[Sara Speller] 15:18:40 Hello and welcome. You are listening to Who We Are Online a special podcast brought to you from the 2024 winter podcasting institute by the National Humanities Center. [Sara Speller] 15:18:53 In this first and final episode of Who We Are Online, we will be discussing identities, the internet, and how they inform each other. [Sara Speller] 15:19:02 My name is Sarah. I'm a third-year PhD student in historical musicology and music theory. [Sara Speller] 15:19:09 My work looks at the ways people utilize nineteenth century ballet and romantic music to escape late stage capitalism through curated soundscapes and whimsical aesthetics. [Sara Speller] 15:19:20 I am here with my fellow humanists, Brooke, K Marie and Amy. Why don't you guys introduce yourselves? [E. Brooke Phipps] 15:19:27 Hi everyone, my name is Brooke. I'm a fifth year PhD candidate at the University of Maryland [E. Brooke Phipps] 15:19:35 Outside of DC and my work specifically is in the broader subject study of communication studies. But I specialize in looking at digital media platforms and how young people use those platforms to not only express their identities but come to understand their own political ideologies. [KMarie Tejeda] 15:19:57 Hi everyone, my name is K Marie Tejeda. I am a 3rd year PhD student in the religion department at Boston University. [KMarie Tejeda] 15:20:07 My track is Religions in American Society. And my works, my work focus on the religions of the African diaspora in the Dominican Republic and its diaspora as well in the United States. [Amy Mjema Omolo] 15:20:26 Hi, my name is Amy and I'm a fourth year PhD student at Penn State studying Comparative literature and African studies. [Amy Mjema Omolo] 15:20:37 My work focuses on how young people are engaging with the idea of adulthood or adulting, broadly speaking, how they want to transition from being a young person into an adult and what that means. [Sara Speller] 15:20:52 Wonderful. So the 4 of us spend a lot of time studying people, communities, and trends online and myriads of different ways and we thought that maybe it would be time for us to look inward at our own identities and relationships to the internet. [Sara Speller] 15:21:07 So, did you guys all grow up online? And what are some of your early internet touchstones? [KMarie Tejeda] 15:21:15 Well, for me, there's a mix of growing and not growing online. Like for example, I was born in the Dominican Republic. [KMarie Tejeda] 15:21:24 And when in the United States the internet was already in boom. Like that was like when it was starting over there. [KMarie Tejeda] 15:21:35 So I got to see. How Myspace, Facebook developed. And, it was part of my life, but not as maybe in the United States. [KMarie Tejeda] 15:21:49 Like the same generation would have access to. [E. Brooke Phipps] 15:21:55 Yeah, I definitely grew up. I'm probably one of those generations in the US that does remember a time before the internet or remember the time when you would get the internet on a CD. [E. Brooke Phipps] 15:22:05 Right, the AOL CD would come to your house and it had minutes on it like a credit card for calling and you couldn't use the internet the same time as like your mother was on the phone, so there was a lot of trying to negotiate with your family. [Sara Speller] 15:22:07 Okay. [KMarie Tejeda] 15:22:10 Hmm. [E. Brooke Phipps] 15:22:19 About when people could be on the internet and the house. So I grew up with it, you know, we had the internet probably by the time I hit middle school. [E. Brooke Phipps] 15:22:27 Where it was more readily accessible. I definitely saw social media grow alongside with me. Live Journal, Myspace, Neopets for anyone who remembers that weird Ca that weird yes exactly right that like capitalist Flash game, you state of social being that definitely took over way too much of my middle school brain space. [Sara Speller] 15:22:40 Neopets. [E. Brooke Phipps] 15:22:53 So those are just some things that I remember growing up with as I was younger with the internet. [Amy Mjema Omolo] 15:22:59 Well, for me, I also grew up both online and offline. I actually remember when the internet was growing in my country and I went to boarding school and I remember sneaking out to go and sign up for a Facebook account and because it was so new you we just stayed it was an internet cafe so we just stayed there and just played around with Facebook emailing people, tapping people. [Amy Mjema Omolo] 15:23:27 I don't know if you remember the tap feature that was there back then. Of course I went back to school. [Amy Mjema Omolo] 15:23:31 I was in trouble, but I always remember that I was in trouble because I was out there setting up an internet. [Sara Speller] 15:23:36 Yeah. [Amy Mjema Omolo] 15:23:36 Facebook account on an internet cafe somewhere in like Kenya. [E. Brooke Phipps] 15:23:38 Okay. [E. Brooke Phipps] 15:23:42 Amazing. [Sara Speller] 15:23:42 Yeah. My, my experience with the internet, I think I did. Grow up online. I am right in between being a millennial and a Gen Z. [Sara Speller] 15:23:54 And my family grew up in rural North Carolina so I definitely experienced the dial-up, The CD when it came from when it came to being at my grandparents house and getting bored and wanting to play. [Sara Speller] 15:24:10 Like something online. And I think for me, one of my main touch stones is actually Tumblr. [Sara Speller] 15:24:18 And I feel like it in. Definitely is a motivating factor, but behind my interest in studying like people's micro aesthetics. [Sara Speller] 15:24:27 Because the number of Tumblr sites you would come across that were just like all of these beautiful outfits of the day and then you would go and it would be some person who's like Goth and it's like, wow, there's so many options you can be as a human. [Sara Speller] 15:24:44 And that's yeah, kind of always stuck with me. And I guess that's a good segue into talking about why we decided to study identities in particular. [Sara Speller] 15:24:58 Yeah, I guess I just said mine. So. [Sara Speller] 15:25:03 But yeah, I don't know. Let's see. K Marie, yeah, how did you come across [Sara Speller] 15:25:10 The kind of identities that you study? [KMarie Tejeda] 15:25:13 Well, something