game of basketball with your friends. They are interested in your everyday favorites and excitements; they want to know what you want to see, hear, smell, taste, and feel- because that is the information that can help them make some real profits, to boost consumption and produce popular merchandise; that is the information that truly defines you.
Although it would have been much better if the speech’s theme was more focused, I still think Johanna is demonstrating a critically important change that our social media, and moreover, our world, is experiencing: the shift on the fundamental concepts of demographics and categorization of the population. Sure, age, ethnicity, gender, and all other factual, basic background qualities can tell SOMETHING about a person. However, firstly, that is not what the social media companies want to know and need to know about an individual; secondly and more importantly, that kind of information is not something that can truly describe who the person is. We the people are more accurately and genuinely defined by our interests, our passion, and our dream-and the social media that are responsible of “defining” us through demographics are realizing that fact. (Go see on Facebook; one of the most popular little activities people are just crazy about doing is “pressing LIKE, LIKE, and LIKE”!!) So perhaps, the day of the conceptual revolution is not far from yet to come. Now just imagine. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to live in a world where you are defined by your passion? As for me- I just simply cannot wait.
THBT the dissemination of personal information in SNS should be restricted
THS affirmative action for women in workplaces
THBT personal interest can tell more about an individual than one's personal data
THBT social media that administrates the user's personal information has the duty to prevent its commerical usage
This is a video that demonstrates how the most representative social media in the world, Facebook, analyzes its users by many demographic standards, but most importantly, by "likes and interests"
-->http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8cJOlMjhfPk
This video talks about how personal interests of the people nowadays can actually affect the public interest, and benefit the nation as a whole by providing such individual information that is relevant when analyzing the demographics.
-->http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4L2kquBCpnM
