Lauren Patten as Jo in Jagged Little Pill (ph. Matthew Murphy)
Theatre has long since prided itself on its acceptance and advocacy for queer people and the LGBT+ community, marking the industry with a number of queer individuals both in executive and creative positions. This acceptance has defined many aspects of the medium and the people who partake in it, however, like any industry, it is far from perfect. One of the most recent controversies surrounding the portrayal of trans characters and trans actors, specifically, is the 2019 jukebox musical Jagged Little Pill, a show constructed around songs from Alanis Morissette’s album of the same name. The character Jo, originated by Lauren Patten on Broadway, was the source of this controversy, particularly in regards to the apparent erasure of their trans identity through the process of the production’s move from Atlanta to Broadway. (For the purposes of this article, Jo will be referred to with they/them pronouns, however current productions of the show do insist that she is a female character who has “always been” female, despite this being empirically false.)
Indeed, scripts of previous iterations of the play as well as clips from its off-broadway run always and exclusively present Jo’s gender dysphoria as an overt aspect of their identity, having their climatic and emotional fallout with their best friend be based around this best friend misgendering them. In the Broadway version, this fallout has nothing to do with their gender identity, instead shifting the conflict to their interpersonal troubles rather than transphobic ones, and furthermore redirecting all of Jo’s struggles throughout the play away from their gender and leaning into their sexuality.
But why? Why create a trans character whose transness is intrinsic to their story and then erase this massive aspect of their identity? This is a question many trans theatre fans have been asking, demanding a kind of explanation to the erasure and silencing of trans stories. The accepted answer is simply this: to keep a cis actor employed.
I don’t want to contribute to any hateful rhetoric directed at the actors themselves, but I think the executive team saw the work that the cis female actor put into originating the role of Jo, and made the decision to make Jo cis in order to remove the responsibility they would have to re-cast the character as a trans actor. It is incredibly baffling that a production that seems to so strongly stand for justice for marginalized individuals would willfully remove a trans storyline in order to benefit cis narratives, but the executive team has not presented any alternative to this reasoning, instead evading answering the question or addressing the issue by purporting Jo to have always been intended to be a cis woman.
More than this, though, for a show that ostensibly takes pride in depicting marginalized people and disengaging with harmful rhetoric such as rape culture and addiction stigma, its treatment of other LGBT+ characters is also incredibly problematic. Not only are trans narratives being overshadowed by cis means, but the only bisexual character in the play is presented, of course, as the stereotypical cheater, one who engages in sexual relations with multiple people (of different genders) at the same time. These harmful biphobic and transphobic rhetorics that this play leans into for plot purposes directly contradicts the show’s message of inclusivity and amplification of marginalized voices. No longer are they stories about young people making mistakes, but stories that echo harmful rhetoric for the communities involved.
As such, Jagged Little Pill becomes the topic of discourse surrounding portrayals of LGBT+ narratives on stage, an unfortunate and unforgiving misgiving that contradicts the industry marker of inclusivity. My opinion on the inherent transphobia of the Jagged Little Pill transfer from Atlanta to Broadway is that it is something that necessitates a response from the creative and productive teams. The show’s transphobia and minimization of trans voices is the result of intentional actions to peddle cis success, brought to light by many trans voices, and it demands acknowledgement at the very least.
For my peer review, I was paired with Ainah. As I followed her link and landed on her website, I was pleased by all the work she has put into her website. It is well laid out, she has put a lot of effort into her website, and it is paying off because it looks impressive. I love that you have created a space to post as you please and share your love for skin-care products, makeup, and places you have explored. The content you have already created is top-notch, and I hope you follow your dreams and become one of the best content creators/content managers.
In the article “Searching for a public of their own.” Written by Danah Boyd mentions that people go out and capture what they are doing and share it online, and others can view the content they have created through the comfort of their own space. I believe you are making public where people can put their trust in you and try out skincare products you have reviewed, coffee shops you have enjoyed, and restaurants you have been to, all while trusting what you have. Even for myself, I want to purchase some of the things you have reviewed, especially the skin care products you enjoy. I am currently into skincare products and have been using “The Ordinary” and the blush you recommend by Rare Beauty #teamselena, lol!
Overall, the content you create is very pleasing, and the marketing you do for skin care is. Makeup, cafe shops, and how to care for yourself while at University are well advertised. So much so that I will take in what you are saying and try out some of the brands you like, and I also enjoyed the tips you shared because sometimes people need a reminder to care for themself. Students often focus on their classes and forget to put themselves first. This is your very own “Digital Garden” where you can let others know how you feel about products, and they can reach out and connect with you about things you have reviewed and reach out about places they have found interesting as well. Keep up the excellent work; one day, you will have everything you hope and pray for.
Title changes have been in store for several members of the royal family. But one member of the royal family has notably been left out.
Who’s Been Left Behind?
Buckingham Palace announced just recently that Prince Edward, the youngest son of the late Queen will now be known as the Duke of Edinburgh, a title previously held by Prince Phillip, the Queen’s late husband. Sophie, the former Countess of Wessex, is now the Duchess of Edinburgh, and their son, formerly James, Viscount Severn is now the Earl of Wessex, assuming his father’s title.
But someone’s missing here.
The Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh’s nineteen-year-old daughter, Lady Louise Windsor doesn’t get a new title. This is because Dukedoms and Earldoms can only be passed down from father to son, leaving Lady Louise in the dust.
Sexist royal rules have plagued Lady Louise for much longer than just this one instance, however. When her younger brother was born, he took her place in the line of succession because of male-preference primogeniture (which has since been replaced by absolute primogeniture with the birth of Princess Charlotte). And when he was born, he received the title of “Viscount Severn,” one of his father’s titles, when again, Lady Louise received nothing.
The Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh with their children, the Earl of Wessex and Lady Louise Windsor
It’s Time for Change
The royal family is symbol of history and tradition, and with this symbol comes the fact that A BUNCH of its title protocols are inherently sexist. The rules prohibiting Lady Louise from receiving the same titles as her brother aren’t the only ones keeping women from holding the same value as men in terms of titles.
During the reign of Queen Elizabeth II, her husband wasn’t a king. Instead, he was known as Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh. This is because the title of “king” is considered higher than “queen” and the monarchy wanted to signal that Prince Philip’s rank was lower than the Queen’s. However, women can become Queen consorts when their husbands become Kings. This is the title that Camilla will officially receive when her husband, King Charles ascends the throne. The fact that “Queens” are ranked lower than “Kings” needs to change. Men should become known as King consorts to show that Queens are not ranked lower than their male counterparts.
Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip
And the only reason why Archie and Lilibet officially became “Prince Archie” and “Princess Lilibet” at the same time that the other title changes were announced is because of another sexist protocol. Only male-line grandchildren of the sovereign can use the titles of Prince and Princess. So if King Charles had a daughter, her children would not get royal titles even though her brothers’ children would.
Even further, when Princess Eugenie (one of the Queen’s grandchildren) got married to Jack Brooksbank, she became Princess Eugenie, Mrs. Jack Brooksbank, taking his name. But when Prince Harry (also one of the Queen’s grandchildren) and Meghan Markle got married just five months earlier, they became the “Duke and Duchess of Sussex.” Again, this is because of the fact that dukedoms and earldoms only get passed down to men, the same protocol affecting Lady Louise.
And these are just a few of the sexist title rules in the royal family. There are so many more outdated protocols that need to be changed if the royal family wants to maintain its popularity with the increasing equal rights movement in the UK.
With so many strong female figures in the royal family, from Queen Elizabeth who served in the British Army during World War II, to Meghan Markle, who might have encouraged Procter & Gamble to change its sexist tagline when she was just 11, it’s clear that it’s time for change. There’s no better time than now.
As the final weeks of the course are coming to a close, I wanted to revisit accessibility to ensure that I covered as many bases that I could on my blog.
So far, I’ve installed the AccessibleWP plugin by codenroll on my blog, which covers the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) principles of “perceivable” and “operable” outlined by the Accessible Publishing Learning Network. It does this by ensuring that vision- and hearing-affected visitors to my website are able to interpret it using their assistive devices or by using keyboard navigation. In particular, there are functions in this plugin that makes links stand out by highlighting them on the page. I also made sure that my links were clear by having them underlined, so that links are perceivable by the user or that there is an interaction available where they are.
