How to Make Your Facebook a Social Awareness Site, and How to Educate Yourself on the Daily

In high school, my facebook page looked like something out of Mean Girls – it was all gossip and pictures. Yeah, facebook is a Social Networking site, and that’s what I used it for. But I never felt good about it. I mean, it’s one thing to keep up with old friends, but when you’re stalking that cute guy’s new album that becomes a whole other thing. Having friends that were fired up about spreading awareness helped motivate me to change my habits online. I was inspired to become more socially involved, and I developed a passion to try and change the world.

It might sound funny, but posting things on facebook does change the world. It’s a social networking site. Interaction with our peers forms SO much of our identity, including our political and ethical values. Our values are what shape our society. So it might not seem like it, but when you post something on facebook, you are actually taking part in a grand scheme of social interaction that changes the way people view the world.

The first thing you need to understand if you decide to make your facebook a social awareness site, is the concept of personalization. In a NY Times article, Natasha Singer writes, “the Internet creates personalized e-comfort zones for each one of us… Give a thumbs up to a movie on Netflix or a thumbs down to a song on Pandora, de-friend a bore on Facebook or search for just about anything on Google: all of these actions feed into algorithms that then try to predict what we want or don’t want online.” This is important to understand because the more you click on pictures of your ex, the more you’ll see his or her posts online. (Check out this TED Talk if you’re curious to see how Google personalizes your browsing. Absolutely terrifying and fascinating).

But you can use personalization to your advantage too! The more you click on political articles, or posts from science sites, or other educational posts, the more facebook will show you what you want to see.

When I said that having friends helped to motivate me to change my habits online, most of that motivation actually came from seeing their posts on facebook, and reading their blogs. So the first step in personalizing my facebook to educate myself was to go out of my way to read what they posted. It wasn’t hard, educating yourself becomes addicting quickly. I don’t want to say get new friends, but I do think that we all do have those friends who post about important subjects. My advice is to pay a little more attention to those posts, and don’t just knock it off as being boring or too controversial. Chances are, if you think a post is just “another one of those things,” it’s even more important for you to read. “Oh, it’s just another rant about feminism, that’s so old.” Ha! Humble yourself my dear, and check your privilege.

A second way you can educate yourself daily using facebook, is to ‘Like’ pages. Surprise, surprise, there are other pages out there to ‘like’ other than music pages or pages that generate meme after meme. You should do some research for yourself, and find topics that you’re passionate about. But here’s my own personal list of favorite pages that teach me something every day: I Fucking Love Science (even if you don’t, you’ll love this page), Collective Evolution (questions everything about life and promotes change), Films for Action (provides documentaries, sometimes short, sometimes not so short), and Unpacking the F Word (rocking the feminist perspective).

If you’re a student, I’m willing to bet your professors/teachers have assigned you readings from lots of different news sources. Not every news source is to be trusted, in fact most aren’t really to be trusted, but if there’s a teacher that you trust to recommend a news source, make sure to see if they have a page on facebook!

My last tip on how to educate yourself using facebook is to follow up on what you like to read about. If a page you like posts something that rocks your world, and they originally shared it from another source, go to that page!!! Then browse their other posts, and if you like those, after adding it to that tab in your bookmark folder labeled news, like the page! I guarantee that this little effort will give you phenomenal results, assuming that you regularly click on articles.

Because the more you click on articles, the more facebook will show you what you told facebook you want to see.

So now that you know how to use facebook to educate yourself on the daily, please go out and help spread awareness by posting and sharing what you see. Gather the balls to make the statement that yes, you’re one of those people. Help make facebook a Social Awareness Site!

Getting Crazy Looks: Moving Around Race – Workshop

 I just attended this awesome workshop that made me ask myself important questions that I hadn’t addressed before about how race and queerness affect my art. 

I realized that I tend to separate my personal identity from my work. In discussing the question, “What makes your art queer, or not?”, I answered that my art wasn’t queer unless it specifically addressed the subject of being queer. Someone else said the opposite – that their art was queer irregardless of the subject material, simply because it was being produced by herself, a lesbian woman. 

Also, I realized something important regarding my race in the first activity, when we had to group ourselves according to what race we identified as. I put myself in the White/Caucasian group. The facilitator had us discuss what we enjoy about our race, and then construct a performance of solely movement that expressed that racial identity. We had a hard time finding things to say. There were many benefits and privileges that come with being White/Caucasian that we pointed out, but mostly there were feelings of uneasiness and discomfort. Our movement performance consisted of us awkwardly milling about, sometime pausing to look at each other, but mostly moving away from each other. 

We brought up the issue of wanting to break free of labels while also wanting to explore our identies in our art, but didn’t come to any sort of resolution. It seemed that we all had a different opinion on the matter. Is this writing of mine queer because I am queer, or is this writing of mine queer because I discuss queer art?