“I opt-in for full feedback.

Consuming The Wellington Student Lifestyle

Nathaniel D. Pernecita

School of English, Film, Theatre, Media Studies, and Art History, Victoria University

of Wellington

MDIA206: Digital Media Cultures

Dr Kathleen Kuehn

June 4, 2021

2390 words
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Introduction

As I obsess over posts of Wellington university students venting out their workload

struggles and clubbing memories, I find myself asking what student culture these

slices of life reveal. Case in point: The usual student who procrastinates, drinks, and

goes out religiously. For a geeky goody two shoes holed up at home obsessively

studying, I may not discover belonging with such a way of life. Thus, I recognise the

lifestyle less as a reality I could live out and more like a stream of content I like and

comment on. Unravelling this sentiment entails journaling my introspections on

confessions from the VuW: Meaningful Confessions Facebook page, where students

can anonymously submit their yarns and opinions living the typical Victoria University

of Wellington life. By drawing on theories informing the scholarship on digital cultures

like digital intimacy, my autoethnography can explore the subjectivity behind my

interactions with the page’s student representations.

My journaling involves logging a fieldnote entry corresponding to a confession from

the page, reflecting on the degree to which I identify with its contents. By doing so, I

explore my relationship towards the page’s common topics. I also post brain dumps

framing how I perceive the page’s norms and values with theoretical frameworks,

which provide the structure to impart my findings and analysis. From there, I process

these fieldnotes and dumps by assigning a word or phrase to passages from them

that convey prominent, recurring messages. This inductive coding lets me identify

and thoroughly grasp what is emerging from the data. Next, I then group the codes

generated from those messages into suitable categories because they share similar

characteristics or express broader ideas. To develop my themes and findings, I

articulate how the different groups relate to one another to interpret how my personal

insights form an overarching theory.

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Findings

Figure 1 An anonymous student is opening up about their workload problems.

Throughout the posts from VuW: Meaningful Confessions like Figure 1, I observed a

prevailing tone of frustration with studying. Thanks to the Facebook page’s incognito

affordances, it perpetuates the assumptions around the Victoria University of

Wellington experience. Anonymity establishes the page’s platform vernacular, the

prevalent social norms emerging “from the ongoing interactions between platforms

and users” (Gibbs et al., 2015, p. 257). The stories students profess are not visibly

tied to them but instead to the page. Hence, they feel freer to voice their honest

opinions and struggles to manage their assignment workload since they can

circumvent the repercussions of their rants on their real lives. To me, this

anonymous intimacy assumes irresponsibility and lacking self-motivation to study as

“the culture most students internalise by default” (see Appendix A). Such

confessions act as cultural narratives normalising and aggrandising the archetypal

lifestyle to render it the dominant outlook among Wellington students.

Unfortunately, I feel alienated by the student culture the Facebook page emphasises.

When reading about the exciting social lives of Wellington students from a distance, I

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see myself as an outsider aching from the fear of missing out. This exclusion leaves

me anxious and insecure, knowing I spend more time consuming their encounters as

content rather than living them. The reason I feel isolated stems from the personal

and cultural environments shaping my sense of self (Wilde, 2020). Considering I had

an Asian upbringing wherein I was not allowed to go clubbing or have a girlfriend, I

lacked social cohesion with the page’s community of Wellington students dating and

“going to town.” “They prioritise enjoying their university years by making the most of

it, but not me” (see Appendix A). My reclusive, studious self-concept fosters an

internal conflict where I struggle to be in the know.

Figure 2 A comment to a confession conveying my wit.

Still, VuW: Meaningful Confessions nevertheless inspires me to project my self-

image not in spite of feeling different to the page’s collective identity but because of

it. According to Alvesson and Willmott (2002), I “continuously engage in forming,

repairing, maintaining, strengthening, or revising the constructions that are

productive of a precarious sense of coherence and distinctiveness” (p. 626).

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Throughout my engagement with the confessions, I aspire to showcase my

personality to illustrate how I am a memorable person to the page’s student

following. “I prefer promoting the perception of myself as someone who is sagacious

and witty” (see Appendix D). Doing so entails differentiating myself by contributing

original, meaningful comments to a confession’s discourse like Figure 2. In so doing,

I can gain recognition and validation in my performative efforts to be “authentic.”

Ultimately, my self-expression lets me guide and entertain my aspiration towards

curating my ideal self.

