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MeToo – I MeToo’d

Month: October 2017

MeToo – I MeToo’d

Posted on by Public Linguist
The plan was, my large undergrad Anthro class would engage in a discussion  of #MeToo on this blog, kicked off by a post by student  Christine Elmo, “What Happens When We “MeToo’?   I’d do the most helpful thing – get out of their way.
Over 1.7 milliontweets including the hashtag “#MeToo,” with 85 countries changed my plans. 
The #MeToo posts have reloaded the images and pain of my own assaults and harassments, shame and bearing it.  I’ve been disgusted and devastated that sick, predatory behavior is always here with us. I feel for women and cry that we are so strong and suffer so very much.
As for the ubiquitous social commentary  – some of the criticism and cautions of women resisting the broad brush of #MeToo.
I do know not all men are sexual predators. As Heather Wilhelm in the Chicago Tribune,wrote, :
 “Every man you know has likely made a woman feel unsafe.” This is bonkers. It is nonsense. It’s quite simply untrue, and it’s also unjust.”
I get it. 

I do know that for some women #MeToo can smack of  “confessional journalism” associated more with women than men. I’m not sure I agree with Journalist Kate Maltby  when she says that the rise in confessional first-person writing around the world “is often a low-status pathway that rarely leads to a high-profile career.”
And I  do know the “filter bubble” I live in is not necessarily yours or my neighbor’s. 
And I don’t know why the same urgent attention is not paid to the Rohingyan Muslims in Myamar or Somalia’s innocents bombed by us.
But that’s not what I want to talk about here. 
Instead I want to think aloud about ourselves online.  The Internet of Us as Michael Patrick Lynch refers to it.
I Metoo’d this past week
I #MeToo’d on the Milano thread.
Click! I signed a petition to demand protection of Medicare.  I Me Too’d.
I responded to an ACLU tweet asking me to call the Office of Refugee Resettlement to demand the release of ten year old Rosa Maria.  I do call.  I retweet.  I MeToo.
Me Too – I help save a dog from a hideous death.
Me Too. My speech act of the week.  I promise to be there. 
I’ve been thinking about something I learned, probably in high school. Maybe it was gym class or  health and safety class.  I remember learning that if you’re out in public and something awful happens to you – you’re mugged and need help – or you come upon a car accident and you’ve rushed in to help an injured person – don’t just yell “HELP”.  Rather pick someone in the crowd – “You with the blue jacket” call the police!”  Or “You with the orange hat, get something to cover this woman!”
Psychologists refer to this as the “bystander” effect.
As good as we humans can be a crowd discourages us to act. Think 1964 and Kitty Genovese here. 
I believe social media is teaching us over and over again that we each  do have great individual potential and power to cast off the passive bystander role and  become, what psychologist Ervin Staub calls the active bystander. Acting to create a better world.
Look, I am perpetually and palpably glad I am not living in the random and rough justice of the Middle Ages and so many past times. And I do believe in the trajectory we’re on towards what Pinker writes about – our  “Better Angels” 
With all its fits and starts and pseudo community building, I believe we are becoming more pro-social and it’s happening in great measure because we are online.
I feel empowered and hopeful when I think of what the online world is offering up to us –  vast archive of photos, statements and writing –  evidence, proof, chits to argue and trade with. Wesley Morris, in the NYT this weekend,  says that the standing up and paying witness  – holding the “receipts” is what is happening in social media and pop culture.
“When judicial and legislative avenues seem stalled or faulty, receipts work as currency in the people’s court.”
Whether it’s women finally calling out predators like Harvey Weinstein with #MeToo, or anti-Trumpers posting endless photos of Ivanka Trump and husband Jared post with Weinstein, the permanent archive of digital ephemera is allowing us to show up in powerful new ways. We hold receipts and we’re trading in them.  



I believe that social media has presented us with the best and worst  – immersing us simultaneously in critical factual information and almost drowning us in deflection and false facts. Diverting our attention but also honing us in lazer–like on things that must be outed. 
The social norm is changing.  We’re in and for the long haul. 
I’m well into my 60s now.  Like so many others baptized in protest during the Vietnam War, I learned early how gut wrenching the act of moral protest in the face of powerful deniers can be. Civil Rights, Women’s Reproductive Rights, Take Back the Night.  Fast forward to Europe closing its doors to Syrian Refugees, the daily Rohingya Muslim genocide in Myanmar, the ongoing world war we’re waging in Afghanistan and elsewhere since 911.    
Surely I know there is still no lack of passivity in the face of world depravity
But for all its pitfalls, social media is stretching our capacity for empathy.  We’re no longer empathetic only to our closest friends and family.
Social media and our online spaces allow us, urge us to have empathy for this person, this woman, this village family, this poor dog.
My students at the public city college where I teach are the future.  They are aware. Empathetic. Connected.  Committed.  They’ve got the receipts and their using them. 
I am so very hopeful. 

