Author Archives: Kianna Frost

Scrolling Through The Shadows

Process Post #12

3 text bubbles that contain angry and sad emojis.
Swim Creative

As an 18-year-old female who has been active on several different social media platforms, I’ve seen my fair share of negative comments. While I always knew they were unpleasant, I never realized just how much of an impact they could have on my mental and physical health.

In the readings this week, Maria Konnikova’s “The Psychology of Online Comments” explains that “negative comments can trigger our brain’s stress response, leading to feelings of anxiety and even physical symptoms like increased heart rate and blood pressure.” (Konnikova, 2013). Yes, you read that right, physical symptoms from online comments! That is serious stuff.

Comments can also affect our self-esteem, making us doubt ourselves and our abilities. I’ve definitely experienced these effects firsthand. When someone leaves a comment saying I “don’t know what I’m talking about”, or if I don’t get a “like” from a friend, it’s hard not to take it personally. It also makes me question everything I post. Even if I know that I’m doing my best and that I’ve put a lot of time and effort into my content, negative comments can still bring me down.

Joel Stein’s “How Trolls are Ruining the Internet” takes a broader look at the culture of hate on the internet and the ways in which it’s shaping our online interactions. He argues that social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook have “made it easier than ever to attack and harass others, and that this has contributed to a larger culture of negativity and hostility online.” (Stein, 2016).  I’ve seen this firsthand this week at SFU, where hateful comments have exploded on the SFU Athletics social channels in response to cancelling the football team. It makes me worry about the kind of world we’re creating online.

While it’s impossible to completely eliminate these kinds of hurtful comments, I think it’s important for all of us to work together to create a more positive and supportive online environment. This means standing up against hate speech and harassment, but also actively promoting kindness and empathy in our own interactions with others.

I make an effort to respond to comments in a positive and respectful way, even if I don’t necessarily agree with what someone is saying. I ensure my comments are constructive, not critical. I think it’s important to remember that behind every comment is a real person with real feelings, and that we have the power to either uplift or tear down those around us.

As a blogger, I try to do my part by moderating comments and deleting those that are particularly hateful or hurtful. I decided that ensuring my blog is a safe and positive environment for everybody is more important than my SEO and potential site traffic. So, I am keeping my restriction on anonymous comments. While this reduces the number of comments I receive on my site overall, it limits the amount of hate comments, as people are less likely to spread hate when their name and email are attached. Additionally, comments must still be approved by me, so I can delete anything negative. I also went into my comment settings and blocked certain words. Comments that contain words such as ugly, stupid, or die, along with slurs, will automatically be put in the trash. Hate has no place on my website. As I was reflecting, I decided that I have no problem with some swear words in my comments, as my site isn’t exactly geared towards kids. However, I did block a few of the more graphic swears. I just don’t want to read comments containing those words, whether they are hateful or not. I am hoping these adjustments limit the potential hate I receive, as well as hate towards other commenters and the people I write about.

By working together to promote kindness and empathy, I think we can create a better online world—one that’s more supportive, more inclusive, and more respectful of everyone’s right to express themselves freely and without fear of harassment or ridicule.  If that doesn’t work I am all for a good old fashioned social media cleanse.

Check out benefits and ways to detox from social media here!

Works Cited

Konnikova, M. (2013, October 23). The psychology of online comments. The New Yorker. Retrieved April 8, 2023, from https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/the-psychology-of-online-comments

Stein, J. (2016, August 18). How trolls are ruining the internet. Time. Retrieved April 8, 2023, from https://time.com/4457110/internet-trolls/

Social Media Overload

Process Post #11

Cartoon women holding a laptop. She's surrounded by a ring of different social media icons.
Express Analytics

We are constantly inundated with messages about the importance of having a strong social media presence. From Instagram to TikTok to Twitter, there seems to be an endless number of platforms to choose from. While I understand the benefits of connecting with others and sharing my experiences online, I find myself feeling hesitant and even fearful about creating multiple social media channels.

One reason for my reluctance is the pressure to present a certain image of myself online. As one of our readings, by Bryce Renninger discusses in “Where I can be myself … where I can speak my mind” (Read that article here!), social media has become a space where individuals can curate their identities and project a certain image to the world. While this can be empowering, it can also be exhausting. I worry that by creating multiple social media channels, I will have to constantly monitor and update each one to ensure that I am presenting the “right” image of myself. I also have to create unique, curated content for each social channel, and I worry that all that extra work will suck the fun out of my blog.

This pressure to conform to societal expectations can be overwhelming, and it is one of the main reasons why I hesitate to create multiple social media accounts. Personally, I only use Instagram because I found that other socials were harming my mental health. Constantly keeping up with them was to much for me, and I felt I was missing out on my own life. Although, I did create a TikTok for “Friday’s with Frosty” to expand my content (Check it out by clicking here!), each time I posted, I deleted the app. I felt this kept me from getting hooked and falling into a negative spiral. Every time I wanted to create a new video, I had to re-install TikTok. In fact, as soon as this class is over I will be deleting my TikTok account for good.

Another reason for my reluctance is the fear of being judged or criticized. In today’s society, it seems like everyone has an opinion about everything, and social media has only amplified this phenomenon. While I understand that not everyone will agree with everything I post online, the thought of receiving negative comments or criticism is daunting. Renninger’s discussion of networked counterpublics in a polymedia environment resonates with me here. Social media has created a space where individuals can connect with like-minded people and form their own communities. While this can be a positive thing, it can also create an echo chamber where opposing views are not heard or acknowledged.

