Process Post #12 Writing After Dusk Community Guidelines

This week’s reading about comment moderation was interesting and made me think of how I wanted to regulate my website. As Konnikova (2013) claims” anonymity has also been shown to encourage participation; by promoting a greater sense of community identity, users don’t have to worry about standing out individually”. Therefore, I want to enable commenters to have the flexibility of posting anonymously or through their personal profiles. I want to ensure that Writing After Dusk is a safe space and community for people to connect, and I will do anything to support their needs and concerns. As a result, I will have open comments rather than banning comments since it can produce “less than desirable effects, including a diffusion of responsibility: you feel less accountable for your own actions, and become more likely to engage in amoral behavior” (Konnikova, 2013). I want my audience to communicate freely and passionately about what they think about what I’m writing, and I hope they engage with one another too. My writing will be read and reacted to and will help drive engagement.

Writing After Dusk Community Guidelines:


– Before posting, is it kind, thoughtful, and beneficial to hear?
– Hateful, racist, sexist, misogynist comments are prohibited
– Explicit, rude or aggressive comments are prohibited
– Respect and acknowledge other people’s opinions even if you do not agree
– Respect the privacy of other members
– Bullying, trolling, and harassment is not allowed
– Sharing/plagiarizing my work is not permitted without permission
– Spam and promotional content is not allowed

References:

Konnikova, M. (2013, October 23). The Psychology of Online Comments. The New Yorker. https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/the-psychology-of-online-comments

Mini Assignment #5: Presenting Myself Online

For this assignment, my task was to create an infographic that summarizes myself online. I have included characteristics that I believe I am, what I try to portray, what I hope I provide to viewers of The Fashion Daily, and something that I would like to improve on. Below, you can view the infographic I have created using Canva!

Journaling Ideas

Why Should You Journal?

Healthline lists stress reduction, emotion processing, and self-discovery among some of the benefits of journalling (Tartakovsky, 2022). Some may use journalling as a place to write down thoughts, while others use it as a creative outlet. This blog post will list some ideas of what you may want to journal about if you don’t know where to start. This list includes a range of written prompts as well as more artistic page ideas.

Journaling Ideas:

Lists:

  • Your Favourite Things
  • Your Bucket List
  • Things That Make You Happy
  • Wish Lists

Trackers/Ratings:

  • Monthly Song Tracker
    • Keep track of your favourite songs from each month
  • Book Tracker
    • Keep track of the books you read and write a small review of each book
  • Song Tier List
    • Rate all the songs in an album from your favourite to least favourite
  • Sleep Tracker
    • Track how many hours of sleep you got and rate your quality of sleep

Artsy Pages:

  • Random Art/Doodle Pages
  • Vision Board
  • Tattoo Ideas

Written Prompts:

  • Write About Your Gratitudes
  • Write About One Good Thing That Has Happened Recently In Your Life
  • Trip Recap
  • Your Favourite Quotes & Song Lyrics 
    • Write them down and reflect on why you like them
  • A Letter To Your Future Self
  • Appreciation Pages
    • Dedicate a page to your favourite show/artist/movie/book, etc.
  • Write About What You Dreamed About The Night Before
  • Things You Love About Yourself
  • Write a Letter To Your Past Self

Reference:

Tartakovsky, M. (2022, February 22). 15 benefits of journaling and tips for getting started. Healthline. https://www.healthline.com/health/benefits-of-journaling#takeaway

Process Post: foodietj’s transformation 😁

I was at a social event for a club and we were put into teams of 4 for a game show. Out of the 3 people I was teamed with, I had only met 1 before during another event. As some of you know, I post on my Instagram stories whenever I have a new blog post up. I post a cute little picture and link my website, show the location of the restaurant, and add a little caption saying “check this out!” or something along those lines. It hadn’t been long since I posted, but the funniest thing was when the 1 girl I had met previously once before said “Oh Tara, I saw your blog on Icy Bar”. I’m not going to lie, it made me feel good. People actually saw what I posted and READ it. I wasn’t just posting and hoping people would view it, but I posted something and people READ it. 

