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Twitter, When Will You Step Up? /  by Roxanne Teti

Ghostbusters (Village Roadshow Pictures, 2016)

Since the new Ghostbusters' trailer was released, the remake has experienced a great deal of criticism for its “all-female” cast. However Ghostbusters’ star, Leslie Jones, has not only experienced disapproval from the typical Internet "fanboys" but has also been attacked by abusive Twitter users. For the past month or so, Jones has been harassed by a group of accounts that have been sending her racist messages fueled with hatred as well as offensive images of pornography. In response, Paul Feig, director of Ghostbusters (2016), along with celebrities William Shatner and Margaret Cho have been using the hashtag #LoveforLeslieJ to express their support for the actress. Despite efforts to rally positive solidarity around Jones, the star recently announced that she would be leaving Twitter. 

For some time now, Twitter has been scrutinized for its lack of “control” over users posting hateful content. With regards to Jones’ recent departure from the Twitter platform, the social media company issued a response saying, “we rely on people to report this type of behavior to us, but we are continuing to invest heavily in improving our tools and enforcement systems to prevent this kind of abuse.” 

Back in May, Facebook announced they would be investing in and researching the potential use of artificial intelligence systems to help censor the uploading of pornographic or hateful images before they reach the user interface—thereby inhibiting people from being exposed to this content from the start. Using AI, Facebook would be deploying a more proactive approach to blocking abusive users from expressing hurtful content on their social network. It's quite clear and now especially relevant with the recent attack on Jones that Twitter needs to only develop stricter guidelines to their platform but also utilize a more sophisticated technology that can help ameliorate the moral quality of the social network and prohibit obscenity and words of hate before further abuse destroys the platform's normative boundaries of safety and comfortability. 

In the past, Twitter has repeatedly tackled issues of censorship with regards to freedom of speech but now's the time for CEO, Jack Dorsey, to step up and save the platform from eroding into a medium undermined by cyber bullies and/or "creepy" accounts created specifically with the intention of spamming users with obscene sexual content. 

Social Media And The Entertaining Allure of Voyeurism /  by Roxanne Teti

You are in the midst of your mundane morning commute and suddenly you find yourself engulfed in the bright lit screen of your smart phone. No, you’re not reading the news, or even checking work emails, but instead you find yourself “lurking” on Facebook, perhaps glazing over the “Timeline” of some random girl you “used to know” from high school. You’re not truly friends with this person nor have you engaged in direct communication with her in six years but yet you’re intrigued to “stalk” her for a moment or two. Perhaps it’s her recent engagement photos that piqued your interest or maybe you're curious if her fiancé is hot or just an "average Joe”. Regardless, we often gravitate towards this voyeuristic activity because it’s easily accessible entertainment.

In the 1970’s a wave of feminist film theorists like Laura Mulvey drew from Freud and Lacan’s psychoanalytic concepts concerning the erotic pleasure experienced by the act of “looking” and related this "visual pleasure" to the dominance of the “male gaze” in the cinematic art form. Personally, I believe regardless of whether the act of “looking” achieves sexual excitement, the voyeuristic intrigue of “watching” is a crucial cornerstone in which the various mediums of art, entertainment, and media have been built upon from the beginning of civilization. 

From the roar of audiences cheering on gladiators as they fight to their death at the Roman colosseum to Hollywood's “Golden Age”, human beings are inherently drawn to spectatorship. Today with various social media channels and digital content readily available within seconds, we're constantly participating in an active state of spectatorship as well as exhibitionism, as we provide a window into our personal lives through various social media platforms. In a way individuals can achieve a particular status distinction within the social stratification of their own network depending on the popularity of one's account. 

When reality television gained momentum in the late-90’s/early 2000’s, the line between reality and performance became irreversibly blurred. As platforms such as Facebook gained as many users and thus viewers as traditional mass media, a similar ambiguity between reality and the façade of reality began to permeate into the seemingly more “personal” channels of social media. 

And yes, perhaps we enjoy being spectators but I encourage you to truly ask yourself—do you also enjoy being the “performer”, the subject of one’s private gaze, an exhibitionist merely used for cheap reality TV entertainment by Facebook “friends” or even strangers?