Analysis

Despite never having drunkenly walked Wellington’s streets past midnight or delayed

my assignments the night before they were due, I still connect with these

quintessential student encounters vicariously as consumable walls of text. For

Debord (2005), “everything that was directly lived has moved away into a

representation ... A social relation among people, mediated by images” (pp. 117–

118). The Facebook page’s confessions shape my expectations toward the

Wellington student lifestyle, authentically depicting it much better than my own time

at Victoria University. It is as if I have replaced my lived university social life with

checking my Facebook feed anticipating the next post. “Oh, how I live a boring,

regretful life considering I draw more value from these simulations” (see Appendix

C). Once I appreciate the university culture through the ease and convenience of my

screens, I reduce it into a source of entertainment that is part of my media diet.

Instead of perceiving the confessions as students laying bare their Victoria University

experiences, they are a narrativised and packaged portrayal of the university. “A

slice of life comedy of [its] culture in how [the Facebook page] references running

gags and pokes fun of the quirks of [its] students” (see Appendix C). Its cultural

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narratives of students bantering about their non-existent sex lives and the rising

rents of Wellington flats are classic tropes that generate reliable laugh reactions. Like

a viewer who derives comfort at the genre familiarities that comedies develop their

humour, I consistently smirk relating to the conventional tropes of the confessions. In

a sense, my media frame of reference is a fetishism of the posts as I attribute life,

power, and autonomy to otherwise inanimate objects (Taussig, 1977). By imbuing

this entertainment appeal on these anonymous posts, I feel detached from the

student confessors disclosing them.

Since the confessions are anonymous and objectified, I do not regard them by their

confessor and how they were made, but instead their value as content. No matter

how intimately confessors banter about their student struggles, they are nothing

more than posts for receiving stimuli. “Having consumed so much media, … it feels

natural for me to cherish these slices of Victoria University life when presented as

consumable confessions” (see Appendix C). In my eyes, their value comes not from

their labour, but from reviewing their fun and relatability compared to other media

possibly deserving of my attention. To quote Marx (2000), “for labour, life activity,

productive life, now appear to man only as means for the satisfaction of a need” (p.

31). My pursuit of conversating with other Wellington students to empathise with

them devolves into a routine reacting with ha-ha or care emojis to the hottest

confessions.

Those emojis are part of a superficial display I perform, informing how I would

participate in VuW: Meaningful Confessions. It is a facade in how I convey shallow

gestures signalling to my friends my compassion and wit, publicising myself as

someone who likes the Wellington student lifestyle with the posts I react and reply to.

The affect I display on the Facebook page is profoundly intertwined with my desire to

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gain social and cultural capital (Dobson et al., 2018). As I curate my romanticised

persona, the less I feel connected with and ownership of it as it portrays a fake life of

me as this funny person relating to the student culture. Admittedly, I am a bashful,

boringly bookish guy, so it bothers me to think this depiction of me is more

interesting than myself. “What worries me is others will recognise me more for the

act I put on in social media, making me think all I am to others is this distorted

version of me” (see Appendix B). To illustrate with Figure 2, are my friends laugh

reacting to me or my online performance? Rather than projecting my personable,

comical self-ideal, I try to live up to this perception of myself out of character with my

real-life personality. No longer is my image tied to reality: It has a life of its own. In

Marx’s words (2000), “the object which labour produces—labour’s product—

confronts it as something alien, as a power independent of the producer” (p. 29).

Honestly, my performative presence capitalising on the page’s cultural narratives

feels like work, pitching my marketable self-branding. There is uncertainty when my

performance ends and authenticity begins. I commodify my being for clout, so what

is left of me when the brand is more relatable and engaging?

My participation is ultimately neoliberal subjectivity at play as I strive for success

through self-entrepreneurship. Bratich and Banet-Weiser (2019) posit this

subjectification entails “the formation of selves through various discourses, strategies

of address, and techniques of transformation” (p. 5006). If I communicate my

keenness of the Wellington student lifestyle by placing confidence in VuW:

Meaningful Confessions’s platform vernacular, I might discover my affinity with

Victoria University’s culture. Consequently, there is a responsibility on me to

contribute to the page to benefit from the positive responses to my relatable, clever

performance. “Anything I post, like, or comment is an extension of what I am like in

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real-life since they affect people’s perceptions and relationships with me” (see

Appendix B). However, instead of making me more empowered and independent,

my contributions leave me feeling alien to them as I exacerbate the myths I tell

myself. I can only blame myself for not conforming to the page’s collective identity

and social norms throughout my real life.

Conclusion

Experiencing the Wellington student lifestyle through VuW: Meaningful Confessions

reveals how I think about Victoria University’s culture and navigate my subjectivity.

The Facebook confessions shape the platform vernacular and cultural narratives,

contributing to my sentiment towards Victoria University life as content consumption.