Additionally, while the font size on my site is set to size 16, 2 sizes larger than the recommendation of 14 by APLN, the theme I am using scales the text size when responding to different screen sizes, which I haven’t figured out how to control. Thankfully, AccessibleWP covers this with their “Increase Text” function, which allows me to set a scale to increase the text size to for ease of reading.
There was a great point made in APLN’s Introduction to Website Accessibility article, which mentioned that those who use screen readers can opt to hear a list of all the links on my website. I realized that on my homepage, there are two major navigational links that actually don’t describe very much when taken out of context: one that says “More” which leads to my about page, and one that says “More adventures” which leads to my main blog posts in a category I call “Adventure Log”. I’ve now renamed those links to “How it all began” and “Full adventure log” in order to make it more perceivable what kind of content will be found when entering those links.
Currently, I’m a bit behind on adding alt-text to all of my images, but revisiting this article reminded me of an article I read at some point that mentioned that even decorative images, like my site logo, could benefit from a brief description—but that they must be brief, so that those who use alt-text can understand quickly what content is useful to them.
While Jagged Little Pill (2019) strived to do much in terms of packing representation into the production, it ultimately fumbled the bag when it came to LGBT+ representation, particularly that of trans and bisexual people. Resultantly, my article this week highlighted this misstep with a specific interest in the transphobia of the show’s trans erasure. This is a topic that is especially important to me, as an active and avid advocate for LGBT+ justice and as a member of the community myself. As such, this article is probably one of my most passive writings in a long time, but informed, I think, by a real justification for this impatience.
Additionally, this week I have decided to make a plan to integrate more multimedia posts in my blog posts. My blog posts, for the most part, are pretty formulaic: a text post with a header image. While there is the occasional post that differs from this pattern, like the audio files of songs I’ve recorded, these are few and far between. Moving forward, I’m going to try to at least integrate more images into my posts, laying them between paragraphs of text so as not to lose the reader’s interest. I also think I want to start introducing more audio posts, since this blog is about performing arts. As well, if I have the time, and, let’s face it, the confidence, I might post a video of me dancing, but it has been a long minute since I last put on pointe shoes, so we’ll see if I stick to that plan.
However, ultimately transmedia posts aren’t really something that aligns with the content of my blog. As this week’s process post prompt implores me to think about transmedia, I think its appropriate to say that transmedia storytelling is actually something I am a big fan of experimenting with, and a topic I explored in one of my media literacy classes many semesters ago, but truly not something that is foreseeable in the future of The Stars, Too. I don’t actually have any transmedia platforms to post my content to and thus grow my readership. My dabble with social media ended when I was semi-Tumblr-famous as a teen, and I have not created a social media account since. Thus, while multi-media is definitely something I can lean into, transmedia poses more of a road bump.
My final peer review is here! For the final one, I had the pleasure of exploring Jolene’s enchanting website:Mama Jo’s Family!
Mama Jo's Website HomePage
Introduction and first impression
Upon landing on her site, the first thing that caught my attention was the introductory paragraph, which provided a welcoming and family-oriented vibe. Jolene’s website is informative and engaging, with her about page particularly noteworthy. I was drawn to her mention of her First Nation heritage and culture, which reminded me of Suler’s article’s Personal and Cultural Values section on “the online disinhibition effect”. This section emphasizes the impact of our personal and cultural values on our online interactions and how we perceive ourselves, which is an important consideration when navigating online relationships with people from different cultures.
One suggestion for Jolene’s blog is to include a photograph of her family on the homepage and about page. Since Jolene introduces her sons and husband by name and age, it would be beneficial to see and recognize their faces. This would make it easier for her audience to follow their stories and create a more engaging experience.
Mama Jo's About Page
Audience and SEO
Referring to Campbell’s article “A personal cyberinfrastructure,” Jalone has demonstrated her cyberinfrastructure to her audiences. By exploring her blog content and photos, the target audience for Jolene Auger’s blog mainly consists of caring and compassionate parents in their 30s-50s who lead a busy and family-oriented lifestyle and juggle multiple responsibilities balancing work and family life. I believe Jolene’s sharing of her moments and experiences perfectly resonates with their interests, goals, and needs.
Although I’m not sure whether Jolene plans to use her blog for marketing and monetizing, I still recommend that she include ways to engage with her audience, such as a contact page, social media sharing buttons, adding her email, or a comment section below her posts if she decides to separate her posts from category pages. This would allow her to connect with her audience and interact with them.
Given that her audience is likely to relate to Jolene’s experiences, they may provide valuable feedback and suggestions for her blog posts and the concerns she has discussed. It would also be helpful for her to incorporate SEO strategies such as embedding videos from YouTube, adding appropriate keywords to her blog posts, and including related hyperlinks to increase credibility and engagement with her content.
As Hollingsworth mentions in “15 Reasons Why Your Business Needs SEO,” good SEO means good user experience, increasing the likelihood that more people will hear Jolene’s message. Implementing these strategies could help Jolene grow her audience and increase engagement with her content.
Content
Jolene’s blog topics are incredibly engaging, and I appreciate that they are pure and relevant to her daily routine. Parents with similar concerns to Jolene’s will also find her blog valuable. Like Basu’s digital gardens, Jolene’s blog truly resonates with her inner voice, which is reflected in her comfortable writing style.
However, her content’s grammatical and punctuation errors could be easily corrected using AI grammar checkers like Grammarly. Overall, Jolene’s blog is an excellent resource that offers her audience a genuine and comforting perspective.
Design decisions
As Pagé suggested, having a visual hierarchy is one of the critical factors in website design. Using the same font sizes for headings and subheadings may decrease the visual hierarchy. I appreciate the font sizes and typeface choice, which are well-chosen and readable.
In order to meet “The Accessible Publishing Learning Network (APLN)” guidelines for accessibility on her website, I highly recommend incorporating plugins that providemultipleaccessibility options for different disabilities, as well as a dark/bright mode feature for improved vision during the day or at night.I am sharing my thoughts on the posts section of the menu bar. When I first clicked on it, I assumed it was a category page, and I thought I would be directed to its specific page by clicking on each process post. However, I later realized that no separate pages were intended for each process post.
To enhance the consistency and accessibility of the content and improve the user experience, I highly recommend creating separate pages for each process post. This will allow each post to be self-contained, organized, and more accessible for readers to navigate. Additionally, as Suzanne and Mickey suggested, adding images and bibliography to each process post would be a great way to improve the overall quality of the content. However, having numerous photos and bibliographies on a category page can be overwhelming and distracting for readers, so creating separate pages is the best option.
I also want to note that the lack of white space on a category page, as highlighted by the Pagé presentation, is another consideration. Creating separate pages for each process post allows her to utilize white space more effectively and create a cleaner, more visually appealing layout for her readers.
Mama Jo's Posts Page
I suggest applying the same recommendations for the assignments section as well. Additionally, for the mini assignments, I suggest providing short descriptions for some assignments that require extra information to improve user engagement, such as telling a story through media. Finally, I found the photos section lovely and exciting, and I appreciate Jolene’s family’s warm, sweet, and intimate vibe. I hope all the good vibes in the universe protect their energy! Thank you, Jolene, for sharing your moments with us!
Regarding aesthetics and design decisions, I suggest adding more storytelling and organization to the pictures from the audience’s perspective seeking family moments and stories. For example, adding dates under the photos and sorting them based on dates or dividing them into separate content posts, each with a unique story and related images. Another recommendation is to add a date for each post.
I recommend using a transparent logo for the homepage because it appears too large for its purpose and is challenging to recognize as a logo rather than a picture.
I suggest reconsidering the color theme. Pure black (RGB 0) can be hard on the eyes, and it may be beneficial to incorporate color principles discussed in Mauve’s presentation. On the other hand, given the family-oriented and joyful mood of the blog, a dark theme might not be the best decision, especially considering the many pictures with white backgrounds on the website. Additionally, the target audience is likely Gen X, who prefer bright themes over dark themes, which are more prevalent among Gen Z (Web flow, 2019).
I also appreciate the hyperlinks for referring to reading materials in the process posts, making it easier for readers to access the sources. However, I recommend using high-quality images instead of some outsourced images and mentioning the source of the photos due to copyright matters.
