Author: Alisa Ishiwata

Mind Mapping

The subreddit community I investigated was the College Meme subreddit (r/CollegeMemes). Personally, I was interested in learning about this online community because I enjoy engaging with humorous content and am currently a college student.

Using the mindmap, I organized my findings into a few branches stemming from the central topic. I outlined the purpose, audience, language and tone, as well as community dynamics. The purpose was fairly simple, which was to share relatable, funny, college memes to build a sense of community for college students. I assumed that the primary audience was current or former college students since having a college experience would be necessary to find the memes funny or relatable. In terms of the language and tone, generally casual and humorous discourse was used across various posts and it was the opposite of the type of discourse that would be expected in most college classes. For community dynamics, I found that users engaged with other users and their content by upvoting, commenting and creating new memes. 

Having a platform to freely organize my analyses into a mind map format helped me understand the relations between each point. When I flesh out more ideas for my analysis paper, perhaps I could add more points or reorganize it. This digital tool will be extremely useful for structuring a well organized rhetorical analysis paper and I look forward to using it for other projects as well.

https://www.reddit.com/r/CollegeMemes/

“The Comet”

“The Comet” by Du Bois is a science fiction story with underlying social commentary from an Afrofuturistic perspective. Sci-Fi stories often involve post-apocalyptic settings. In “The Comet”, the protagonist, a male African American, finds himself in a world where the majority of people in New York have been killed by a comet. He stumbles across a wealthy White woman, and for a brief period, they believe they are the only survivors on Earth. The two come from very different backgrounds and would have never interacted prior to the comet strike, but when faced with the end of the world and only each other to rely on, these preexisting racial and class barriers dissolve and they form a human connection. This fictional setting prompts the audience to imagine a world where racial and socioeconomic status no longer matter and consider the irrational nature of racial and class discrimination in the real world. “The Comet” therefore uses a post-apocalyptic setting commonly seen in Sci-Fi stories for rhetorical effect. 

Upon reading the text, I reconsidered the absurdity of all forms of discrimination. Oftentimes, when the privileged are stripped of their privileges, they become just average human beings. Consider social status. People are often born into the social class that they belong to for most of their life, and people of higher social status often inherit their status from their predecessors. However, without those predecessors, privileged individuals would not possess such privilege. The same goes for wealth. Wealthy people live prosperous lives, but without their wealth, they would just be average human beings as well. This was seen when the wealthy White woman in the story was forced to rely on the protagonist when her status and wealth no longer mattered and she was on an equal level with him.

Overall, it was very interesting learning about Afrofuturism and perceiving social issues from the perspective of African Americans.

Writing in the Digital Age

As Baron discussed, technological advancements have influenced literacy practices in recent years, especially since the widespread adoption of the computer. Technology has certainly impacted my writing practices. It provides the basis for my writing and is useful for editing and refining my work.

One application I frequently use is Google Docs. It provides a digital space to store and create my documents. I usually write my essay drafts and class notes in this application. In contrast to physical papers that can be damaged or lost over time, Google Docs is able to safely store documents for prolonged periods of time. I can retrieve my 7th grade biology assignments despite having written them years ago in a different country, something that would have been difficult to accomplish without technology. Another feature I enjoy is the synchronization between various devices. As long as I log into the same account, I can access my work from virtually any device in the world connected to the internet. In a sense, my work will always be with me and will be easily accessible. This also introduces flexibility since I can edit from my Google Docs app on my phone while laying down in bed, which would have been difficult to do using paper and pen. I also enjoy its collaborative interface that enables multiple users to edit and write simultaneously. If the writing was done on paper, it most likely be more time consuming and limit the number of editors, ultimately effecting the quality of writing. 

For similar reasons, I enjoy using the Notes app. It supports collaborative work and stores documents for extended periods of time. I still have access to the French vocabulary list I studied in middle school. Like a notepad, I can easily open the Notes app and jot down notes and ideas. I also like the simple and minimalist design of the platform. Other applications that have multiple features can be distracting when trying to focus on writing down ideas on a document, so Notes provides a simple solution to this issue. 

Lastly, I would be lying if I said I do not use AI tools for writing to some extent. When it comes to generating, summarizing and organizing ideas, applications such as Chat GPT can be very useful. They can produce excellent work in seconds, which is why many people in the work place and school have been using them. Relying on them excessively will only be detrimental to building your literacy and writing skills, but using it as a guideline and a stepping stone to continue on with a writing project can be extremely helpful. 

Building My Way to the Billboards

The Bottom-up Basic Skills Principle resonated the most with my learning experiences in various discourse communities. 

According to this principle, basic skills are not learned in isolation or out of context and are instead discovered bottom up by engaging in particular domains, or in this case, discourse communities. 

When I first enter a discourse community, I have close to no knowledge of the discourse used in that community. After some interactions/engagements with others in the discourse community, however, I am able to lay down some foundational knowledge which I use to build my skills/knowledge bottom-up. 

For example, as someone who enjoys producing digital music on GarageBand, I was initially unfamiliar with terms such as, “reverb,” “synthesizer,” and had never heard of genres such as “bedroom pop.” Then, I slowly built my music production knowledge as I began watching music-related YouTube videos and instagram reels. 

The Insider Principle, which states that the learner is an “insider” and not just a consumer, also resonated the with my learning experiences. 

For example, having grasped a better sense of how music works and is produced, I have been able to connect what I learned through my own production experiences to the concepts/keywords/discourse studied in my music class. In other words, being an “insider” to the music creation process and not just a consumer enhanced my understanding of the subject and provides me with different perspectives. 

I will definitely will not be seeing my songs on the Billboard charts anytime soon, but if anyone is interested, my music can be found on instagram @queenali_@producer.