Is Pretty Little Liars A Great Show?

After months of gathering information and researching whatever I could find on my hashtag #PrettyLittleLiars, I have found a few interesting things out about it. The major one being that not too many fans are as fond of the show as I thought.

To my surprise, most of the tweets I had gathered from the day of the Big A Reveal were negative comments about the ending of the season. And I completely understand where they are coming from, I was disappointed too. The producers and cast of the show kept building up the suspense of finding out who A really was and the ending was a huge let down. It ended up being a character named Charles, a character who has never been mentioned or seen before. I, along with many other viewers were expecting a repeating, popular character of the show to be the villain.

Of the tweets I had gathered from this night, some were retweets from unhappy users, tweets to the producer telling her she did a horrible job, and a lot asking who Charles was, written with a foul but quite possibly deserving language. In boyd, Golder and Lotan’s article, Tweet, Tweet, Retweet, they say that “Retweeting can simply be seen as the act of copying and rebroadcasting, the practice contributes to a conversational ecology (1)” and I completely agree with that, now seeing how Twitter works. In a few of the tweets I had analyzed that were retweets, I noticed that some of them had added conversation, perhaps to get the original tweeters attention.

Though I had never seen a full conversation develop within my hashtag #PrettyLittleLiars, I do know that I happens often; I can see it looking through my newsfeed.

Overall, yes I was surprised by the reactions of the fans of the show, but at the same time I really wasn’t because they’re reactions were the same as mine.

Typewriter Results

Here is the original paper that had been typed using a typewriter. Check out my response to this assignment here.

Click on the image above and you should be able to read it.

My Written World

What is my ideal writing environment you ask?

Good question!

This is what I typically look like on a regular day when writing. Except, I normally do most of my writing (and occasionally my best) when its past 10 o’clock at night. I am also a girl, not the guy in this picture. I like to put myself in a comfortable, warm, and soft environment away from people. Me, my bed, and my laptop. We make a wonderful love triangle.

In addition to my location of choice, I also have been known to quietly listen to classical music when composing a magical piece of my brain into words on a page. If you are the proud owner of a pandora internet radio account, I recommend adding the “Classical for Studying” station. If you do not have a pandora radio account, I recommend getting one ASAP! (It’s free)

The third thing I typically add to my writing environment is:

A warm cup of something. Typically I will drink tea or coffee. I don’t know why, but hot drinks tend to get the creative juices flowing rather than ice cold beverages.

Now that I have set up my physical environment for your imagination, let me discuss what kind of writing space or program would be ideal for my needs and writing style.

I picture myself gracefully tapping away at the screen of a large tablet or ipad type of device. Laptops are great but they can be bulky and temperamental. Some tablets are just too small to be typing or drawing on so I would want this one to be bigger. A feature on this tablet would allow me use a stylus to hand-write things if I choose to do so, because with certain inspiration, things sometimes feel like they need to be hand-written instead of typed. With this program, I would be able to use the stylus to click and hold onto words and drag them into a different place, almost like cutting and pasting, but it would be my electronic hand writing that I would be able to edit and move around.

This large tablet would also have the capabilities to wirelessly connect (maybe through bluetooth) to speakers in my room so that my classical music can lightly drift throughout the space inside my four pink bedroom walls.

When it comes to saving my work, I would like the device to automatically save as I type or write. Then, these files could automatically upload onto a cloud or some other type of internet based server where they can be reached from other devices, with the proper login of course.

I would like the program to be similar to GoogleDocs considering that is my favorite writing space that I’ve used all semester. I would like to be able to insert media, pictures, videos, gifs, and links into my writing space.

I wouldn’t really want it to be connected to places like Twitter or Facebook. I find a lot of the time, that easy access to those social media places serves only as a distraction for me and my writing. I don’t picture myself needing to use Twitter to research or study anything in the future.

This writing environment and device would definitely be textually interactive. That’s what I would like its main purpose to be, but it could also be socially interactive if need be. Technology is incredible but I wouldn’t want it to distract me from doing something that I love, writing.

What I Should Have Learned In Studying #PLL

Props to anyone who got the Ice Nine Kills reference in the title of this post. I like to keep it intertextual (check out James Porter in Intertextuality and the Discourse Community for a solid definition of this word).