that I have noticed like in the that thing of the negotiating identity within the field I am studying. [KMarie Tejeda] 15:25:23 That it involves a lot of Secrecy and It depends on the generation, for example. [KMarie Tejeda] 15:25:34 People like as I said, I studied religions of African origins in the Dominican Republic and it's diaspora and for example people from an older generation like people who are now fortys and fiftys their online presence might be more in secret like people like the their profiles online you could see like they have more restriction like just people who are invited to it they can access and things like that and then but [KMarie Tejeda] 15:26:02 the younger generation have more access to it. Like there's some celebrities, Bruhas online that I have seen that it being like so, disturbing how within the same tradition. [KMarie Tejeda] 15:26:16 Like people negotiate their identities online and the way that they portray themselves. So I find that very interesting and generational wise and also regarding to the tradition itself because I don't know how familiar you are with religion of African origins, but like secrecy is very important thing. [KMarie Tejeda] 15:26:40 Like, you know, secrecy is a very important thing. Like, no, everybody should have access to this very important thing. [KMarie Tejeda] 15:26:44 Like, no, everybody should have access to this secret knowledge and these things. So, seeing how the new generation, the younger generation kind of don't [KMarie Tejeda] 15:26:51 Don't negotiate secrecy in the same way for me is fascinating. [E. Brooke Phipps] 15:27:02 Yeah, it's actually really interesting that you mentioned there's a bit of a generational gap and that young people seem to care less about secrecy. [E. Brooke Phipps] 15:27:10 Part of what I work with specifically is looking at how young people take platforms that would be considered unlikely platforms. [E. Brooke Phipps] 15:27:21 So for example, the Palestine solidarity protests are happening in roadblocks right now, right? [E. Brooke Phipps] 15:27:26 Roadblocks is a really popular video game platform. Typically trending towards a much younger age demographic. [E. Brooke Phipps] 15:27:33 So the average age demographic of a site like Roadblocks would be probably somewhere between 12 to like 14 would be the dominant demographic. [E. Brooke Phipps] 15:27:39 And so people have been really surprised that there's been that kind of political demonstration there and that it is so public and that young people you know are really excited to be public with some of this expression of political solidarity even at young age. [E. Brooke Phipps] 15:27:56 And part of what I study has been and that's actually a trend that's been going on for a while. [E. Brooke Phipps] 15:28:01 Specifically with young people, I think there's this sense that privacy is dead. There is no such thing as having a private life in that if your life isn't somehow captured in social media, you don't necessarily have a life, which I think has. [E. Brooke Phipps] 15:28:14 Lots of other social ramifications that can be very negative for young people, but specifically what I'm looking at in a lot of my work is how people take these communities that may be a bit more niche or maybe a bit more private, right? [E. Brooke Phipps] 15:28:29 So like their private server on Roadblocks, their private server or Minecraft, there are private islands in animal crossing and then turn that into a space for political solidarity and then make an intentional pivot to make it public for whatever reason. [E. Brooke Phipps] 15:28:45 And I work with those people on what their reasoning is for that. And for a lot of the groups that I work with part of the visibility aspect is part of the politic, right? [E. Brooke Phipps] 15:28:55 So you do the organizing in private, but then the demonstration has to be public. And that's sort of how they are negotiating that space right now with their identity and their privacy and publicity. [Sara Speller] 15:29:05 Yeah, and I think Amy, your research also has to do a bit with groups, deciding when they go public and making political stances, but in a very different way. [Sara Speller] 15:29:19 Can you talk about that a bit? [Amy Mjema Omolo] 15:29:19 Yeah, my approach towards identity stems from the idea that being an adult is a series of performances and doing a lot of things so it's you know it's getting a job, buying a house, getting married, having the kids like once you attain this social status is you become an adult and so where I come from since the unemployment rate is very high and getting earning a living is a very big aspect of being considered an [Amy Mjema Omolo] 15:29:50 adult and if that is impossible it begs the question that am I an adult? am I still a young person? am I an adolescent? what am I? so when I study people who are online especially young people they're redefining what it means to be an adult. They're finding new ways of earning a living through TikTok and Instagram and they're asking us questions like, you know, can you retire off of making videos [Amy Mjema Omolo] 15:30:17 online? You can make a lot of money, but is it.. And you make enough that you can retire. [Amy Mjema Omolo] 15:30:23 What does that mean? Once you leave the online space and does that mean you're settled into adulthood? [Amy Mjema Omolo] 15:30:29 And now we have to consider that being an adult also means living or having an identity that is online and what does that mean? [Amy Mjema Omolo] 15:30:36 How does that look like? People are exploring ways of different ways of parenting and exploring their past traumas. [Amy Mjema Omolo] 15:30:43 So it's a lot of unlearning, And investigating and a lot of poking holes at ideas that we thought were set in society that would establish that this is how you become an adult and young people are saying, well, not quite. [Amy Mjema Omolo] 15:30:58 It's a new generation things are not how they used to be back then. I can't buy a house at 24 and get a married at 21 like or. [Sara Speller] 15:31:04 Right. [E. Brooke Phipps] 15:31:04 54 at this rate. [Sara Speller] 15:31:09 Yeah. [KMarie Tejeda] 15:31:09 Yeah. [Amy Mjema Omolo] 15:31:09 Yeah, it's like