Week 13 Blog

In class, we really focused on uptakes, and counter uptakes, so I am going to stick with the theme. In the reading, uptakes were pretty limited to activism (what a concept! That is literally our focal point in this class), but it made it easier for me to decipher what uptakes are by relating it to myself, and things that are strictly just tied to my life. For example, an uptake, plainly put, is how someone reacts to something and how that something circulates through that given community, or even surrounding communities. So for my friend group, there will be saying that goes around. This saying is inspired by nothing more than an inside joke. When a piece of the friend group introduces this saying, we either think it's funny/entertaining, and then it becomes a piece of our own vocabulary, then maybe proceeding to circulate into other groups we are around. Maybe a difficult example to follow, but examples like that helped me really grasp the idea. By the time we were talking about trends in class, I could really comprehend the idea of uptakes, and relate the idea back to past trends. Sticky Uptakes, on the other hand, would be like remixing the saying at hand within our friend group. The reading talks about selfies, and how it was such a feminized genre - that was the uptake. The sticky uptake was calling some actions in '#ChallengeAccepted' trend, "images," "portraits," etc. Counteruptakes somewhat go without being said. They are simply the uptakes that do not interact with the trend in a positive way, yet the trend still circulates throughout genders because of their participation.