Mama Jo's Menu Bar
Menu Bar
The navigation bar is well-organized and easy to navigate. However, I found one aspect of it to be slightly unclear. Instead of using the word “posts,” it would be more helpful to use the term “process post” since it pertains to all posts related to a specific process in WP terminology. It’s worth noting that the navigation bar is solely used for process posts.
Additionally, the peer review section does not currently have any peer reviews available. Therefore, hiding this section might be more effective until content is added temporarily. At this point, it can be made public.
Final words
I believe Jolene’s blog has much potential to gain popularity among parents and even younger generations like myself. I’m particularly drawn to the sincerity and authenticity of her cyberinfrastructure, which is somewhat rare among people of my age group.
Upon exploring her blog, I found that it offers a unique perspective on topics related to motherhood and parenting. Her writing style is engaging and relatable, making it easy for readers to connect with her and her experiences. However, what sets her blog apart is the genuine and honest approach she takes toward her content.
Overall, her blog has the potential to become a go-to resource for mothers and parents who are seeking inspiration and a sense of community. Her commitment to authenticity and openness is commendable, and I look forward to seeing how her blog evolves and grows.
Bibliography:
Webflow. (2019, March 6). Generational marketing: How to use color to appeal to different age groups. Webflow Blog. Retrieved March 26, 2023, fromhttps://webflow.com/blog/generational-marketing-colors
Hollingsworth, S. (2021, August 9). 15 reasons why your business absolutely needs seo. Search Engine Journal. Retrieved March 26, 2023, fromhttps://www.searchenginejournal.com/why-seo-is-important-for-business/248101/#close
Campbell, G. (2009, September). A personal cyberinfrastructure. EDUCAUSE Review, 44(5), 58-59. https://er.educause.edu/articles/2009/9/a-personal-cyberinfrastructure
Basu, T. (2020, September 3). Digital Gardens let you cultivate your own little bit of the internet. MIT Technology Review. Retrieved March 26, 2023, from https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/09/03/1007716/digital-gardens-let-you-cultivate-your-own-little-bit-of-the-internet/
Page, M. (2023). Web Design and Type on Screens [PowerPoint Slides]. Department of Publishing, Simon Fraser University.
Website accessibility archives. APLN. (n.d.). Retrieved March 27, 2023, from https://apln.ca/category/website-accessibility/
Suler, J. (2004). Psychology of cyberspace – the online disinhibition effect. Retrieved March 27, 2023, from https://truecenterpublishing.com/psycyber/disinhibit.html
For my final peer review, I looked at Mercy’s blog, MindMediaRes, which is a website that analyzes media through personality theory, as stated in the tagline. In his about page, he explains that he’s been interested in psychology his whole life, and when he got into personality theory, he found the competitiveness of the community extremely toxic. Therefore, with his blog, he wants to create a space where he can safely write about his opinions and invite others to share theirs too.
Who is the Target Audience?
Through exploring Mercy’s content, it becomes clear that his target audience is composed of personality theory enthusiasts, or more specifically, personality theory enthusiasts who are interested in how it manifests itself in media.
Fattal explains that counterpublics are publics who oppose dominant discourses, and I think that Mercy’s target audience fits this explanation perfectly. Personality theory is a way of explaining the mind that isn’t rooted in science, which is the dominant discourse in our society in terms of psychology. By catering to this audience, (or counterpublic) of personality theory enthusiasts, Mercy successfully creates a public and generates discourse in a welcoming environment.
At the same time, Mercy makes it obvious that his intended audience is also himself. Basu explains that the creation of digital gardens is different than simply making a blog because it involves talking about niche interests and focuses on learning and growth, instead of growing large audiences.
In alignment with the concept of a digital garden, Mercy creates an environment dedicated to growth and the telling of his own thoughts and ideas, explained on his about page. He states that “this blog is based on my own thoughts, feelings, and ideas” and also emphasizes that he’s trying to learn more and is open to hearing other people’s opinions too. So with the digital garden in mind, he’s also marketing to himself, but for the purpose of this review, I’ll be focusing on the marketability of the counterpublic of personality theory enthusiasts (which he is a part of anyways).
Mercy’s “about” page, detailing the construction of his digital garden
Writing for an Audience
Looking at the content on Mercy’s blog, it becomes obvious that his content posts specifically cater to his target audience of personality theory enthusiasts who also enjoy media. Each content post focuses on an aspect of personality theory, either cognitive functions or the enneagram. Using these aspects of personality theory, Mercy analyzes different media, such as movies and shows. For example, his most recent content post surrounds the character, Trina from the 1992 musical, Falsettos. He analyzes Trina’s enneagram type through the songs she sings throughout the musical.
Mercy’s content also caters to all levels of personality theory enthusiasts, from beginners to experts, which increases the marketability of his website to a wider audience. This is evident through Mercy’s first two content posts, where he explains the two aspects of personality theory he tackles in his blog: cognitive functions and the enneagram. These explanations provide a solid framework from which beginner personality theory enthusiasts can start building their knowledge.
It is also obvious that Mercy’s blog content is more intellectually advanced. This is not only shown through the blog’s subject matter, but in the way the posts are written. The academic tone of the blog makes the content more exclusive, but I don’t think this is a bad thing at all. Hollenbaughexplains that when creating content, writers need to present themselves based on their imagined audiences. In this case, the imagined audience would be personality theory enthusiasts, who are assumed to be more intellectually inclined in the first place, just based on the academic subject matter. Take the first sentence in Mercy’s post, “Untangling Morality in Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along” Blog as an example:
“Character archetypes have a fairly predictable lifespan of solidifying themselves in pop culture, going through subversions, and subsequently creating new archetypes based on those subversions over the course of many years.”
The vocabulary used in this sentence makes the blog content more exclusive in nature, making it difficult for a younger audience of children, per se, to understand the posts. Nonetheless, the language caters well to the target audience, who, judging by their interest in personality theory, is already intellectually advanced and can understand the vocabulary used in the blog.
Diving into Design
Judging by the blog’s target audience of personality theory enthusiasts and the content in each of the posts, I think that in terms of design, this makes for a more intellectual, serious, straightforward feel to the blog. Mercy uses elements that help maintain this aesthetic that align well with Mauvé Page’s suggestions for blog design. For example, the typeface personality works well with the more serious, intellectual aesthetic of the blog. It is clean, simple, and legible, and makes sure the g’s and q’s don’t mix up, and all those kinds of things.
Excerpt of a post from MindMediaRes, showing effective use of typography to convey the blog’s aesthetic
More generally, some other effective design elements include the fact that there is a good contrast between the black and white shades, making the writing clear and legible and adding to the “seriousness” of the blog aesthetic. The design is also very cohesive, with a limited amount of colour and one consistent font used throughout the blog.
Mercy’s website is also accessible, which makes it inclusive to everyone within his target audience. In alignment with Gaines’s explanation of the four principles of accessibility, Mercy’s blog is particularly perceivable. For example, he includes an accessibility plug in and all his hyperlinks are underlined, making them different from the rest of the content and reducing the need to look for them.
Design Suggestions
Mercy uses a theme from Alx for his blog. While this template is effective in organizing his posts and laying out all the content in a logical way, Gertzwarns against using templates because they are often standardized and can take the personality away from websites. Therefore, I would suggest that Mercy thinks about building his website from scratch so that it reflects him and his audience better.
But if straying from a template is too much at the moment (which I completely understand as it’s also the reason why I’m still using one), I would suggest that Mercy creates a consistent identity and brand for his blog that caters well to his target audience of personality theory enthusiasts. This might be the “serious, intellectual, straightforward” feel that I talked about earlier, or any other kind of mood Mercy wants to create.
Subtle customizations that reflect aspects related to personality theory might be a good idea. For example, this might include creating a homepage, that, instead of simply featuring previews of posts, hosts a post carousel with pictures related to the content featuring aspects of personality theory. It might also involve playing around with more colours to convey a certain aesthetic if he sees fit.
Branding the site a little more strategically through design elements would create a clear mood and atmosphere for the audience, which, aside from the content, pulls viewers into the experience and shows them what the blog is about even before they read any of the posts.