What happens when we ‘Me too’?

Posted on by Public Linguist
This Blog Written by
Christine Elmo


I am writing now to explore my thoughts about the cultural consequences brought on by the timing of ‘Me too’ as an event, which unfolded around the same time as the truck bombings killing 300+  people in Somalia. In writing this I am not looking to diminish the destructive horror of sexual harassment and sexual assault. Without becoming too personal, I have experienced my own share of, how shall I say, negative infliction on my body and mind so much so that I have lost friends in the process of keeping these experiences secrets. This is because sometimes the memories of these experiences continue to isolate me.

But, this blog post is not about me. 
I only offer something of myself here now in hopes to show that in offering criticism about ‘Me too’, it is not in effort to reduce the impact of sexual harassment and sexual assault. What I am questioning, however, is, although the stories of Harvey Weinstein are hot on the press right now, and consequently his grotesque behavior seems to be the catalyst of people saying “Me too”, why make a thing of sexual harassment and sexual assault these days when this behavior has been going on since the beginning of civilization?

To be direct: I am suspicious of the timing of ‘Me too’.

Before pointing to the dual nature of ‘Me too’, it feels important to me to give some sort of history, a framework, for understanding what ‘Me too’ is.
On October 18th I read on Ebony and the Huffington Post that the inception of the ‘Me too’ movement began years ago by Tarana Burke, the founder of Just Be Inc. This movement did not begin as a hashtag. Burke says: “It wasn’t built to be a viral campaign or a hashtag that is here today and forgotten tomorrow. It was a catchphrase to be used from survivor to survivor to let folks know that they were not alone and that a movement for radical healing was happening and possible.” 


The ‘Me too’ tweeted by actress and activist Alyssa Milano  at 1:45 p.m. on Sunday October 15th, 2017, was not original unto itself. More accurately, ‘Me too’ is a grassroots campaign that has existed for nearly a decade. Although the use of this catchy phrase going viral is “new news”, its use of it as a way of creating conversation between those with similar experiences is not.


‘Me too’, also seen as #MeToo,  went viral around the time news began to break about the double truck bombing, which exploded in Somalia (less than 24 hours before Milano’s tweet). The New York Times reports that 270, possibly more, people died as a result of that attack. Around the time my Facebook and Instagram newsfeed became flooded with ‘Me too’status updates, no one was posting about Somalia, except one anonymous person I follow on Instagram, which made me consider the timing of ‘Me too’. “We” all seemed to be too caught up in the drama of our own accounts of being victims of “our” culture’s vices drawn out by the constructs of patriarchy. Meanwhile, the news media coverage about Somalia was unobtrusive, and its presence in the realm of social media appeared nonexistent.

The timing of the wave of ‘Me too’ makes me feel like “we” are behaving the way Washington behaves. This sort of behavior appears dual in nature. Something happens that grabs people’s attention, distracting them from what is going on, while in the background, something else is happening.

Take the Comey trials as an example. Remember them? It was midday, the time of prime-time TV.  America’s attention was acutely focused in on Comey’s trials, which amounted to nothing much. Sometime after the public trials, the general public learned that while our attention was focused there, in the background, shielded from the public’s attention—because the public’s attention was engrossed in prime-time TV—Mitch McConnell had a go at picking away at the healthcare bill. And months later, where exactly are the Comey trials? I am not sure, but I do know that they are well out of the spotlight—leaving plenty of room for the headlines brought on by ‘Me too’.

I have to catch myself here now because someone else will. 

Yes…….I just equated “our” use of ‘Me too’ to frivolous TV. In saying that, again, I am not dismissing the significance of being able to come out about the ways in which some of us have been harmed. I have blatantly come out in this article has someone who has gone through these kinds of experiences. But something is happening here. Not only is our behavior distracting from other events happening in the world but also in fashioning our sexual harassment and sexual assault into a compact hashtag for the purpose of advertising on social media, “we” are turning our personal experiences into commodities, something to be packaged and exploited further.