someone was like, I'm 40, I don't have a job or like I work part time online, but I'm still an adult. [Amy Mjema Omolo] 15:31:16 I don't have a house. I'm all these things, but if the older generation says I'm not an adult because I don't have them. [Amy Mjema Omolo] 15:31:23 What am I supposed to do? I see my cell phone as an as an adult. So the online space is a way for younger people, however defined. [Amy Mjema Omolo] 15:31:33 To explore a lot of issues and for me that means exploring what adulthood means for them. [Amy Mjema Omolo] 15:31:40 Yeah. [KMarie Tejeda] 15:31:42 Yes, and I'm thinking that it is very complicated too because you see yourself in a way, but then older people see you in another way just because you don't have material things so it's is complex. [Amy Mjema Omolo] 15:31:54 Exactly, and and before you are a younger generation that are looking up to you and we're trying to figure out well what is that what I'm supposed to grow up and become like an TikTok personality like you've got a career path can I write that that's what I want to be when I grow up. [Sara Speller] 15:31:59 Yes. [E. Brooke Phipps] 15:32:00 Yeah. [KMarie Tejeda] 15:32:08 Huh. Yes. [E. Brooke Phipps] 15:32:10 Yeah. [Amy Mjema Omolo] 15:32:14 It's like a whole changing dynamic these days. [Sara Speller] 15:32:15 Yeah, and so many of them do. I feel like I have nephews and a niece and they They're growing up in a time where like being a YouTuber is like a career path that many people actually aspire to, which is amazing and it like shows how important. [E. Brooke Phipps] 15:32:28 Yeah. Yeah. [Amy Mjema Omolo] 15:32:31 Yep. [Sara Speller] 15:32:35 The internet and art and identity is in our everyday lives, but it also is so dramatically different than when we were growing up and I am wondering if you guys Find yourselves [Sara Speller] 15:32:48 Defining identity against the internet or against these kinds of communities that we, are researching. [Sara Speller] 15:32:57 Like what does it need to be an adult for you guys? [KMarie Tejeda] 15:33:02 Well, for me, I don't define my identity by online like. The way like the majority of like people might define it like I'm thinking it's just I'm thinking what you're saying like regarding to like the YouTube being a career or like even just being an influencer, like it's just like a rear pad like. [KMarie Tejeda] 15:33:24 I don't think my identity depends on how I portrayed myself online. Because also if you see whatever you see online, it's in a sense is a fake [KMarie Tejeda] 15:33:37 Reality. It's like an eternal alternative reality that you're living in. So in fact, Personally, I don't publish that much online. [KMarie Tejeda] 15:33:49 I just have it to have connection with people who I know who live in another country around the world. So, but I do see that the younger generation need so much. [KMarie Tejeda] 15:34:04 And like the portray like a this fake identity online in order for them to find meaning for themselves. You know, like, and that's something I see it, but. [KMarie Tejeda] 15:34:16 In my case it personally I don't negotiate my identity based on whatever I do. [Amy Mjema Omolo] 15:34:25 For me, it's a delicate balance. Sorry, Brooke. It's a delicate balance because I'm quickly learning that [E. Brooke Phipps] 15:34:26 Okay. [E. Brooke Phipps] 15:34:29 Nope, go for it. [Amy Mjema Omolo] 15:34:36 What is seen on social media is not necessarily fake because people are also drawn to what would call authenticity or like people who are just themselves [Amy Mjema Omolo] 15:34:48 Who just, maybe record themselves doing daily life and don't quite care maybe about how they look or what they're doing per se. [Amy Mjema Omolo] 15:34:57 So it's it's somewhat of a difficult balance to say or ask, is this the real person? [Amy Mjema Omolo] 15:35:03 What am I doing watching them? Is this also my identity? Like have I based my Identity off of being a person who watches people online all the time on my phone scrolling, you know, liking pictures. [Amy Mjema Omolo] 15:35:18 Is that part of me? When you go offline is when you actually get to question yourself on such things because now you don't have your phone and you're wondering, okay, what do I do with my time? [Amy Mjema Omolo] 15:35:28 Does that define me? It's a it's just a lot of questions, but I can't stop thinking about. [Amy Mjema Omolo] 15:35:34 The fake versus authentic aspect of it a lot. There's just a lot of arguments on both sides about it. [E. Brooke Phipps] 15:35:41 It's one of the things to tie into that that I actually have spent a lot of time processing with my students where I don't know that I love the idea of fake versus authentic. [E. Brooke Phipps] 15:35:54 Typically the way I describe it in my work is this idea of curated because it's not that the person that you are online is not who you are, but usually it's like a highlight real, right? [E. Brooke Phipps] 15:36:06 It's the thing people can understand in 140 characters or it's the most salient parts of your identity, right? [E. Brooke Phipps] 15:36:14 Because we're all multiple identities bound to one person. But typically most people try to distill that down to 2 or 3 kind of key identifying aspects online because either that's how they make connection or if they are an influencer that's like what sells. [E. Brooke Phipps] 15:36:28 And so I know even for me as someone who participated as a content creator on Twitch for some of my ethnographic research, [E. Brooke Phipps] 15:36:37 There were certain parts of my identity that I really tried to not highlight but those are the things I was gonna bring to the forefront, right? [E. Brooke Phipps] 15:36:46 Like I was an educator, I was doing this for charity and I was doing this to start conversations about social issues. [E. Brooke Phipps] 15:36:52 I also enjoy video games. I'm very competitive, but that wasn't the personality aspects that I was trying to lean into in my content because even though those are true things about me, that wasn't what I was gearing the content around [E. Brooke Phipps] 15:37:06 So I use the term curated more often because of that because it's usually a strategic. It's almost like strategic essentialism is honestly what it