Behind the Curtain: The Internet Trap

“The Internet Trap” took me through the experience of Dorothy in the magical land of Oz but skipped right to the end in meeting the Wizard of Oz. Before reading “The Internet Trap,” I knew that big brands and firms had an advantage over small, individual firms and influencers. Still, I sincerely believed in the second internet the author, Matthew Hindman, describes. Hindman says the second internet is “the imaginary internet—the idealized, fictionalized, reified internet that ‘everyone knows’ is democratizing communication and economic life” (p. 163).

As Dorothy and Toto began the quest to see the Wizard, I also created content on Instagram and Twitter in the hopes that my wishes would be fulfilled. I have been on Twitter since 2009 and Instagram since 2012, with a decent following (less than 3,000) on both platforms. Sadly, I believe the myth that if I work harder and post consistently, I can build a following and platform on social media as a creator. At the very least, I could acquire brand deals and partnerships with my favorite companies to get free things like clothes, health supplements, and beauty products. Well, Hindman helped me realize quickly that we are not in Kansas anymore. Not only are brands able to attract more attention because of resources, money, staff, data, and computing, audiences keep persistently refusing to decentralize (p. 7). Companies like Facebook (meta) and Twitter promote becoming content creators and being paid, but the more time I spend online, the richer the site evolves. I am tricked into believing I am a creator when I am actually spending more time as a content consumer. Hindman clarifies that “it is time to stop pretending that the internet is a level playing field” (p. 17). And naively, I believe having a “clean” internet profile that does not use too much profanity, sexuality, or opinions can be too radical and polarizing. While I had not known about the ethical principles of AI before reading Bernd Carsten Stahl’s “Artificial Intelligence for a Better Future”, I have tried to move ethically on social media. The ethical principles are transparency, justice, fairness, non-maleficence, responsibility, privacy, beneficence, freedom and autonomy, trust, sustainability, dignity, and solidarity (p. 28). While the principles sound good in theory, in practice on the internet, ethical principles are not discussed or centered. In actuality, drama, violence, and other amoral content trend and go viral more often.

As a digital native, I was made to believe that the internet was primarily a free and equal place. Companies often try to figure out how to find their way onto social media. Companies that have gotten Black slang wrong in an attempt to be cool online gave me the façade that we all are fumbling around with the new features of the internet and social media like IG reels and Twitter circles. But a large company always had the upper hand to beat me out as an influence on the web. The reality is that brand loyalty, and the mass amount of money companies spend on building and defending their brands cast a great shadow over small brands (p. 29). I was aware that creating a brand is key, but the decades and money Nike, Apple, Google, and other large brands have researched and invested in their brand made me feel like the Scarecrow who needed a brain to make the reality of their resource that feels so, duh, make sense.

But here I am, on the yellow brick road, hoping I can make it to Emerald City. Hindman discusses companies’ ability to advertise multiple times and retarget on numerous platforms (p. 30) and the partisan echo chambers created through personalization (p. 48), continuing to uncover the vast space between creators and big corporations. As a creator, I am suggested to keep content fresh and new which means posting multiple times a day and on 2-5 different platforms. For instance, Tik Tok influencers recommend posting 2-3 times a day with the hope that one of your posts will garner attention. But with Tik Tok, it is like playing rushing roulette. One post could gain 50,000 views, but it does not mean you will earn 50,000 followers. I have seen creators have one dance go viral and then stick to that trend, doing the same dance every day in a new location and outfit. It literally seems like a joke. On Instagram, because the platform once to center Reels, significant influencers (100,000+) followers have said that their likes and followers have decreased consistently since Instagram has tried to compete with Tik Tok.

Unlike the Wizard of Oz, Hindman is not ashamed or hiding behind a curtain of the truth of the internet. On the internet, a third of web visits go to the top ten firms, Americans have a few local options online for news, and all profits large firms make to building giant factories in a “post-industrialized world (p. 163). The author offers me a warning: the possibility of becoming popular on the internet is further away than I think. And the internet is more controlled and directed by giant firms than I realize. I thank Hindman for this reality check because it puts me back in the place of loving social media for the fun of it and not the carrot dangled in front of me. It motivates me to click the heels of my red slippers and go back home to post for fun and creativity and not in the interest of increased followers, likes and attention.

