Mars-start

To those operating outside of Instagram culture, a “finsta” can sound like a nonsense word. Indeed, it is only a recently coined portmanteau of the words “fake” and “Insta,” and its purpose lies in posting pictures that wouldn’t normally be posted on one’s real Instagram (a.k.a. a “rinsta”). Finstas are typically private accounts rather than public, and followers are limited to the user’s closest friends. There are many reasons why a finsta might be created in addition to someone’s real Instagram, such as for posting content deemed too vulgar for their main account, like risque photos, drug use, and underage drinking (Wilcox)...

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WHAT MY BLONDE WOOZEN MEANT (AND MEANS) TO ME

In Glitch Feminism, Legacy Russell makes the compelling argument that the liberating exploration of her identity online helped her wrestle with what it meant to exist as a Black, female-identifying, queer person offline. The cyberworld helped her discover herself in ways not possible AFK where marginalized bodies like her own were being “systematically erased, edited out, ignored” (13). She uses this digital term “edited out” when describing her experience IRL, to demonstrate how lingo learned from frequent Internet usage can bleed out into her everyday life, and to possibly imply that more than just the terminology might seep out too. In fact, the phrase shows an imaginative pasting of her digital character onto herself in the real world, in that she came to the jarring realization of existing as essentially the human version of what is an easily-deletable avatar online...

E-VICTION: DEPLATFORMING AND ITS EFFECTS ON LONELINESS

Ana Valens’ article, “‘E-Viction’ sex work event sheds light on ‘digital gentrification’ by self-destructing when it’s over,” reports on a unique virtual event that seeked to address the pressing issue of sex workers’ culling from online platforms, of “trading [their] hard work for civilians” while forcing them to “find a new platform.” Similarly, in “A Feature, Not a Bug,'' Mar Hicks states that “technological systems tend to require the domination of many for the profit of a few." In the case of online adult creators, they have been subjugated, used, and discarded while the results of their work line the pockets of the platform creators and managers...