rejeansthoughts

[rejeansthoughts]

“A Crisis?”

Well, I made it to week 12 of my Intro to Social Media class, the final week. This will be my last post on this blog before it gets lost in the pile of other forgotten Tumblr pages. For my blog, I wanted to have a common theme of a chill aesthetic with anime pictures to give off a sense of relaxation while reading through my blog. Also because I really like Anime haha. Yes, I know, I’m a nerd but I embrace that. I scavenged through Reddit in search of the most calming photos for this blog and I think I did a good job in my finds. The Tumblr theme that I found, for the low price of $0, also turned out quite nicely.

To briefly end off this blog, I will discuss my last week. For week 12, we discussed Social Media and Crisis. This is a part of social media that I would really enjoy creating a career in for myself. You truly have to plan ahead to fit all kinds of situations that could potentially happen, and then be able to think on your feet as soon as a crisis occurs. There’s little room for error in that short amount of time you have to create some form of statement for the public in response to a crisis.

When a crisis arises, there are 4 stages of handling it. They are: 1. Identifying the crisis. 2. Strategizing around how to manage it. 3. Implementing the strategy and monitoring it. 4. Evaluating the strategy post-crisis and making changes to crisis planning as a result. These stages need to be implemented ahead of time as preparation for a crisis, and during a crisis when it happens. The 4 strategies for handling a crisis are forgiveness, sympathy, avoidance, and attachment. As stated in our lecture, Forgiveness is where the organization is at fault and it takes full responsibility and wants to fix the issue. Sympathy is where the organization identifies that it has also been a victim of the issue but then becomes active in fixing the issue. Avoidance is where the organization either avoids discussing the crisis entirely or takes no responsibility and indicates that another party is at fault. Attachment is where the organization positions itself as “on the same side” as the public and seeks buy-in from the public in making change happen.

We discussed the recent Starbucks racial arrest apology and Toronto ice storm in class as examples of how to and how not to handle a crisis. In the discussion, we looked at Starbucks initial response to the scandal where black men were arrested while waiting for their friend in one of their locations. One of the baristas called the police on them. Their initial response was very vague and failed to address specific racial issues. This was a great example of how not to handle a situation like that. We also discussed the ice storm that hit Toronto last year in April. The situation dealt with handling the hydro company of the city and their initial response to power outages. We were able to come up with multiple statements on how to handle the situation through heated class discussion…..get it….to melt the ice….ill show myself out. This situation showed me that in crisis management, one could never please everyone. There will always be someone out there that does not agree with your statement. It's best to come up with a response to please the most people in the situation, never all. I also learned that crisis management is not just damage control; it comes from the organization’ strategic objectives. I really enjoyed the class discussion for this and hope to maybe work in this field.

I really hope you enjoyed reading through my blog for the past couple weeks and hope you got to see how my mind thinks and processes certain situations. Thank you for tuning in, and farewell!

[rejeansthoughts]

“Confidently Racist”

I’m quite disappointed in the 11th week of my blog/social media class as one of my favorite artists currently has been exposed on social media for being a racist. I know, this just took a heavy turn. The artist in question is Sabrina Claudio. She is a 21-year-old Cuban R&B singer from Miami who has been making waves in the genre within the past 1-2 years. I first heard about her through seeing some discussion on twitter about up and coming artists, and through a co-worker saying her music is fantastic. I am a huge fan of R&B and the recent set of artists with it so I decided to give her a chance and oh MAN did I fall in love with her music. She only had one project out at the time named Confidently Lost which became one of my favorite projects of the year. It was a fresh sound of R&B from another female artist, and I was extremely here for it as women have been running the game. After the release of her new single called “Don’t Let Me Down” with Khalid, someone on twitter called her out for being a racist after they unearthed that Sabrina had been running an old Twitter account with racist statements. The account in question was called @ODamnYourUgly (yes, it has the wrong usage of your) and Sabrina had admitted to running the account on her current profile, @SabrinaClaudio back in 2015. The @ODamnYourUgly account had tweets consisting of her using the N-word and hate speech towards black women and dark-skinned Latinas. I won’t go into her exact comments, but they were hateful and wrong. Her first response was to delete the tweets, which then led to her posting an apology for her past actions and mistakes, and that she will learn from them. I am not only talking about this because I’m salty, it is because whatever you post on social media, stays there, and is very hard to get back, sometimes impossible. We have seen how many scandals there have been for celebrities since the beginning of the world wide web. Everything you do online can be seen by the whole world and can be hacked into and manipulated against you. Sometimes it's for the wrong reasons like blackmail, and sometimes it's for the right reasons like in Sabrina’s case. Information like this should continue to be aired out to show who they really are. Everyone needs to take a moment before posting that tweet on Twitter, or that photo on Instagram to ask themselves “should I really post this?” This can save you so much trouble in the future and help you evaluate your ideas if they are in the wrong. One should always be mindful of what they are posting online. I am very disappointed in Sabrina and will not support her music as I was.