feels like sometimes really. [Sara Speller] 15:37:14 Yeah [E. Brooke Phipps] 15:37:16 Right, from Spivak, it has that sense to it, especially when you're talking about people who would consider themselves part of like historically marginalized or historically underrepresented or under supported and underserved communities online. [E. Brooke Phipps] 15:37:30 I think a lot of that type of curation plays into how they exist in those spaces as well. [Sara Speller] 15:37:36 Yeah. I also really like the idea of curation as a kind of way to escape an authenticity-fakeness binary, particularly because some of the most interesting part. [Sara Speller] 15:37:51 Most of the most interesting parts of my research are related to when creators pull the curtains back and they kind of show like, yes, I have this little aesthetic space, [Sara Speller] 15:38:03 I make my own bread, but also here is a vlog demonstrating the number of hours that I have to do like XY, and Z in order to have my little hobbit hole, or here is a breakdown of how I edit my videos. [Sara Speller] 15:38:22 So you can also have this particular aesthetic when you're creating content. And I guess inside of that too is [Sara Speller] 15:38:29 a distinction between branding for commercials sake or like, branding yourself as an influencer or as a Commodity online, I guess. [Sara Speller] 15:38:43 And then people who brand themselves or curate themselves because that is their corner of the world that they do have [Sara Speller] 15:38:52 Control over. And I think kind of because of that, I don't know what an adult is anymore. [Sara Speller] 15:39:02 I went from, yeah, having this like being a little kid and being like, wow, an adult does XY, and Z. [Sara Speller] 15:39:09 And now I am an adult and I don't have a house and My, I'm not a huge poster online, but when I do post, it is certainly a curated highlight reel of my plants or my cat. [Sara Speller] 15:39:24 And like are those little sections what [Sara Speller] 15:39:29 Creates the figure of an adult that other people see or that I think of and yeah, it kind of throws. [Sara Speller] 15:39:37 These conventional understandings of place and roles throughout your life into like a crazy flux, which I kind of think is, I don't know, it's beautiful, but. [Sara Speller] 15:39:50 That's, I don't know, yeah. And kind of on that note. Do you guys feel like [Sara Speller] 15:39:59 There are niches that you work with online, like your online communities that you do research with, K Marie mentioned Brujas and the kind of generational difference between people being very public and people being very private. [Sara Speller] 15:40:15 And Amy and Brooke, you guys have both kind of presented these different sides of generations that are interested in one or 2 specific things and that's kind of how they meet. [Sara Speller] 15:40:28 Online. I was just wondering if you guys could talk a bit about these potential niches that you find yourselves being drawn to. [E. Brooke Phipps] 15:41:25 Yeah, I mean, I can at least say for me, mine was definitely heavily informed by the pandemic. [E. Brooke Phipps] 15:41:30 I knew I was going to be doing something with like digital political expression. My work in my master's program had been more about organizing online and and what happens when what is organized online becomes physical. [E. Brooke Phipps] 15:41:44 So I was looking at like the different women's marches and things like that post, 2016. [E. Brooke Phipps] 15:41:51 But then the pandemic happened and 2020 was a pretty volatile year in US political culture for all whole myriad of reasons. [E. Brooke Phipps] 15:41:58 And because everyone was still in lockdown though, we were seeing a lot of people start paying attention to online spaces. [E. Brooke Phipps] 15:42:08 In like popular media and being like, oh isn't this just so funny that like people would protest in animal crossing and I was saying they're saying people have been doing this for a while and it's actually a really important way that I find my students in particular are learning about their politics because they're not watching [E. Brooke Phipps] 15:42:24 CNN, they're not watching. You know, 24 h news channels give them anxiety. [E. Brooke Phipps] 15:42:29 They're not reading the Washington Post that gives them anxiety. Same. But they're finding it in these other spaces. [E. Brooke Phipps] 15:42:36 And so that's where I really started doing my research because people were treating it like it was this sort of anathema of COVID and I was saying like actually this is something that people have been doing for a while because the platforms help people take some sort of customizable ownership over it in ways that I think just reading something or watching something doesn't allow people to do with their identity. [E. Brooke Phipps] 15:43:01 So I sort of fell into it. Because of COVID and I also had to come up with a dissertation topic and gotta pick something and go and here I am like 3 years later and It's written, so that's sort of how I ended up into it. [KMarie Tejeda] 15:43:16 For me also it started in the pandemic as well but I didn't have that specific topic like I started with the Holy Spirit and spirits. [KMarie Tejeda] 15:43:25 And how people interacted with it. So during the pandemic, I was kind of asking like how do people Like now, how do people negotiate that relationship between the Holy Spirit, which is very something that usually happens in groups and things like that [KMarie Tejeda] 15:43:43 And with this idea of that everything was online. So I also have friends who practice Brujeria, and I saw and I follow one online that she. [KMarie Tejeda] 15:43:57 Everything she did online, like I was seeing how she gave like talks about it and she was doing like reading cards and she used media in different ways, even like WhatsApp like if a person pays her XYZ for her services, she can give you a reading through [KMarie Tejeda] 15:44:17 You know, either for the Instagram, DMs or things like that. So when I got to apply to the program and everything like that. [KMarie Tejeda] 15:44:25 I say, well, like in my community, that's not something that is so much researched about because of all the mystery behind and