Overall
All in all, I really appreciate the passion that Mercy puts into his blog. It’s clear that aside from being a school assignment, personality theory is something that he is truly interested in. His posts go above and beyond the course requirements and include in-depth, comprehensive explanations, thorough application of theory to case studies, and even several sources for readers to learn more. Because of this and so much more, I really hope that he continues working on this blog after the course is over and I will definitely stay updated so I can keep learning about personality theory!
Hollenbaugh, E. E. (2021). Self-presentation in social media: Review and research opportunities. Review of Communication Research, 9, 80–98. https://doi.org/10.12840/ISSN.2255-4165.027
This week, we learned all about how to optimize our blogs for every website’s best friend and greatest enemy: Google. So I decided to look closer at Spilling the Royaltea’s analytics to see who is visiting my site. Then, I did the same to my search engine optimization or SEO to try to figure out how to grow my audience and rank higher on Google searches. (For an explanation of the random underlines, read further):
Diving into Analytics
This week, I did a deep dive into Google Analytics for my website, and looked at who’s been looking at Spilling the Royaltea. Here’s what I found in terms of website traffic:
Since Spilling the Royaltea’s inception, there have been exactly 100 new users and 745 page views! The number of users has stayed pretty consistent over time, with the occasional peak of 5 users a day. While it’s good to know that I haven’t been losing viewers, it would be nice to see this increase sometime soon. Hopefully, by improving my SEO in the coming weeks, I’ll see an improvement shortly.
Unfortunately, since I just recently enabled the option to view demographics, I am unable to see data on this section of my website analytics. Seeing my audience’s demographics would be extremely useful when ensuring I’m catering my data to the right people. For example, I am currently assuming that my audience consists mostly of young people, so I’m using quite a bit of Gen Z jargon in my content posts. But if mostly older people are looking at my blog, I’d have a little bit of a problem, since they might not understand the nuances of the language I’m using. When this part of Google Analytics updates, I’ll be sure to use it to help decide my content.
Implementing Effective SEO
Hollingsworth really drives home the importance of implementing SEO in businesses (and I guess Spilling the Royaltea could be considered one?) to help increase visitors to websites. For example, it builds trust and credibility. By creating an accessible, effective user experience that can be easily found on Google, people feel more comfortable going to my site for information. I’ll also get a larger audience by building this sense of trust and credibility. It even helps me with my knowledge of the web because I need to stay updated about who’s doing what to improve their SEO.
And in this week’s lecture, we learned exactly how we might go about improving our SEO, so I tried out a few of these tactics this week. Firstly, we learned about implementing effective keywords. These keywords are what searchers enter into Google, so I need to make sure I’m implementing enough of these to improve my ranking on Google searches. So for this process post, with the help of ChatGPT, I entered the prompt: Generate keywords for a blog post related to analytics and SEO, and here’s what it gave me:
And while I couldn’t include every single one of these keywords in my posts, I tried my best to organically include as many as I could (or slightly varied versions of them), the first occurrence of which I underlined throughout my post.
We also learned about including strategic headers. Although I thought I was already doing this pretty well, I learned about a few things I could do to further improve. For example, I should be using actionable headers, which I did for this post: I included the verbs “dive,” “implement,” and “create” to add some dimension and interest. I also included keywords in my headers, like “analytics” and “SEO.”
The final thing I want to do is work on the branding of my site. So far, although my website is consistent in its theme, nothing in terms of branding really makes it stand out and become memorable for visitors. I think that part of creating this “memorability” is making a logo. Coming soon…
Creating my Digital Garden?
But what about creating a digital garden just for me? In my previous process post about analytics, I spoke of maintaining my site as a digital garden instead of monetizing it and trying to grow my audience. Because of this, I concluded that I wouldn’t worry too much about gaining readers, just because I wanted to make it a space for just me and my own thoughts.
However, after learning about analytics and SEO this week, I realized that I’m already doing a bunch of the things I need to do to increase my audience like summarizing my article in the subheaders and writing high quality information. And after all, I realized that making a few improvements to potentially invite more people into my blog requires a few simple changes that don’t take away from the intimacy of my blog like I previously feared. So at the end of the day, having a big audience to share my interests with sounds like a pretty great thing to me.
Diving into Kristie’s site Thebaristababe, you have a very strong impression of what her blog is about, from the visuals of her holding cups of coffee to her heading “Everything Coffee”. Kristie has a very clear menu interface with all her assignments organized from this class, and her content pieces are easy to navigate. As Hollingsworth (2021) notes, “good SEO means a better user experience .. [it] offers users the information they are looking for in fewer clicks, quickly, and easily”. Further, it is an excellent way for readers to grasp what your blog is all about and increase user attention and behaviours via Google Analytics, which can help you improve your blog. Below the visual header, Kristies has an elaborate about section and explains what her blogs entail:” weekly content on my favourite coffee shops, and different specialty coffee that I make as my daily encounters with caffeine”. On the right hand, a search bar also makes her content more accessible to users.
Friendly Recommendations: I love the fun visuals you have added, but they may take up too much space where the reader might not realize you have put an intended about section below the visuals since it takes up the whole screen page. Likewise, the search bar is not as easily accessible if you do not scroll down to the entire page on mobile, which is essential as the data.ai findings showcase Gen Z being a mobile-first generation. Speaking of accessibility, you have yet to download the accessibility plug from WordPress which can prevent users from engaging with your site.
Content
I was unsure about what the section “Daily Doses of Caffeine” was about until I saw you explain it in your process post #3: “where I post all things coffee. Whatever is on my mind during the day or a random coffee thought that pops into my head, this is where it will get posted”. I enjoyed reading this section of your blog, and I loved the cute visuals you added. They also follow uniformity in formatting and are easy to follow with the break up of white space and text.
Friendly Recommendation: It would be beneficial if you had a subheading under the title “Daily Doses of Caffeine” explaining what the section is about because readers might not stumble across your process post like I did to understand the section.
As a reader, it can be hard to discern where one post ends and where a new one starts, and It could be helpful to break up the text by adding visuals, increasing the font size for headings, etc. Everything looks like a uniform long text, which can be hard to read.
As Hollingsworth (2021) states, “establishing a brand as an authority takes patience, effort, and commitment and relies on offering a valuable, quality product or service that allows customers to trust a brand”. Your coffee reviews consist of 5 main factors: the coffee shop, drink, ingredients, rating, and extra note that adds a nice touch of personalization. Further, I love the intimate visuals you choose to accompany your reviews, but apart from the visuals, it can be hard to discern where one review ends and starts, similar to your process post page.
Friendly Recommendation: The visuals do not align with the text correctly, so it can be hard to tell which visual matches the review. I’m unsure if it’s a template issue, but adding space between each post and emphasizing the size or bolding the text can create better fluidity, cohesiveness, and cleanliness.
Overall, Kristie has an intended audience targeted towards coffee drinkers and lovers; since her blog is intimate and personal, I am unsure of whether she wants to monetize her content. However, if she does, I have a few suggestions for revamping her site through a new rating system and social media interventions. Coffee rating reviews can be more concise with comments on coffee profiles such as acidity, bitterness, sweetness, sourness, and the overall body of the coffee. She can also link the social media handles to the coffee shop and create a google map of all the coffee shops you have reviewed for readers to have the ultimate coffee shop experience, boosting engagement and connectivity. Moreover, adding your social handles can create a closer connection to readers, and she can add a page on her blog dedicated to reader-suggested coffee shops that you go to and review.
References: Hollingsworth, S. (2021, August 6). 15 Reasons Why Your Business Absolutely Needs SEO. Search Engine Journal. https://www.searchenginejournal.com/why-seo-is-important-for-business/248101/#close
For the third and final peer review of the semester, I was assigned to review Roland’s website; however, due to Roland’s website being incomplete as well as lacking content, I randomized another person and am now going to peer review Emerson’s website. This was finalized on Saturday, March 25, 2023, anything posted after this date were not included.
At first glance, Emerson’s website can be seen as a dark hole, a bit bland with nothing behind the surface, but then you would be quite wrong. The first thing I checked out was the “About” tab on the menu, it was only then was I able to understand what I was getting into. Emerson’s creative take on creating your website was shown, and I started to believe that I was able to get away from it all with dripowensonline.
