Just a Bitch with a Blog

Splendid Morning,

Who knew those Year 12 exams would end?

It has been a pleasure reporting on the latest goss for the last two months. What a roller coaster it has been.

However I’ve enjoyed my year, hell my whole upbringing with you guys.

Troye Bolton would be proud.

Well...you’re probably wondering who was behind this all? When is the grand reveal?

This is real, this is me, I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be now #camprock

Splendid Morning,

We're about to have a hoedown throwdown at Shelferry. A double life has been exposed by none other than yours truly.

Strap in, I'm coming in like a wrecking ball.

The Suspicion

Jun Lui, is Shelferry's own Hannah Montana. "Jun", means truthful in Chinese. Ironic.

Lui works in her family's restaurant as a waitress. Her quaint looks were always complimented with a cute corgi bag. We all considered her to be a nice quiet girl. And she would have almost gotten away with it if it wasn't for those meddling international kids.

The Chinese international students acted strange around Lui. They were always on their phones, which isn't surprising, as 84% of the Chinese population own smartphones (Blue Notes 2015). I snuck a peek once, and they weren't on Messenger, Whatsapp or Youtube as they are banned in China. Instead they were on QQ, Wechat and Youku, their equivalents. 80% of Chinese social media users have more than one account (Blue Notes 2015), and obviously, Lui had multiple.

The Investigation

Suddenly, Lui's profile started to rise.  The Chinese students would act like paparazzi, calling her 'Ye Xian' which is the Chinese equivalent to 'Cinderella'. This sparked my interest, and I sprung into action.

Turns our Lui is a Chinese live streaming celebrity. To make it as a 'Stream Queen', three key factors determine your success “Age, face and figure" (Jing 2017). In the last 2016 analysis, there was a domination of 'Stream Queens' over 'Stream Kings' on popular streaming apps with the ratio on Huajiao being 3.4/1 and on Yingke being 2/1 (Marszałek 2018).

Lui has 1 million followers and could be earning in excess of $20,000 per month with her brand endorsement of corgi bags (Birtles 2016). Brand endorsement is huge as “social media has a greater influence on purchasing decisions for consumers in China than for those anywhere else in the world” (Chiu et al 2012, p.1). So much for $18 an hour at Yum Cha.

The Reveal

Suddenly 'anonymous' posters were plastered on the back of toilet doors (be honest we all actually read them there) with a link to her streaming site. Local students were shocked, and rightfully so.

We were in the dark due to the 'Great Firewall of China' (Anti 2011) which is the "biggest internet censorship network ever created in human’s history” (Bu 2015). Apparently there is virtually no interaction between Chinese users and the rest of the world. (Taneja & Wu 2014, p. 297). All this in an effort to protect national and Lui's security.

In the end Lui received 20,000 more followers from my exposure. Her family would like a portion of her secret earnings though, she will always be the ugly stepsister to them.

Splendid morning,

Today we witnessed a ‘boss fight’. Virtual and real-life drama? My favourite. You really shouldn’t have.

Achievement unlocked: Girlfriend

It was breaking news, Leo Enda & Emily Adelle were boo’d up. Enda is a hardcore player of video games, which are “cultural artefacts, industries, social communities, material cultures and media practices” (Hjorth 2014). In a recent assignment, Enda revealed he liked all three dimensions of video games; sociological, aesthetic and technical (Farrell 2018).

The renowned EVE player earned the honorary badge of Adelle’s heart. God knows how, Adelle must have conquered the mountain of dorito dust and mountain dew to find the entrance to his mother’s basement.

Player 2 has entered the game

After becoming ‘Facebook Official’, the threats against Adelle started while playing EVE on Steam.

Adelle loved playing Fortnite, the World's Largest Battle Royale Game (Crecente 2018). With 40 million downloads, it is considered an 'Agon’ game with a competitive nature which presupposes training, skill and discipline (Caillois 1955).

Degrading ‘Gamer Girls’ is not uncommon. In fact, a whole website exists called fatuglyorslutty.com dedicated to the disgusting and misogynistic comments women in gaming receive.

Adelle looks up to Zoe Quinn, a game developer who created Depression Quest. Quinn’s hard work was overshadowed by attacks over her sex life following a blog published by her ex with intimate and demeaning details (Parkin 2014).