I know the the the bad things like the prejudices against such practices. [KMarie Tejeda] 15:44:43 So One, also I guess Brooke, you have to have a topic. I, mine is not, as reduced yet for dissertation purposes, cause I'm still doing course work and things like that. [KMarie Tejeda] 15:44:59 But, the pandemic was a big factor. Also the need in the Dominican community of such research [KMarie Tejeda] 15:45:24 And also because I, as I said, one time when we were talking outside of this podcast like I want people to feel proud of their African influences in the culture. [KMarie Tejeda] 15:45:27 So that's another thing and I got online because it's something modern, it's something like I'm interested in and yes. [KMarie Tejeda] 15:45:30 It's kind of like a Summary. [Amy Mjema Omolo] 15:45:33 That's interesting because for me it stemmed from going back home after my master's with high expectations of getting a job and then being hit with like, hey, you're not any more special than the hundreds of thousands of unemployed youth. [E. Brooke Phipps] 15:45:50 Yeah. [Sara Speller] 15:45:50 Yeah. [Amy Mjema Omolo] 15:45:50 And getting to terms with that, like K Marie, I was up in the religion sphere praying to God for a job like my, I know I had like relatives who had maybe gone to witchdoctors and stuff like to just like try and help me secure a job I did. [E. Brooke Phipps] 15:45:59 Yeah. [Sara Speller] 15:45:59 Yeah. [Sara Speller] 15:46:02 Okay. [KMarie Tejeda] 15:46:06 Okay. Yes [Amy Mjema Omolo] 15:46:07 Thing. And Exactly! And exactly. And meanwhile, all you have is your phone and social media. [E. Brooke Phipps] 15:46:08 Pray to whoever is listening. That's the job market. Yeah. [Sara Speller] 15:46:09 Yes. Any and everyone. [KMarie Tejeda] 15:46:14 Hey. [Amy Mjema Omolo] 15:46:18 And now I'm, I was just, you know, watching my friends and I'm seeing all these identities being performed online, you know, maybe you know somebody in real life and they're not [Amy Mjema Omolo] 15:46:27 You know, maybe they're not all that, but then online they portray this image of like, wow, everything's going great, my life is perfect, but it got me thinking about, huh, how are people performing adulthood? [KMarie Tejeda] 15:46:34 Oh. [Amy Mjema Omolo] 15:46:40 Because I'm here, I don't have a job, I live with my mom, I have a master's, well I don't have a job and online I see somebody who maybe realized earlier on that you know the papers the papers won't get them far so they were like okay let me make comedic kits and like, you know. [Amy Mjema Omolo] 15:46:58 In 2 or 3 years, suddenly you see them getting brand endorsements and this deal and that deal and it gets you thinking like, huh. [Amy Mjema Omolo] 15:47:05 On the adulthood scale they've really progressed through it and it makes you question what am I doing? [Amy Mjema Omolo] 15:47:10 And so I came to grad school without any idea what I was studying until my, my advisor was like, you know what, let's shut everything down. What are you interested in? [Amy Mjema Omolo] 15:47:24 Let's leave like the academic stuff aside and just figure that out because you won't write your dissertation if you're not interested in it at least. [Amy Mjema Omolo] 15:47:29 So I just started talking to her about my life and she was like, you know, you should write about that. [Amy Mjema Omolo] 15:47:33 And I was like, actually, I should do that. It's a big part of me and it It's actually affected how I view life now. [Amy Mjema Omolo] 15:47:42 I don't just go through it expecting, you know, get to this stage and then you've accomplished this and then you're this person. [Amy Mjema Omolo] 15:47:49 It doesn't work out that way. You take corners and curves and sometimes you don't even get to that point and It's okay. [Amy Mjema Omolo] 15:47:57 We just try and figure it out. So it's this aspect of thinking that you know adulthood is just figuring things out. [Sara Speller] 15:48:02 Yes. [Amy Mjema Omolo] 15:48:03 Nobody has got it like down to a T where like yeah look at that person that's adulting I mean some people are like that but it's the questioning. [Sara Speller] 15:48:08 Yeah. [E. Brooke Phipps] 15:48:08 Yeah. [Amy Mjema Omolo] 15:48:12 Am I doing it? What if I don't? Will I still be okay? It's that question. [Sara Speller] 15:48:19 Yeah, that's fantastic. And it kind of reminds me a bit earlier we were talking about how our ages, when we were first kind of connecting to the internet. [Sara Speller] 15:48:31 We were in, and we still are, you know, in these middle stages where the adults in our lives were like, I don't get it. [Sara Speller] 15:48:39 And then the children in our lives are like looking up to us and seeing Myspaces and AOL chats and like all of these things that we were up to and thinking I want to do that. [Sara Speller] 15:48:49 And I know that we talked a little bit before about the idea of growing old online rather than growing up. [Sara Speller] 15:48:58 And I was wondering too, how that might look in some of your communities. And if it shows up at all even because this idea of like being an adult is figuring things out. [Sara Speller] 15:49:11 I think that's the right definition of what an adult is on and offline. But then, I feel like part of growing old. [Sara Speller] 15:49:21 Quote unquote, online is realizing that that is not what the youth want to hear and that is not what the youth want to see. [Sara Speller] 15:49:31 So, and I know that Brooke and Amy, you guys have had experience teaching. I know you're still in course work, but I'm sure you've been a chaplain in [Sara Speller] 15:49:42 At Boston for a while. So like I'm wondering what you guys. Have noticed when it comes to maybe talking about the internet offline with people who are younger than us and very much on the internet. [E. Brooke Phipps] 15:49:55 The youth will always let you know that you are old. That's the first thing they I think they secretly delight in it and I let them revel in it. [Sara Speller] 15:49:58 Okay. [Amy Mjema Omolo] 15:49:58 Yep. Yeah. [E. Brooke Phipps] 15:50:06 I actually have a a part of most of my courses that I teach where I ask my students to teach me slang or things, the phrases they use regularly that they think I