Brianna Higgins - 5 Boxes
1. Diversity
Advancement, Tenacity
Our tenacity to understand diversity allows for our advancement in wisdom.
2. Clarity
Elaborate, Connection, Intuitions
Our connections provide clarity towards the unknown and elaborate parts of how we live.
3. Compelling
Opposite, Curious, Understanding
Things that are opposite from us are compelling and make us curious of the unknown.
4. Decline
Intuition, Standards, Change
A decline in our intuition causes us to have lower standards in ourselves.
5. Support
Benefit, Compromise, Diversity
We can support one another through our abilities to compromise and benefit each other.
Nicole Herget - 5 Boxes
1. Persistence
Tenacity, Curiosity, Unified
It is important to be tenacious in the face of adversity
2. Senses
Bonding, Intuition, Elaborate
Through our intuitions we gather our greatest strengths
3. Knowing
Curiosity, Perceive, Understanding
We must have an understanding of ourselves before we can understand others
4. Growth
Diversity, Compromise, Benefit
Our lives benefit when we communicate and compromise to benefit others
5. Diversity
Opposites, Advancements, Curiosity
Advancements in our society lead to progression in the world around us
Article: "Fake 'Likes' Remain Just a Few Dollars Away"
Intro - Nicole: With just a few dollars and a couple clicks, getting likes on your favorite social media website is easier than one would think. “Fake ‘Likes’ Remain Just a Few Dollars Away” showed us just how true that statement is. As the article developed, we looked at the many factors in which social media affect our society as a unit. Social media manipulation has come to the forefront of our society in regards to situations such as marketing campaigns, social media account engagements and even elections. We took a deep dive into the relationship of paying for likes and the outcome of it. It is no shock that people have concerns with this manipulation. Examining fake engagement is very important based on the outcomes that follow the action. The action of manipulating can cause a facade of success. This false information can lead to events that could benefit or on the dark end of the spectrum, hurt people. The question remains: how does this manipulation of social platforms affect our lives as we know it?
Paragraph 1 - Nicole: Advancements in social media has guided our society to discover alternative routes of sharing our lives. This online progress has lead to positive outcomes of connecting and sharing our lives with the people around us. Although online connections have a generally positive outcome, it can also lead people down a darker path. These negative outcomes being: manipulating their social accounts to selfishly promote oneself or product. These egotistical decisions stem from the big social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Youtube. How we interact and relate with others impacts how we view each other on a daily basis. With the conglomerate social media platforms controlling what we see on a daily basis, we are seeing trends and complications coming to the forefront of our society.
Paragraph 2 - Nicole: We must have an understanding of ourselves before we can understand others. Why are people manipulating their profiles for more likes and views? How do we combat online disinformation and contribute to our society for the best? When companies can sell likes and views, why shouldn’t someone take advantage of that for their personal growth? If you had the opportunity to better yourself, you should. But, having this personal and selfish vendetta can be much more hurtful in the long run then we realize. If a person’s personal growth online is due to the likes and views they purchased, the satisfaction might be present in the moment, but will not last forever. Hard work and dedication to one's personal brand will lead to understanding ourselves and our intentions far more than fake likes that one bought. Because these avenues for buying likes are so readily available, the question is: how do we stop this from happening and occuring in the future?
Paragraph 3 - Brianna: Our tenacity to understand diversity allows for our advancement in wisdom.
Researchers from the NATO Strategic Communications Center of Excellence were curious about the unknown when it came to social media, and the ability to hire companies for likes and clicks. The 2016 election compelled them to look further, only to discover that for a small amount of money, you could buy over thousands of likes, comments, views, and followers, from companies in Russia and Europe. This provided researchers the wisdom to look further into the problem, and what companies or accounts were at fault for the manipulation. With such a wide availability on an influential matter, consideration on the outcomes and future effects needed to be made
Paragraph 4 - Brianna: Our connections provide clarity towards the unknown and elaborate parts of how we live.
We are surrounded by the ability of others to influence us. Researchers found hundreds of providers of social media manipulation, only to further prove what was most feared. With such an ease of access to them, it was clear that their revenue was high, and that they were being commonly used. They were then connected to thousands of active accounts that were linked to this manipulation, and sent it to the social media providers to give them further clarity of who was to be at fault. But the question remained, what would be done then? Even with knowledge on the providers side, the accounts still remained active, giving them the ability to further manipulate the minds of others.
Paragraph 5 - Aron: We have grown comfortable living in a false reality.
Social media as an influence on its’ own has allowed us as a society to live in a false reality, for some it’s a much more comfortable reality than the one we live in. The instant gratification that comes with seeing friends and acquaintances like your post can be addictive, and draws people deeper and deeper into the void of social media. Sometimes people will post a picture on Instagram or tweet out a statement, and not get enough likes or favorites and take it down. People are becoming reliant on this instant gratification. With the ability to purchase false popularity on social media, people without a large social media influence can spread themselves faster and more efficiently than ever. The issue with this is that it is false popularity, it is false attention, it is false gratification. We have to learn to live our lives through our experiences in the real world, and this ability to purchase false influence can draw those more vulnerable to temptations further into their false reality.
Conclusion - Aron: Social media can be a very important platform for many. It allows us to voice our political opinions, share what’s going on in our lives, and connect with people we haven’t seen in years. The potential continues to grow daily, as does the influence social media has in our lives. The reality is that influence on social media is becoming an influence in the real world. The ability to manipulate your online influence has blurred the lines between genuine popularity and false success. People, topics, marketing campaigns, and more that shouldn’t have a large platform due to a lack of ingenuity or new ideas have the ability to put themselves out there more and more. Some things aren’t meant to succeed, and that’s ultimately how life works, but the ability to purchase fake success is detrimental to social media as a whole and allows things to slip through the cracks that really shouldn’t be.