Browse Exhibits (3 total)
Don't Put a Label on It: A Study in Student Stickers
You see them every day. They are all around you. They are little glimpses of what lies beneath the impassive faces that people put on as they go through their daily routines.
Yes. They are stickers.
When we think about everyday writing, no canon would be complete without accounting for the carefully curated exhibits we see all around us via laptops. Students select stickers with little bits of slang, quotes, or references to memes to display to the world. It doesn't get more mundane and everyday than that. As students, the stickers we pick for our laptops are what we are continuously reminded of every time we open it to complete schoolwork, watch a movie, or do a quick Google search.
While the stickers may appear to be mindless fun, it actually goes much deeper. When we slap colorful designs or searing witticisms on those monochrome surfaces, it is important to consider the why of it all. For some, it is nothing more than an exercise in the aimless-there is no deeper purpose for their sticker choices. For others, what they put on their laptop is akin to baring their soul in the most aesthetic way they know how.
In a world where there is a pressure to conform, it is remarkable to see students find little ways to remind others - and themselves - about their interests.
This exhibit aims to explore the role of stickers as a form of everyday writing in the lives of students. Are they a marker of one's identity? How closely can they be tied to one's career or academic ambitions? What can we tell about a person based on their stickers?
The answers may surprise you. And hopefully you'll never be able to look at someone else's laptop the same again.
Examining "Finsta" Accounts as the Modern Day Diary: Everyday Writing in the Digital Age
This exhibit aims to examine everyday writing in the digital age. Social media is increasingly being utilized in a diary-like manner and private accounts are a popular way to express and archive one's thoughts. Over the last 5 years, many users of Instagram have created "fake" (otherwise described as private) accounts where they can be more selective with their followers and content. Many people began using "fake" accounts (also known as "finsta" accounts) to post more intimate accounts of their lives to a more select group of individuals. The increasing popularity of such a phenomenon brings to light many questions about everyday writing in the digital age. When considering how "finsta" accounts function as a new age diary and form of digital everyday writing, it is important to explore the way that elements like text, images, and the promise of privacy define this new form. As a scholar of rhetoric and composition (with interests specifically in visual and digital rhetoric), I have decided to examine "finsta" accounts as new-age diaries. The exhibit attempts to explain why "finsta" posts are everyday writing in addition to explaining how text, images, and privacy settings shape and impact the form.
"Finsta" accounts are a new and modern form of everyday writing. Emerging onto the social platform late in 2011, "finsta" accounts were a concept that invited users to engage in more private and personal posting on social media. "Finsta" accounts presented themselves as an alternative digital space where the user could maintain more control over the audience and their posts. For many people, the concept of "finsta" accounts is inviting. The form offers more privacy because of the user's ability to be more selective with who follows the account, what the profile picture is, what the username is, what the biography states, and what type of content is posted. "Finsta" accounts are digital spaces where users can post intimate details about their lives that are vastly different (and more honest) than their public persona. Additionally, they can market such posts to a more selective audience as a way to maintain the intimate and personal nature of the posts. As the form became increasingly popular, it was only natural that people saw the "finsta" form as an invitation to a space where diary-like entries could be posted and only the most inner-circle of a person's friend/family group could access them. Soon after their advent, people were using "finsta" accounts to post diary-like content that gave updates on their lives, their emotional states, their hidden interests, and more.
Trolling: Writing for the Lulz
Common advice on the web advises internet-users against "feeding” (or interacting with) internet trolls, and for (sometimes) good reason. However, this exhibit seeks to understand this peculiar internet-born version of everyday writing. Simply put, trolling is a form of dialogic practical joking wherein the writer (or "troll") seeks to decieve the unsuspecting public into taking their writing as genuine or serious -- no matter how absurd or outrageous the content. This written form of deceitful playacting is motivated by one thing, and one thing primarily: laughing at others’ expense (often stylized as “the lulz”).
While trolling as a rhetorical tactic perhaps pre-dates the internet, the actual term "trolling" is fairly recent. This writing, which is often (but not always) multimodal and metatextual engages in a sort of “game” with the public: the troll assumes a purposefully-absurd persona and spends as long as they possibly can committing to an overly-elaborate fiction. This dedication to an absurd persona usually results in three different outcomes:
- The public is fooled, and takes the troll's words and actions as wholly serious, resulting in a "successful" trolling where the public expresses outrage and offense;
- The public is not fooled, resulting in a "failed" trolling where the public does not express outrage and offense or;
- The public recognizes the troll and begins playing along with them -- thereby becoming trolls themselves.
As a form of everyday writing, trolling remains a fascinating and underexplored form beacause of it's two-sided rhetorical aims. When you're an internet troll, it doesn't matter if you actually believe what you are saying... all that matters is that you fool strangers into thinking that you do. In this way, trolling isn't exactly the same thing as lying, because if a troll is particularly skilled, they may not need to tell a single lie in order to convince an unsuspecting stranger into seeing their words and actions as genuine.
This exhibit will use two different instances of public trolling to explore this phenomenon: the "Storm Area 51" Facebook event, and the #JusticeForBradsWife hashtag campaign.