don't know and they are correct. [E. Brooke Phipps] 15:50:20 I usually don't know them. And I always learn something new every semester. Because I do think the way that online trends work and online spaces tend to work. [E. Brooke Phipps] 15:50:31 They gravitate towards demographic and they sort of naturally become self selecting in certain ways. So I don't know a lot of folks who are over the age of 40 with a TikTok. [E. Brooke Phipps] 15:50:41 Unless they are a content creator on TikTok. But a lot of people I know who like recreationally consume TikTok are under the age of 40. [E. Brooke Phipps] 15:50:50 And even some of my younger students now would tell you that TikTok is sort of over. It's now all about Be Real which plays into this idea of like TikTok is where you go for stylized like comedic or intentionally curated content. [E. Brooke Phipps] 15:51:05 Be Real is where you have your most authentic self, right? And so there's I always feel like there's a new platform that's always trying to tell whatever that youngest online generation is. [Amy Mjema Omolo] 15:51:09 Wow. [E. Brooke Phipps] 15:51:21 Oh, we're the place for the real conversation [E. Brooke Phipps] 15:51:25 You don't want to hang out with those old folks, with those decrepit millennials, like, let's, you know, I don't know if anyone remembers like the Visco Girl Trend. [E. Brooke Phipps] 15:51:35 That was a, that was a platform that came and went very quickly, but that's just very archetype of this idea that like Instagram is too old, so we're gonna come up with something new. [E. Brooke Phipps] 15:51:43 But I think the flip side of that, right, where you would have all these platforms trying to solicit business from younger people is that Because the younger people generally one, will eventually age up. [E. Brooke Phipps] 15:51:56 But 2, consume a new platform but keep the old platform. Some of these older platforms like Instagram, for example, have a lot of extended staying power because they are always adding. [E. Brooke Phipps] 15:52:07 So there's this interesting dynamic where some platforms feel like very exclusively for young people. [E. Brooke Phipps] 15:52:16 And then some platforms, are like, especially because I study how people use these different platforms. Some of them have these little pockets or bubbles that are sort of allocated on age and when those bubbles cross over, you're sitting there like, I don't understand this meme. [E. Brooke Phipps] 15:52:30 I have I just have to do a lot of googling to understand what is happening here. And I think that goes apart from age, but that's just some of the ways that I see kind of hope getting old online playing out in my work. [Sara Speller] 15:52:37 I feel like I don't know if you guys are familiar. But the baby grunk [Sara Speller] 15:52:46 Meme, which is like a child of a football player or something. That was the first meme that happened and I said what in the world is happening. [Sara Speller] 15:52:55 I still don't know. I tried to Google it. It was completely, I could not break through the the youthful culture in order to understand what the meme went. [Sara Speller] 15:53:05 A new one is skivity, but I do know what that means. Maybe. Are you guys familiar with this? [E. Brooke Phipps] 15:53:12 I am, I am not. Riz was probably my most recent young people trend that I had to have someone explain to me why we were rizzing up folks and then I was like, okay, we're here. [Sara Speller] 15:53:14 Okay. Hmm. [Sara Speller] 15:53:20 Yes. Beautiful. Skivity. It's just like There's like a song and people will quote the song and nothing makes any sense so you might see like the phrase like my get in Ohio. [E. Brooke Phipps] 15:53:22 But now skippity. [E. Brooke Phipps] 15:53:26 Skibity. [Sara Speller] 15:53:37 But it's just meant to be kind of like nonsensical or like absurd and I think One of the things that I do love about getting older on the internet, I love absurdity. [Sara Speller] 15:53:50 Like that is kind of the basis of everything that I research and do is like What is the most ridiculous [Sara Speller] 15:53:58 Like uncrackable thing and why is that an appealing thing for people? So it was very, it was very traumatizing, I would say, to have a meme that I didn't immediately know what was going on. [Sara Speller] 15:54:14 And I know as the zoomer of the bunch. I just wanted you guys to know I know what it's like. [Amy Mjema Omolo] 15:54:20 Yeah. I feel like these days you can't even mention Facebook anywhere like when I whenever I catch myself saying Facebook, I feel like I'm being judged by like the younger generation, like I have to scroll like privately if I'm on a bus or something so they don't see that it's actually Facebook. [Amy Mjema Omolo] 15:54:42 So I always say maybe like Twitter or Instagram is the medium in ambiguous space where they can't quite figure out what age or what generation I'm in. [Amy Mjema Omolo] 15:54:56 But I'm just realizing now that I might be quite old, cause I did not know about Be Real. [Amy Mjema Omolo] 15:55:02 Like I thought TikTok was still like everything and it seems people have moved on already but it also makes me feel good that still platforms such as Facebook and Instagram are still around while these others are like coming and going or we still don't quite know. [Amy Mjema Omolo] 15:55:16 How long they'll be how long they'll stay what they'll do but It's quite interesting [Amy Mjema Omolo] 15:55:22 Trying to I feel like we're like a middle generation. As millennials or even younger millennials where you know you kind of know what the newer trends are but you also are attached to the older trends while now there's a younger generation that doesn't even know like you know dial-up phone or what you had to do back then to like call somebody and now your older folks who are like, why are you spending [Amy Mjema Omolo] 15:55:48 so much time online? I don't get it. Like, what's there? What are you looking at? [Amy Mjema Omolo] 15:55:52 They don't understand it. So it's we are that like that middle generation where you have to consider, oh, am I old, am I young? [Amy Mjema Omolo] 15:56:00 Don't quite know, but okay, I'll just ride it out, see how it goes. [KMarie Tejeda] 15:56:03 