Today friends, I am here to wrap up this study of #PLL and what I have determined based off of my results.

First and foremost, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again,Pretty Little Liars has a huge fan base. There was definitely a lot for me to look through and observe. I found it very fascinating that this show reaches so many different countries and is translated into so many different languages. This made it a bit of a challenge to translate and understand everything! I noticed that if a tweet about #PLL was written in another language, there was less of a chance of it being a retweet.

Secondly, I found that a good majority of the tweets that include this hashtag, are predominantly retweets. Fans are constantly retweeting everything between theories, articles, news, reactions, and pictures. This is how information gets spread so quickly. The producer or actors will tweet a clue or a piece of news and it will get retweeted hundreds or thousands of times in a very short span of time.

We are getting so close to knowing all about Big A, it's getting harder for me to answer your questions w/out giving it away.

— I. Marlene King (@imarleneking) March 27, 2015

the most outta the box episode so far. I dug the script and the execution. As for the big reveal well… We couldn't give everything away

— Troian (@SleepintheGardn) March 25, 2015

A lot of the other tweets are just statements or exclamations, not necessarily an attempt to start a conversation or to communicate with others.

#PLL IS ADDICTING

— Lauren Powell (@lpowww) April 13, 2015

While coding my tweets, there were definitely usernames that popped up time and time again. In the image to the left, we can see that user sarah052794 tweeted 138 times within the span of a week. We can also see that 100% of her tweets were actually retweets. User pllfinale tweeted 173 times, all responses to another user using @reply method.

Something else I looked into was the social media spaces associated with #PLL. This took me to lots and lots of websites. (Check out my blog post about this). Some of them were news sites, others were fan made blogs, and some were gossip pages. I did a lot of digging around on Facebook and Instagram too. Just search “Pretty Little Liars” and I guarantee that you’ll find more than you were looking for.

One thing that I struggle to wrap my head around still, is the idea of Twitter being a source for a community. Does everyone who uses the hashtag #PLL belong to a cluster or group of people? Are PLL fans considered a community through Twitter?

Howard Rheingold in The Virtual Community defines

Virtual communities as: social aggregations that emerge from the Net when enough people carry on those public discussions long enough, with sufficient human feeling, to form webs of personal relationships in cyberspace.

This makes me rock my head back and forth and go “ehhhhhhh… maybe”. 

I wouldn’t say I have personal relationships with these strangers on Twitter who just so happen to tweet about a common subject. So no, Twitter does not make a virtual community for #PLL lovers, well at least not according to Reingold’s definition.

What does Twitter do for the TV show Pretty Little Liars? Well, a lot actually. The fact that the producer Marlene King does Q&A (Question and Answer) sessions with fans makes people want to get a Twitter account so they can be in on the action. Also, the network abc family hosts live chats with some of the main actors. They ask fans to tweet their questions and responses. Who wouldn’t get a Twitter in an attempt to chat with @Tylerjblackburn?

I'm live tweeting now!! Tweet me using #PLLchat! ❤️ @tylerjblackburn pic.twitter.com/WklrsPfRLc

— Pretty Little Liars (@ABCFpll) March 25, 2015

As if all of these attempts to communicate within the fandom isn’t enough, the network abc family posts up relevant hashtags in the corner while the show is being aired. It’s as if the network and the show are both promoting Twitter as a means of communicating about the show.

  #Ezrasnewfamily

#Ismelldeadpeople

What I’ve learned from researching the Twitter usage in regards to #PLL is that is actually is a very good way to network about the show. Fans retweet important things that help out other fans get bonus insights or clues. My favorite aspect of this “Twitter family” is that I can share my theories and also read other theories. This helps me adjust my opinions and suspicions of characters. When I find something mind-blowing, I will tweet it @ my friends or other well known followers and fans. Without Twitter, I wouldn’t have the information and resources that I have. I definitely wouldn’t be the super fan that I consider myself.

So, thanks Twitter ❤

Ideally…

As our blogging assignments come to an end, I look back and think of the pros and cons of each of the four writing spaces I have explored. My last assignment is to take different elements from those sites and create my ideal writing space; the features, the layout, and any add-ins to make the site easy and enjoyable to use. Lets start with the first writing space we were assigned, the ZenPen. This was by far one of my favorite writing space we had used. I liked the layout of the site; a small task bar that won’t distract you and I really liked the option for fullscreen mode, blocking out all things on a computer that cause the brain to wander. Those two elements would definitely be a part of my writing space if I were to create one.

