Remaining anonymous is a choice that is given to every person who uses the Internet.
Most people don’t know who you are behind a username.
This is both important, but dangerous.
It is important that people are able to keep their private lives separate from their online profiles, but it also creates an easy pathway for literally anyone to harass whomever they please without consequence, in many cases.
But online, you can decide who you would like to be as opposed to who you are offline.
You can create a whole new identity for yourself.
This is not a threat.
Not entirely.
Creating a new identity can be a way of expressing oneself. In some cases, it brings out one’s true self. In some cases, it encourages fantasy.
Your identity online does not necessarily need to coincide with your identity offline and this also helps keep your privacy. Many platforms also allow those who do wish to share their personal lives online privacy features. Over the past decade or two, social platforms have become much more advanced in increased their privacy settings and providing options for the public to go, generally, unnoticed by most. Although companies may be given copyrights, information and images can be quite well hidden from the rest of the world.
My blog is allowing me to live a dream that I may not have had the opportunity to do, if the Internet and social media did not exist.
I get to choose exactly what I wish to display and what information I provide.
Most people who visit my page will simply know me as The Raincity Fairy.
Or Ashley.
I am obsessed with lipstick.
I love lip products. I once became familiar with every drugstore lip product several years back. Whether it’s a liquid lip or a bullet, glossy, matte, or velvet, or a nice lip balm or a stain, I am constantly looking for new and better products that are both smudge-proof and kiss-proof.
I usually like to experiment with bold reds and deep purples. Sometimes, blues, greys, and browns make intriguing lip shades during the fall and winter months.
I definitely love an edgy look.
Currently, my favourite lip product is the DisneyxTHEFACESHOP watery lip tint collaboration. I use the shade #4 Red. Unfortunately, this product is no longer available, but it just the perfect shade of red. It smells like candy and leaves a slight stain, but needs to be reapplied after eating. It’s not the perfect lip product, but it isn’t terrible either.
My top two brands would have to be NYX and Etude House.
You can never go wrong with a bold, matte lip from NYX or a pretty, rose colour from Etude House.
A tip?
If you have several different shades of lipstick and you’re out shopping and you see a colour that you really love, don’t buy it because it’s very likely that you already have something similar.
In no particular order, my top five holy grail skincare products of 2020 are:
As somebody who has suffered from years of eczema and terrible acne, some of these products have truly been life changing.
I have been using the aloe vera gel from The Face Shop for just about a year and a half now. It claims to use 99% aloe vera in its product. Whether or not that is true, I cannot say, but I used to get extremely red patches on my face from who even knows what. It just happened. Even when I had outgrown the eczema and acne on my face, it just happened. Though I’ve seen many dermatologists over nearly 20 years for eczema, I never managed to find a solution for the aftermath: my blushing, hot red tomato face. The Face Shop’s aloe vera gel is the single product that has managed to calm any irritation and inflammation. This is a product that I will likely be using for the rest of my life.
2. COSRX Advanced Snail 96 Mucin Power Essence
Cosrx also makes wonderful skincare products! The two that I use are the snail and whitehead essences. The snail essence is gooey when applied and leaves my face shiny no matter how much powder I apply, so I use it during my night routine, but it is so moisturizing and does wonders for my skin.
3. COSRX AHA 7 Whitehead Power Liquid
The game changer, though, is the whitehead product, which supposedly exfoliates the skin by melting away dead skin cells. I didn’t believe this when I read the reviews, but it had so many amazing reviews from so many different people that I had to give it a try. I was skeptical when I tried it. I didn’t notice much difference at first, to be honest, but given a couple more days, my skin was so much softer and smoother. I don’t believe it’s actually meant for daily use, but my skin needs it daily. Too much of this product may cause irritation, but that just means using it less often. It’s not expensive, and if I had to pick one out of all of the products listed here, I would choose this essence.
4. MISSHA Super Aqua Cell Renew Snail Cream
The snail renew cream is a little more on the pricey end. It comes in quite a pleasing jar and it is extremely light and has a rather faint, sweet scent. I love this cream for daytime use as my skin is very oily. I can use a little bit more when needed, but just enough on those extra oily days. I haven’t been able to tell a difference in the texture of my skin, but it is a decent daily moisturizer.
5. Burt’s Bees Moisturizing Lip Balm
And of course, Burt’s Bees has some of the best lip balms out there.