This perspective entails interpreting these confessions as a spectacle of university

social life, a storytelling genre relying on familiar tropes, and content with exchange

value mystifying their labour. When it comes to my engagement with the Facebook

page, it inspires my self-expression. I construct an ideal persona to garner clout,

fostering my neoliberal mindset at the cost of leaving me feel alien to how I honestly

see myself.

In exploring my lived experiences in VuW: Meaningful Confessions, I can add to the

academic discourses about digital media with my self-reflexivity. While

ethnographies would apply theories like spectacle to offer immersive descriptions of

online sites, I employ them to question and critique how I make sense of my

prosumption of the Facebook page. By doing so, I offer an intimate, critical, and

evocative first-person account studying my connection to aspects of the page’s

student culture. My storytelling can consequently allow me to theorise my role in “the

cultural identity presentations and performances in digital spaces” (Atay, 2020, p.

272). I embody and encapsulate the personal meanings I derive from the yarns and

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opinions that anonymous Wellington student confessions express with my

autoethnographic research methods. Such is the case when I reflect on the nature

and significance of letting this media consumption mediate and influence my

attitudes toward Victoria University student life.

Another implication is the scholarly, personal insights I impart about the digitalisation

of university social life by journaling my engagement with VuW: Meaningful

Confessions. Considering Victoria University culture as a digital one reveals how

Wellington students employ the affordances of replies, reactions, and confessions to

promote their real-life lifestyle and build an online community of like-minded people.

They foster solidarity and a collective sense of reality with their textual interactions to

create a common resource of meaning (Correll, 1995). Adding my perspective shows

how I experience the Facebook page on a personal level. My consumption of

confessions and the responses to them acknowledges the page’s culture as a

creative process where I reshape and reinterpret its shared meanings as my

narratives. In this case, I introspect on the consequences of my identity work and

performance for the page: What values and behaviours do I end up internalising?

Limitations

A limitation with carrying out this study comes from my research design choices

since they might lead to short-lived insights. Since I only took fieldnotes of VuW:

Meaningful Confessions for four weeks and selected confessions during that period,

it is uncertain whether my introspections of the page would still be true if I had

observed it for longer or another occasion. As such, my subjectivity consuming the

posts as content could be a false positive finding as the length of observation is too

short and time-dependent to verify my analysis. If I could redo the observation plan

to remedy this shortcoming, I would employ a longitudinal design whereby I monitor

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the page periodically. For example, three weeks of fieldnotes every three months for

the next year. This approach would improve my autoethnography’s academic rigour

by drawing from a larger, comprehensive dataset, developing a more refined

interpretation of the themes I identify.

Given the digitalisation of university social life manifests across various online

spaces, solely focusing on observing VuW: Meaningful Confessions limits the

research’s scope. In addition to the Facebook confession page, Victoria University’s

student culture is present in platforms such as Vic Deals, Bad Memes For Suffering

Victoria University Teens, and the social media accounts of halls of residence. This

narrow focus means my autoethnography is lacking and disingenuous since, in

reality, I navigate multiple sites when consuming the Wellington student lifestyle as

media. Next time I undertake this study, I would observe the content of more online

spaces, like the ones aforementioned, characterising Victoria University students.

Unravelling the platform vernacular of those spaces account for the nuances in

theorising my digital perception of the student lifestyle. By doing so, I collect more

diverse fieldnotes leading to different, potential conceptual frameworks for

approaching my subjectivity and relationship to the typical Wellington students.

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References

Alvesson, M., & Willmott, H. (2002). Identity regulation as organisational control:

Producing the appropriate individual. Journal of Management Studies, 39(5),

619–644. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-6486.00305

Atay, A. (2020). What is cyber or digital autoethnography? International Review of

Qualitative Research, 13(3), 267–279.

https://doi.org/10.1177/1940844720934373

Bratich, J., & Banet-Weiser, S. (2019). From pickup artists to incels: Con games,

networked misogyny, and the failure of neoliberalism. International Journal of

Communication, 13, 5003–5027.

http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/102183/1/13216_41125_1_PB.pdf

Correll, S. (1995). The ethnography of an electronic bar: The lesbian café. Journal of

Contemporary Ethnography, 24(3), 270–298.

doi:10.1177/089124195024003002.

Debord, G. (2005). The commodity as spectacle. In M. Durham, & D. Kellner (Eds.),

Media and cultural studies: Keyworks (pp. 117–121). Blackwell.

Dobson, A., Robards, B., & Carah, N. (2018). Digital intimate publics and social

media (1st ed.). Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-

3-319-97607-5

Gibbs, M., Meese, J., Arnold, M., Nansen, B., & Carter, M. (2015). Funeral and

Instagram: Death, social media, and platform vernacular. Information,

Communication, & Society, 18(3), 255–268.

https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2014.987152

Marx, K. (2000). Economic and philosophic manuscripts of 1844. Marxists Internet

Archive.