As I said, I post my newest blog posts on my Instagram stories (@tara.jacksonnn btw), and for the past month whenever I post, I get people liking my stories. Again, not lying, this makes me feel good. It makes me feel like people are supporting what I’m doing and actually like my work. THIS IS NOT BRAGGING AT ALL, BUT I have had so many people respond to my stories about how impressed they are with my website and how much work I put into it. They like my design, my comments, and even said they’ll check out the places I went to and that THEY would give me recommendations.

“Transmedia storytelling is a process. Elements of a fiction get dispersed across multiple media for the purpose of creating a coordinated entertainment experience” (Kevinbrittenylauren.wordpress.com, 2013). As I am able to post pictures and link my website to my stories, it allows me to disperse my blog across different medias (Instagram and Facebook). This allows for access to an audience I never had before. Without these medias, I would be a singular blog with maybe around a total of 50 people who viewed my website and 40 of them being me.

I am grateful for the experience I have had with this website. Being able to legitimately create my own platform that I haven’t been afraid of. I can post whatever I want, whenever I want, and most of all, I don’t have to care what people think. Although I may get some unwanted comments (not yours mom!), I am able to filter out what I want and don’t want to create my own food-loving platform.

References

Kevinbrittenylauren.wordpress.com. (2013, November 21). Pokemon as Transmedia Storytelling. Kevinbrittenylauren.wordpress.com. https://kevinbrittenylauren.wordpress.com/2013/11/21/pokemon-as-transmedia-storytelling/

Peer Review #3 – The Stars, Too (part two!)

This week, I revisited Ryn’s blog, titled The Stars, Too. Her about page describes the website as “an amateur journalistic blog … wherein the author offers their analysis of shows from different performing arts mediums, as well as the industry as a whole.” To me, this description is a perfect and accurate encapsulation of the blog.

After looking through the posts that have been made since the last time I visited the site, as well as prior, Ryn is doing a great job of sticking to the theme of her content that she self-described. Clearly, the intended audience is those who appreciate the fine arts.

It would be reasonably accurate to argue that her blog is a digital garden. Tanya Basu elaborates on this notion, explaining “that they can grow and change, and that various pages on the same topic can coexist” (Basu, 2020). Ryn does just this – while she has a specific niche, she talks about various topics that fall under said niche, such as ballet and theatre. However, her website is a personal-enough space where she can share her own music. Therefore, not only is her blog a digital garden in itself, but she also includes her singing, which ties into the ethos of individuality, a crucial part of digital gardens.

In my previous review, I mentioned that Ryn could benefit from including other personal things in her blog since her about page only said a little about the author. At the same time, I acknowledge the importance of controlling one’s online identity and data, which is crucial when having your own space on the internet and more clearly explained in the article The Web We Need To Give Students. I think incorporating her music is a great way to create more personability and helps create a connection between the reader and the author; music is a deeply personal thing. She also has a poetry piece that I really enjoyed reading. It is about ballet, so it ties into one of her blog’s topics; again, it is personal and depicts a series of emotions.

It is clear that the intended audience is lovers of the performing arts, and every post on The Stars, Too has been published with intention. The theatre and ballet posts provide a comprehensive look into the performances, and the personal aspects, such as her poem and song cover, still tie into the main focuses. Therefore if the reader is on the website to look at a ballet review, they won’t be disinterested in the poetry because it is still about the same topic. This also means that the author will connect with the reader through personal aspects.

References:
Audrey Watters. 2015. “The Web We Need to Give to Students”

Basu, Tanya. September 5, 2020. “Digital gardens let you cultivate your own little bit of the internet” MIT Technology Review.

The Ghost of You Haunts This Empty House

This house is slowly collapsing on itself ever since you’ve been gone; life has been a whirlwind of lost time. The departure of you has created a void within me. I have realized that I’m more fragile than I once thought I was after you left me impairable by your destruction. I could never understand how such deep penetrating sorrow can drill into my brittle bones without puncturing the walls of my lungs, how my chest can be full of love and sorrow all at the same time to bear it all. 