Emerging with Media

When I first thought about emerging media, my mind initially thought that new and most types of media I am not familiar or comfortable with. Social sites and digital spaces like Tik Tok, Discord, VR, and NFTs leave me feeling lost, mostly old. As a 32-year-old, I remember our family having one computer at my Aunt Michelle's where we needed to coordinate what time we could come cover because she did not want her phone line tied up as we were on her dial-up internet. I remember patiently waiting and hearing the computer scratches made to open my AOL account and Yahoo email. While we would share one-to-one instant messaging, at that point, I did not have a complete understanding of how vast the internet was, nor did I feel like it was social. My younger sister and I typically would message our small group of friends, but we mostly visited my aunt and uncle's place to practice typing on the Mavis Beacon application. Mavis was a Black woman who felt like an extension of my family and who taught me where to place my hands and type quickly without looking.

Then, in high school, I joined MySpace. Ellison and Boyd mention the history of media describing MySpace showcasing the "Top 8." Still, your personality through your profile picture and even a playlist users could curate as visitors came to your page. The article "Sociality Through Social Network Sites" redefines social networking sites by naming that the platform has distinctively identifiable profiles that users develop and share the content, connects are public and can be consumed, and others can interact with the content. In reflecting, I remember being a young person who created a unique MySpace profile and worked on writing posts about my teen life, showcasing my favorite shows (SpongeBob SquarePants) and my favorite music (Destiny's Child), developing a personality that was parallel to myself in real life and on the internet.

Over time the continued development of the internet, mobile phones, and applications, my understanding of emerging and new media developed as I grew up as a digital native. Still, I was also curious about creating space for myself and finding community. I came out as LGBT in college, and Tumblr was the safest place for me to not only find community but explore my identity beyond what queerness was assumed to be in the cornfields of Bowling Green, Ohio. Tumblr felt like an updated MySpace with its ability to really curate and individualize my presence online. It felt like an honor to the now distant developers and tech geeks who created social media that mattered to people, as Danah Boyd writes in "Social Media: A Phenomenon to be Analyzed". In my first year of college in 2008, Barack Obama was running for President, and I was just old enough to cast my first vote for him. Amid this Black family nearing and winning the White House, my political education was also born on the internet with Twitter and Facebook. Racism and the Confederate flag were closer than I had ever known, and I began to become more engaged in social justice issues. Boyd writes about how the 1990s tech developers developed the technology as a form of resistance to the dot-com era and that we, the people, were co-constructors of social media working to reflect values and norms against the ever-consumeristic, neo-capitalist, and data surveillance world that was developing. The internet developed me as an activist, especially during the time that Trayvon Martin, Tamir Rice, Sandra Bland, and Michael Brown were murdered, and social media created a fear in me but also the bravery to join in political movements locally; I was the President of the Black Student Union, and nationally, becoming a founder of the Black Lives Matter, Atlanta chapter.

While in college and even graduate school, the internet became a scary and traumatizing place for me; I began to retreat from the use of Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. While was also emerging as media is also emerging and becoming more and more important, the progress of Black activists, scholars, thinkers, and creators has helped me fall in love with social media all over again. Kamal Sinclair defined emerging media as:

… communication formats or channels in the process of becoming known as part of a long evolution of our communication architecture. That process involves an interplay between the following:

• Creatives (i.e., artists and scientists) who imagine an experience they want to communicate in a particular manner that cannot be done with existing media.

• Investors/Funders, who decide which ideas will be resourced for exploration;

• Technologists, who invent and iterate on tools (i.e., hardware, software) that facilitate the communication of the imagined experience;

• Marketers, who figure out how to persuade people to use the new medium;

• Audiences, who participate in the experience and provide feedback;

• Stakeholders who use the audience responses to innovate further.

While other scholarly definitions were provided, I found this take to be the most refreshing. Because rather than focusing on what is new and novel, emerging media is an extension of a long evolution of communication architecture. Sinclair's writing and other creators have moved me from the fearful pessimism I had for social media and into seeing it as an extension of my passion for art, photography, and storytelling. Emerging media is flexible and can look in many ways. One of the most exciting perspectives shared by Morgan Willis, who was interviewed by Sinclair, shares how emerging media is decentering legitimacy. The landscape and space for stories are wide open, and I am excited to emerge with them.