Emerson’s audience is himself, and he doesn’t sugarcoat it. He states it in “Process Post #5”, “I don’t expect others to find it”. Rather than trying to state that their audience is whoever comes upon it, Emerson admits that they are writing to themselves and does not need to adapt to anyone’s comfort levels as it all depends on what he believes is true. Since his website audience is so small, relative to who Emerson lets into his digital garden, it allows it to be comfortable and welcoming. The minimalistic-ness of the “Home” page allows for a personal aroma for the user and reader.
I like to take a look at what other people are doing in class. I check out the google sheets page with all the websites and inquire what people are writing about or posting. Having looked at Emerson’s website I can say that I haven’t seen anything like it. In the recommended reading “How to Survive the Digital Apocalypse” by Travis Gertz, he talks about copycat culture and how companies are looking at the most successful websites and copying what they are doing. “When another company achieves success, there’s a lot of pressure to investigate what they did right and apply that to our own organizations” (Gertz, 2015). Looking at all the different websites in the class, I can say without a doubt, I haven’t seen something like Emerson’s. As I mentioned previously, his audience is himself, and because of that, he doesn’t need to copy others because he doesn’t have the same audience.
As a reader, of course, my perspective on Emerson’s website is going to be different than his perspective or even someone else’s. Because of this, it’s hard to say what I would think needs changing on his website. I am not his intended audience so of course, I am going to think of things differently than he would or he would want to. I would say, if it was my website, I would change the titles of my process posts. I like to make my posts engaging, even if it’s just for myself, so possibly changing the titles of your process posts could make your website just a little more interesting.
Altogether, I enjoyed Emerson’s website immensely and look forward to seeing more interesting and creative photos in his “Archive”.
For this third and final peer review of this class of PUB 101, I was assigned to review another blogger’s website. For this peer review, I am told to observe the website’s marketability to an intended audience group. I was paired up with a student named Kashish Shodwani, and her website is called “BRAINY BLOG” I think this was one interesting website to look into. For starters, some may notice that there is an eye-catching title to the website, there is this picture of a plastic brain and huge text stating “Unlocking the secrets of the brain.” As for her about page, she starts by greeting the viewers of her website by saying “Hello psychology geeks…” Which can give a big hint of what she had imagined her audience to be. As for the about page, she said that she is a major in Psychology. She said she hopes to grow by learning better about her life by understanding how she and others work; Hearing this reminded me of an article called “How To Talk to Stranger” which goes into how to be a more friendly persona and how to talk to strangers out in the world (Hamblin, 2016).
As for the design and aesthetic of the website, I noticed it has a very similar colour background and formatting to the POSIEL website which is our home site for this class. I feel that this design, intentional or not makes a sense of familiarity within the site since most of the returning audiences may be students in the same class of PUB 101. For the marketability of this website, I believe the top of the page is a great eye-catcher, it has a bright orange brain picture on the right, and Big bold text stating “A dive into how to use psychological concepts in everyday life: Tips, Tricks and Insights.” Which may make the reader interested to read more about psychology. The big bold text can make an easy marketing strategy for her viewers, which can make the difference for people stay on her site or not. The typing style used in blogs on this website is very formal with proper punctuation and grammar. This typing style can give the feeling that the author makes blogs for people who are more sophisticated in reading longer blogs and readings.
One of her blogs called “Fight the Stress” this blog goes on about how stress is very draining to almost everyone and how we should control it. I feel that Shodwani’s public audience in mind was other people who are interested in Psychology. For example, Shodwani stated in her introduction sentence saying “Hello psychology geeks…” which is a massive giveaway to Shodwani’s idea of what her public was going to be on. According to an article called “Publics and Counterpublics” by Michael Warner, Warner stated that “A public is a space of discourse organized by nothing other than discourse itself.” (Warner, 2002).
Bibliography:
Hamblin, J. (2016, August 25). How to talk to Strangers Irl. The Atlantic. Retrieved March 23, 2023, from https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2016/08/civil-inattention/497183/
Warner, M. (2002). Frontpage. Public. Retrieved March 23, 2023, from http://knowledgepublic.pbworks.com/
Whenever members of the royal family have any sort of outing, for better or for worse, fashion decisions are always at the forefront. Their styles are emulated by millions around the world who aim to look as prim and proper as true royalty. But ladies of the royal family take the cake for having the most iconic fashion senses. Today, Spilling the Royaltea is awarding rankings to the top three most stylish members of the royal family.
Bronze Medal: Queen Elizabeth II
Queen Elizabeth, despite not being the most daring in her fashion choices, was known for her bright-coloured ensembles and signature handbags. As told by her daughter-in-law, Sophie, the Duchess of Edinburgh, the late Queen wore these neon outfits, from bright red to green, to everything in between so that her admirers could always spot her in a crowd. Being easily spottable meant that everyone who wanted to had the chance to easily say “I saw the Queen!” Aww… she did it for us!
Queen Elizabeth II’s rainbow of outfits
Silver Medal: Kate Middleton
Kate Middleton’s elegant style has her looking royal every time the camera is graced with the opportunity to catch a photo. Her fashion sense, although not always the boldest, is palatable to all, making her a global fashion icon. Her ability to pull off both designer brands and more affordable pieces from places like Zara caters to women all over the world.
Kate Middleton wearing a dress from Zara during a visit to the University of London for its Children of the 2020s project on October 5, 2021
She often wears coat dresses and pantsuits with simple prints, paired with classic jewelry pieces, creating timeless, impeccable ensembles. Just look at her!
Kate Middleton wearing a pink pastel suit at a meeting for The Royal Foundation Centre for Early Childhood in June 2022
Gold Medal: Princess Diana
Despite her tragic passing over twenty years ago, Princess Diana’s iconic, daring outfits have left their mark on us all. From her casual outfits of the 70s and 80s fashion to her beautiful, HUGE wedding dress, Princess Diana always had us guessing what she would choose next.
Princess Diana’s 1981 wedding dress
But what makes her take the cake as the most fashionable member of the royal family is her ICONIC revenge dress she wore after her husband, King Charles confessed on TV to committing adultery with the now Queen Consort, Camilla. The beautiful black off-the-shoulder gown screams “I don’t care about my husband and I don’t need him” and we’re here for it.
Princess Diana’s iconic revenge dress in June 1994
When I opened the “State of Mobile” reading by data.ai I actually laughed as I went to the eleventh page and looked at the “Average Age Group Index Among Top Apps Per Category”. For Gen Z is said the typical apps, apps that I use like Instagram, Snapchat, Spotify, although I was surprised that Tik Tok wasn’t on there. For Millennials it had said WhatsApp Messenger, which I thought was funny because I am on a family groupchat with a bunch of cousins as well as aunts and uncles on WhatsApp and I would say the average age on the group chat falls into the Millennial age category. And than last, but not least, where I laughed out loud was for Gen X and baby boomers where it had in fourth place, Stocard. I laughed because when I am currently writing this, Thursday March 23, my mom had JUST texted our “Jackson 4” groupchat to add her Chipotle card to our Stocard app.
That little starter may not be relatable, but for me it was quite funny. ANYWAY, while starting my website, as I had mentioned in previous posts, I never thought I would actually be writing to an audience. I thought the only ones who would read my posts would be myself time and time again, but then also those who were reviewing my blog as well as whoever was marking it. Little did I know, when I post on Instagram, people actually look at what I post or share. Now, I get an average of 43 people viewing my blog postings when I share a story on Instagram promoting it.
For my audience and my goal as a blog content creator (weird to say that after writing consistently for 2 months), I never really aimed to have my blog show up on others search pages. Sure I could include keywords for people to view my posts, but personally, my blog wasn’t meant for that. My blog was never meant to be a profit maximizing website to capitalize off of the hungry, but rather a way for me to just write about what I like. I have to admit, I hate writing about topics that I’m not interested in, and I have had teachers tell me “Tara, when you like something and are actually interested about the topic, your writing drastically improves”. So when writing this blog feels like a chore, or a job, than I might start to write more dry.