Time slowly escapes me; the only evidence of lost time is tainted behind my sullen eyes and the dark shadows beneath them where the ghost of you haunts me. I can feel misery slowly spreading itself inside of me, the heaviness of sadness weighing on my chest, remorse tugging on my shoulder blades, a seething longing building up in my throat of things left unsaid. A darkness has loomed over me, gradually spreading into my chest like a fatal poison bringing me closer to death second by second. A self-inflicted death, I don’t think I could ever stop loving you as your presence wraps around me like a second skin. Maybe love has always been a fleeting nature of a tender dying matter that could never be kept for too long.

The day you left, something shifted inside of me. I started tearing down the wallpaper in our bedroom and repainted it as if it could undo all the memories that were held within the walls. Sweet nothings scattered across the floorboards, I tore them apart one by one, hoping that your voice inside my head would ease away. I took down photographs of us, but your image lives permanently on the walls of my mind. I changed the sheets, but your scent has engulfed the entire house. I took the batteries out of the clocks because time has ceased to exist ever since you chose to abandon me. All that remains is the emptiness that has settled inside of me of all the things I’ve lost and loved.

Process Post #11: Publics and Counter-publics

“networked publics are both the “space constructed through networked technologies” and the imagined collective that emerges as a result of the intersection of people, technology, and practice … [T]hey allow people to gather for social, cultural and civic purposes, and they help people connect with a world beyond their close friends and family” (Renninger, 2015).

Renninger (2015) highlights, “SNSs are not inherently good at fostering whatever kind of communication one wants to engage in at any given moment”. I can attest to this as I find reaching new audiences and readers incredibly hard. I have read thousands of ways to attract readers and have been doing the work by posting consistently (once a week on Medium/Thought Catalogue). I had a few loyal readers who would comment on my pieces, and I am ever so grateful for them, but my stats were falling short of where I wanted to be. Looking at stats can be toxic and depressing, so I wouldn’t say I like to do it often, but knowing which pieces people gravitate to the most is helpful. The four affordances of SNSs are “persistence (posts are recorded and archived), replicability (content is easily duplicated), scalability (visibility of posts is great), and searchability” (Renninger, 2015). Out of the four, I execute persistence and scalability fairly well by posting on a schedule and having aesthetic visuals to match the piece I wrote.

To incorporate more transmedia within my blog and to engage my audience, I can create Tik Tok account dedicated to my weekly content pieces of poetry/prose where I do weekly readings. In addition, I can create exclusive content on Tik Tok before it launches on my blog to encourage my followers to follow my journey on Tik Tok since it is such a big app with a broader audience and the ability to get more views. Further, I can create another Tik Tok account dedicated to book reviews on the creative process to generate a conversation and exchange book recommendations that could be featured on my blog. I can also make an Instagram account and easily transfer the Toks to Instagram reels to gain more views and help solidify my audience.

References:
Renninger, B. J. (2014). “where I can be myself … where I can speak my mind” : Networked counterpublics in a polymedia environment. New Media & Society, 17(9), 1513–1529. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444814530095

Process Post #12: My “KeptRules”

Reflecting on my site, my purpose is to create a safe and welcoming community. Therefore, to keep that statement I have come up with reasonable guidelines for users on my site to follow.

The list is as follows:
– Refrain from hateful/negative comments
– Consider appropriateness (my site is for all ages)
– To respect and support others
– Plagiarize of any work is not accepted
– If you want to borrow any content from KeptCollexion, you must ask for permission and acknowledge the original author.
– Don’t forget to share this space with your friends and grow the KeptCollexion community.

I think that the guidelines mentioned above are necessary as it moves the direction in where I want my site to go and how I want users to interact with each other.

We all know that the internet can be a dark place. In “The Psychology of Online Comments,” it stated that many users on the internet post anonymously and freely (Konnikova, M. 2013). This gives freedom to anyone to say anything online which can cause harm in some cases like online bullying. But it also stated that removing comments doesn’t really create a solution towards anything as it affects the way how people can connect, and takes away the motivation to build a community (Konnikova, M. 2013). Like how the article mentioned removing comments, I still want my audience to speak freely and share their thoughts as it drives engagement. Although, with that privilege comes limitations. I want KeptCollexion to provide a safe and positive space for users to share things they love, and I plan to keep it that way.

I plan to implement such actions by adding a small section on my site displaying the guidelines or publishing the text beneath my “about me” paragraph.