Though I did not like Google Docs, mainly for the layout of the text and images (its not very blog friendly), I did like that it had the options for adding links, images, changing the font and other important features a task bar should have. I am iffy about the sharing and multiple user feature that Google Docs has.

 

It can be very useful for documents that need multiple contributors, but if you are trying to type something and somebody else tries to work on that section of the document as well, it is a pain. I also like that it automatically saves your work as you type, and you can share that document with others and they can view or make changes to it as well. In my ideal work space, I would also include easy access to adding links and media and have the site automatically save any work done.

From the response I did on the notebook on my cell phone and the response on the typewriter, I would not have any elements from either of those on my ideal work space. The notepad on the phone was way too complicated to compile a blog post; there were too many spelling errors, no room for media or links, and you had to retype it onto WordPress when you were done. The typewriter as well. I found it extremely difficult to type on both devices and neither are user friendly. I enjoy adding links, pictures, videos, and switching up the layout of my blog posts, so the elements from the four that we explored that I chose to incorporate into my word space would work the best in accomplishing the most creative blog. I would also include easy access to adding Twitter feeds and Facebook profiles because I think that they are the most important way that one can get their ideas and blogs to others.

The Good Ole Typewriter

Last week our assignment was to look up some scholarly articles that have to do with our hashtag. Of course, #PrettyLittleLiars is anything but scholarly, but I ended up finding some pretty interesting articles.

Our task was to compile our blog posts using typewriters that our professor brought in for us. Each one of them had a special name, relating to a specific topic. My typewriters name was Floyd Pepper. When I first chose it, I had no idea what that meant. A classmate of mine brought it to our attention that the theme was the Muppets, something that I have heard about but knew nothing of the characters or concept.

So I was really excited to use a typewriter; I had never been in the presence of one before. Thank god two of my classmates were working on them as well because when I sat down in front of it I had no clue what to do.

My thoughts on the type writer are as follows: interesting but very time consuming, painful and annoying. It is crazy to think about how easy it is for us (those computer savvy) to type on a keyboard, but when it comes to a typewriter it is a whole different story. The keys are in different spots, you have to push down extremely hard to get the print to show up on the paper, and the keyboard is on an angle, so your fingers cramp as you type. It was hard for me to adjust to pushing the keys hard enough to get the letters to show up. I had to go back on several of the letters and go over them. My problem when I pushed hard on the keys, they would either get stuck in the down position, or my fingers would get stuck in between the keys on the keyboard. It happened multiple times and it is pretty painful. I should have used a typewriting for dummies website, maybe I would have learned something.

I thought the best part of the typewriting was having to reset the paper every time it got to the end. I would hear a ding, then I would have to slide it back to the left, move the paper up, and continue writing again. Because I wasn’t aware of how the type writer worked before using one, I did everything the hard way. Instead of pushing the paper over and turning the dial, I found out later that I could have easily pushed the lever to the left of the typewriter and preset the line spacing before hand. Oh the joys of a pre-technology world.

If I had the choice between using a typewriter or a computer for the rest of my life, I would hands down choose a computer. I am so accustomed to the way it works and feels, after using one for so many years, that it just comes naturally to me; I don’t have to look at the keyboard. I guess if a typewriter was my only option, like it was back in the day, I would probably become accustomed to that as well. Overall, I enjoyed the assignment our teacher has given us, even if it was a little tedious.

Who Even Uses Typewriters anymore??

This week in class, we were assigned to write our assignment using a vintage, manual typewriter. I’m not going to lie, after it was over I had to sit down and chat with my Grandma about it. My Grandmother used to work for the government and her job was to type and record things (I’m not sure of the specifics). So all day long, she was typing on a typewriter. Apparently, she was so good that she was able to type more than 100 words per minute.

To write barely a full page, it took me at least an hour.

We were assigned to research and find three scholarly articles that pertain to our hashtag and then type it up on a typewriter. Finding the articles wasn’t very hard but it did require me to think outside of the box a little. There are not many professionally researched, written, and published articles based off of the teenage television show Pretty Little Liars. So instead, I thought of motifs and themes that occur in this show such as body image, social media, cyberbullying, personality disorders, and genre.