Yeah, and even like simple words, like for example, When I refer to a presentation, usually I say a PowerPoint. [KMarie Tejeda] 15:56:11 So when you say a PowerPoint, that means that you have to be 30 or something close to that because kids now they just call it like oh no a presentation and that's it but before people just say PowerPoint just you know like even a word like that can be like it's showing that there's a gap between even the language that you use with the new generation. [KMarie Tejeda] 15:56:34 Do you remind me of that when you were talking about the course and everything last semester I had to teach because at BU we have to teach after the first year. [KMarie Tejeda] 15:56:44 In the program yes in the second No, it's okay, but I noticed that like even things like sometimes it takes me a little longer to think about like just the kids just tell you oh no but we can do this and I okay that's okay that yes so they give you also an archaic Every time that they're looking for that opportunity to let you know that you're old. [Amy Mjema Omolo] 15:57:08 Nobody does that anymore. What is that? [E. Brooke Phipps] 15:57:08 Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. [Sara Speller] 15:57:10 I feel like the 4 of us have relatively young faces, I would say. So I think if they get an extra kick when they don't know How old the TF or the professor actually is? [KMarie Tejeda] 15:57:12 Yes. [Amy Mjema Omolo] 15:57:21 Yep. [Sara Speller] 15:57:25 And then they realized like, oh, you were born in the olden times? Get low is one of your party songs. [E. Brooke Phipps] 15:57:29 Yeah, the late 19 hundreds. [Amy Mjema Omolo] 15:57:31 Yep [Sara Speller] 15:57:32 Yeah. [KMarie Tejeda] 15:57:32 Oh. [E. Brooke Phipps] 15:57:34 Get low one of your party songs. I'm dead. Yeah, when you're old enough that they're all like, oh yeah, denim is so in right now and I love my boyfriend, Keith. [Amy Mjema Omolo] 15:57:44 Yep. [E. Brooke Phipps] 15:57:45 I was like, welcome back to the nineties. We, we also thought it was very cool. So glad to see that you also enjoy it. [E. Brooke Phipps] 15:57:49 They're like, look at my neon, and I'm like, okay, so have you heard of the Fresh Prince of Bel Air? [Sara Speller] 15:57:57 Yeah. [E. Brooke Phipps] 15:57:57 Like, we're all, it's all cyclical baby. Yeah. [Sara Speller] 15:58:01 Yeah, and I think as we kind of wrap up we had this kind of question that we wanted to close with [Sara Speller] 15:58:11 Which echoes the idea of our podcast, which is who are you online? And it's something that we've kind of bounced back and forth a lot already. [Sara Speller] 15:58:22 So I'm just gonna, I guess our closing question. If you were not researching the online communities that you do, would do you think you would be a member of those online communities? [Sara Speller] 15:58:39 Either now in the ages that we currently are or as you. [Amy Mjema Omolo] 15:58:44 That's an easy question for me because I study influencers. If I could be one, if I had the body part and the guts, just those 2 aspects, I would be on TikTok shaking everything and getting all the money. [Sara Speller] 15:58:47 Huh. [Sara Speller] 15:58:58 Yeah. [E. Brooke Phipps] 15:59:00 Yeah. [Amy Mjema Omolo] 15:59:00 Because life is expensive and I don't wanna be poor. I am the millennial who's like in touch with reality. [Amy Mjema Omolo] 15:59:06 I am tired of being poor. So if that got me money and I could keep some form of like my dignity and you know. [E. Brooke Phipps] 15:59:09 Hmm. [KMarie Tejeda] 15:59:14 Shaking your booty. [Sara Speller] 15:59:14 Yes. Do it for the vine. [Amy Mjema Omolo] 15:59:14 Yes, I I would do it because I'm seeing how much money they're getting I want to fly I want hashtags, I want to fly, I want hashtags Santorini hashtag Dubai. [E. Brooke Phipps] 15:59:15 Yeah. [Amy Mjema Omolo] 15:59:23 I want that life like I don't. I would do that like I think maybe that's why I'm secretly I'm studying them so that I can secretly like live out my different life. [KMarie Tejeda] 15:59:24 With everything paid. [Sara Speller] 15:59:24 Not, to, to. [E. Brooke Phipps] 15:59:26 Oh my gosh. [Sara Speller] 15:59:31 Yes. Yeah. [E. Brooke Phipps] 15:59:32 Learn their ways. [Amy Mjema Omolo] 15:59:36 Yeah, like I'm like, oh my god, I wish that was me. Like, how do I get there? [Amy Mjema Omolo] 15:59:40 And then I quickly realize, oh, I don't have the guts to do that or I'm too shy or something. [Sara Speller] 15:59:41 No, I feel like One day we're all gonna we're all gonna get on Instagram and we're gonna see a very familiar face as an Instagram influencer and it's going to be Amy. [Amy Mjema Omolo] 15:59:49 Yes. Yep. Yep, definitely. [E. Brooke Phipps] 15:59:52 Yup, yup, hashtag Dubai [KMarie Tejeda] 15:59:52 Yeah. Yeah. That was true. Hmm. [Sara Speller] 15:59:54 Yes, thank you. [E. Brooke Phipps] 15:59:58 So yeah, I think for me, yes, just because I very naturally came into the community that I started researching because I very naturally came into the community that I started researching because it wass very naturally came into the community that I started researching because it was what was happening in the community that I started researching because it was what was happening in my sphere of influence already. [E. Brooke Phipps] 16:00:12 And I was like, oh, has anyone actually? Really studied this and the answer was no and I was like cool. [E. Brooke Phipps] 16:00:16 And so that's how I got into it was already happening in my area. As far as like the content creation thing. [E. Brooke Phipps] 16:00:25 Having done it now as part of auto ethnography. I don't know that I would ever want to do it like complete flip side from Amy because a lot of what I ended up researching and after having all sorts of interviews and conversations with a lot of content creators is that it is in a lot of ways a really predatory [E. Brooke Phipps] 16:00:44 System on most platforms for people to become content creators. And the amount of money that like TikTok would make off of you shaking your booty versus you is astronomical. [E. Brooke Phipps] 16:00:56 And it's really interesting to see as other groups try to compete with each other. YouTube has recently just like revised