Since when did my or anyone else’s experience of sexual harassment and sexual assault become a commodity? Something to monetize in the Western World? And although there is a collective of autonomous beings who have gone through these experience, in labeling them all under a singular hashtag, how does this not homogenize the very personal nature of each one of them under the somewhat arbitrary category of ‘Me too’?



For me the behavior of ‘Me too’ happening alongside the truck bombings in Somalia seems systemic of Washington. Most obviously, Trump tweets something outrageous, racist, sexist, classist, narcissistic, all of the above plus more. Then, the crowd (us, the people and perhaps pawns of Washington’s game) get fired up about it. Our attention is reeled towards it. In the meantime, Washington is in the background shredding order to pieces and making deals without our knowing. Trump’s show simmers down because either our devotion to his behavior extinguishes itself as our fatigue reduces our exhaustion to ashes, or, Trump sets off another twitter-trigger, redirecting our attention. The negotiations in Washington continue.

It is too easy to point a finger and say Donald J. Trump is solely responsible for us adapting this kind of behavior where we impulsively spew stuff all over the Internet for strangers to read, and consequently, judge about ourselves. Blaming him alone though would give him too much credit for aspects of intellect he seems to lack. Plus, although I am offering a critique of ‘Me too’ here, now, it would be hypocritical for me not to say that I am so often on social media as an active user of the sites, posting, ‘liking’, and commenting on what people post. I mean, I too made my own ‘Me too’ post on both my Instagram and Facebook accounts. I too made an effort to divert my social media audience, and more than that, myself from the destruction of Somalia in order to present myself as a victim of what happens when people abuse the power dynamics drawn out by capitalism. And I too, after contemplating all of this, continue to use my social media accounts. So what gives?

I will close this post in leaving a couple of questions for us to consider.

A question more linguistic in character: 
     How was “our” use of ‘Me too’ this month influenced by what    we as an American society are focusing our attention on these days?

 Is there a way to redirect our attention, or perhaps settle it in one place for longer than the effect of a tweet?

And then a question perhaps more psychological in nature: what exactly is going on? 
People are bombed and “we”, those of us who were not killed, start shouting that “we” are victims of our own culture’s vices. 

Meanwhile, those who have died remained silenced both because they are dead and because any voice we could be giving them and their situation is occupied with our personal dramas. 

Why this dichotomy? Why did some of us feel a need to say “Me too” instead of saying, “What’s going on in Somalia and where do our responsibilities lay in relationship to it?”





What’s Media? Whose Media?

Posted on by Public Linguist
This Blog Post Written by
 Samia Khan 

One day, as I was scrolling through my Facebook feed, my usual focus of global predicaments was obliterated by something more local. My old friend from elementary school posted a status supporting YouTube sensation, PewDiePie. I didn’t know much about PewDiePie besides that he had the most YouTube followers from any YouTuber known. He was a gamer and now at that moment, his usage of the hard “N”- word. My old friend argued that PewDiePie had simply made a mistake, and that PewDiePie’s mention of the word held no bad connotation. As I defended my POV, his friend called me a “snowflake”, reflecting the potent influence PewDiePie had on him. Thus, I decided to investigate this influencer further to understand if I was simply being too sensitive or not.

Primarily, PewDiePie’s videos all captured his youthful nature, which resonates with the younger audience. He was prone to make impulsive, loud, “comical” remarks to draw in his audience. This was coupled effectively with his high production, colorful graphics.


I immediately realized that he appeals to a certain group of people. He was marketing himself to the younger generation (the receivers), as a sender, with his ability to incorporate, known Internet humor consistent with the younger generation – for example, use of profanity.

This youthful, enthusiastic nature combines with what he’s really popular for – his gaming videos. Although he doesn’t use a code difficult to understand to older viewers, his body language and spoken language call out to mostly younger viewers & he can easily influence them.

How about my old friend though who was the same age as me? I did some further research and discovered that PewDiePie was known for using tactless ideas to humor his audience way before this recent usage of the “N” word. He utilized both visual representation and corrosive oral messages to produce an anti-Semitic message.

Even though he apologized, how did his huge platform + this language influence younger viewers who already held certain ideals like people being “snowflakes” for not being okay with the hard N word and anti-Semitic jokes within their filter bubble. He was only confirming what they believed. Many of his younger viewers and gamers immediately were using words they didn’t even understand in the comment section, because they first saw it fetishized on internet memes and now with PewDiePie.

Trails of comments, minimizing the significance of the word infused the comment section.

