Curation and building an online presence often go hand-in-hand. Everything online that we post, like, add, etc. is added to a list of other creations or impressions we’ve made in the past. Over time, this turns into a collection of various texts, images, and other media that we can use to help portray ourselves or an idea. Usually, these online curations have some form of a shared theme or unifying idea that creates an aesthetic. While I don’t have much of an online “presence,” if someone were to comb through my various accounts (please don't do this) they could probably get a really good idea about me as a person.
Spotify is easily the most-used of my online accounts. While I don’t usually go out of my way to share music I’m listening to, creating public playlists is a nice way to keep track of music I like while also using the app as a form of expression. I believe that the kind of music we listen to can say a lot about who we are and what we’re currently going through, and I like viewing playlists as preservations of different emotional phases in our lives. Spotify’s discovery feature also plays a role in how I curate my playlists. This can be very hit or miss, but nonetheless I’ve found this technology to be useful on multiple occasions for filling my musical library with a lot more diversity. If someone were to look at my created playlists, which I do make public, I think that it would reveal as much about me as other social medias do. I don’t use Spotify intentionally as a social media platform, but in some ways it can serve a similar purpose as one. As for actual social media platforms, I use Twitter and Facebook very differently. Twitter isn’t something I use seriously much at all. I mostly just use it as an outlet for random things I think of, as well as retweeting things that either have interest to me or match my style of humor. To sum it up, I’d describe it as a collection of my various thoughts and amusements and not much more than that. Facebook, on the other hand, I treat much more formally and, when I actually use it (which admittedly hasn’t been in multiple years), I treat it as a collection of important events in my life. My Facebook is pretty much entirely just things my mom has posted to my page, but whenever I decide to use it again I still planning on posting just important stuff. If I have a birthday or graduate college, it goes on Facebook. If it’s 1 am and I just thought of the best joke, to Twitter I go! Besides the difference in content, I also treat both platforms very differently in terms of how much I reveal about myself. Since Facebook is viewed as more of a “professional” platform, I include my full name, college, and job in my bio. Twitter, on the other hand, shows a much different side of me that the professional world probably doesn’t need to see, so I keep a lot of info about myself minimal. All-in-all, Facebook is a curation of facts about me, but Twitter is a curation of bits of my personality. I’ll admit that I find the amount of info about me that I’ve created on the internet a little unsettling, but I also understand that it’s just part of living in the digital age. Almost everything we do online, intentionally or not, adds to our online presence.
2 Comments
9/3/2018 10:35:46 pm
I really like the distinction you made about Facebook showing facts about your life and Twitter shows your personality. I think that is the case for many people our age. Something I wonder is, since you make your Spotify playlists public, do you think that might alter what kind of music you'd choose/listen to because you want to portray a certain type of personality within the music you choose?
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Ethan Davis
9/5/2018 09:47:58 am
Thanks for the kind words! As for the question, not really. I don't expect anyone to actually listen to my playlists, but if they did I'd rather let the songs speak for themselves since it's just anything I like listening to at the time.
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