Balanced Bragging

#LVCC406

What's your favorite Micro-blog? 

You might be reading this and thinking to yourself, "Micro-blog, what is a micro-blog?". 

I would define micro-blogging as the activity or the practice of making short, frequent posts to a form of social media. So hypothetically speaking, almost every single person has a "personal micro-blog" -it just depends what social media networks your using; Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Blogger. 

But can micro-blogging lead to excessive bragging? This idea of "Braggadocian Behavior" is suggested in Chapter 3 of the book Socialnomics. Qualman poses the point that "as people continue to micro-blog, it often becomes a competition of who's doing the coolest thing" (Qualman, pg 37).
When reading this part of the chapter, and thinking about the truth behind it, my mind couldn't help but wander to one of my favorite artists songs. In 2018 Drake released the album Scorpion. Drake's reputation to always rap about real life experiences is the reason he has become so big. 

The verse goes: 

I always hear people complain about the place that they live

That all the people here are fake and they got nothin' to give

'Cause they been starin' at somebody else's version of s***

That makes another city seem more excitin' than it is

I know a girl whose one goal was to visit Rome

Then she finally got to Rome

And all she did was post pictures for people at home

'Cause all that mattered was impressin' everybody she's known

I know another girl that's cryin' out for help

But her latest caption is "Leave me alone"

I know a girl happily married 'til she puts down her phone

I know a girl that saves pictures from places she's flown

To post later and make it look like she still on the go

Look at the way we live

Drake touches on the concept of Braggadocian Behavior and how it has become a way of life - especially for the generations that have known nothing but technology. Think about the first thing you do (or the first thing you want to do) when it just finishes raining and you see a radiant rainbow? Probably post it to your snapchat or instagram feed. How about when you managed to sneak down from your nose-bleed seats to right behind the dug out at a yankees game? If your first initial instinct is to take a picture and to post it to a social media app, you can consider yourself a victim of micro-blogging. 

If you have a hard time understanding what Braggadocian Behavior is, think about it like this...
I had previously read a book called Mediated by Thomas De Zengotita. 

Mediation, generally speaking, means “dealing with reality through something else.” (DeZengotita, 2005, pg. 8). Thomas De Zengotita writes with the purpose to try to get you to think about media, and explore the idea of how it has led to mediation; how it “shapes your world” and “way you live in it”. 

Zengotita starts off a subsection titled “In Denial” stating that most people “refuse to accept the fact that reality is becoming indistinguishable from representation”

... Think about that.