I get super dry and chapped lips year round. Burt’s Bees has kept this from happening all year. I don’t have much to say about this product. It’s great. I’ve tested it and I will vouch for it. It comes in different flavours and different colours, for those who enjoy a slightly tinted balm or want something a little bit fun. It’s 100% natural, and although it is not a vegan product, they do not test on animals.
2020 has been a hectic year, but that doesn’t mean your skin needs to suffer as well!
Community Guidelines:
These guidelines would work for my blog as it is highly focused on social media, imagery, and modelling. On social media, I have received messages that are, sometimes, inappropriate and unappreciated. Many of these messages go unanswered and ignored. I would be very unhappy to see these types of messages on my public blog.
I would also like to protect my viewers and welcome everybody, regardless of their background. This is a safe place for people to discus fashion, beauty, and trends. It is a safe place for people to share their stories without fear of harassment or discrimination.
I will be implementing them by adding a section to one of the pages on my blog, which clearly state the community guidelines. If a viewer violates one of the guidelines, I will then proceed to take action against it.
I intend to continue blogging.
I also intend to continue posting photos on Instagram. Instagram has been and will continue to be my main platform.
However, I also wish to expand.
I want to take my posts to the next level and create YouTube videos.
I want to use YouTube as a platform to connect with my audience and grow. YouTube would be such great method to show my viewers my content and talk to them about it. I could create videos for every Instagram or blog post. I can display my personality through video rather than text. I could verbally tell my story. There would be emotion.
And wouldn’t that just be more personal?
There are so many options.
As I am rather finicky about the quality of the videos as well as the background and the lighting, I will absolutely require ring light tripods to film, especially in the gloomy, rainy city of Vancouver. My house, unfortunately, does not have the lighting for shooting photos and videos. In order to take pictures, I must shoot them during a short window when the sun is high and shining.
I have my account ready to go.
Now, I need to get started.
My ears have been pierced since I was three years old.
That’s a long time ago, right?
I remember getting my ears pierced. I remember the day. I remember the place. I remember who I was with. I remember what the weather was like. I even remember people that I saw that day.
I got them pierced at Claire’s Accessories.
However, as a brief disclaimer, I do not condone Claire’s ear or nose piercings. I do not agree with piercings at the mall. I do not agree with piercing guns. Piercing guns are plastic and they cannot be sterilized meaning the piercings carry bacteria from every single person who has previously gotten a piercing using that gun. Piercing guns also use butterfly clip jewellery, which are terrible quality. The jewellery is forced into the ear, breaking the skin with blunt trauma. The piercers are also untrained and unqualified for this particular job.
Please see a professional piercer at a tattoo and piercing shop. Please take your children to see a professional piercer. It may cost slightly more, but it is so much better for your ears.
Thank you for listening to my safety spiel.
When I was sixteen, I decided I wanted to stretch my ears.
Of course, I was young. I was stupid. I was sixteen and eager to stretch my ears as fast as possible because I was impatient and my friend was doing it with me. My ears went through a lot of unnecessary pain, and fortunately (and very luckily), I did not end up with a blowout.
I stretched my ears to 0g or 8mm in the span of a couple of months.
And they stayed at this size for the next eight years.
About two years ago, I decided that I wanted to stretch my ears to 00g. That’s 10mm or one size up. I barely noticed the difference. It suddenly brought me back to high school when I was stretching my ears for the very first time. It became addicting. The jewellery, plugs and tunnels, are so detailed and breathtaking, at 14mm that I sized up another 4mm before I decided to stop.
And then I downsized.
I went back down to 10mm for a year when I was teaching in Korea, but I was so unhappy with it that I stretched back up. I used unsafe methods with masking tape and caused myself some problems, which in turn, caused me to downsize once more. I waited until I was home from Korea to begin my stretching journey for the fourth time.
But my ears are now at a happy 14mm.
I honestly have such a beautiful, extensive collection of plugs and tunnels.
Though some may not find it attractive and some may think it’s extreme or unfashionable, it’s become a large part of my identity as a fashion lover.
I would never want to give up my ears for anything.
Monster Insights is a plugin that I have been using on my blog since near the day that I first began writing. It is an analytics plugin that provides me with information surrounding my audience.
