It has taken me a while to get going but at last, my visitor/resident diagram.
My VR map tells me quite a few things. First, it affirms my fascination with visual learners and my admiration for them. I try not to think dichotomously about visual or auditory, but I am not sure that map is saying what I imagine. After taking this picture, I realize the apps I use most are missing– WhatsApp and MarcoPolo. Email was added as a perfunctory nod to the Davidson clog more than anything else but my walkie-talkie apps represent my leanings toward auditory styles better than the map itself.
One of the reasons this course drew my interest is because I struggle in my comfort within personas I aspire too–visual anthropologist. public visual anthropologist. I am not on Facebook. I have been Facebook-free going on nine years but I wish I was more adept at harnessing Twitter and other social media platforms because of that. Bonnie’s blog post about the push-back on live-tweeting at conferences was surprising as live-tweeting has gotten me through my social awkwardness of navigating conferences in the last few years. Through Twitter, I’ve learned about relevant scholarship more immediately and also found collectives of anthropology folx that I really like engaging with. Instagram and Snapchat are personal and the only social media where I display family photos.
I have a personal/professional website Envision Imprint. I co-founded this blog with a friend/colleague from graduate school and it’s been running for about five years now. While the blog is not as developed as I would like (needs more content updates) I am proud that we keep it going and I hope to spend more time writing there in the future. Three years ago, I got excited about the Davidson Domains project, registered a site and have done nothing since. I am generally mortified by this.
I really like finding out about different intentionality and decisions around platform choices. I commend you for being Facebook free, and am curious about what surrounded that choice. I feel forced into being on it, because there are so many people in my life I find out about there and really nowhere else. (They are people I would have talked on the phone with in a different time, and I hate talking on the phone). But I am not forced, it is a choice. The other thing I like on FB is that people seem more relaxed there (as opposed to more public platforms), but this is exactly what feeds into the problems surrounding how people express themselves and their opinions about all the things. Ultimately, I would like NOT to be there at some point, so your choice gives me hope for myself. Your post also makes me wonder about the different perceptions of personal. Is it related most specifically to family / friends? to interests (unrelated to professional interests)? to more open expression of feelings?
Facebook free for me really started as an experiment. I’d just recently moved to a pretty isolating place and FB was causing me to feel down about missing out on what I felt like was my “real life” and not the place that I was currently living. So a week turned into a month, then three and then whenever I would re-active my account, I became increasingly turned off by the interactions I was having there so it felt pretty easy to let it go after that. Instead, I made it a point to call folks more often, visit more regularly and to actually exist in physical spaces with people. In the end, I realized that leaving FB was exactly what I needed to actually feel closer to the people I cared most about because I am able to experience things with them rather than feel like I’m missing out by perusing their photos online.
I need to get off facebook. I have no meaningful interaction there, the interface aggravates me, and I think my real life would be richer without it.
Incidentally, twitter just makes me anxious. So even though it is my primary source of news, I’m increasingly unsure that its worth it.