The documentary follows a photographer Nev and the online friendship he makes with a little girl Abby through paintings she does of his photographs. Over a short period the two converse quiet frequently. Other characters come into play like a mom Angela and a potential love interest Megan. As time goes on and certain things don’t add up and Nev becomes suspicious and starts to investigate further. After a surprise trip to see the family he discovers that he is being lied to and all the relationships he makes are all fake and set up by the mom Angela. This brings us back to the points of roles being played online to keep up a certain image. This is instance Angela was the ultimate puppet master and role player. She made several different Facebook profiles for people she made up and acted in the roles of what those people would do and say. This was a way for her to let out what she lacked in life and wanted to be. She used the Internet to be a more acceptable and likeable version of herself. Although, her case is an extreme one it honestly doesn’t differ that much from all of our online presence. No matter what anyone says we all want to be liked. We may not be able to alter this likeableness in real life, but in the online world this is easily achievable. We can carefully play the role we think we should fill. We do this by posting certain statuses or by editing our pictures. We take pictures of us doing certain things with certain people in order to play a certain role. We then edit those pictures to give off a more likeable appearance. So, Angela might have taken hers to an extreme all at once, but how are we so much better then her? She was at least guilty about what she had done. Through out our daily lives we lie about who we truly are on a constant basis and think nothing of it. Why? Because we can and its now socially expectable to do so. We are all trying to be a better version of ourselves so we can come across more appealing and likeable to fit into the roles we think we must play. So, although Angela was the puppet master to many different avatars at least she knew what she was controlling. We on the other hand are the puppets and our master is social media.
Monday, November 10, 2014
Puppet Master
In class we watched and discussed the documentary Catfish. The documentary follows a photographer Nev and the online friendship he makes with a little girl Abby through paintings she does of his photographs. Over a short period the two converse quiet frequently. Other characters come into play like a mom Angela and a potential love interest Megan. As time goes on and certain things don’t add up and Nev becomes suspicious and starts to investigate further. After a surprise trip to see the family he discovers that he is being lied to and all the relationships he makes are all fake and set up by the mom Angela. This brings us back to the points of roles being played online to keep up a certain image. This is instance Angela was the ultimate puppet master and role player. She made several different Facebook profiles for people she made up and acted in the roles of what those people would do and say. This was a way for her to let out what she lacked in life and wanted to be. She used the Internet to be a more acceptable and likeable version of herself. Although, her case is an extreme one it honestly doesn’t differ that much from all of our online presence. No matter what anyone says we all want to be liked. We may not be able to alter this likeableness in real life, but in the online world this is easily achievable. We can carefully play the role we think we should fill. We do this by posting certain statuses or by editing our pictures. We take pictures of us doing certain things with certain people in order to play a certain role. We then edit those pictures to give off a more likeable appearance. So, Angela might have taken hers to an extreme all at once, but how are we so much better then her? She was at least guilty about what she had done. Through out our daily lives we lie about who we truly are on a constant basis and think nothing of it. Why? Because we can and its now socially expectable to do so. We are all trying to be a better version of ourselves so we can come across more appealing and likeable to fit into the roles we think we must play. So, although Angela was the puppet master to many different avatars at least she knew what she was controlling. We on the other hand are the puppets and our master is social media.
The documentary follows a photographer Nev and the online friendship he makes with a little girl Abby through paintings she does of his photographs. Over a short period the two converse quiet frequently. Other characters come into play like a mom Angela and a potential love interest Megan. As time goes on and certain things don’t add up and Nev becomes suspicious and starts to investigate further. After a surprise trip to see the family he discovers that he is being lied to and all the relationships he makes are all fake and set up by the mom Angela. This brings us back to the points of roles being played online to keep up a certain image. This is instance Angela was the ultimate puppet master and role player. She made several different Facebook profiles for people she made up and acted in the roles of what those people would do and say. This was a way for her to let out what she lacked in life and wanted to be. She used the Internet to be a more acceptable and likeable version of herself. Although, her case is an extreme one it honestly doesn’t differ that much from all of our online presence. No matter what anyone says we all want to be liked. We may not be able to alter this likeableness in real life, but in the online world this is easily achievable. We can carefully play the role we think we should fill. We do this by posting certain statuses or by editing our pictures. We take pictures of us doing certain things with certain people in order to play a certain role. We then edit those pictures to give off a more likeable appearance. So, Angela might have taken hers to an extreme all at once, but how are we so much better then her? She was at least guilty about what she had done. Through out our daily lives we lie about who we truly are on a constant basis and think nothing of it. Why? Because we can and its now socially expectable to do so. We are all trying to be a better version of ourselves so we can come across more appealing and likeable to fit into the roles we think we must play. So, although Angela was the puppet master to many different avatars at least she knew what she was controlling. We on the other hand are the puppets and our master is social media.
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I can really see where you are coming from when you say we try to make all the right moves on social media. The hash tag is really the puppet master if you think about it. effing #WCW and #Tbt. Those two tags alone have instigated more posts than we can count I think. I have been conscious of my activity since the beginning of the social web and it's pervasiveness. Nowadays it seems social media touches even the deepest aspects of our life.
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