[rejeansthoughts]

“Vlogging”

I wanted to post a little blurb on my thoughts on vlogging for week 10 of my blog. If you have been living under a rock for the past couple of years, ill explain what vlogging is. Vlogging is basically blogging, but instead of writing, you are recording. All postings are in video form, primarily posted to YouTube, Instagram, and Snapchat. The vlogging platform has exploded in the past couple of years, providing many internet personalities to come up and make a living off of documenting their daily lives.

I personally don’t follow many vlogging accounts and the only vlogger I follow per say is 4YallEntertainment in Toronto, but I have always been fascinated by the concept. It amazes me that people are perfectly ok with documenting their everyday life for the world to see. It seems like it could be strenuous physically and mentally since it has to keep people’s attention for so long. Not just anyone can be a successful vlogger, one has to be somewhat exciting or partaking in exciting events. I would feel like I would have to live up to expectations of my fans so they keep coming back. But I’m sure the rewards must be great. There are tons of YouTubers that have quite big homes, own name brand items, and etc just from filming themselves. Some of it is even sent to them by companies so that they can promote it in their videos.

I have also been fascinated by the appeal for some people to watching vlogs. Now people can watch movies and play video games as it is an escape from their current lives. Movies and video games allow you to completely enter another world for new experiences whether it be controlling a character or watching an actor/actress. With vlogging, you are living vicariously through another person; you basically become THEM! You experience things as they do, regardless of editing. It is a new form of excitement with reality. There isn’t as much fabrication and fiction when it comes to vlogging.

You need to have most of your life on display to be successful in the new media form of vlogging and I will continue to be amazed at the perception of this in the future to come. Who knows where vlogging can go from here.

[rejeansthoughts]

“Shopping”

For week 9, the discussion in class was based around social media algorithms which I found to be very interesting. In terms of algorithms in social media, it is referring to how content on the internet is carefully calculated to be tailored to the individual browsing. This is seen in everyday life on the multitude of platforms we browse like Google, Facebook, YouTube, and etc. Everyone has their own version of the Internet. All of these platforms are curating content based on your tendencies online. They see which accounts you are engaging with the most, the content you generally like, the things you shop for, and etc. In a way, its kind of scary how everything you do can be tracked and evaluated to learn about you. The internet sees and knows all. INSERT EYE EMOJI There was a specific part of the lecture that discussed advertisements that seem to follow you around everywhere you go. All it takes is for you to look at one item on a shopping website and BOOM, there it is on the sidebar on every page. The professor brought it up with a pair of UGGs that she was looking at, and instantly I was able to relate. The exact same thing happened to me when looking at dresses online for Fashionnova for my girlfriend. For the next month, I was seeing ads for all the dresses I clicked on but did not buy and to be honest, it was quite annoying. This is referred to as retargeting. Algorithms aren’t just referring to mathematical equations and computer code. It's much more than that and determines how everything online works specifically for consumers. It's amazing how it can be turned into a form of advertising and it has proven to work with the ever-increasing trend of online shopping. Unfortunately, writing this post is giving me the urge to buy some new clothes on H&M.ca. See ya next week!

[rejeansthoughts]

“Fortnite”

Well, here we are in week 8 of class as the end draws near. Soon it will be summer vacation where I will have an excuse to do absolutely nothing for 4 months, and I could not be more excited. This week of lessons was an interesting one as we discussed in class internal communication platforms for businesses to use to solve their media issues. An example is the use of HipChat for having employee group chats and etc to discuss business matters. This discussion led to me bringing up Discord which is used a lot by the gaming industry for talking with friends online and on Twitch. Twitch was discussed in the class which is why I wanted to briefly talk about the recent event on Twitch where Drake joined a famous Twitch streamer’s (Ninja) live show to play Fortnite.