– Eliza (aka Peanut)

Reference:

Konnikova, M. (2013, October 23). The psychology of online comments. The New Yorker. Retrieved March 31, 2023, from
http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/the-psychology-of-online-comments

Exploring Style: Styling Your Hair the Old Fashioned Way, a.k.a, The Best Way!

Image above generated by DALL-E.

Recently, I have discovered the secret to achieving voluminous hair styles in a healthy, heat free way. That’s right, we’re going back to the 1960’s and pulling out the hair rollers!! I always knew of the hair roller technique, but the process seemed too difficult and time consuming so I never gave it a try until recently. I always relied on heat powered tools like a curling iron or a straightener when I felt like changing up my hair style or dressing up, but now that I know how to use these plastic rollers, it will be my go-to method! As we know, applying heat onto your hair regularly is very damaging and can greatly impact your hair health over time. Plastic hair curlers are the perfect way to reduce the possibility of harming your hair, as well as achieve what I think are better styling results! 

There are several ways you can style your hair curlers depending on the sort of look you are going for. For example, if you are going for a more voluminous movie star look, you will want to place the curlers in when your hair is about 80-90% dry, and start by placing the roller on top of the section of hair you’re curling, followed by rolling the curler upwards (leaving them in for about 30-40 minutes). If you are going for a look where you want the ends of your hair to curl inwards and towards your face (perfect for face framers and layered haircuts!), you will want the curlers to be rolled downwards. To achieve this, you will want to place the roller under the piece of hair you have sectioned out instead of on top, and roll it towards your head from there. Again, you will want to do this when your hair is about 80-90% dry, and leave the rollers in for about 30-40 minutes. To get the best results, you may want to roll sections of your hair in different directions, using both of the methods described above. I am definitely still learning and practicing how to master the use of these rollers, so instead of me providing a tutorial I suggest you take a look at TikTok as that is where I have discovered these different techniques so far! If you are not on TikTok, there are plenty of step-by-step tutorials on Youtube as well that are just as helpful! 

I highly recommend using the plastic hair rollers that I have been mentioning throughout this post so far, rather than other options such as velcro hair rollers. This is especially true when you are just learning how to put in the rollers properly and getting the hang of things.

When I got my first set of rollers, I had thought I had done my research properly and purchased velcro rollers as many websites and content creators recommended this kind. I was hesitant because I just envisioned my hair getting stuck in the velcro and it being a mess, and that vision soon became a reality. Not all of the rollers got stuck in my hair, but the few that did were a pain and just caused me to go into a state of panic because there was no way I wanted to cut out a big chunk of my hair! After about 30 minutes I was able to get them out, losing a bit of hair in the process, and boycotted those rollers for months until I gained the desire to try them out again. I figured that since it was my first time using the rollers I must have put a few of them in the wrong way and hence the mess I was left with, but the same thing happened the second time I tried them out. So, I concluded that my hair type is not suitable for the velcro rollers and went back on Amazon to try and find some all-plastic ones. After a bit of searching, I found some really good plastic rollers that came with a covering to help hold them in place, and these were game changing! They are super easy to use, and I have never had them get stuck in my hair. The rollers have also allowed for me to achieve the voluminous movie star hairstyle that I desired, and with a bit more practice I think I’ll be able to perfect it! Here’s what the plastic rollers look like…

The last tip that I will mention is that curling your hair before you put in the rollers can help you achieve a very voluminous look that is harder to achieve with just the use of the rollers. I have tried both ways and like the results, so I suggest trying out each method to see which you prefer! Of course, not applying any heat to your hair and just using the rollers on their own is the healthier option for your hair, but once in a while you may want to curl your hair before hand. Make sure to use heat protectant! That is one way you can help keep your hair healthy and protected from the heat of your curling iron or straightener! If you are going to curl your hair before applying the rollers, stick to using the large size rollers to prevent your hair curls from becoming super tight (unless this is what you would like to achieve of course!). Just remember, the smaller the hair roller, the tighter and more bouncy the curl in your hair will be.

That’s all for this issue of Exploring Style! Have fun testing out your hair rollers, and watch how they can make your hairstyle elevate your look!