“Next time you need to say ‘Nucking Figger”, “NI**A MANI**A”, “it’s just another word”…

With his power, not only has he proved to satisfy the SMR component of media, the filter/confirmation bubble, but he was also molding/pushing social norms & in response to that, perhaps inciting Internet mobsfurther.
PewDiePie’s platform was clearly, immensely strong – it nurtured multiple factors of MEDIA (a critical component of technology). However, in turn, he markets products through the arguments through his non-civil methods. These methods are applied to target marketing; a group of people with similar mindsets are collected in one domain as supporters to become consumers.
We see this hierarchy and power held by strong influential people on media, not only by PewDiePie, but by Trump, the Kardashians, etc.  PewDiePie’s language reflects who he is and who his supporters are. More importantly, his language manipulates how is viewers systematically conceptualize and perceive words and the world. Likewise, Trump’s use of words like rocket man took a lively form, and gave politics new dimensions – one that wasn’t so professional.

What happens when these higher, powerful platforms clash? In an article published by Swinburne Universityof Technology, the authors examined this same question, concluding that “in today’s landscape, [PewDiePie] is the media, and he will continue accordingly”.
They believed that PewDiePie experienced minor to no backlash, because he’s conquered a portion of media that ensures that other platforms can’t denounce his position in media as effectively as they’d desire to do so.
For example, when PewDiePie tried to dismiss his use of anti-Semitic imaging and wording, The Wall Street broke ties with him. PewDiePie responded by elucidating that Wall Street gave more power to the matter by employing their powerin the situation, but they failed.
“It was an attack by the media to try and discredit me, to try and decrease my influence, and my economic worth” -PewDiePie
I found it interesting that Swinburne questioned, “Who, exactly, is “the media” here, though? The Wall Street Journal, with a readership of more than 20 million, or the man with an online audience twice that size?” and “who is the media?”
PewDiePie’s wide fame stems from his ability to use many ingrained parts of media to push himself and his products. He creates a cyclical movement where his persona uses social norms, filter bubbles + conformation bias, Internet mobs, language, etc to push his fame further. In turn, these components of media that he uses show up as byproducts from his viewers once again, which shows how strong of an internet figure he is. Thus, I’d answer Swinburne’s question with, PewDiePie is lodged in this systematic format of media in order to keep this rotation and growth of media in technology flowing.
But Swinburne also stated “the fact that media corporations can only sanction PewDiePie via the withdrawal of their partnerships but can’t exclude him entirely is one indication that we’re dealing with a different beast.” I then didn’t know how to define this immense power PewDiePie held.
Is PewDiePie then a composer of media or another cooperator of it?
What is your chyme in the matter of my old friend and younger viewers defending PewDiePie?
Do you agree with my input of a cyclical process handled by PewDiePie’s fame?
Does it frighten you as much as it frightens me?
Citations:
·       Winkler, Rolfe, et al. “Disney Severs Ties With YouTube Star PewDiePie After Anti-Semitic Posts.” The Wall Street Journal, Dow Jones & Company, 14 Feb. 2017, www.wsj.com/articles/disney-severs-ties-with-youtube-star-pewdiepie-after-anti-semitic-posts-1487034533
·       Golding, Dan. “YouTube Star PewDiePie Is against ‘the Media’, but He’s a Part of It Too.” PewDiepie against ‘the Media’, but He’s Part of It | Swinburne News, The Conversation, 24 Feb. 2017, www.swinburne.edu.au/news/latest-news/2017/02/youtube-star-pewdiepie-is-against-the-media-but-hes-a-part-of-it-too.php
·     Here’s the link to PewDiePie’s apology if you want to see the response of his supporters yourself! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLdxuaxaQwc

Did We Talk Neanderthals to Death?

Posted on by Public Linguist
This blog post written by 
Emily Lau, Hunter College
Before reading this post, it is imperative to understand that there are many hypotheses regarding the origins, reasoning, and pathways that language has taken to emerge. The reason behind this ambiguity is because spoken word is ephemeral – once spoken, it vanishes in the air. Consequently, there is little hard evidence that provides logical support for one hypothesis.