I was in my bed on the night of March 15th, when 2 of my friends messaged me saying that Drake is playing Fortnite on Twitch with Ninja. Anyone that knows me, knows that Drake is my favorite artist so once I see those 5 letters in a row, I’m listening. Now I knew about Twitch & Fortnite but admittedly, I was never a big fan of either. Twitch is a platform for streaming your footage of a video game, or etc., live for an audience to view along with you. Twitch streamers can interact with their audience as they have a camera and mic set up facing them, along with a chat screen open. It sells the idea of being able to speak directly to the person you are watching and seeing their reactions happen live. Now Fortnite is a battle royale video game. Battle Royale is like the books/movies Battle Royale & The Hunger Games. 100 people are dropped onto an island in either squads or individually and whoever is the last man or squad standing, wins the game.

When I clicked the link that was sent to me, it opened up the stream and there I was, watching my favorite artist playing a video game live. As the night went on, another rapper by the name of Travi$ Scott and JuJu Smith who plays for the Pittsburgh Steelers joined as well to make a 4-man squad with Ninja. I had no idea what was going on during the game since I don’t quite understand it, but there I was into the late hours of the morning watching it. It is believed that the whole event that occurred was not a marketing scheme and it was just Drake’s interest in the game, which I personally believe since there are other celebrities out there that have admitted to loving certain games.

Now you may be asking “Who the hell cares?” I will tell you why. There is money involved in this….a LOT of money. Twitch is free to use service, but by paying $4.99, you can subscribe to a channel and receive extra perks. When you subscribe to a channel, the money gets split 50/50 – half to the channel and the other half to the Twitch company. That is for an individual subscriber. There is also the concept of donating money on Twitch. Any subscriber is allowed to send a donation of any dollar amount to a Twitch streamer. People do this to support their favorite personalities so that they keep bringing new content. Ninja had around 100,000 subscribers on Twitch on March 3rd. He now has over 200,000. With all of this together, it has been reported that Ninja makes over $500,000 a month just by streaming this video game live. The event that occurred shot his already high subscriber amount up into the stars. The companies Twitch and Discord made a lot of money as well off of this event.

To think our parents would always tell us to not play so much video games because it would fry our brains and waste our time. Now imagine telling them you are making hundreds and thousands of dollars a month by doing this. Times have changed with our platforms of media and with the money that comes along with is.

[rejeansthoughts]

“Salt On The Floor”

Well, I’m back with another rant for your head top in week 7 of my social media class, but this time, it's dealing with the social media response to the singer Bruno Mars. On January 28th, 2018, the 60th Annual Grammy Awards was held in Madison Square Garden in New York City. The awards were stacked this year with great nominees like Kendrick Lamar, SZA, Jay-Z, Childish Gambino & Bruno Mars. Jay-Z had the most amount of nominations, sitting at 8, while Bruno Mars had 6. The end of the show had arrived and they were going to announce the Album of the Year award. Bruno Mars had swept the awards show earlier, winning 5 out of the 6 he was nominated for. The crowd favorite to win seemed like Kendrick Lamar but it was Bruno that took it to make it 6 for 6. Now Bruno Mars isn’t my favorite artist. I was never a big fan of his music until his recent album 24K Magic for which he was nominated for came out. It had a big R&B/New Jack Swing/Funk influence to it which I fell in love with, especially with the hit single Finesse. Do I think he deserved all of the awards he was nominated for? No, due to the other artists/albums in contention for the award. But my main problem doesn’t lie with the fact that he won, it was the comments made following the awards. I signed into my Twitter account for my daily dosage of memes and saw some discussion to Bruno Mars being a culture vulture. It was mainly tweets saying he wasn’t, but I wanted to see some context. I looked into the threads of tweets which led me to the original video that started it all. There was a YouTube video called “THE GRAPEVINE | IS BRUNO MARS A CULTURAL APPROPRIATOR? S3EP18” where a panel of around 15 people congregated together to discuss if Bruno Mars is an appropriator of Black Culture. I saved the video to my YouTube account to watch it later with my significant other, and oh did it piss us off. We could barely make it through the whole video due to the opinions stated. More than half of the people present in the video were in favor of Bruno being an appropriator. This argument to me is completely false. How the hell can you hate on an artist who wants to recreate the music he grew up listening to? How can you hate an artist just because they are racially ambiguous to you? He is a foreigner as well; Filipino and Hispanic. He stated that he used to perform the music he listened to when he was younger at events, so he is showing appreciation for it. Why is it that black people must have ownership of the music they strive the most in? That doesn’t make sense to me at all. Music isn’t owned by a culture, race or etc. I feel that every artist should be able to make music for whichever genre they want. Why hate on the artist just because they want to do something different than the earlier pop songs they were doing? An artist shouldn’t be boxed in like that. With the statements in the video regarding non-black artists winning all awards along with how they are presented, the problem more so lies with the industry and audience, not the artist themselves. Bruno has proven to be an extremely great performer/artist with this album due to the use of genres. If there is so much as an issue with black artists not getting the recognition they deserve, it should not be the artist’s responsibility to shine the light on others to give them fame and etc. Their job is to create the music they want, and that’s it unless they have other personal reasons.