If I just focus on the reasons ten and eleven in Sam Hollingsworth’s article “15 Reasons Why Your Business Absolutely Needs SEO”, which are 10. SEO is PR and 11. It’s a Long-Term Strategy. I believe all Sam’s points are valid and make sense, but his points concerning my website do not coincide. For example, both his tenth and eleventh points relate to the longevity of the website, but for me, I don’t plan on writing posts consistently for the rest of my life or even past this course. Once the course is done, as fun as it has been, I don’t plan on keeping my website going as I have other things in my life I have to deal with and other courses to work on. Anyway, all in all, I have to decide what I want to do and want to complete in the remaining part of this class.
AI is on a rapid rise in education. Professors and educators have been banning new softwares like ChatGPT and Dall-E with the fear that students will use them to plagiarize entire assignments and diminish critical thinking. However, the use of these technologies is inevitable and increasing in various everyday circumstances. As educational institutions continue banning them, they will just get more and more advanced, which means that at some point, we’ll all have to cope with them somehow. So this week, I tried out two of these technologies: ChatGPT and Dall-E, and found a few ways students might positively use it in the classroom.
What is ChatGPT?
ChatGPT is an AI software developed by OpenAI that is meant to generate almost-immediate, conversational responses to questions, prompts, and commands. It launched to the public in November 2022, and since then has been a topic of discourse in academia, ethics and technology, and general interest of the common person with free time and internet connection. Its impressive technology allows the responses to be detailed, articulate, and generally factually correct. User input also helps craft desired outputs, as the AI can “learn” and tailor its responses to reflect feedback and critiques. As mentioned, ChatGPT has faced rejection from educators and institutions with its negative implications for students, but there are ways that ChatGPT can be effectively implemented to aid learning and expression.
Idea Generation
Writer’s block is pretty inevitable for any class, especially PUB 101, where I write two or three posts a week. With a simple prompt, ChatGPT can generate ideas to take inspiration from for essays, assignments, and blog posts. This could yield excellent results, as each student would be able to spend more time on the execution of their project, rather than spending time brainstorming ideas that are often too simple to accurately and rigorously demonstrate their learning. To bypass the possible concern that this would limit creative thinking and be a case of plagiarism, I must clarify that in fleshing out projects from a mere concept to execution still requires a lot of creative thinking, and by referencing the software’s assistance it would steer clear of plagiarism claims since the ideas would in a sense still be the student’s own based on the prompt and information fed.
Keyword Generation
In PUB 101, I’ve learned that inputting keywords in posts is extremely important. They help improve the SEO and my website’s reach. ChatGPT could effectively help generate some of these keywords to benefit each post on my blog. So, I decided to type the following into ChatGPT: what are some keywords to include in a blog post about reviewing Taylor Swift’s album “folklore”? Here’s what it generated.
What is Dall-E?
Dall-E is an AI software, also developed by OpenAI, that generates complex creative images from text prompts. Prompts can include things like recreating individual artists’ styles, using various art mediums, and ultimately absurd visuals that one would not expect to see in one image. Like ChatGPT, the use of Dall-E has been a controversial topic. Specifically, when is it ethically permissible to use it, especially in academic contexts?
Creating Visual Interest
My content posts often use a lot of images from the internet. While this is useful in many cases, especially for posts that take on a more editorial-style, I think that adding pictures created from DALL-E could enhance the personalization of my posts. It could make the blog reflect me and my own personality instead of always relying on other people’s pictures and using generic-looking stock photos. For example, my post about crocheting could have included Dall-E pictures to create added entertainment, visual interest, and personality.
Dall-E generated image using the prompt “an oil painting of a girl learning how to crochet”.
Citing and Copyright?
Since ChatGPT is such a novel tool, traditional citation styles have yet to cohesively come up with solutions for ways students should properly credit the use of the technology in their work. However, as a student and a blog-owner, citing your sources is a critical step in ethical academia and success. Suggestions have been made for citation style from APA, for example, an online library guide for a university suggests, “This technology is new and we are all learning about generative AI resources and how to ethically use them. Consider making the ChatGPT conversation retrievable by including the text as an appendix or as online supplemental material.”
But then again, would we even need to credit the model if it’s not really taking from other people’s ideas? If things are written by ChatGPT, who owns the copyright? The human who generated the prompt, or the creators of the model? Only time will tell.
References:
Antonelli, W. (n.d.). How to use dall·e 2 and Craiyon, the AI art tools that can generate images from any text prompt. Business Insider. Retrieved March 23, 2023, from https://www.businessinsider.com/guides/tech/dall-e-mini
Dall·E: Creating images from text. DALL·E: Creating images from text. (n.d.). Retrieved March 23, 2023, from https://openai.com/research/dall-e
Introducing chatgpt. Introducing ChatGPT. (n.d.). Retrieved March 23, 2023, from https://openai.com/blog/chatgpt/
Johnson, A. (2023, January 31). Chatgpt in schools: Here’s where it’s banned-and how it could potentially help students. Forbes. Retrieved March 23, 2023, from https://www.forbes.com/sites/ariannajohnson/2023/01/18/chatgpt-in-schools-heres-where-its-banned-and-how-it-could-potentially-help-students/?sh=130da4506e2c
Research guides: APA style 7th edition: Chatgpt & ai tools. Humber. (n.d.). Retrieved March 23, 2023, from https://guelphhumber.libguides.com/c.php?g=716556&p=5279441
For this week, the readings have made a shift in content. Although these shifts happen every week, I thought that this week was different from the rest. While one of the readings involve the basics of SEO and other things, the reading that caught my attention was the data on mobile usage and apps. The data collected was from 2022, and the article is called “S T A T E O F M O B I L E 2 0 2 2.” This study collects data on apps downloaded and where it is downloaded in each country. The article states that there are “Globally 230 Billion Downloads…” (data.ai, 2022, pg. 7).
Some examples of data that I found interesting was the use of apps from each generation, one of the top most used apps by Gen Z according to data.ai is Instagram, followed by Spotify, Netflix, then Snapchat. I was also surprised that male and female usages were different for the top-used apps. Accordingly, males’ top downloaded app was WhatsApp Messenger, while females’ top downloaded is Facebook. Overall this article is a great source of collecting and looking at data, and I suggest that you take a visit to it as well.
References:
Unknown. (2022). S T A T E O F M O B I L E 2 0 2 2. PUB 101: The Publication of Self in Everyday Life. Retrieved March 22, 2023, from https://posiel.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/dataai__state_of_mobile_2022__en.pdf
Analytics are an aspect of website design that I see mentioned quite often, with videos and articles discussing how to best utilize the information you can get from built-in metrics and website additions such as Google Analytics.
In the artist world, you would only need to focus on analytics if you’re trying to find freelance work or an industry job in the field. Since I make art as a hobby, I have little use in analyzing the pieces I post (especially since they’re made for fun 90% of the time).
In the past, I have lost motivation and passion for art because I was constantly checking my engagement rates, optimal timing, and post formatting. Although I don’t resent the art I’ve made purely to appeal to trends and popular media, I find that it doesn’t genuinely represent me and my style. My personal art journey has also been stunted from such attempts for engagement, since I try not to add anything experimental or “weird” in order to appear more palatable.
Because of these reasons, I choose to ignore analytics on social media and focus on engaging with my friends, creating art that is true to myself, and relying on the miraculous and constantly shifting nature of the algorithms and individuals to decide how each post fares.
When discussing this website, I have a much more impersonal view of the content I create. I am less confident in my writing, and analyzing works will always be more stressful to make public than something like art which can be interpreted in infinitely many ways.
On the rare occasion that I do check my analytics, I’m mostly looking for information about the people who use my website and whether I’m meeting their needs well enough. For example, I found that 89.4% of my user base views my website on desktop which helps me prioritize which elements to update or fix. I also enjoy seeing which posts people visit my site for; there are a surprising number of users who choose to view my classwork instead of the blog content itself.
I enjoy browsing different user reports and seeing if there’s any visitors who come back to the blog often (35.7% currently). Interestingly, a majority of my audience finds my website through organic searching, which suggests a user base outside of just my fellow classmates. My overall bounce rate is 52.63% which I hope will stay in that range for the rest of this term.
I keep a filter on known bots and spiders, but there’s always a gnawing feeling in the back of my head that much of these analytics are taken up by non-human users. Despite this, I still find it fun to peruse the different tabs and wonder why each person has chosen to stop by my site.
