Friday, September 11, 2015

Padlet Wall

In large group yesterday, we were all asked to come up with labels that we had heard and/or have used within our smaller table groups. My table group had good overall discussion and came up with a good list. When we were asked to come together as a class and post words from our lists anonymously on Padlet, it started off well even though most of the words were derogatory. As time went on, the words seemed to get more offensive, and some "words" turned into phrases, such as "my mixtape is fire" "add me on snapchat" and "lick my balls bitch". I was curious as to how to comments escalated so quickly and it makes me uneasy to know what people will say while they are protected by online anonymity. This actually makes me think back to a few weeks ago when we read the group articles about teenagers who were killing themselves based off of things said to them through ask.fm. Obviously it isn't the same situation, but then again, it's the same action of hiding behind computer screens when one knows that they have anonymity. So why is it that we keep abusing this internet anonymity if we have already seen the consequences of it?

3 comments:

  1. Maybe people think that this is all a joke, and don't think that their words will have any impact on the person. There's also the idea that, its anonymous, whether they do anything to hurt themselves or not, no one will ever know who said what, so there would be no one to blame.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I think this is SUCH a great post Haley. It made me really sad to be honest. I was disappointed that in a room full of seniors we couldn't have an intelligent conversation about labels without someone feeling they need to "go there". Obviously, when planning the activity, I knew the potential for someone to do that. And I was fine with the "snapchat" comment... but then someone just felt the need to be degrading. And no one would EVER have said that out loud in a room full of the class. Half the time we can't even get people to speak about totally relevant topics out loud in the class. In was baseless and classless and frankly, we are better than that. I would love to see other members of the class weigh in on this blog post. That person cast a negative shadow on the entire room. And I wouldn't be happy about it if I was a student in the room.

    To your larger point, I think this activity is indicative of exactly why we need to be having more conversations as a school/society about the consequences of "behaving badly" when trolling and posting anonymously. And I will be using this as an example when we talk about in class later this quarter. Great post!

    ReplyDelete
  3. I totally agree with this Haley. At first, the posts were eye-opening because all of the labels had a negative connotation. Then suddenly it escalated to inappropriate and obnoxious. Although some of the comments were comical, they were all totally uncalled for. But I do believe the conversation and posts started off well.

    ReplyDelete