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https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/pdf/Economic-

Philosophic-Manuscripts-1844.pdf

Taussig, M. (1977). The genesis of capitalism amongst a South American peasantry:

Devil’s labour and the baptism of money. Comparative Studies in Society and

History, 19(2), 130–155. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0010417500008586

Wilde, P. (2020). I, posthuman: A deliberately provocative title. International Review

of Qualitative Research, 13(3), 365–380.

https://doi.org/10.1177/1940844720939853

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Appendix A: Saturday, April 10 (“#344 – Is This A Break?”)

It is given students will procrastinate until the week, maybe the night, before the

assignment is due. This lifestyle is just the culture most students internalise by

default because they prioritise enjoying their university years by making the most of

it, but not me. While they are out partying, “going to town,” and dating, I am holed up

with parents obsessively studying and surfing the internet. Of course, this life was my

choice, so I have to live with the fear of missing out. I just hope my labour will bear

good fruits. Good grades leading to a good job leading to a good lifestyle. You know,

the Asian method.

Appendix B: Saturday, April 17 (“#348 – Grant G, Sort Your Staff Out.”)

However, it is fair game to criticise the confessor’s character albeit as advice or

witticism. “Sounds like someone’s been coddled through high school a bit [too]

much...,” says one of the comments. Personally, I view myself as a chill, nice guy, so

it feels out of character for me to judge others online. How I see it: I believe my

physical and online selves intertwine and relate because my real identity is attached

to my Facebook account. Anything I post, like, or comment is an extension of what I

am like in real-life since they affect people’s perceptions and relationships with me.

Trying to be someone I am not would give me this kind of out-of-body experience

where I perform this online persona. What worries me is others will recognise me

more for the act I put on in social media. It makes me think all I am to others is

nothing more than a performance. There is no deep down. Instead of projecting my

self-concept, I am trying to live up to this online perception of me, which has a life of

its own. An existential crisis would emerge as I worry whether people like me as a

person.

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Appendix C: Sunday, April 25 (“#354 – Kelburn Campus Is Unhinged.”)

What does this confession page mean to me? When I think about it, I have always

seen the page as a way for me to keep up with what is going on at Victoria University

by peeking into the encounters of other students. The lives they live. At least in that

way, I do not feel like I am missing out in the fun culture. Instead, listening to others

yarn about their experiences there, which I consume as content while I scroll through

my Facebook feed. When I spend most of time these days at home studying, it feels

odd knowing I have spent more time reading about these representations of Victoria

University than venture out there. In fact, it seems like I derive more warmth,

laughter, and sadness from these experiential, intimate confessions. Oh, how I live a

boring, regretful life considering I draw more value from these simulations. I have yet

to experience these spectrums of emotions, but when will I? Will I ever? The

confessions remind me of the SpongeBob SquarePants meme where Squidward

would watch begrudgingly from his window to see Patrick and SpongeBob cheerfully

running around. I am Squidward in the sense that I yearn for a blissfully ignorant life

these students have as I study from a distance. Having consumed so much media,

from video games, anime, film, and television, to literature, it feels natural for me to

cherish these slices of Victoria University life when they are presented as

consumable confessions. These stories are a kind of ironic escapism from the dread

of what Victoria University is actually like for me, studying constantly. I can distract

myself with the page’s yarns, serving as comfort television providing a reliable

source of entertainment. It is as if this confession page is a slice of life comedy of

Victoria University’s culture in how it references running gags and pokes fun of the

quirks of students.

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Appendix D: Monday, May 3 (Brain Dump #4)

When it comes to the identities I express at the confession page, I prefer promoting

the perception of myself as someone who is sagacious and witty throughout my

responses to the confessions because the Facebook account I use to engage with

the page’s content is tied to my real-life identity. As such, whatever I like or comment

should cohere with how others perceive me out of saving face. Although submitting a

confession presents an opportunity for me to perform different identities I would not

intimately share with my friends, there are preferences and social norms as to what

personalities are empowered and accepted in the confession page. To put it in

broad, stereotypical terms: The extroverted student who procrastinates their

workload, regularly has sex, goes clubbing at the city often, and rents with flatmates.

The moderators who curate the page seem like they are less interested in accurately

representing the diverse identities among Victoria University students and are more

self-interested in entertaining students by playing into the tropes and narratives

about the culture to produce reliable and optimal engagement of the page’s

followers. Even if the occasional academic recluse or punk confesses their opinions

and yarns, it feels less sincere because their posts are being commodified to gain

likes and comments.

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