Consumption, passive consumption and production of media, thoughts and ideas

Something I think about sometimes is the way in which I olften consumer media. I, as well as a whole lot of other people I imagine, generally consume a lot of media in my newsfeed on social media, in a passive way. I scroll past things — interesting things, boring things — with little difference in my reaction to them. I see osmething onertesting and I might spend a little more tie on it — read it in full as opposed to a speed read, check the comments, check who liked it, click into an article even. If it’s really interesting, maybe I’ll even look it up and see what else exists on the internet in relation to that topic, or the person or group who shared it. But not usually. Usually, I scroll and scroll, see something interesting, give it a few extra seconds, then scroll on and forget about it. If you asked me, what’s something interesting I spotted on scoial media last week, yesterday, today? I’d find it hard to conjure something up. Apart from maybe when there’s a particular topic tha ‘everyone’ is talking about. But even then, I’d probably not retain the majority of information I read about it. Memes and other funny things are probably the easiest to retain.

Now, not to say I don’t learn anything on social media. I certainly do, but usually on a fairly base level. I catch myself often when chatting to someone bringing up a particular topic or fact, and saying ‘doesn’t that….’ (insert claim here) — if I have seen a headline or one or two tweets about it.

There’s no question that social media is not great for attention spans. I’m certainlynot the first person to say it. I’d often scroll past something, think, oh that’s interesting, I must look that up,and forgot what it was literally 2 seconds later. Really, racking my brains then — knowing there’s something interesting I wnated to learn about but forgetting what it is in seconds. And often when I’m reading an article, even if I find it quite interesting, I find myself either clicking away after a few seconds or just speed reading it. Or often I’d see a headline that intrigues me, think, oh that’s interesting, but feel like I don’t have time/don’t feel like clicking into and actually reading it rightnow. And of course, I’d very rarely come back to it later when I feel a bit more like reading something.

Another thing is that I’d be reading something that’s really interesting, and thinking, oh, I wish I had some way of retainign this information. I want tio rememebr this. But just knowing, becuase of how my mind works and media is these days, that my mind will be bombarded with lots of other, less meaningful information that day and I’ll probably not remember the details of this interesting thing.

All in all, I’m a more passive consumer of media (particular on social media). I feel likepeople who reply to tweets, comment on things, etc, are more active consumers. And people who often tweet themselves are more productive users of the platform. (I realise now that it’s twitter I;ve been thinking about during this entire ‘blog’). Recently I’ve been sending tweets to friends more often which I suppose is a little bit more active than not, and I like things and retweet tweets that I really agree with — but overall I do feel like the narrative is created more by people that use it a lot. I engage with the narrative in a largely passive way.

I suppose I don’t really feel I have stuff to add most of the time. I wonder is it because I’m a woman. And/or is it tied to my upbringing. I wasn’t really asked my opinion on things as a child, and it certainly wasn’t listened to when I gave it voluntarily. Infact I was often intentionally ignored, as I said and thought thungs that were maybe not the status quo in my family. Rocking the boat.

Of course, I’m a white, middle class, well educated young woman. I’m not exactly someone who can claim I’ve been ‘silenced’. I’ve not. I am extremely priviliged. I am fairly extroverted too, so there are people who I have found to listen to me when I ‘go on’ about my opinions (usually). So overall, I’m not sure why it is that I feel, I suppose, embarrassed to share what I think sometimes. (Separately to online — I often feel embarrassed by totally normal things I do — maybe I have a little bit of social anxiety.) (Maybe??!!). Of course, I’m not, actually in the minority here. The vast majority of people DON’T tweet a lot and/or have lots of people who follow (listen to) them. I think I saw a stats before that only 10% of people ar eon twitter, and only 10% of those people actually tweet. There I go again, vaguely citing some speciifc claim. I think it was someone related to Biden’s campaign actually that said they didn’t pay much attention to social media in the run up because it’s such a microcosm.

Anyway. Here I am on medium, producing media! And even though I’m happy/excited to be doing so, unlike some people, I very muchdon’t want to share it. I’m not producing this media for anyone to see really. In fact, I’ve changed my medium name to just my first name because I would be embarrassed if someone came across these random ramblings. (Haha! Kara just got home and I literally turned the screen away just incase she got an inkling that I’m writing a blog of sorts. Yikes). Maybe (hopefully?) after a while I’ll feel less embarrassed about putting my random thoughts out there. Lots of people do it after all! And (maybe I said this in my last blog?) one of the things I’d like medium to help me with is, as they say, ‘finding my voice’. What does that mean? I suppose, fleshing out ideas and formulating ways in which I want to react to them. Maybe in 15 years I’ll be a politician/journalist and I’ll say, when being interviwed on a feminist podcast, I started finding my voice by writing semi-anonymous rambings on medium.