#i need people on tiktok to gain some form of literacy

[mac-n-chees]

i see so many people on tiktok saying beetlejuice is a “creep” for waiting for lydia for 30 years and that the ship is disgusting and i gotta say…

shut the hell up❤️

like these the same bitches that swoon over the fact that 117 year old edward cullen was rizzing up 17 year old bella swan, like… is it because beetlejuice “isn’t conventionally attractive”… the double standards are WILD.

[blubberquark]

Blog Meta vs Tumblr Meta

When I started this tumblr, I wanted to post about game development and game design. I followed other game developers, and I posted about game design, WiP screenshots and art assets, and links to finished games. Later I started an aesthetic sideblog (reblub.tumblr.com), and posted some programming tutorials to this tumblr. Programming is not really something that interests followers who want to know when I have released a new game, or who want to reblog WiP pixel art. Then I stopped worrying and broadened the range of topics on this main blog to opinions on computer literacy, teaching programming, and contributing open source. It's my blog and you can't stop me. I might post some cooking recipes. Maybe it even helps promote my games.

If I wanted to go all-out on promoting my games, I would post a lot more visually interesting WiP stuff, and game design ideas that are directly related to games I am promoting, broken down so players who don't design their own games understand them. I would have to manually cross-post everything on mastodon, twitter, instagram, tiktok, and so on.

If I wanted to go all-out about programming tutorials, I should probably host them somewhere else. The NPF tumblr post editor does not do code blocks, or maths. I could make a series of hyperlinked pages and host them on my own domain, or I could record some screencasts and sell a course, but not on tumblr.

I don't want to do either of those anyway. I want to keep this tumblr relatively noise-free, I don't want to be my own full time social media manager posting gifs every day, and I don't want to sell webinars or online courses. I just want to keep making games, occasionally.

When tumblr enabled ads on blogs, and not just on the dashboard, I noted the lack of kickbacks for blog posters.

When Posts+ was announced, I thought about posting more gamedev tutorials. There is probably a small audience out there who would want to learn GameDev from me, but they might not be enough people to make it financially viable, and they are probably not willing and able to pay me enough. The people who are on tumblr already don't want to buy gamedev tutorial content, and when they do, they don't want to do so on tumblr.

With every new tumblr feature, I noted that it doesn't really help me write one or two posts a month. It doesn't help me publish or monetise the kind of content I want to write. The tip jar is more compatible with the way content spreads through tumblr than posts+, but it's not what I need.

The only way I can monetise a gamedev tumblr is by posting viral gifs of my game, and directing them to other platforms:

getting people to wishlist the game on Steam

promoting my itch.io page

promoting a Patreon

promoting a podcast

promoting a KickStarter

selling branded t-shirts

funnelling them into my Discord

There is no good way to monetise devlog content, game development tutorials, or long-form blog posts on tumblr.

This feels mildly concerning, but maybe it's okay. I know that many game developers started a Patreon for their podcast, a YouTube channel, a twitch stream, or a TikTok, only for that to become a larger source of revenue than their game sales. As they work on their next title, and try to drum up hype for Steam wish lists, cross-promote other games, appear on podcasts, the sales from their last game dwindle, and the revenue from YouTube ads and twitch donations grows. They are basically professional YouTubers at that point, or professional programming coaches, but without the actual game in the end, it doesn't work.

On the other hand, tumblr can still monetise me. I could decide to blaze some pretty screenshots, some .gifs, and gain followers and wishlists.

I don't know where this leaves artists on tumblr though. Tumblr is full of pixel artists who take commissions. Tumblr is full of old school oil on canvas artists. Their interests aren't aligned with the platform. Tumblr doesn't earn anything when they do commissions, and the artists don't earn anything when ads are shown on the dash next to their reblogged original content.

With all this in mind, tumblr live makes some sense.

In the mean time, I'll have a look at cohost, and I might re-work some of my drafts that require elaborate formatting into a longer-lived web site. And maybe I'll write some games!

[zerone990]

Is blogging still relevant in the age of tiktok and Instagram?

Computational platform means a platform where hardware and software is made together for software application to run (techopedia, 2020). There exist many platforms for blogs to be post but one such platform, WordPress is the best platform for blogging. Its preferred because for starters its free (only need to pay for hosting) and blog creators can freely customize their blogs without much restriction from the site (Lofgren, 2022). Based on sources online, there are reasons that support why does and why does not blogging stays relevant around these 2 giant social media apps (Instagram and tiktok). Below listed some benefits, functions and affordance of blog vs social media.

