GET OFF THE PAGE
This week we read a couple chapters from Verified by Mark Caulfield and Sam Wineburg. The essence of chapters 4 and 5 is that you need to get off of the page that you are on, and you need to browse results carefully while you look for a variety of experts who can give you a solid opinion. There is more to it than that. There is also a whole discussion on trust compression and info-cynicism. Trump compression happens when you start feeling like nothing can be trusted. It can feel overwhelming at times when you decide to start looking into a topic you know nothing about. However, it is important to remember that the Truth is out there. If the site you are on isn’t giving it to you, don’t give up… get off the page and find another site.
Trust compression and info cynicism is something I have experienced in my own life to an extreme degree. There is one specific statement that really struck a nerve with me, “When trust compression reaches this level, where it seems like everybody’s got an agenda and no one can be trusted…” (Caulfield and Wineburg 108). This hit me because two years ago I started going down rabbit holes that had to do with conspiracy theories. I did not just see words, but videos that made me question reality. I looked at our news, our societal structures, and culture and what I saw was a system that was NOT what it represented itself to be. I will not go into it here fully because I do not want to stir controversy, however I did lose trust in our news sources and our government. I started doubting, and I continue to doubt, most things that I see regarding news, government, or “elites”. I have experienced that feeling of everybody having an agenda and not being able to trust anyone. I enjoyed seeing what that is be put into words, and I am glad this book is helping me break down what I see and understand it.
Crafting Our Websites
Onto the websites we worked on this week. We watched a CSS tutorial by Carrie Dils that I GREATLY enjoyed. The main purpose of CSS is to style your HTML code, and this tutorial went over maaany of the CSS elements. The most useful of these that I need to remember for the future is div and classes, everything seems to circle around these identifiers.
I realized that in Virtual Studio Code it does that autocorrect thing that Minecraft does when you type in a command and can press tab to finish what you’re typing automatically. Yeah, y’all know what I’m talking about. Anyways, I started changing my background and my text colors and I saw a lot of color options. The amount of control you have over your own website is astonishing. After consuming content for my entire life, I am looking forward to creating content and making it look how I want it to look. I have complete control over what I say, how the website looks, and the message that you get from my site. Looking back at the info-cynicism conversation, I know that I want to help others who feel that way. Providing a website that gives the facts without an agenda, rather, providing multiple views so you can decide for yourself. The Markdown was barebone and not very exciting. However, color sparks a fire that makes me excited to create a website. There is more possibility, more control, more power… What are the possibilities for designs and shapes? What else can I do to make it unique and pop? I have seen some crazy websites before, so I am curious how far we can go in a pretty shallow introduction of these complex topics.
Comments
2 responses to “Week 5 – Crafting Websites and Verified (or “GET OFF THE PAGE”)”
I really liked your point on trust compression. It was so interesting to see how that was used in your life. I too had an experience similar with the Vanderbilt Hospital after one of my family members was denied surgery multiple times. What really separates mine from yours is how you mentioned the use of videos, articles and then on top of that headlines. Those are all vital pieces that companies have to combat with in order to win over the viewer and not cause a collision like you suffered resulting in trust compression. I think you provided a great example in that way on how it can manifest and cause a shutdown and opinionate yourself on a specific group/idea.
I really resonate with your conspiracy rabbit hole. It’s easy to fall down something like that and have it completely encompass every free thought. It can also be entirely discouraging when seeing the 24-hour news cycle. That being said, I had to break free from that pipeline because it felt like I was drowning in distrust and paranoia. Every new story felt like another ten thousand pound weight on my shoulders. I don’t think distrust of those in power is bad or unnatural, I just think that there’s little I can really do, so allowing anxiety to creep in at all times had to be dispelled.