WEEKLY 9


DUE: 6/6
  1. Read two of these: Joanne McNeil – The Facebook Bully, Gilad Lotan – Fake News Is Not the Only Problem, Aditya Mukerjee – I Can Text You A Pile of Poo, But I Can’t Write My Name, Zynep Tufekci – Is The Internet Good or Bad? Yes.
  2. Post a 2-3 sentence response: Pick an online site that you participate in (something more specific than “Facebook” or “Twitter,” e.g. a particular Facebook community, or a fan forum for a sports team). Do you consider it a “community”? Why or why not?

RESPONSE

I used to be part of a Facebook group called "sounds white but ok." It used to be really funny posts that mostly consisted of people of color making fun of the way white people cooked or weird family photos and other basic white things, etc. However, it started turning into a really toxic environment to the point where I ended up leaving the group because it was so negative. Someone posted a video of a white man helping out a homeless black man and their caption said something along the lines of "ugh I hate how white people have to always be the hero." Would it have been better if he had just walked by and done nothing to help? The Facebook page became completely overridden with negative posts like this and even my roommates ended up leaving the group. I think this page used to be a really good community for people of color to vent their frustrations in a safe place, but it ended up downspiraling into a really toxic environment where basically if you were white you were automatically considered an enemy by this Facebook group.



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