Benefits and functions of social media:

Ease of use

People now only need social media app being installed into their smartphone and they can just write their post right there and then as it is easy to edit photos, create beautiful Instagram feeds or editing short videos on tiktok with just a smartphone (Corinne 2021).

2. Potential to get bigger audience

With the rise of social media and internet, people in general have lesser attention spans. Nowadays people prefer to consume online entertainment pictures and videos quickly by scrolling and move on to the next thing. Since blogging is mainly text-based and long-form content, people easily get bored from reading (Corinne 2021).

Affordance of social media

Informational character of visibility is an affordance of social media (Instagram and tiktok). A person’s post can be visible to his/her followers but the post’s visibility can increase by receiving likes and getting shared. This post’s number of likes and numbers shared serves as an indicator of influence level so the algorithm detects this influence and it will recommend to other people’s social media feed (Siegert, Caicedo & Hansson, 2020).

Benefits and functions of blogs:

Ubiquity

Blogs are more ubiquitous than Instagram reels and tiktok videos. This is because the blog’s content can be repost or repurposed into different social medias post (e.g. Facebook) and be shared as a guest article. Content from tiktok platforms are more dependent on its parent platform (Beyond the Panorama, 2022).

2. Content-length flexibility

Reels and tiktok has very short length and time duration content than blogs. Blogs can be short or long form so it can provide more information for readers to gain more knowledge about certain topics. (Beyond the Panorama, 2022).

Affordance of blogging

Blogs can act as a medium for people to communicate in depth about specified topics. People who are interest in a blog topic have a chance to discuss with other people commenting on the post (the author of the post included) (Ranker, 2015).

In my personal opinion, based on the findings above, I find that blogging is still relevant in the age of Instagram and tiktok. It is because that sometimes people do want to seek information about topics that they interest in so blogging is a good place where they can find those information.

List of reference:

Beyond the Panorama. (2022, August 5). 6 Reasons That Make Blogs Remain Relevant In The Age Of Reels And TikTok. Beyond the Panorama. https://beyondthepanorama.com/6-reasons-that-make-blogs-remain-relevant-in-the-age-of-reels-and-tiktok/

Corinne. (2021, April 3). Is Blogging Dead? The Rise Of Instagram And TikTok. Skinnedcartree. https://skinnedcartree.com/2021/04/is-blogging-dead-the-rise-of-instagram-and-tiktok.html

Lofgren, L. (2022). Compare The Best Blogging Platforms and Blog Sites of 2022. QuickSprout. https://www.quicksprout.com/best-blogging-platforms/

Ranker, J. (2015). The Affordances of Blogs and Digital Video. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 58(7). 568-578.

Siegert, S. Caicedo, M. H., & Hansson, M. M. (2020). Boundaryless Twitter Use: On the Affordances of Social Media. MDPI, 9(11), 201-219. https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci9110201

Techopedia. (2020, May 12). Platform. https://www.techopedia.com/definition/3411/platform-computing

[dipulb3]

Got a money question? There's a TikTok for that

New Post has been published on https://appradab.com/got-a-money-question-theres-a-tiktok-for-that/

Got a money question? There's a TikTok for that

Now she has over 800,000 followers.

Dunlap, who notes on her website that she is not a licensed financial adviser, says her parents taught her a lot about money growing up, but she quickly realized that wasn’t the case for everyone, especially for women.

“Having a financial education as women or any marginalized group is our best form of protest and is our best way of gaining agency in a world that is increasingly inequitable,” Dunlap said.

And TikTok, she said, is leading the way in enabling a younger, more diverse group of people to both provide and gain access to this education.

Finance has long been seen as a white, male-dominated industry. A 2019 survey by the Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards found that 77% of all financial planners are male, while 72% are over the age of 40.

But many personal finance TikTok creators are bringing diversity and relatability to conversations about money for young people.

When it comes to the apps’ thriving personal finance community, most of the faces dolling out financial advice are new — and many of them are women and people of color.

“Women, people of color and young investors are traditionally underserved segments of the investing public, so it’s natural for them to turn to non-traditional sources of financial advice,” said Lisa Kramer, professor of finance at the University of Toronto. “If a TikTok video encourages someone to start planning and investing for the future, that’s a win.”

A new generation seeking personal finance advice

Personal finance TikTok has become a wildly popular destination for Gen Z’ers and Millennials looking for money advice.

The hashtag #personalfinance alone has a total of 4 billion video views, with #finance trailing behind with 2 billion. Other finance-related hashtags, like #financialiteracy, #financetiktok, #finances and #finance101, have a total of roughly 427 million video views combined.

