CW: racism Anonymous Facebook platform ExeHonestly has been criticised after posts relating to neo-Nazi memes were published yesterday, 3 November. One of the posts read: “People’s favourite number? Mine’s 1488”, making reference to the fourteen-word white supremacist slogan “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children”. The phrase was […]
A loss of face
Until recently I thought that social media was a force for good. As someone who sometimes finds social situations fairly exhausting, social media seemed more of a solution than a problem. There is no doubt that it has revolutionised the way we interact with others. Social media can incite change and spread messages across the […]
Meme of the Month: Don’t Look Back in Anger
In 2017, the internet was rocked by the Distracted Boyfriend meme. One man, his arm around a supposed girlfriend, staring at the backside of another girl while the first woman looks on, furious at this supposed betrayal. But let’s start from the beginning. The original image was part of a stock photo series, taken on […]
CIRCLES: The Prince and You – navigating the legacy of social media
Prince Ea looks up from his phone. He stands before the ocean. The orange of the late summer sky seems all too perfect; he’s clearly chosen his moment. As he sits, he thinks (or he looks like he thinks). What is Prince Ea thinking about? What’s brought him here? The water hits the rocks but […]
Mental Health and Social Media: do we spend too much time staring at screens?
The panic around social media use today is like the panic around Grand Theft Auto in the noughties, video-nasties in the eighties and the development of the printing press back before people knew what penicillin was. Stupid and petty, silly and unfounded, peddled by the kind of people who can’t handle change. It would all […]
Fake News
We’ve all seen classic knock off products, perhaps you’ve been tempted to buy them? You wouldn’t be alone. 40% of people in a UK survey admitted to buying pirated films and music or purchasing counterfeit clothing and accessories. This is despite the fact that 90% of respondents in the same survey agreed that it was […]
Monopolies in the Internet Age
The monopoly is as old as capitalism itself. It is logical that a system built on the premise of private profit makes having complete control over supply or trade of a commodity attractive; this way you would maximise profits by simply being the sole recipient of all revenue. Despite this, monopolies have been warned against, […]
Using Facebook to find voters
With Facebook omnipresent in modern life, most of us are aware that we see adverts, and that they are often tailored to us individually. There is now also new evidence that the amount of personalisation can be used to change your opinion on political questions. A study from the University of Bath tested the effectiveness […]
Know what I mean?
ALTHOUGH a basic skill in the sense that it is necessary to our very survival, communication is the most nuanced and elegant tool available to humanity. It shapes and enhances every aspect of our highly-collaborative modern lives with verbal and hand-written forms looked over in favour of more technologically advanced options. It’s been a very […]
Mass murder or mass hysteria?
Want to hear a joke? Okay, here goes: there’s an escaped convict roaming the streets you probably live on or near, and he’s knifed six people tonight. One of the kids in our year died. I watched it from my window. Better lock your doors. I couldn’t believe the tweets, comments, Snapchats and statuses before […]