I was interested in writing about the origin of language because of this quote from The 10,000 Year Explosion, by Gregory Cochran and Henry Harpending: 






“Probably the most popular and attractive hypothesis is that modern humans had developed advanced language capabilities and therefore were able to talk the Neanderthals to death.” 
The working idea is that, since Homo sapiens could communicate effectively, they displaced Neanderthals and outcompeted them for resources. I believe this argument is solid; speech production and language in H. sapiens would give them an evolutionary advantage, since they could share information about plants and food items, relay where abundant foods or fruit bearing trees are, or convey warnings. (I highly recommend this biological anthropology book, especially if you are interested in the controversy of whether humans are still evolving).
The advancement in genomics methodologies (extracting, sequencing, and analyzing DNA and mapping genes) has revealed that Neanderthals and modernhumans share 99.5% of their genome. Despite this similarity, Neanderthals are phenotypically different from modern humans, which essentially means that their features are not the same as modern-day humans. Although we are genetically similar to Neanderthals, this empirical evidence does not show that Neanderthals were capable of producing modern human speech. 

In fact, a hyoid bone from a Neanderthal was found in Kebara, Israel and scientists initially used this to argue that Neanderthals must have had similar speech capabilities as humans. However, this was disproven because there is no clear correlation of the morphology of the hyoid to speech capability. 
Additionally, we cannot compare our language syntax to any other species. It has been argued that organisms which contain language syntax most like our own are songbirds and parrots. In addition to the ability to imitate, it has been shown that humans and these birds have the same organization for auditory-vocal behavior. Despite these biological and linguistic studies, it is important to recognize that many hypotheses regarding the language capabilities of organisms are highly controversial.  
For decades, linguists, psychologists, biologists, and anthropologists have been working towards resolving these problems. Linguists like Chomsky and his colleagues argue that language developed via the Strong Minimalist Thesis, which essentially argues that all the “machinery” for language production and auditory listening was originally present in the predecessors of modern humans. This hypothesis bridgesor merges these two machineries so that modern humans could produce and understand language.
Of course, this is all under the assumption that language has originated recently (around 100,000 years ago). In 2014, Chomsky and his colleagues authored a paper titled “How Could Language Have Evolved?” Here, they speak about how H. sapiens originated in an archaic society – there was no technology, cities, and arguably, culture. They use this fact (that the rise of cities, technologies, and culture occurred rapidly) to show that language must have been a recent acquisition. (It is interesting to note that there is an evolutionary trade off – the ability to produce language comes with a cost. The optimal positioning of the larynx for speech production caused the inability to breathe and swallow at the same time, which meant that H. sapiens could easily choke to death). In addition to the argument that language has originated recently, Chomsky and his colleagues argue that language has not evolved – this raises many critiques of his work.


In my opinion, I do not agree fully with Chomsky.
I believe that language is constantly evolving, as observed with the usage of emojis ( see Yumna Ahmed Qazi post )  and the emergence of social media platforms. 
However, I do like the Strong Minimalist Hypothesis, since it would explain why many organisms have similar auditory and speech capabilities but not the ability to produce language syntax like that of humans. 

So, do you agree/disagree with Chomsky’s hypothesis that language is non-evolving and unique to humans (and not their predecessors)?

What do you think about the evolutionary tradeoffs in regards to speech production? Can you think of other tradeoffs that have come along with being able to speak?

Did we really talk the Neanderthals to death? 


Do You Speak Emoji?

Posted on by Public Linguist

Written by Yumna Ahmed Qazi
Hunter College


A few days ago, I texted my brother and asked him to buy some dinner for me before he came back home. He responded with a thumbs up emoji  and I replied back with a smiley face and a heart emoji  .
      
Albeit a bit late, as emojis have been around for years now, that moment was when I realized for myself that emojis, along with emoticons and stickers, are a language. They allow us to communicate without saying anything and saves us the effort of actually spelling out any thoughts or opinions. 

If a picture can say a thousand words, an emoji can more or so do the same. For lazy millennials like us, this idea sounds perfect. These little images are everywhere – in our phones, social media and apps. Emojis have grabbed our tech savvy generation’s attention with their cuteness and their ability to boost communication. 

After my revelation, I decided to do some research for myself and found a relevant article. The fact that Oxford Dictionary’s word of the year for 2015 was the face with tears of joy emoji baffled me. It made me think: 
Are emojis on the same level as other non-verbal languages like sign language? Does emoji usage depend on factors like age and gender? What do linguists think about the concept of emojis? 

It also occurred to me that emojis are nothing new – an instance where we communicated with images is when people used hieroglyphics during the ancient Mesopotamia era. But does this mean we’re going backward instead of moving forward? Are we getting dumber because we use less spelling and grammar? I personally don’t think so. 

We’re an impatient generation who feel the need to convey everything immediately. Sending an emoji can communicate things that textspeak can’t, such as gesture, body language and emotions. It’s just the way we do things. It’s not like I would suddenly start drawing pictures in my essay that I have to write for my English class. 