I can see an overview of how many sessions there have been on my page within a particular timeframe, the average session duration, and the page views. I can see what percentage of my audience are new viewers and what percentage are returning viewers. I can also see which country my viewers are from, which devices they’re using, and whether another website referred them to my blog. It shows me which pages are the most popular as well.
Monster Insights is quite a useful tool and helps me figure out who my audience is rather than having an entirely imagined audience and being unsure whether or not anybody is even viewing my blog at all! This plugin helps me cater my content to the my desired target audience.
I have also used Google Analytics to track data on The Raincity Fairy.
Google Analytics gives me all of the same information plus more. I can see the age range of my viewers as well as their gender and their interests. Surprisingly, I have more male viewers interested in sports rather than female viewers interested in fashion. Most of my viewers have been from Canada or South Korea.
And they like reading my academic essay.
Why?
I must admit that it baffles me how that works!
But it sure is interesting.
For those who don’t already know, I’m quite an avid reader.
I love reading.
I love learning.
I love books.
I love the way they look. I love the way they feel. I love the touch of the crisp, new pages and the distinct smell of a well-loved novel.
I really love everything about them.
Could I argue that fashion books make books even better?
Maybe.
Maybe not.
I have to admit that I love a good novel more than anything, but fashion books are a close second… or third.
I don’t have many, myself, but I do own two very special ones written and illustrated by Megan Hess. She has published the most stunning books, inside and out, that I have ever had the pleasure of owning. I intend to collect the rest of her work, and hopefully, create a small fashion section in my future library.
I can’t wait to read them.
The thing about fashion books is that, just like the clothes themselves, the books are also, more often than not, beautifully designed and illustrated. Every part of a fashion publication screams magnificence and glamour. They’re great reads for anyone who loves fashion as I do and they make charming coffee table books.
What’s not to love about fashion books?
Although much of my content is entirely my own, some of it is not.
My Pinterest feed, for instance, is mine, but the posts themselves do not belong to me. My Pinterest feed contains my mood board. It is a part of my inspiration for the content that I create.
How do I use it?
The images on my Pinterest follow a very specific theme. They reflect the type of images that I also want to create and post online. They give me ideas on what I can do. Sometimes, I try to recreate the images and give it a creative twist to make it original.
I also use Instagram photos for this purpose.
Others’ works have helped me draw inspiration and ideas for my own content.
They do tend to look rather nice on my page as well.
Essay II
wc – 890
Dec 08, 2020
Lisa Kakaraba Tswanya
My experience as an online publisher is the topic matter of this paper. My first notable comment is that it is nothing like I thought it would be, I thought it would be all fun and games with a platform to express myself but I didn’t account for the structure of some sort neither did I think about how the actual website would come to fruition. It is four months later and after getting many criticisms and advice I can finally say I am getting the hang of it. I never understood the point of a publishing class until I took PUB101 and now i see the significance of the class and i have gained great knowledge in the class
My first task was figuring out what i would’ve liked to do with a site , and with all that was going on in the world i thought i owed it to myself to do something that is related to my identity , as a black international student/woman. My reasoning behind this was simple ; any chance to educate and teach someone about blackness was valid and i found a way to teach a whole class, I also remembered i had a knack for poetry and it was worth intehgrating it into my little cybe garden. “Everyone does their own weird thing” was a part of the Basu article we read earlier in the semester and i felt i had found mine.
Mark Bernstein said Gardens … lie between farmland and wilderness,” he wrote. “The garden is farmland that delights the senses, designed for delight rather than commodity.” my own little cybergarden tailored to teach and uplift blackness to hear the stories of those who were there before through my expression of poetry , In reality only if it was that easy.( Basu 2020)
I initially struggled making my blog my own as I had an idea but no execution on it and to top it all off I started building my site on a phone not a computer and this made my wordpress experience all the more “interesting” I had to find a way to make my site my own and still appealing to the readers. At this point in the semester my readers were anyone as i mentioned in my week 6 process post but as time went on i realised i had to have a niche and it was black people , lost in westernization , lost in the effects of imperialism and colonialism , lost in the effects of slavery , trapped in an identity crises and needed help understanding themselves , understanding how the world sees them and understanding who they really are .