Despite my fear and reluctance, I do see the value in social media as a tool for storytelling and self-expression. My blogging experience has empowered me.  I like the pace—no pressure to post everything all the time. I like the space—I can fully develop my thoughts and ideas without character limits. I really like that I don’t feel that pressure to constantly check my posts—I am not tied to likes. The fact that I don’t have followers also takes some of the pressure off. When I am writing I don’t think about all the people who will see my content. I am just able to write what I think. It is freeing.

Although I have my issues with social media, I came up with ideas for a potential “Fridays with Frosty” expansion. All this content would create traffic back to my blog.

An infographic titled "Friday's with Frosty Multiple Channel Expansion Plan" beside cartoon social media notifications. 

Section 1 - TikTok
Continue making trend videos, "my ratings", and  "this or that" content. Include celeb drama breakdowns or "beef backstories". TikTok logo accompanies text. 

Section 2 - Instagram 
Create pop culture memes and "clickbait" posts that connect to my other content. No reels. Instagram logo accompanies text. 

Section 3 - Youtube 
Podcast-style videos with special guest appearances. Different opinions. YouTube logo Accompanies text. 

Section 4 - Twitter
Sarcastic one liners. No threads. My first thoughts/  floating out content ideas. Twitter logo accompanies text. 

Section 5 - My Blog 
Continue writing article-style commentary on pop culture. Cartoon webpage accompanies text.

Works Cited

Renninger , B. (2014). “Where I can be myself … where I can speak my mind … – sage journals. “Where I can be myself … where I can speak my mind” : Networked counterpublics in a polymedia environment. Retrieved April 8, 2023, from https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1461444814530095

Analytical Adjustments

Process Post #10

A cartoon man and women stand, looking at large, colourful graphs and data.
Julie Joyce

As an up-and-coming blogger, improving my SEO or Search Engine Optimization, will have a huge impact on my website’s success, especially if I plan to monetize my content. Having a good SEO means your website is geared towards search engines, thus appearing higher up on the results page. Our readings this week emphasize the importance of building your SEO, to widen brand reach and website visibility, as most consumers don’t look past the first few results (Hollingsworth, 2021). Until now, I have been focusing mostly on creating content and finding my footing building a website–something I have never done before.

But, this inspired me to test my blog’s SEO. When looking up “Fridays with Frosty” directly in Google, my site came up first! Thanks family and friends for that boost. This is huge for my site, as our readings say, “If you’re not on page one, you’re not winning the click” (Hollingsworth, 2021).

A screenshot of a "fridays with frosty" google search. My site is the first res

But, when you change the search terms, even slightly, to something like “Fridays Frosty” I disappear right off the first page of results. It looks like I still have some work to do.

This week, I used google analytics to try to improve my SEO. It says that 92% of my site’s viewers come via a direct search and are located in Canada. (Shout out again to the fam jam!)

But, 88% of the viewers on my site come through desktop, something I wasn’t expecting. This posed a problem for the way I integrate videos into my blog. My site isn’t user-friendly enough when you are on desktop. This had to change, because good user experience improves SEO. Our readings talk about this, stating “Google has learned how to interpret a good or unfavourable user experience, and a positive user experience has become a pivotal element to a website’s success.” (Hollingsworth, 2021).

My issue is I have been making my videos on TikTok, then saving them to my computer before posting, rather than just embedding the TikTok directly. This means that on mobile, watching the videos is fine, as they are already sized to fit the screen. On desktop however, the video size and vertical proportions are too big for the screen. You can’t see the entire thing. You have to do quite a bit of scrolling to even get to the bottom of the video. It doesn’t making watching easy. So, I needed to fix this for my larger desktop audience and hopefully, it would boost my SEO.

I had to redo all my video blog posts and embed them directly from TikTok. I decided I could also improve my website’s marketability at the same time, by creating a Fridays with Frosty specific TikTok. Up until now, I have been posting on my personal TikTok account. Once I reposted all my videos to the new account, I uploaded them to my blog as TikTok’s. Although it was frustrating to have to post everything again, it was worth it. My site looks way cleaner, and I have a head start expanding my brand over multiple channels (Check out my plans for that here).

Learning about SEO made me realize that I may have been using tags on my posts incorrectly. I have been treating them like keywords, and have since learned they aren’t the same. I decided to enlist ChatGPT to help me improve this. I imputed my most recent post, about Caitlin Clark (She’s awesome, check it out here!), into ChatGPT and asked it to generate tags for me (and it came up with the tags for this post too). It came up with some basic stuff, like “Caitlin Clark”, “Iowa Hawkeyes”, and “women’s basketball”. But it also came up with a few things I hadn’t thought of, like “basketball records”, and “TV viewership”.

I’m anxiously waiting to see if AI can help improve the traffic to this post, and my SEO, through improved tags. If it does, I will be going back and getting it to come up with tags for all my older posts.

The readings did demonstrate a few things I have been doin well in terms of SEO. They say good SEO “offers users the information they are looking for in fewer clicks, quickly and easily,” and “builds trust & credibility” which a positive user experience is part of (Hollingsworth, 2021). By splitting up my content into written and video sections, navigation is easier, making content faster to find. I have also made decisions about comment modifications that will foster a positive user environment. Read about those decisions here!

In the future, there are many things I could do to improve my SEO, with the help of analytics, like improving code so my website loads faster. But, those changes seemed daunting at this point and I would be way out of my depth. If I continue my blog, it will definitely be something to think about. Until then, I’ll just keep telling everyone I know to check out “Friday’s with Frosty” and hope it boosts my SEO.

Works Cited

Hollingsworth, S. (2021, August 9). 15 reasons why your business absolutely needs seo. Search Engine Journal. Retrieved April 9, 2023, from https://www.searchenginejournal.com/why-seo-is-important-for-business/248101/#close