[rejeansthoughts]

“Oversaturation”

It is now week 6 of Social Media and due to a midterm, I don’t have any class material to share with you guys. Don’t lie, you rejoiced a bit. So for this week, I’m going to rant a bit about the way music is going due to social media changes of the past decade. Now if you guys remember, in the 2000s and early 2010s, music was mainly sold in CD form and through iTunes. You would see the hottest songs out on the radio and Television due to music videos on channels like MTV and B.E.T. This soon led towards the popularity of music videos on YouTube which was an amazing change. I love being able to watch any video on my computer or phone at any time instead of having to wait to hear it in a certain time slot. Soon after the YouTube takeover, streaming services and major social media platforms came along, and that is where my rant lies. Streaming & Social Media has completely changed how music is consumed and its longevity. First is the change of owning music. Most people do not actually own music compared to physical/digital copies of singles and albums. We all pay a small fee to have access to a huge library of music, but not actually own it. For me, owning media has been a huge part of my life and losing the “ownage” of it devalues the music itself. Music is now consumed in a much different way. Do you remember when that new Justin Timberlake album came out, or that new 50 Cent tape? You probably played that album for a good couple of years after it came out and it still provides that good bit of nostalgia for you to this day. Every year had a plethora of releases and singles that are still being played around the world in parties, clubs, on the radio, and etc. Now, music comes and goes at a very fast rate. A lot of newer artists are releasing music to capitalize on the newest/hottest trends, and they die out within a week. It is oversaturating the music market which in turn causes for the audience to listen to music for a week, then dash it away while waiting for the next big thing. The attention span is gone. Now I am not saying there are no music releases that are sticking like older albums; there are. Some examples include Drake’s Take Care, Adele’s 21, Kendrick Lamar’s Good Kid, M.A.A.D City. It's just that a lot of music is coming and going in the blink of an eye. There is always the select few artists that capitalize off of online trends and memes who go on to make a name for themselves, an example being Rae Rremmurd, but most artists are just releasing music to hold you over for the next couple days on your commute. For the past couple decades, it was normal for an artist to release an album every couple of years, but now releases are only a couple months apart to a year. Sometimes it is better to have quality over quantity. Streaming & Social media has caused this because of the wanting for more and more content at such a fast pace, and with the idea of if you don’t release something quick enough, you’re officially a piece of the past. I do love how music is so accessible in the current era, and that it continues to grow, but I wish music would go back to the way of not saturating the market, and for more time to be put into the music itself.

[rejeansthoughts]

“Send a Pic”

Week 5 has come and gone like a breeze and its starting to hit me at how soon I’m going to be stressing over exams. Until then, I shall be procrastinating while watching anime and writing for this blog! So this week’s discussion in class dealt with having a social media strategy and community management. The in-class assignment used Sky Zone as an example of how to create such a strategy using SMART goals and the ROSIE protocol which proved to be a lot harder than I thought.  Now for those of you who haven’t heard of Sky Zone, it is a gymnasium but with trampolines. It contains a jungle gym, basketball net, dodgeball area, screaming children, volleyball court and etc. If you haven’t been yet, clear whatever plans you have and go. But as I was saying, we had to come up with the potential audiences to tap into to promote the business using social media. Working on this assignment was a challenge but it did make me think about the current climate with social media audiences that I’m currently in, especially with Snapchat. Now if you are unaware of what has been going on with Snapchat the past month, let me fill you in. Now Snapchat has updated their user interface recently which completely changed the layout. It now has mixed the story page with your regular individual messaging page and created a new page for popular Snapchat accounts, regardless if you follow these accounts. Celebrities and news pages will show up, along with even more advertisements. It has made Snapchat quite clunky and disorganized.

Now because of this, there has been a massive negative reaction, including me, on social media. Everywhere you go, someone is complaining about the update and wishing the update could be undone. The app has been updating on its own for some people to make matters worse. Now where it really took a turn was when Kardashian family sensation Kylie Jenner tweeted “sooo does anyone else not open Snapchat anymore? Or is it just me... ugh this is so sad.” After this tweet was posted, Snapchat’s parent company’s shares dropped 8.5 percent which is around $1 billion. What I find amazing is that such a simple thing as a tweet from a Kardashian can cost your company so much money. There are people like the Kardashians that have so much power when it comes to social media because of their massive following, and it's scary. As a PR agent, you have to prepare for moments like these and act accordingly. You have to tap into the SMART goals discussed for a social media strategy to bounce back from such an event for your business. The social media community using your app and others like Twitter need to be managed extremely well because that is the audience giving you income along with the advertisers. Moments like these I will always keep in the back of my mind as motivation to become a PR agent that can handle moments like this well…..or somehow end up in the Kardashian family to pay off my student loans.