monetization to try to make it better for content creators, but you have to really produce a lot of content and you have to have a lot of people buy into your content to make a good genuine living off of it. [E. Brooke Phipps] 16:01:17 So for me, as someone who did content creation more as a researcher and then stopped, I'm like relieved that I stopped. [E. Brooke Phipps] 16:01:23 So I still consume it, but I'm I'm very grateful to not be a part of that community anymore. [E. Brooke Phipps] 16:01:28 I was like, bye I'm good. Wrote the papers, got the published article, I'm out. [Amy Mjema Omolo] 16:01:35 Well, you My bubble isn't burst yet, so I'll just keep hoping that it will work out. [E. Brooke Phipps] 16:01:36 At least that's my experience. [E. Brooke Phipps] 16:01:41 Yeah. Yeah. [Sara Speller] 16:01:43 Yes. [KMarie Tejeda] 16:01:46 That for me, I don't know if I'll be, will be part because [KMarie Tejeda] 16:01:51 Sometimes the practices, I don't like there's some, there is some part of the religious aspect of the, of the traditions of Dominican Brujeria, the, that I don't feel comfortable with. [KMarie Tejeda] 16:02:06 You know, that I don't feel comfortable with, you know, like there's some aspects of it that I just said, I don't know if this is for me, you know, like when I'm ethnographically doing field work like I'm just, don't feel like I will feel comfortable with. [KMarie Tejeda] 16:02:20 But at the same time, it's I would say like there's a lot of within the Dominican culture that we do, we think, oh, you know, we believe that is attached to it that we cannot disconnect it. [KMarie Tejeda] 16:02:38 For example, like a person, a random person who is a faithful Christian, you can't have an at their house like in the back of the of the door of the entrance like across. [KMarie Tejeda] 16:02:49 And that's like, and it can be made of a type of, a plant that they do there and that's usually used in in Brujeria [KMarie Tejeda] 16:03:01 So like, you know, but they use it for protection and it doesn't mean they're doing any work. [KMarie Tejeda] 16:03:05 So. I'm like in and out of it because in my culture we have a lot of things that we use regarding like it's just cultural. [KMarie Tejeda] 16:03:13 They're all they're like but there other parts of it that I would never feel comfortable with. [Sara Speller] 16:03:19 Yeah. Do you think in the spaces that you do research? Do you feel like people do that kind of picking up what they do like and leaving what they aren't [Sara Speller] 16:03:33 Comfortable with or does that doesn't really settle well with them? [KMarie Tejeda] 16:03:37 Well, what I've seen is the people who really, really practice it, they're willing to do a lot of things. [KMarie Tejeda] 16:03:44 Like I've seen a lot of like, they do like rituals. That could or not involve animals [KMarie Tejeda] 16:03:52 Huh. So that is the part like because of the censure they might not sacrifice an animal online, you know, but they can tell you that the recipes for the rituals that you should do or not do, you know, so. [KMarie Tejeda] 16:04:08 There's things that are still done publicly, but they're older. I'm still all the day as I said that they very Online on everything. [KMarie Tejeda] 16:04:20 But at the same time there's a little part of it this still done in private. It's private, yes. [KMarie Tejeda] 16:04:29 So I think there will be things that they will never do online. You know, because it would be more misunderstanding of the practices and then it would be more. [Sara Speller] 16:04:31 Yeah. [KMarie Tejeda] 16:04:39 You know, persecution and things like that of the things they do. [Sara Speller] 16:04:42 Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah. And the complete opposite side of nothing like from the actual material conditions that would keep you from potentially buying all the way into your community. [Sara Speller] 16:04:57 I feel like I'm kind of doing this auto-ethnography with my pending dissertation topic. [Sara Speller] 16:05:02 My prospectus and things are due semester but like I quite literally fell onto the topic of like escaping capitalism through like fancy boy music because I did it. [Sara Speller] 16:05:16 And then I went online and I was like looking at a playlist and I saw all of these children or adults I don't know writing like self insert fan fiction and it's like if I'm thinking to myself what is the online community that I'm interested in it's cottage core Tik Toks, it's like black girls having their apothecaries and yes with that still realm of privacy because if [Sara Speller] 16:05:39 they are brujerias, like there, there are things that must be prepared and done. But But it's, yeah, it's really interesting. [Sara Speller] 16:05:47 I did not think about. [Sara Speller] 16:05:50 How different. The different ways in which our researches deal with material world versus completely digital community and understandings of each other. [Sara Speller] 16:06:03 But I had so much fun talking with you all. And yeah, do we have any last comments? Do we want to plug anything? [Sara Speller] 16:06:14 I don't know. Do, Amy, do you have a TikTok or an Instagram that is influencer ready? [Amy Mjema Omolo] 16:06:24 Unfortunately, I don't. I'm I just follow people and let's live vicariously through them like But one day, one day, just master my face, one day if you see it like on your feed, somebody who looks like me. [Sara Speller] 16:06:39 We'll resurrect the one-time podcast. Yeah. [E. Brooke Phipps] 16:06:39 We'll know. We will yeah, I mean I'll just also express gratitude. It was really lovely getting to work with you all and getting to know your work and it was fun to go on this little experiments of podcast creation together. [E. Brooke Phipps] 16:06:55 So thanks for everyone's time. [Amy Mjema Omolo] 16:06:56 Thank you. We had fun. [Sara Speller] This has been Who We are Online. Podcast connecting the research of the NHC 2024 Winter Podcasting Cohort number 2: Amy, Brooke, K Marie, and me, Sara. Once more we would like to thank the National Humanities Center and offer a special thanks to YouTube lofi artist Massobeats for their song Lavender which serves as both the intro and outdo music for this podcast.