Everyonce and a while I find something on the net that makes me upset. Like this article “Viewing American class divisions through Facebook and MySpace”. Let me just quote a paragraph from the article:
“MySpace is still home for Latino/Hispanic teens, immigrant teens, “burnouts,” “alternative kids,” “art fags,” punks, emos, goths, gangstas, queer kids, and other kids who didn’t play into the dominant high school popularity paradigm. These are kids whose parents didn’t go to college, who are expected to get a job when they finish high school. These are the teens who plan to go into the military immediately after schools. Teens who are really into music or in a band are also on MySpace. MySpace has most of the kids who are socially ostracized at school because they are geeks, freaks, or queers.”
While this may upset you like it did me for a lot of different reasons. I looked a little deeper to see how the author could have wrote the well put together essay on something so really freaking absurd. Found a blog post from her saying:
“I think some folks misinterpreted this piece as an academic article. No doubt this is based on my observations from the field, but this is by no means an academic article. I did add some methodological footnotes in the piece so that folks would at least know where the data was coming from. But I didn’t situate or theorize or contextualize this at all.”
It was here I realised that this was just an essay not meant to really be shared with 90,000 people, it was really just something to get conversation going between friends and things. Someone posted it on Digg, Reddit and a number of other news sites and it got around fast.
Context is extremely important when judging someones written work. Danah Boyd, who is really an excellent writer was thrashed with hate mail and other bullshit. Check out her blog here.
photo via: Noqontrol
