Archive for month: October, 2015

Hello everyone and I hope that you are having a fantastic day. Today’s topic is Lurking and those that lurk. For those that might not know what that means, here are some definitions for you.

Google defines it as: (of a person or animal) be or remain hidden so as to wait in ambush for someone or something.

Urban Dictionary has it as, spying on people online, while you remain invisible

Wikipedia defines it as: In Internet culture, a lurker is typically a member of an online community or PLN who observes but does not actively participate.

Some people have used the terms: Stalk, creep, creeping, spy and watching or even scanner. All the same, it is one that surfs the web checking in on different pages or communities and does not interact with it. As I do not agree with labeling this as a type of stalking, as that has harmful intent. I find it better to lurk before you speak because sometimes what is on your mind does not fit the community.

The idea of this week’s topic is to become a lurker and scope out some web groups without revealing my identity nor interact within the groups. Well, I will tell you that was not a hard task for me as I am a lurker. I have been lurking for years(maybe forever). I do not stop nor start with the internet; I do it at work, school, heck wherever I can. It is not that I do not want to intervene, it is that I like just to be quiet and listen to what other have to say. For instance, I went to a cosplay workshop biweekly for six months and never spoke to one person other than the person that introduced me to the group, Which I might add only went two other times. I find it easy to be quiet when not called on.

My two favorite places to “Lurk” is a FaceBook Group called (sorry if offended) is “The Phreak Shall Inherit the Earth”, and “Giving F*cks for Therapy.” Both of these support groups were created for different reasons. One is to allow people to say what is on their mind and to give the problem the finger; the other is to show respect for a fallen friend of many and to share memories. At one time, I was active with The Phreak, but it had a different title and different purpose. Originally the group was named “Blayne Punches Cancer in the Face” and it was a support group as he went through his treatment, but in May he lost that battle and the page evolved with its purpose.

As I said before, “I am a Lurker,” no denying it. Sometimes while on Facebook or Twitter I will like, share, repost, tag and even comment from time to time. But most of the time I am in and out with no-one the wiser.

Well as I always was, keep smiling, make someone laugh out load and have a fantastic day.

CDR

This week we are lurking. Lurking basically means we are keeping tabs on social media sites in order to gain information. As previously stated, my topic is the current refugee crisis. The two social media sites that I decided to lurk on are YouTube and Instagram. The reason I chose these two sites is because they involve picture and video along with likes and comments. I believe that an image can make a huge impact on the way someone views a certain topic without words having to be said. Like they say, “A picture is worth a thousand words.”

Lurking involves me constantly looking up my topic of the refugee crisis on the social media sights and looking at anything new that is posted. I have been lurking first thing in the morning, at my lunch break, after work, and before bed. What is extremely interesting to me is that there is always something new that has come up and that I can look into. When I first began lurking, I honestly felt very weird. I felt like I was spying on people and I didn’t like it, but when I started to think about it deeper, I realized that these people are doing what we are working towards. They are using social media in order to get their thoughts and beliefs out into the world. Once I was able to grasp that concept, I didn’t feel like a creeper anymore.

YouTube has brought many videos to my attentions that are working towards getting people motivated to help the cause. Instagram on the other had is a lot more of people sharing their perspectives on what they feel about the refugee crisis. There is always people posting to help spread the word, or trying to make a difference but when others’ opinions are involved we can always expect some sort of head bumping to be involved. This was something I wasn’t expecting but I can see how some people would feel another way, I personally just feel as if we should be helping out. I saw more of the head bumping on Instagram, but either way, the majority of people that came across this situation feel for these people and want to help.

In terms of social media, the term lurking means to read and look through social media but do not post your own ideas or comments. Lurking is usually looked down upon in most social media communities. But for our assignment this week we were given the task to lurk on various social media sites to discover how the different communities communicate and open up ideas on our topics. For this week again I did my lurking on Twitter. But for my other social media site I decided to explore Reddit a website that I already lurk on.

For my lurk through twitter I started with the hashtag #mentalhealth and began exploring the top posters for this hashtag. I would occasionally open up twitter throughout the day on my phone and plug in the hashtag to see which posters would pop up. One of the recurring posters was this twitter account called @MHChat which is an open access community for mental health. On their twitter account they give a link to their actual website mhchat.com which is an open forum that allows people to post their views and experiences. The website also contains links to articles that describe whats going on in the world of mental health research. Other then MHChat the hashtag usually yielded results from everyday users who are either posting their problems or stories of others and links to sites that could help you or that could provide some support. Lurking on twitter was super easy for me because I’m always on twitter throughout the day and I never tweet anything so all I did was focus my attention to the hashtag and learn how the people that posted on their acted with each other.

For my other social media site I decided to use one site that I personally frequent a lot, Reddit. Reddit is a huge online community that self-coined themselves the “front page of the internet” because a lot of things like jokes or news articles usually get shared on reddit first. On Reddit itself you can scroll through the side and find various “subreddits” which are very similar to hashtags on twitter in the sense that these “subreddits” are topics and threads focused on the same thing, so for my lurk I used the subreddit r/mentalhealth. On this subreddit it was very similar to twitter where people posted their own personal experiences and how their experiences can help others. Sometimes users would post question on the site hoping that someone out there would have the knowledge to help them with whatever they are going through. I attached a picture of what the subreddit looked like on my phone just in case anyone was interested in seeing it.

Picture of the subreddit “mental health”

For me lurking was not all that bad because I usually lurked regardless on both of these sites. The only thing I had to do different was just frequent either the hashtag or subreddit that pertained to my topic. Things I learned during lurking was that twitter definitely had more people posting but I feel that reddit had more people commenting and actively trying to help their fellow redditors. The connections made on Reddit felt stronger since the community on Reddit has this weird feeling of closeness amongst themselves.

Overall lurking through these sites showed me many more sad stories and experiences and has proven even more that the mental healthcare in our country needs to be greatly improved.