Response to gifting

Many of the people wrote about how gifting saw it as a way to get something out of other people. While this can be the case gifting can also be less selfish than everyone wants it to be. In Matts response he begins with a basic definition of gifting, giving someone something without expecting anything in return.  This shows us a less selfish side of the idea of gifting in our world, but this is also a very outdated definition. Hannahs post about gifting shows us a much more relevant version of gifting. In her post she discusses how we give each other gifts that are basic acknowledgements of each other's existence on our social media accounts. This is exactly how we gift each other in today's society. I'm more likely to post a collage on Instagram of pictures of my friend with her tagged in it saying something nice about her, and of course there are going to be pictures of me in the collage with her. Hannahs view of selfish gifting is much more realistic than Matts old school definition, but I think people want to believe that we are being more like Matt when we gift than we are like Hannah.

Social media and ownership

     In today's society the idea of ownership is so blurred because of our desire to share everything with everyone. We use social media to tell everyone about our daily lives and hope that the funny things we say and do get retweeted so that the entire world can see them. Being twitter and instagram famous are things many people strive for, and if a million people follow you on snapchat then it almost seems like a million people care. When it comes to information that is available on sites like Wikipedia it blurs the lines of ownership even more. Almost anything you Google these days will lead you to a Wikipedia page, or one of Wikipedia other sites such as wiki answers. When you Google sites that Wikipedia owns it take you to a link for a Wikipedia page that shows all of them. People actively go onto sites like these to correct the information that is provided or change it completely. As people we share everything on the Internet and once it gets out there it no longer belongs to us. This is also beginning to apply to print media as well. If someone wants a book they don't actually have to buy it now they just have to bootleg it, so the last form of media that is actually still able to be owned by someone is losing that title too. 

     If you ask my roommate she will tell you that she has a much stricter view of ownership. If she tweeted it then it belongs to her and people shouldn't be allowed to just take that from her. I feel like many people would also feel this way about their own things, but once it gets out in the world it cant really be yours anymore, so this view is very outdated and cant actually be held very well anymore. The only thing I can think of in my every day life that still has its own owner that can be found is my tattoos. Tattoos have a shared ownership, while it is on my body Ill never be able to truly say they're mine. The design and work put into them belongs to the artist, Tosha Carnes. When anyone ever asks me about them they ask who did them, and I tell them Tosha Carnes, so in a way they are Tosha's. Tattoos are really the only thing that ownership can truly be had on, and even then that line is blurred because while the artist did them, they are on someone elses body.