[rejeansthoughts]

“Content Creation”

It is now week 4 of my Intro to Social Media lecture and with the exception of me not being late to class for once, it has been mainly the same so far; interesting. The lessons continue to be of an informative nature that plays into my interests with social media in the PR field. This week’s lesson dealt with the content ecosystem which highlights how many different digital/social communication outlets there are and to be honest, it is quite overwhelming. Looking at the PowerPoint slides outlining each one with their respective categories made my head hurt a bit and makes me wonder how some people keep track of all these outlets but hey, that’s why I’m here in this program.


The lecture led to sites that deal with content creation like YouTube, fanfiction, and blogs like the one you are currently wasting your time reading….unless you’re my professor. There are so many different ways you can create and release content online with all these different outlets to different audiences and niches. Even a review you left on TripAdvisor for that 2-star motel you stayed in to save money or the 12th Reddit post about your dog on r/aww is considered content creation. No matter the idea you have, there is somewhere online that you can post it to which is incredible. There’s so much out there to be discovered, created, and shared online which this lesson conveys.



Our third segment of the class went into Social Media campaigns, specifically for Television and Movies which I felt was the cherry on top of the lecture. The slide led to a picture of the ad campaign for the film District 9 and immediately, my nerd instincts started to fight to come out. It hurt just a little bit knowing my classmates didn’t recognize the movie but I digress. It highlighted how companies tend to go outside of the norm to promote their product. In this case, the ad campaign for District 9 was reminiscent of the days of colored segregation in the United States but with Extra Terrestrials. The posters of the film were placed around conventions like Comic-Con to get people talking about what they are seeing and to investigate.

This ad campaign made me think back to some of my favorite ad campaigns for media which went outside of the norm. The Blair Witch Project film in the 90s went against other run of the mill horror movies by advertising the movie as if it was a real documentary and not just a feature film, and it worked in their favor making millions. Paranormal Activity in recent years as well succeeded by doing this, but by advertising only the audience watching the movie. Just the clips of the audience sitting in a dark theater getting the shit scared out of them were enough to make a massive profit. Lastly, the film Chronicle had an ad campaign where the creators of the film made human-like figures from pieces of plastic and attached them to drones to fly around New York. This represented the main characters in the film gaining powers and being able to fly.

I enjoyed the lesson for what it was, especially the ad campaign discussion. Maybe I’ll look into getting into ad campaign creation for the film industry if my current path seems to fall through.

[rejeansthoughts]

“United Breaks Computers”

My lesson on Wednesday this week with regards to Social Media focused on the concepts of Reputation and Policy. Due to the horrible weather in our country of Canada, I missed the first quarter but hey, better late than never. Basic social media practices were shared as a guideline for successful content. Practices like having relevant content, frequent interactions with others, paying attention to the norms of platforms, and etc. The idea of being positive and upbeat on social media as well was highlighted which I find to be the very opposite of how social media is. 

Everywhere I go on social media, there is someone out there butthurt about something going on in their life. That someone is sometimes me as well. Social media is that escape for me to go and rant about whatever topic in my mind and get that validation I'm looking for. A quote was brought up in class stating “…although we tend to share the happiness only of people we are close to, we are willing to join in the rage of strangers.” by Prof. Ryan Martin which stuck with me. I found it to be very interesting as I see how much easier it is to rage with other teens to middle-aged strangers in my area compared to my own friends. There seems to be some form of common understanding with nothing to lose considering you don’t know the person behind that greasy keyboard and profile picture of an anime character....

Anyways, situational and system outrage was discussed which I enjoyed learning about due to the examples of United Airlines and the Black Lives Matter movement. It provided me with a perspective and an understanding of the different forms of social media issues there are out there which helps me analyze situations better. A systemic outrage I got to see happen in real time was the “Me Too” movement against sexual assault and harassment in Hollywood. It was amazing to see all these women come together to bring this hidden issue to light which reminded me of the concept brought up in class.

It’s only week 3 of my Intro to Social Media class but so far it's looking quite enjoyable. Let’s hope there aren't too many cat gifs in the next set of presentations or my view on the class may change (hehe).