Life In The Hall Of Mirror By Andrew Lam Summary

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For most everybody in the world, people tend to have two identities: one in reality and one online. Andrew Lam wrote an essay, called “I Tweet, Therefore I am: Life in the Hall of Mirrors”, in which he described how people are posting videos or statuses which is making social media take a turn. Instead of social media being a place to share very little information, people are now tending to post weird updates. Lam was describing an example where a boy that was going to surgery asked to have his picture taken because his arm got taken off by an alligator. Another example is when Bill Nye was speaking and collapsed from exhaustion. Most of the crowd took their phones out and recorded videos instead of helping Bill Nye out (540-541). With …show more content…

With anyone being able to post anything they want, there is access to multiple videos or pictures of harsh content. People see these videos all the time, and as a result, it reduces their empathy towards the victims in the videos. The story of Bill Nye collapsing is a good example of how people have reduced empathy. Once Bill Nye collapsed, not many people jumped out of their seats to help. Instead, many people whipped out their phones and started recording the events unfolding. The reduced empathy can be linked to a “rewiring” in the brain. Most people active on social media have an urge to rather post updates or videos of events unfolding in front of them. The urge comes from the competition to be the most popular online. The previous examples of Bill Nye and the boy in surgery shows peoples urge to post online. The events happening are unique and news worthy, so the people’s rewired brains urged them to record and take pictures rather than be smart and help out or go to …show more content…

One identity is the person an individual is online, and the second identity is the personality an individual is in real life. Most online personalities are more open and talkative. Online, people are not afraid to say what is on their mind. What they share is open to the world, but is behind a screen and typed up, so there is no face-to-face conversation or debate going on. Not having anyone to say what is on the individual’s mind in person lets down the guard of what others think of the specific

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