I have a love-hate relationship with my media (just like everyone esle) and that can be summed up by two words. Stan Twitter. If you don’t know what that is, stan twitter is a side of Twitter that consists of different users who “stan” (or a big fan of) a certain celebrity, film, or tv show and they create a whole community based on that. I was part of stan twitter in my early teen years and it was a really fun time of my life but also the worst. I met a lot of people that I still have contact with today and it was really cool having an outlet where I could talk about my interests but some of the things that you would see on stan twitter could be really concerning. When you have a whole community based on your love for a certain person or piece of media, a lot of people can be very passionate about it (especially teenagers) and passion is a very strong feeling to have. That passion was so great to see when you saw such a large community coming together because of their love for a specific thing, but that passion also resulted in fights when there are disagreements or differing opinions. The anonymity of stan twitter made it easy for people to tweet whatever they wanted that it became known for its harassment and bullying. Being on the inside of it was interesting because I saw the love that came from these users but it also desensitised me to the negative things that they would say.
I left stan twitter because I matured enough to realize that the person I was becoming online wasn’t who I wanted to be, I didn’t want to be that person who started fights because someone didn’t like something that I did; even though I had so many good memories there and made such great friends, I started to hate being online. The happiness I felt interacting with people and talking about my interests were overshadowed by the amount of hate I would see and even the hate that I would feel. And that is why I “<3” my media, it’s a great starting point for such amazing content and connections but it can also go south so quick.
student number: 13505157
Why I Heart My Media 