Before I could even begin typing on the typewriter, I was completely lost trying to figure out how to feed the paper through the machine. Luckily, the girl typing next to me was able to help me out. Then, when I began typing, it seemed as if there was no ink. The letters were very faint and I knew that I wasn’t doing something right.

After calling on my professor for assistance, he was able to fix it and I could finally begin writing. But wait! 

With typewriters, there is no going back to edit. There is no spell check. There is no backspace button. If you’re going to type something, you’d better make sure it’s exactly what you want to say because once it’s there, there is no going back.

This really sucked for me because it interrupted the method I like to use when I write. My method is to come up with my idea, and just begin typing it out. I don’t worry about using proper words or awkward sentences, I just focus on getting my thoughts down on paper and then I go back and edit/rearrange them to sound better and to be grammatically correct.

You can’t do that on a typewritter! DUH.

It made sense why a few of my classmates had brought their laptops and pre-written their paper. I wish I had thought of that, but then again I’m not a cheater!…. Okay, kidding.. kidding.

Overall, the most frustrating thing about the typewriter was that I would start to get the knack of it and speed up but then I would instantly make a mistake and this would cause me to halt any typing and just stare at the page in sadness wishing that there was some way to erase my mistake. They would always be such stupid mistakes too! If you look at my paper above, you can just search out all of the mistakes, but please don’t, I’m already aware of their irritating existence.

In the future, I plan on never ever ever ever getting back together using a typewriter again, unless it is for something artistic and the length is short so I don’t have to suffer through taking all day to type it. I’m glad I was able to experience using it, but I’m also glad for the advancement in technology. For now, I think I’ll stick to my laptop and if that doesn’t work, I’ll opt to hand-write it because at least then I can erase or dab on some white-out.

My grandma mentioned to me that they had white-out for typewriters too, but they were not available to us when using them. Also, I get a headache just trying to imagine the struggle it would probably take to feed the paper and align it to the exact spot I had left off. No thanks!

What The World Thinks Of #PrettyLittleLiars

For this assignment, we were to use Rowan Universities library resources to find any scholarly articles we could that would relate to the hashtag we chose. I found this extremely difficult to do, and my first attempt at it was horribly wrong; I searched for Pretty Little Liar articles and only got short pieces for a magazine or something. So I gave it another shot. This time, I searched “fandom” and was much more successful.

For my first article, Good Neighbors? Fan/Producer Relationships and the Broadcasting Field by Rebecca Williams, talked a lot about the relationships social media websites allow the fans and the producers to have. Most people would assume that being able to connect with the producers of your favorite shows, as a fan, would be a positive thing. I thought so myself. But after reading this article, I changed my way of thinking. Williams writes, “Despite the apparent democratization in fan/producer interactions engendered by the internet, the illusion of reciprocity often conceals an empty relationship that encourages fans to believe that they have an input when they actually have little impact on the TV industry or the texts it produces” (282). I have seen the fans who use #PrettyLittleLiars in their tweets, tweet to characters in the show or the producer, especially in the last few episodes of season 5, asking why they did a scene one way and not the other or if they are happy about making their fans upset with them because they didn’t agree with something that happened. Here is a tweet I gathered from a user to the producer of the show during the last episode of the season, when they promised they were going to reveal who A was; a tweet that shows having the opportunity to express your emotions to someone like a producer of your favorite show isn’t always a good thing.

@imarleneking you can go fuck yourself. You didn’t reveal anything. #PrettyLittleLiars

The second article I found called Fandom in the Digital Era written by Roberta Pearson and the third article I found, Tweeting Television: Exploring Communication Activities on Twitter While Watching TV by Buschow, Schneider and Ueberheide relate to the how the internet and television go hand in hand nowadays. In Roberta Pearson’s article, she explains that while you are watching a show, you are more likely than not to see something relating to the internet. She says, “Even some fans who limit their creative activities to the interpretive sometimes find annoying the vast amount of ancillary content that now regularly accompanies most television shows”(85). Being an avid watcher of Pretty Little Liars, I have noticed over the years the increased use of perfectly placed hashtags during the show. For maybe the first two seasons, you would never see a hashtag on screen during a scene but by this season, season 5, a hashtag relating to every other scene pops up. And I do find it very annoying.