However, Enda was ready to fight for Adelle and his relationship. While 92% of Australian players play games with another person (Digital Australia 2018), Bane was going to wish he played alone that day.

Let the battle begin

I guess it’s true that video games “promote the formation of social groupings”  (Huizinga, cited in Butgereit 2015) as a crowd formed when the fight broke out. Enda managed to give Bane a black eye before teachers broke it up (boo).

Enda was given detention, but considering Bane’s online behavior, Bane was suspended for 3 weeks.

The suspension wasn’t only from school, but from EVE too. Enda reached out to EVE’s ‘Council of Stellar Management’ who “provide opportunities for negotiation, opinion on management decisions and the direction of game development” (De Zwart & Humphreys 2014). They recognisied that some bad behaviour is play enhancing, and is some damaging.

Splendid Morning,

Today the queen is back and about to call ERRYBODY out. In particular, Ava Nova.

When Ava Nova was born, I imagine her parents gave her a buzzword name hoping it would make headlines one day. Probably didn’t expect “Ava Nova fakes breast cancer to fund her Gucci bag”.

The Setup

Now, Nova was a bit of a hermit crab. While being invisible, she obviously did some research about Bell Gibson, the infamous con artist who ‘survived’ fake cancer through eating healthy (Rojek 2017).

When Nova said her ‘chest hurt’ at lunch last month, her friend Brianna Westall looked up her symptoms on Web MD and joked she had breast cancer. We’re all guilty of self-diagnosis as “a large portion of digital health practices involve the sharing and curation of health information content through social channels" (Morehead et al, cited in McCosker 2015).

Nova disappeared from school and returned a month later with breast cancer and a plan.

The Plan

Nova did what any Gen Z would do, she started a blog. 'Social media brings a new dimension to health care” (Morehead et al, cited in McCosker 2015) and blogs can particularly help to record the emotional highs and lows associated with illnesses. As she was accumulating 8,000 followers, the school created an honorary day to help fund the mastectomy of the affected breast. ‘Save our Supernova’ entailed everyone wearing purple and donating to the cause.

But what did we do? We participated in superficial engagement (Farrell 2018). Like Movember, we had the mo without the money (Burgess 2013). We busted out our purple detailed outfits, lookin’ like a bunch of Barney the Dinosaurs. However how much did we raise? $300.... from 600 kids at the school. 

Pop culture artefacts like media, music, and fashion are important social scripts (Milner 2013) and Nova knew this:

Media - a local Leader feature article.

Music - Breast cancer survivor Olivia Newton John dedicated a song to her on a recent Today show performance.

Fashion - Nova created a ‘supernova’ pin pictured below:

and with a huge violin, we all played her a sympathy.

The Truth

While hooking up with Noah Dolder, instead of exposing one breast, she exposed her lie. Two breasts. Dolder faced the breakdown of Nova who spilled that it was all a hoax.

The month she disappeared from school? A trip to see her parents in America. The doctors notes? Mad photoshop skills. The money she raised? Towards new Gucci bag.

Unlike Belle Gibson she wasn’t fined $410,000 over false cancer claims. She was required to forfeit the bag and publicly apologise.

We have reached 50+ followers!

Splendid Morning,

This week has been a PR nightmare for Shelferry College, and I'm living for it.

The Herald Sun have been sniffing around trying to find out the real story about why the animals 'chicken' and 'toad' have been circulating the school. Use me as a source, I'm about to give them the full story.

Cyberbully Chicken

Graham Hall, a recent recruit on the college football team, was in the boys change room. While putting on his shorts the boys spotted a birthmark on his upper thigh. Why the 'straight jock boys' were looking there, well, you can make your own conclusions 👀. School Captain Jeremy Turner pointed out the birthmark looked like a chicken. Hall had a bit of a laugh and agreed.

The end, right? Wrong.

Memes that belong in 2011 such as this were posted to Shelferry College's FB group, with equally insulting messages commented below. This classifies as cyberbullying in the traditional sense; “sending or posting harmful or cruel text or images using the Internet or other digital communication devices” (McCosker 2016). Sadly, Hall isn't a lone chicken. “40% of all internet users report experiencing at least one form of traditional online harassment” (Pew Research 2014). However what about the non-traditional ways?

“Technology doesn’t simply break social conventions - it introduces new possibilities for them”(Boyd 2014).