So whether you’re curious about how to crush credit card debt, getting started investing or stashing away cash for an emergency savings fund — sure enough, with a simple search, there’s a TikTok for that.

So what’s with the sudden fixation with personal finance?

The pandemic may have something to do with it.

“It has made people acutely aware of the risk of unforeseen disasters,” said Matt Kasman, assistant research director at the Brookings Institution, a left-leaning think-tank. “It’s increased motivation from all people who lived through it, but certainly younger people to become motivated to save a nest egg or reserves of cash.”

Taking the taboo out of money talk

Talking about money with other people has long been considered taboo. But on TikTok, those taboos don’t seem to exist.

In a number of videos on the app, some of which have gone viral, TikTokers are talking about their salaries, how much they pay for things and how much debt they owe — all down to the cents.

One popular personal finance TikTok involves an attorney breaking down how much of her $180,000 salary she actually took home while living in New York. In the video, she provides a real-life snapshot factoring in actual amounts for taxes, rent, bills, health insurance and 401(k) contributions.

“Finance is often a fraught topic space. For one thing, it’s traditionally been seen as taboo. It’s also anxiety-producing for a number of other reasons, it’s high stakes and can be seen as complicated,” said Kasman. “Anything that makes it accessible, fun, and takes away from some of the anxiety and some of the taboos is a good thing and should be a goal in any setting or format that seeks to do effective financial education. It’s one that I think these new platforms excel at.”

Delyanne Barros, 38, known as @delyannethemoneycoach on TikTok, started posting videos in February 2020 on topics that include early retirement, financial independence and paying off debt.

“When I started understanding that you could become financially independent really early in life and you can totally change the way your life is going to unfold, it completely changed my mindset,” she said.

Barros didn’t grow up receiving much financial advice from her parents except for two things: to get an education and have good credit.

As a former attorney turned full-time entrepreneur, Barros’ quest for financial independence began with a desire to pay off debt as quickly as possible — $150,000 worth of student loans to be exact. And there was a lot of trial and error along the way.

“It’s a subject that we do not talk about, even with family, even with friends,” said Barros. “We’re noticing the advice that our parents and our grandparents gave us no longer applies.”

Barros, who is not a licensed financial adviser, now boasts nearly 183,000 followers on TikTok and attributes much of her success to her vulnerability around her finances on the video-sharing app.

“Here was this person on the Internet laying out all of her business and people were really attracted to it,” she said, referring to her videos. “I started seeing there’s a need here for people to learn about this stuff, there are gaps to be filled, so I took it upon myself to learn everything I could about the subject.”

Bridging the gap of financial literacy

Errol Coleman, 22, is one of many creators teaching newly-minted day traders about the stock market.

With nearly 263,000 followers, more than 7,500 YouTube subscribers and 20,000 members on Discord, Coleman shares TikTok videos spanning underrated and free stock market resources and other concepts like how to find your own stocks and understanding stock resistance and risk.

Coleman, who is not a licensed financial adviser, was first introduced to the basics of the stock market as a senior in high school.

“When I first got into the market, I thought it was such a good opportunity. I couldn’t believe that more people weren’t talking about it,” he said.

He’s since made it his mission to learn as much as he can about trading and investing in order to inspire and educate other young people.

And the response has been positive, especially from other TikTokers of color. Coleman recalls a comment he received from another Black male on one of his videos: ‘You don’t know what it means that someone that looks like me is doing this.’

“It just made me realize that not many people grew up with just knowing about opportunity,” Coleman said. “I want to put this type of opportunity in front of people and show them the basics and that it’s actually not that complicated.”

But it’s not all good financial advice

While TikTok is filled with financial advice and content, not all of it is beneficial and accurate.

“There are drawbacks to these new formats. The con is the quality or accuracy, might vary,” Kasman said. “Since they’re short format and often engaged in a la carte they also might not be really good at scaffolding, which is kind of building up the foundational skills before putting one foot in front of the other.”

It’s also the reason why creators like Barros, Dunlap and Coleman caution their followers to do their own research and learn more about the concepts they share in videos.

Personal finance is personal and it isn’t one-size fits all.

That’s why Kasman stresses the importance of ensuring you have the foundational skills and core financial concepts, such as tracking expenses and budgeting, mastered.

“This can help people adjudicate between good information and bad information, what’s applicable to their circumstances and what’s not, with what they encounter on new platforms,” he said.

