Post Aesthetics: A Final Reflection & Summary

Going into this assignment I felt I already had a pretty good grasp on online communities. What was new to me was creating content for a specific community .I had never done that before and it certainly proved to be more challenging than I would have thought. As I stated in my post ‘First Impressions’ a friend of mine added to me to a facebook community called ‘Post Aesthetics’ (PA)  at first glance I was confused by what the goal of the group was as I did not understand a lot of the content. Some posts were basically in another language. I struggled to understand what was considered ‘good content’ to the other members. By the end though my journey was much like this members:

“Social media platforms are eclectic, ad hoc, and prone to change.” (Bolter, 208)

In my post ‘Ettiquette and Mods’ I discussesd the interactions that went on between the communities members and the communities moderators. These interactions were generally all in the spirit of making sure all posts were considered ‘good content’. When I first joined I thought it was odd that many posts were seemingly against the rules/guidelines they have spelled out on their page. Most specifically when it came to funny screenshots that was considered ‘lazy content’.  This frustration from the mods led to the mods deleting many posts and then enforcing an “all text week”. This kind of management is all an affordance facebook provides to communities. With this community being on facebook it allows user to bring their IRL friends involved in any given conversation as opposed to platforms like Reddit where ‘tagging’ is not an option.

My first 2 contributions meanwhile did not receive the response I wante (you can read more about this journey in my post ‘Good Content‘)

By the time, I was ready post again it was text only week. Many members were telling stories about embarrassing  things that have happened to them throughout the day. I myself found myself in a situation where as a result of spending so much time on PA, my Facebook NewsFeed was almost all PA posts. This fact resulted in me accidently commenting on a reply (posted by a stranger) to a post of an acquaintance – thinking that it was a post from PA. My comment wasn’t exactly ‘safe for assignment’ and I quickly deleted it.

This somewhat embarrassing moment made me think about all the times people accidently text the wrong person. I personally have sent a text message to my brother’s girlfriend that was certainly not for her eyes. It happens. I thought the people of PA would appreciate this story as:

one , It’s relatable and two,  it relates directly to the PA community

I used hyperbole in telling the story making what I said a bit more NSFW ¹ and changing ‘acquaintance’ to ‘Family Member’. With this I finally got the results I was looking for :

This experience has allowed me to learn not only what hipsters are up to on the internet but how to create content for any audience, how to engage with people online, and what defines a community. If someone had asked me what PA was a few weeks ago I would have responded ” a weird place for people to post memes” .now I would say ” PA community for people to post and engage in  original content that will make the audience have an emotional response and also: Memes”

REFERENCES:

Bolter, Jay David. “Social Media and the Future of Political Narrative.” Travels in Intermediality. Lebanon, US: Dartmouth, 2012. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 8 February 2016. 206-226

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