Blog Post #4

Essena disconnected herself from the pressures of peer and technology by deleting her account (which were subjected to said pressures). Her website seems to be offline currently, which can speak to her not making her way back to social media despite the many efforts her fans have made. She knows that when she makes her way back to social media it will be a decision she made personally, and not to appease peers. Although one may argue that she is still driven by a continuous pressure to prove to her former fans and the rest of society that she is no longer the person she made them think she was.

She exposed her competition thus cutting ties with former alliances or fellow YouTube stars, as part of an attempt to relinquish her power. The only downside to this action is that stardom usually follows one around even if they delete a social media profile, and the entire situation is most likely bringing her more attention if anything. Its not as if she quietly stepped away from social media, but it is if she wanted everyone to know she was leaving. Once Essena make her way back onto the Internet, those same core followers were able to find her and follow her again just through a different platform. Her reasoning for being back on the Internet was not for an attempt to expand her brand or gain back social power, but it was merely an attempt to re-portray herself online identity as she would have liked it to be, regardless of what the social media was going to think.

I believe that everything she does from this point onwards will now be subjected to platform tactics like the popularity principle and ranking mechanism, but what makes it different is that her purpose for creating content is not for personal gain or power. Social media is a popularity contest, regardless of what your intent may be. Essena’s intent on producing social media content is no longer influenced by those previous values, hierarchy, or competition, which is the true take away and is what separates herself from Van Djick’s ideology of culture of connectivity.