I am usually on my computer into the late hours of the night, which has always been reflected in when I post my art. Surprisingly, that trait has carried over into the content of this website, with many posts being completed after 9pm. While posting late would typically be considered a bad practice (afternoons are usually more preferable), many people happen to visit my blog in the evening. This could also be due to different time zones (where it would be earlier in the day for the rest of North America), but there are very few users reading outside of the lower mainland.
As a whole, analytics are a valuable source of user feedback, especially if you don’t receive more obvious sources like comments or emails like me.
So, I noticed that I have not posted anything much about Blender. Yeah, I know this was originally meant to be a blender website so let me fix it.
Also to go off topic for one second, these blog posts are nice and everything but there has been something I have been questioning. I am making these blogs purely because this is something I enjoy. But one thing that is making me think is how this is for the PUB 101 class. And I feel that makes a difference. Let me explain, if I were to make a blog because I wanted to I would make one out of fun. Though with these blogs being graded, I feel as if all blogs must need a certain length. For me, this makes these blogs more of a pile-on with all the other assignments, process-post, and reviews we have to do. But hey, I am just a guy stating his opinion online and it may not matter. So my bad for going off track, let us continue our blogging!
Here are some nice dominos being tumbled over, I was trying out the physics feature on this. Watch out for the little surprise at the end of this video. Oh, and just for one more add-on to this piece, the “S” and “G” are meant to be my initials.
Hey, this one took a while to do, mostly because I was trying to figure out how to make the ground look realistic. Apparently, in some versions of blender, there was a template for rock texture and depth. So that is being used in this little short video. As for animating the text, I had to make sure the text lit up at the right times, so each text are there own separate object, not as one big text.
Here is a sheep, we do not talk about the sheep. the sheep although made of simple things, but knows a lot of things.
Here is a cool thing I did here, notice something? Yes, the floor is reflective, that’s what you thought right? Yes, this was cool, I added a thin glass material right above the floor, which automatically added the reflection which I thought was so cool. Thank you for looking at my art dumps, if you have any questions, please type in the comments, I may choose to request somebody’s idea if I get any!
In State of Mobile 2022, Data.ai reports that each user spent on average 4.8 hours on their phones, which is one-third of the time we typically are awake. Reflecting on my own device usage, my screen time averaged about 10 hours and 50 minutes across all of my devices in the last week alone. Of course, this covers more than just my phone—so a more realistic look that I’m able to access is my social media usage, which has solely been on my phone. Just yesterday, I was guilty of being on TikTok for 9 hours and 7 minutes, which is so wild.
As somebody who clearly spends an unhealthy amount of time on social media, I believe SEO is crucial to reaching the customers, readers, subscribers, and users you want—whether you’re an individual or a business. Whoever your intended audience is, SEO is a force that captures leads towards what you are putting out in the digital world. In “15 Reasons Why Your Business Absolutely Needs SEO,” it states that SEO can boost the effectiveness of the user experience of a website, and can drive trust and credibility in an online space (Hollingsworth, 2021). Over time, trust and credibility can be built with consistent care for SEO, to keep brands relevant and more easily discoverable. When we better understand how our own audience is trying to find us and meet them where they are, we’ve already created a trail that they can start to follow.
SEO doesn’t just cover websites either—for example, Instagram users heavily rely on hashtags to extend the reach of their posts beyond those who already follow them. By making sure they use the right hashtags, users can reach more people who find their content relevant. When I used to post for a small Instagram shop I was running with my friend, a decent amount of time was spent testing combinations of hashtags, from ones that had less than 10,000 posts to ones that had over 300,000 posts in them, to see how popular and lesser-known hashtags would affect our post reach. The analytics we reflected on in our Professional account each week helped us see which posts were doing well, which hashtags were associated with it, and where our audience was coming from, so we could continue to target those people.
It’s not easy to build an audience from the ground up, but with consistent effort and reflection, it’s definitely possible. However, in our heavily saturated digital world, I’ve observed that it takes zeroing in on a niche, as well as being insanely active on multiple platforms, to really see growth. With the need for a considerable amount of effort, the communities that last online are likely founded on passion rather than a fleeting need to go viral.
Catherine, the Princess of Wales is a global fashion icon. The term the “Kate Effect” has even been coined to describe how every outfit she wears immediately sells out, contributing an enormous amount to the British economy. Spilling the Royaltea is counting down the Princess of Wales’s top five outfits of 2023 so far:
5. Simple yet Elegant
At a Windsor Castle meeting with eight academic professionals on January 25th, the Princess of Wales wore a clean black suit over a white v-neck blouse. This simple outfit is sharp, classic, and clean, taking the fifth spot on Spilling the Royaltea’s countdown.
4. Power Suit
Kate flaunted the power of her new royal title as the Princess of Wales with this beautiful emerald pantsuit and turquoise blouse. The button detailing and sharp lines of the suit give her a regal aura, which is very fitting to meet Crown Prince Haakon and Crown Princess Mette-Marit of Norway on March 2nd. Despite the fact that she looks absolutely beautiful in the suit, the bow at the top of her blouse crowds the outfit, making it feel a little old-fashioned, which places this outfit at number four.
3. The Burgundy on My… Blazer when You Splashed Your Wine Into Me -Taylor Swift
While visiting the England Wheelchair Rugby team on January 19th, the Princess of Wales chose her Roland Mouret suit, which she also wore during her visit to Boston in 2022 (our sustainable queen!). She kept the accessories simple with a dainty necklace and hoop earrings. She shows us that sometimes, less is more with this sleek ensemble.
2. Beautiful in Black and White
Instead of one of her signature pantsuits, Kate opted for a long houndstooth black and white skirt with black books, a turtleneck top, and a long cream coat when visiting a rehabilitation center on February 28th to announce a new garden therapy initiative. Sometimes, all it takes is a bold pattern to make a statement.
1. Bold in Red
Rounding out the countdown is the red Alexander McQueen suit Kate wore to launch the Shaping Us Campaign for the Royal Foundation Centre for Early Childhood and reception at the BAFTA headquarters on January 30th. Her Gianvito Rossi pumps and Miu Miu clutch perfectly match the suit with her statement Chalk Jewelry earrings adding contrast to the all-red ensemble. The cut of the suit, the boldness of the all-red, the accessories… chefs kiss!
My parents always get mad at me whenever I try to argue with them about social media platforms. Of course, I do believe that social media is taking away the mystery of our generation compared to others, but I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad thing. My dad is always saying that I am giving away my data and that the big companies are going to know whatever about me, but my response is always “so what”. How bad is it if they know I like to watch videos about murder mysteries, or what TV shows I like to watch. Is it really the end of the world, no, it’s not. Sure, I do think that some people overshare on social media and that maybe they shouldn’t tell everyone where they are exactly at every minute of every day, but posting once in a while with your friends or if you go out for coffee really isn’t that bad.
After reading the introduction of “Digital breadcrumbs: the data trail we leave behind us…” by George Philip, Jennifer Anne Lazo, Rooham Jamali and Rudy Al Jaroodi, I was astounded to realize that my trail is long. REAL long. Even right now, I’m at work and using the mall wifi to use my computer typing on google docs. Anyone who can track that type of stuff, knows I’m at the mall right now using google.
Personally, as I mentioned before, I don’t really care that much about my data trail. Sure, it’s a long one, but overall, the people that get our data are going to get it at some time at some point. Whatever you do, if you search up a store on google, ads are going to pop up for that store the next time you look at something, they are always collecting information and I can’t think of a reason why its bad. If you have self-control and a little awareness about what is going on, they really can’t get to you on their data mining techniques.
When they mentioned CCTV cameras in the article/podcast, I was interested to learn the different opinions of some people regarding them. Some thought it was unnecessary while others thought about the safety it provides. Things like these are what I mean when I say that we aren’t going to be able to stop how far the digital age takes our data trail. Sure we can regulate some things, like how the UK has a data protection law, but there are always going to be backdoors or other ways to get information that we won’t be able to control. Overall, I think as a generation and a population, we need to increase our awareness about social media and the information they can take but think about the benefits this may allow as well.
Hello everyone! This week I’ve been busy trying to improve my website by analyzing its performance and figuring out new ideas that could help make it even better.