So, are emojis are just a stepping stone for better digital communication – a way to make them capture and communicate something or our emotional voice?

Or by relying on them so much, are we losing our abilities to convey emotion through words, metaphors, imagery?  Will our prose writing ultimately suffer?  
What do you think?  

If you’re interested in looking into the linguistics of this more you might check out a new book (Vyvyan Evans) about emoji – 

What Is Your Data Worth?

Posted on by Public Linguist

Blog Post Written By
Rebecca Vicente, 
Baruch College

I first learned of MoviePass after my roommate recommended I purchase a monthly subscription to try it out. She started out by telling me how the subscription allows for someone to see as many movies in theaters as they wanted for the one-month fee. 

The fee used to be $50, making the pass only worth the cost if someone was planning on seeing at least 4 movies that month (figuring that an average movie ticket is $15). This seemed like a very reasonable offer, as someone could easily see a movie every weekend during a month. 

Then, she told me they recently cut the price to $10 a month, and with that she piqued my interest. At a cost of $10, all someone has to do is see one movie to make their investment back. It doesn’t seem like a profitable system, so why, and more importantly how, would a company be able to stay in business with such little obvious return?

It was soon after I started reading more into the pass that I found the reason why this ‘too good to be true’ service could afford to be too good to be true. On August 15th 2017, Helios and Matheson Analytics Inc. announced that it would be acquiring a majority stake in MoviePass Inc., and for those who don’t know Helios and Matheson Analytics Inc. is a data company that works with information services and consumer behavior patterns. Meaning that this subscription service is able to be as cheap as it is because a big data company is using and possibly selling consumer data on the back-end.

 This type of information can be used for things such as advertising and marketing to target consumers to get them to buy more products. 

We have all seen those advertisements that seem to cater to our recent searches. The ability to send information into the filter bubbles of those who are most likely to buy the product is a popular and desired trend among advertisers. In turn, data has become just like any other commodity, which can be theoretically packaged and sold. MoviePass is a prime example. 

Within their Private Policy, MoviePass states the following:

We keep track of your interactions with us and collect information related to your use of our service, including but not limited to your online activity, title selections and ratings, payment history and correspondence as well as Internet protocol addresses, device types, operating system and related activity. We use this information for such purposes as providing recommendations on movies we think will be enjoyable, personalizing the service to better reflect particular interests, helping us quickly and efficiently respond to inquiries and requests and otherwise enhancing or administering our service offering for our customers. We also provide analysis of our Users in the aggregate to prospective partners, advertisers and other third parties. We may also disclose and otherwise use, on an anonymous basis, movie ratings, consumption habits, commentary, reviews and other non-personal information about customers.

The gap between the low cost of the service to consumers, and the apparent high cost the company is paying theaters, is bridged by the company’s ability to now use the data collected from consumers in a profitable way. Although it is not explicitly stated what Helios and Matheson Analytics Inc. intends to do with MoviePass, or how much involvement they really have, one must assume that in order to make this business model work, consumer data must be highly profitable. 

I brought this information back to my roommate because I wanted to know what her thoughts were on her data being collected. She told me that it didn’t faze her one way or the other. At the end of the day, she was able to see the movies she enjoyed and have the experiences she wanted, for a rate she can afford. Plus, as she said, she is not doing anything productive with her data, so it doesn’t matter to her whether someone else wants to use it, as long as she gets what she wants from the deal. 

Data is a very abstract concept for most people, and quite worthless to ourselves. I am not the one making a profit off of my own data. I wouldn’t even know what value my data would have, or to who. Our data is being collected constantly from various sources, from our social media to our subscriptions. MoviePass made me ponder what the cost of our data is, and what we are willing to trade our data for. My roommate on one hand, is willing giving away her data in order to feed her love of watching movies. On the other hand, I’m less apt to do this because I don’t watch that many movies. However, after thinking a bit more on this topic, I’ve decided that I would gladly give away my data to any subscription service that allows me to eat at a different restaurant every night of the month for the low rate of $10 a month. For my roommate, the cost of her data is monthly movies, for me it would be food. What is your data worth to you?

References, for more information:

https://www.moviepass.com/content/privacy
http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170815005561/en/Helios-Matheson-Analytics-Acquire-Majority-Stake-MoviePass™
https://www.theverge.com/2017/8/15/16150628/moviepass-pricing-subscription-fee-theaters
http://www.businessinsider.com/moviepass-faq-2017-8

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