Social Media & Parasocial Relationships

Let's just say it was a rough start to the semester, that's why this blog post comes like 6 weeks late.

The longer this class evolves, the more I find myself heavily rethinking what I though I already knew. At the beginning of this class I felt that I was very different than most of the class from taking the right selfies to parasocial relationships to even my views on various class topics. Well, that's kind of true. There are definitely times in class (during unit four) when I was like, "wow, do people really do that" and "do people really go out of their way that much to be *this* person on social media?"

During that unit I really began to reevaluate my usage of social media. I looked at the number of followers I had on Twttier: 133 (at the time). That was right on par with the article "Social Networking Sites & Our Lives".

When people in class admitted to having upwards of 600 friends, I just think "How?" How can anyone have that many friends? While I am an introvert, 600 just seems physically impossible, but I also only friend people I actually know. And I used the ever popular system of unfriending about once a year.

Now that we are very much so out of unit four, I find myself being slightly more critical of what I post or how I use social media; however, my strict approach of professionaism, beneficial not superficial, yet simultaneouly me is what I'm pursuing. I see the game that 322 is trying to play. It isn't working, but maybe that's because I wasn't your average social media consumer.