Daynah boyd talks about this in her book searching for a public of her own I tried to make a networked audience and have reach to a connected group of people she says “ networked publics serve as publocs that both rely on networked technologies and also network people into meaningful new imagined communities in new ways. Publics are important , and not just for enabling political action but for also providing a mechanism through which we construct our social world, In essence publics are the fabrics of society” This is a view that i grew to hold, understand and respect because that is how my audience and public formed the fabric in which my website ended up being made up of it showed me the realities that your audience can affect your choices more than just your goals or plans aswell ( Boyd , 2014)
This is the last week of school and with peer review i have been able to get the aid of my peers and i have been able to tap into their knowledge and be inspired by them. One of my peers blogs in particular struck me as unforgettable and that is Milton Jang hsi site had alot of what i would like my site to embody , it featured a portfolio with his pieces and he worked on his website endlessly from his constant growth to his organizational tactics i loved it and that is why he is one of my sources he thought me something about marketability , he worked on his personal brand and he excelled and that is how you market a personal blog like his and mine. I got this quote from miltons peer review of my blog Gary Vaynerchuk said process of marketing yourself especially for more personal sites like poetposits involves building up your personal brand.
As for the future i have decided to keep working on my blog and use it as a place of refuge for my feelings and poems for the rest of the year , I will work with all the tools ive been given in this class to ensure success of my website and I will channel myself more into it I only wished that I had seen this website as an extension of myself all along.
To my classmates i bid you adios and i beg you to keep following your creative instincts and using it to fuel positivity in your lives. I will never forget this class . To my teacher and TA thank you for the guidance and effort you put into our success
Basu, T. (2020, September 03). Digital gardens let you cultivate your own little bit of the internet. Retrieved December 02, 2020, from https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/09/03/1007716/digital-gardens-let-you-cultivate-your-own-little-bit-of-the-internet/
Danahboyd Follow. (2014). It’s Complicated. Retrieved December 02, 2020, from https://www.wattpad.com/203798155-it’s-complicated-8-searching-for-a-public-of-their/page/3
Jang, M. (2020, December 04). Milton Jang. Retrieved December 09, 2020, from https://miltonjang.com/pub-101/blog-review-poetposits-com/
Week 13 blog post
Good food doesn’t have to be complicated.
Life gets busy and it can be hard to find easy ways to fuel your mind and body with good food. Since eating well goes hand in hand with a life well lived, it only feels fitting to add a food and nutrition post this lifestyle blog.
Some of my most favourite recipes come from the website and Instagram page “minimalist baker” where every recipe is designed to either be 10 ingredients, 1 bowl, or prepared in 30 minutes or less. Each recipe incorporates fresh fruits and vegetables and aims to provide easy meals that are fancy enough to make you feel like a professional chef.
I have provided some of my most favourite recipes from the website below to help inspire you for your next meal!!
As we are nearing the end of the 2020 Fall semester and entering into exam period, it’s crazy to reflect back on how much I have learned from this class. I never thought I would be capable enough to build my own blog and understand all the components that help put it together.
I also started thinking about my intended audience for my future blog/website that I may plan on building depending on how busy my schedule gets next semester.
I have decided to help my parents rebuild their company websites with the knowledge I acquired from here and hope to continue building on my knowledge in PUB 201 next semester. I think this is one of the very few classes which I have taken the skills I have learned and applied them to do something useful/helpful in my life today.
Sounds for the Soul
From hours upon hours of study sessions, to stretching and yoga, running, or a morning walk, music has been a pivotal player in my daily life this past month.
Below are some of my personal playlists from Spotify, designed to amplify good vibes and provide a soundtrack to a life well lived.
1) Ebb & Lofi flo: “Flowing strictly for the vibes” . This is a playlist created with the intent of flowing effortlessly in the background and cleanse the mind during study sessions and my daily yoga/stretching routines. All of the songs are instrumental, however the ebb and flow of each melody is sometimes exactly what is needed to to reset the mind after a busy day.
2) Equinox: “Equal parts day and night”. This playlist was made with the intention of being a soundtrack to go alongside the seasonal transition from summer to fall. Containing happy and light songs for bright & crisp fall days while also having some more mellow, rainy day songs that make you want to watch raindrops fall.
3) Sandpiper pl/ flo days: “Summer sunshine, winding roads, and crisp waves”. This playlist was the soundtrack to summer 2020 and will forever make me nostalgic for those carefree days spent on the beach, surfing, and lazing in the sun with good music and good people.