Here are all the 'unconventional' ways Hall was harassed online:

Angry reacts on all his posts

Unfriending him

Commenting chicken emojis

Deleting his posts in the Facebook group

Does the school care about Halls situation? Yes. But why? To cover their own ass. Shelferry have NOW decided (after refusing in the past) to implement the eSmart curriculum which has an 80% success rate in teaching effective school plans and policies and creating a respectful school community (McCosker 2016).

What power the mass media have when trying to wreck havoc on a school's precious reputation.

TROLLING TOAD

While cyberbullying and trolling are often used interchangeably, "they have different definitions and are largely carried out by different groups of people." (McCosker 2016). There is a difference between telling somebody to kill themselves over a birth mark, and a rickroll.

So where did Toad come from? I'm glad you asked.

A simple spelling mistake similar to Trump's covfefe became an overnight trolling sensation at Shelferry. Toads were referenced in assignments, commented on Shelferry’s FB page, littered on our FB group and plastered around the school. Trolls want "not to achieve some outright victory of presence and righteousness" (McCosker 2014). Instead they have "goals of embarrassment, anger, and disruption often merely for amusement, but is sometimes driven by more “serious” motives including political goals" (Dahlberg 2006). In this instance, they want to provoke and embarrass the school for their mistake.

Splendid Morning,

Today is a historical day, where Principal Smith was schooled by his own school.

And it all started with Brianna Westall’s realisation that social media can be used to express “dissent, dissemination of information and collective action” (York & Youmans 2012) of our sexist dress code.

DISSENT aka THROW SHADE

Westall was recently targeted by Mr Smith for wearing a (cute af) black tank top to school. Fortunately, Westall used Facebook to “elicit external attention” (Aday et al, cited in Gerbaudo 2012) to the issue. I’ll let Westall tell the rest of the story.

DISSEMINATION OF INFORMATION aka SPREAD IT

Keeping true to her promise, Westall was the opposite of Elsa. She wasn’t about to Let It Go.

The status was shared over 109 times on Facebook and retweeted over 70 times on Twitter. Many people at our school read the news on Twitter, as it disseminates in real time, and bypasses the newsgathering operations of the mainstream media (Gerbaudo 2012).

Westall created an online petition boycotting Mr Smith’s dress code. She modeled it off petitions of girls in similar situations such as Kelly with 1,252 signatures and Nadia with 2,423 signatures. However, some questioned whether petitions promoted slacktivism. Slacktivism is “feel good activism that has zero social impact but creates an illusion of having a meaningful impact on the world” (Morozov, cited in Gerbaudo 2012). While Westall does the hard work of confrontation and activism, you just click a button encouraging her to do so.

Nevertheless, it worked. All those signatures amassed to 3,000, and Mr Smith was peeing his big boy pants.

COLLECTIVE ACTION aka GET IN LOSERS, WE’RE GOING PROTESTING.

Following the support Westall had recieved, she tested their loyalty. On April 12, Westall organised a protest at the school, where everyone, even boys, wore off the shoulder and spaghetti strap tank tops. Westall got the idea from a similar protest, as it highlights the double standard.

What Westall didn’t predict is that her movement inspired an act of hacktivism. Hacktivism is “the politically motivated use of technical expertise”(Milan 2017) otherwise known as “digital disobedience” (Lohrmann, cited in Bergal 2017). The IT club hacked into our schools website and produced this:

Despite all this, Westall’s uproar influenced a review of the dress code. Bra straps and bare shoulders were not seen as an educational hazard, and permitted. The school is currently reforming how they approach dress code violations, taking submissions from students, parents, teachers and social workers. Bonus: Mr Smith is to undertake a social behavior course as the IT club may of disclosed his darkest thoughts.

We may be small, but social media is powerful. Use it to be “reformers and revolutionaries” (York & Youmans 2012) like Westall.

If you haven’t been following, Shelferry College had the choice of two School Captains this year. See the post here for all my uncalled judgements.

Sophie Cardell received 134 votes, and Jeremy Turner was like

and took the win with 135 votes. I’m not sure if ‘Hugh J. Ass’ is a student that goes to this school, but it was the winning vote.

Cardell, you should have totally listened to my advice and used social media to your advantage. Too late now.

I guess we’re stuck with a self entitled jock with teeth brighter than his future.