Additional reporting by Sofia Barrett

[asb9747]

Media Literacy Week 6 Blog Post

Michael Foucault’s What is an Author? is entirely, and maybe more so, applicable in today’s internet meme and content driven society. Kids, teenagers, and even adults across multiple generations are producing memes at all times and on all modes of social media, both popular and unpopular. I could log on to TikTok right now and see the same dance done to the same music by a seemingly infinite number of users on that platform, and it would be nearly impossible for me to determine who exactly created this dance, why they created it, whether they expected to go “viral” or not, or why this particular instance of social media participation has taken hold of the internet, if only momentarily.

When Foucault asserts, “Discourse that possesses an author’s name is not to be immediately consumed and forgotten; neither is it accorded the momentary attention given to ordinary, fleeting words. Rather, its status and its manner of reception are regulated by the culture in which it circulates,” I am immediately reminded of the effect that meme culture has on the youth of today, and how memes have, in a sense, flipped this assertion on it’s head.

It’s not until later in the essay that Foucault comes around to where I believe memes fit in to society today, when he writes, referring to authors like Homer and Aristotle, “The distinctive contribution of these authors is that they produced not only their own work, but the possibility and the rules of formation of other texts.” This point illustrates the power and danger of authorship when teaching media and media literacy to young people today.

In a way, the anonymity of the internet, particularly in meme, sampling, and remixing subcultures, is a double-edged blade. Students in today’s connected world are more likely than ever to author new types of media, whether that be a new style of music, an essay that explores previously unthought-of content, or a film that takes advantage of rising inexpensive technology and the powerful editing software that comes standard on most computers these days. The possibilities for creative expression and inspiration are endless. There is a negative to that connectivity though, which is the possibility of being completely lost in the sweeping scope of the Web. In my previous example of a TikTok video that goes viral and inspires millions to recreate and remix that original content, the originator of such a video will forever remain anonymous.

The authorship doesn’t matter for the creation of a particular moment in internet history - it’s the movement itself that remains and evolves. Celebrities will latch on to the phenomenon and it will be played out until it reaches its inevitable saturation point and is run into the ground. What will happen to the person, most likely a young person, who created this worldwide phenomenon? If they can continue their prolific production and retain their followers, they may end up in the strange new world of “internet fame,” but if they can’t continue to produce content that is widely consumed, they may fade into oblivion or be eaten by the same media engulfing amoeba that may have gathered the writings of Aristotle or Shakespeare under common authorship.

So what is there to do in order to teach young people about these phenomena that spread like hungry wildfires? It seems readily apparent to me that my job as a media literacy instructor and mentor will be to make sure children and teenagers don’t fall into the trap of feeling as though they need to break out, blow up, or become famous overnight. It may be hard to sell, because just the idea of getting thousands of likes on an Instagram photo, being retweeted by a comedian on Twitter, or racking up followers on TikTok must seem entirely alluring to a person who has spent a great deal of their childhood and adolescent years consuming brightly colored content accompanied by the catchiest of tunes.

I do not feel comfortable calling what is happening, the desire of many youths to become some sort of internet star, a sickness. It is the natural outcome of a society that values fame and celebrity, then gives all of its members a chance to be connected to every other member. I also run the risk of sounding like someone who rejects social media entirely, which is not true at all. I love using Instagram. I find it to be an effective method of journaling, in this case a visual journal. I can try out combinations of photos in series, or just catch up with what my friends and family are doing. The risk comes with dopamine-spiking likes, businesses being built of the sexuality of young people, and exploitative data-mining that leads to invasive advertising techniques.

The negatives of social media have been there since the beginning, but I believe since COVID-19 has hit and made all of us turn to our screens even more, it is more vital now to reach young people and show them that they need to manage their online personas carefully. I worry about a future where nobody can get credit for the work they produce. A future where a student of mine creates something beautifully engaging on the internet, and it is ripped off and sold to a major corporation that will bastardize and reproduce the work for their own gain, but not the gain of the creator. A connected world is great for inspiration and collaboration, but the reality is that the idyllic values proposed by a truly democratic and interconnected Web will always be appropriated and skewed by those looking to make big money. I worry about exploitation in all forms, and I worry that someone out there will always be looking for a way to make someone’s hard work into an advertisement, whether it is subtle or grossly overt.

The only way to make sure that the impact is mitigated is to teach young people how to recognize the sinister arm of The Corporation and how, even though what they are making may be a new template for new ways of expression, as Foucault refers to the work of Homer and Aristotle, someone may want to take their work and use it for their own, usually monetary, gain.