Bushcow, Schneider and Ueberheide’s article also talks about the internet has taken over communication while watching TV. This article talks about how research on watching tv was once centered on face-to-face communication within family members watching the same show. “Today, new technologies and social media have extended interpersonal communication beyond the boundaries of friends, family and geographical regions” (131). I found that all of the tweets I have analyzed for my research paper were written during the last few seconds of the season finale, which means the fans were more interested in getting their opinion of the episode out for everyone to see rather than sitting and processing what had just occurred.

I believe that these three articles will give me more information to work with during my research rather than the other three “articles” I found earlier.

Cell Phones, Best Friend or Worst Enemy?

My cell phone is great for everything. It’s like my own little pocket-sized computer. I can’t really complain much about it, except that it is terrible to write lengthy blog posts on a cell phone app.

The screen is so small!

As you can see, I attempted to write my <—— last blog post using the notes app on my iphone. After I thought it was pretty lengthy, I coped and pasted the text into an email and then copied and pasted that into wordpress. As it turns out, I hadn’t written as much as I thought I had. Plus, I didn’t want to add any pictures or media to the notes app because I was afraid it wouldn’t copy and paste well when transferring it over.

Writing it was slightly difficult because when the keyboard is up and you’re typing, you can only see a few lines that you previously typed. Then why you try to scroll up, the keyboard gets stubborn and doesn’t want to go down. I know this is probably a small complaint but I just thought that it was ineffective when trying to write a decent blog post.

After doing this assignment, I spoke to a friend about it and they said they write papers when driving to school sometimes. They do this by speaking into the phone using Siri (on iphone) and it records what is being said. I wondered if maybe I should have taken this approach but I couldn’t figure out how to do it.

Then again, I didn’t feel comfortable tampering with phone settings while attempting to drive to class. I think I would rather spend that time singing along to pop tunes on the radio and sipping my morning coffee.

If anyone has had a different experience or recommends an app that they enjoyed using to write lengthy posts, feel free to let me know. I’m willing to give it a second shot! You can comment below or shoot me a tweet at @Samantha_Gilson

Pretty Little Liars is mediated socially.

I’m not gonna lie, I’m having trouble distinguishing the difference between social media spaces and websites. If you check out one of my previous blogs, I talk about a whole bunch of websites that have to do with Pretty Little Liars. Some of these websites are linked to social media sites. So this blog may seem a little similar but I’ll try my best to throw in some new ideas here.
The number one social media space that pops into my mind is Facebook. Pretty Little Liars is all over Facebook. So is the hashtag #PLL. Plenty of people use it to communicate about the show. In the picture shown to the right, the official Facebook page for the TV show Pretty Little Liars asks an opinion question. Who is it directed towards? I assume the fans. Obviously, this is to get conversations started using a social media space. I think it’s really cool that we have this kind of opportunity. Facebook allows people to reach very far in space and time.

Another popular social media site for PLL is Pinterest.

I think Pinterest is neat because there’s so much information you can find off of it. They have boards for just styling tips that are related to Pretty Little Liars so the fans can dress like the girls or style their hair the same way. There are links to other sites. There are memes for entertainment. It’s crazy what you can find on Pinterest. If you’re not familiar with this space I suggest you check it out!

Another popular social media site is Instagram. Now I personally do not have an account on there but anyone is able to view the account for PLL and the actors.

On these sites, the fans can get sneak peaks of upcoming episodes. They can also get a look into the lives of the actors and what they are like when they are not in character. This is nice because it makes the relationship between fan and celebrity a little more intimate. The words that come to mind here are “A day in the life”.

The actors also use this space to promote other projects.

Another popular social media space is Twitter. Twitter is a great place to connect with all things #PLL. I would say it is the most interactive. Fans are able to tag #PLL and talk to other fans who are tweeting about the same thing. Also, fans are able to tweet directly at specific actors and occasionally they get a response. People can also tweet to the writer and director making Twitter a great place to connect and reach people with similar interests.

Overall, I still struggle with differentiating between websites and social media spaces. In my opinion, they are very closely related and intertwined. It’s hard to have a social media space that does not fall under the category of a website. Likewise, websites are usually social spaces and in relation to #PLL, most websites are going to be considered social media.