In this lecture, I was fortunate enough to attend a talk given by Trevor Battye from Clevers Media, who shared his insights on monetization and ways to make money from your audience. He stressed that it’s important to identify the needs of your audience and to be unique in your niche when starting a business. One key takeaway for me was that your first business might not be the most profitable one, but it’s a valuable learning experience that can set you up for success in future endeavours.
Trevor also mentioned that starting a business when you’re young can be advantageous because you tend to be more determined and willing to take risks, and people are more compassionate and are generally more forgiving of mistakes. I found this encouraging, as I tend to be a bit of a perfectionist, and that’s held me back from starting my own business or even just creating my own public social media pag e. But As a part of Rojan’s Road to Roj transformation journey, I recently shifted my mindset and focused on continuous improvement.
One thing that really resonated with me was Trevor’s experiences with selling candles. As someone who wants to get a publishing minor, I’m eager to learn more about these kinds of experiences in this field by taking the PUB 456. Overall, it was an inspiring and informative talk that left me feeling motivated to keep pushing forward with my own projects.
As a content creator for my blog, I’ve become increasingly aware of the digital breadcrumbs I leave behind daily, from checking the weather on my phone in the morning to using my contactless card to buy coffee, various apps and technologies record and track every action I take.
But what does this mean for my readers and me? Who has access to this information, and how can it be used? These are essential questions to consider as we navigate the world of big data.
According to Dr. Elisa Oreglia, a lecturer in Global Digital Cultures, a digital trail is a trace that we leave behind through technology. This can include our location information, app usage, and internet searches.
Photo Credit: Unsplash
But where does all this information go? Dr. Oreglia in “Digital breadcrumbs” explains that it’s stored in various places, from our mobile phone network to GPS satellites and data centers scattered worldwide. And while there are laws and processes in place to protect our digital privacy, it’s essential to be aware of what data we’re sharing and who we’re sharing it with. For example, when I search for my name on Google, I still see some very old profile pictures. Although I don’t want them to be public anymore, I cannot delete them because I can no longer access those accounts.
I believe I am responsible for informing my readers about the digital breadcrumbs they may be leaving behind, especially in this digital age where companies like Amazon are trying their best to make every action digital and collect every single piece of data from users.
Also, Suzanne Norman’s experience in “Trying not to drop breadcrumbs in Amazon’s store” when visiting Amazon’s first physical store was mind-provoking, as she could not purchase a physical book with cash, which is scary for me as a reader as well. By sharing this information, we can all become more mindful of our digital footprint and take steps to protect our privacy online. So, the next time you check your phone or purchase with your card, remember that your actions leave a trail of data behind you. Stay informed and stay mindful.
Besides, this week I made some changes to my design website based on the peer reviews I have received. I was glad that both of my peers were engaged with the overall design decisions, the flow of my content, and the consistency of my website for my audience. Both mentioned that my logo might not represent the intention behind my overall blog content and the other homepage elements. At that time, I had not yet posted my content about the transformative miracle of meditation and yoga on my journey and the following posts on topics such as my “ACL surgery” and “bypassing materialism“, which these practices have had a huge impact on my life, bringing me a new sense of balance and helping me to form this new perspective.
On this blog, by sharing the stories of each step of my transformation journey, I want to show the balance I have gradually gained through all these stages, wether in physical, mental or social stage. Thus, the Lotus pose is a powerful symbol of the balance between mind, body, and spirit (Luthra, 2021) and this is the reason I chose it as my logo
Also, to make my header image more balanced with the overall homepage aesthetics, I updated the images of the featured homepage slider. I made it consistent with my header image. As Cass mentioned in her peer review # 2 I also added more pictures to my content posts and process posts to make them more engaging. I also shortened my paragraphs, as Ashley mentioned in her peer review #1, while reducing the white space in each post. I am grateful for the constructive peer reviews I have received so far.
Bibliography:
Affeldt, C. (2023, March 9). Peer Review Number Two. Completely Cass. http://completelycass.com/personalblog/peer-review-number-two/
Chia, A. (2023, February 7). Peer Review #1: Exploring Rojan’s Road to Roj. Two AM Thoughts. http://twoamthoughts.com/posiel/peer-review-1-exploring-rojans-road-to-roj/
Luthra, A. (2021, October 30). Padmasana Benefits. Be Body Wise. https://bebodywise.com/blog/padmasana-benefits/
Norman, S. (2016, March 7). Trying not to drop breadcrumbs in Amazon’s store. Publishing | Graduate and Undergraduate Studies – Simon Fraser University. Retrieved March 25, 2023, from https://www.sfu.ca/publishing/news/editorials/trying-not-to-drop-breadcrumbs-in-amazon-s-store.html
Pod Academy. (2015, September 28). Digital Breadcrumbs: Our Data Trail. https://podacademy.org/podcasts/digital-breadcrumbs-our-data-trail/
Digital footprints, digital trails, and digital breadcrumbs – the data trails we leave behind us when we use technology are something many of us have been warned about our whole lives.
I Know A Lot About This
Like my previous post on digital literacy, I’ve learned quite a bit about digital footprints, especially as a Communication major. In one of my classes, I even produced a 10-minute documentary on the effects of digital footprints on future employment opportunities. But in that documentary, I emphasized individual actions and the implications of “cancel culture,” and how to mitigate the impacts of digital footprints on young people’s futures.
But on Pod Academy’s podcast, they explain that digital footprints don’t just encompass people’s individual actions and choices made on the internet. A lot of information is spread unintentionally when using any sort of technology with a chip in it. For example, when I use my phone, it’s constantly communicating with cell towers and the internet too. That means that my phone’s always giving apps information about me and my environment.
And as an avid technology user, this is a little worrisome. I don’t exactly want my phone tracking me and giving all these apps tons of information at all times. But also, I’ve sort of gotten to a point where I don’t care. Like many others expressed on Pod Academy, the creation of our digital trails has been so ubiquitous that people simply don’t worry about it anymore.
Google Analytics
The information collected from our digital trails or footprints is often used to improve outreach and grow audiences. For example, for my own blog, I installed Google Analytics, which allows me to track people’s browsing habits on my website.
As of March 18, 2023, within the past 28 days, I’ve had 35 users visit my site. I can also see information about my most popular pages and top content, and how visitors experience my site such as how long pages take to load (which 9.4s, considered poor… oops). This information should help me build an audience and engage them effectively. However, to be completely honest, although I have been checking my Google Analytics from time to time out of curiosity, I haven’t been using it to help improve my site for my audience.
The “traffic” section in Google Analytics for Spilling the Royaltea
I think that a big reason why I haven’t been doing so is because my site is turning out to be more like a digital garden than a blog. Digital gardens, according to Basu, are spaces that do not focus on growing audiences and having huge viewerships. Instead, they focus on personal growth, which is exactly what Spilling the Royaltea has been about. As my blog has developed, although I do have a target audience in mind, I’m not too worried about growing my audience, getting famous and rich, or any of that kind of stuff.
For now, I’m using my analytics simply as a way to satisfy my curiosity about who’s looking at my blog. I’m really enjoying my blogging process and especially like the lack of pressure to gain huge audiences, so I think that’s what I’ll be doing for the time being.
To Monetize or Not To Monetize?
So, all of this leads to the question of whether I should monetize my site. With the whole concept of digital gardens in mind and the idea of creating a space for me and my thoughts, I don’t foresee monetizing Spilling the Royaltea anytime in the near future.
Based on my own experience with monetized sites, I felt like ads make websites feel distant, incohesive, or even disturbing, since many of the ads from Google Adsense are often inappropriate. I want my blog to be as inviting and welcoming to users as possible and I want it to retain its intimate, personal feel. I don’t want users to believe I’m “using them” by exploiting their information and digital trails to extract money from them. With my own apprehensions about advertising and data collection in mind, I don’t want to create a space where others feel the same kinds of fears.
I also want my blog to reflect me and my thoughts only and with a third party who imposes their ads or has input on what kinds of content I post, it takes away from the intimacy of my blog. For me, the content I post is what matters, and I want users to focus on this too.
So although Spilling the Royaltea is simply a passion project (…or a school project) without any financial gain, I’m very satisfied with how the experience has been so far. It’s the joy of blogging that matters, not how much money I can get from it.
