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Final Project: An Argument on HKBU Secret

Our work (Screenshot and translation)

#BU10339 Damn! We’ve done group projects together from 3 years ago. I still can’t expect that you would be the free rider in the group. You said that you didn’t want to do anything. I thought you were just kidding me. But you did nothing in fact. You always say you are very very very busy. Everyone is studying here but is anyone as busy as you? Due to your “contribution”, I need to finish your part of work in a hurry and overnight. You want to have a worse grade, it is ok. But now you are encumbering me to get a higher GPA! BIG SHIT! I don't want to see you in next semester! (Reported. You just need to wait for retaking the course.) [posted on 27/11/2017,104 reactions, 42 comments]

Related Comment

Aiko Tim Lee @Foss Chan We have been in same dormitory from a year ago.I still can’t expect that you would be the free rider in the group. You said that you didn’t want to do anything. I thought you were just kidding me. But you did nothing in fact. You always say you are very very very busy. Everyone is studying here but is anyone as busy as you? Lo

Judy Chan hihi (foul language in HK internet) why you freeride me

Louis Leung you know who is freeriding 😉

Judy Chan 😉

Hong Yung Chan Leung, give me a chance to be free rider in the next semester.

Louis Leung @Hong Yung Chan reg my major electives😂😂

Adrian Law @Gogo Chan i’m sorry

Gogo Chan @Adrian Law I'm sorry

Link: https://www.facebook.com/HkbuSecrets/posts/1576814599028451

#BU10352

"Re #BU10339

Are you joking?

I confess that I am a freerider. However,don’t you think that you should be responsible for this problem? As you know, my part should develop from your part. You should finish your part three days before the presentation if you on schedule. Unlucky, you just finished your part at the day before the presentation! I am not on call for this presentation! I still have other assignments! I am sure that you can finish your part if you spend your school time on study instead of joining the society committee! By the way, I don’t want to be a deadline fighter as you. I am busic!

Beside this, I don’t want to hand in a piece of rubbish even I need to retake this course.

[posted on 28/11/2017, 30 reactions, no comment]

Link: https://www.facebook.com/HkbuSecrets/posts/1578044518905459

#BU10366 Re #BU10352 Frankly speaking, we’ve been friend from 3 years ago. If you need help, just ask for my help. However, you do nothing without any notification. What do you mean? You do not care about having a low GPA, it is OK. But I care. Having a low GPA, I’ll be harder to get in the job interview. Don’t tell me you can help me! Don’t tell me the theory which learnt in class can help me! You always say that start working on the report after going through all of the related readings. Roland Barthes? Hyperreal? What is the use? If you get a worse grade finally, will the HR ask you about the reason of low GPA? Wake up plz! Plz don’t sleep in your academic world anymore! [posted on 29/11/2017, 6 reactions, no comment]

Link: https://www.facebook.com/HkbuSecrets/posts/1578997725476805

#BU10405 RE #BU10352, #BU10366 Keep secret if you want to quarrel each other. No one wants to know that what do you arguing. By the way, it is really hard to like studying. Although you study hard, you may not get the high marks. [posted on 2/12/2017, 2 reactions, no comment]

Link: https://www.facebook.com/HkbuSecrets/posts/1582134505163127

#BU10414

Birds of different feathers do not flock together. You may choose to find a new partner. You are an university student and no one can force you to do anything you don’t want.

I just don’t understand that you may choose to play hard or work hard in this four year in university. However, it seems that it is the hardest choice when you choose to study hard.

If we follow the study plan, we should take five to six course for every semester. Otherwise, we may need to defer. Under my calculation, we need to spend around two hours on reading the materials or doing revision for each course. It takes around ten to twelve hours a week. It is fine at the beginning of the semester.

On the other hand, our schedule maybe affected by the deadlines of assignments and presentations, which may affect our GPA, during the semester. It is difficult to finish reading all materials if we do our assignments just for aiming a good grade. I think the most meaningful part is the reading materials when we are doing presentation, especially for the humanities students as me. So, I hope we can start doing our presentation after we finish all the reading and gain from the process.

We better be prepared that we may not having a high income job as we are studying Humanities. Why don’t you study business if you want a high income job in the future? I don’t understand that why you are so concern on the GPA instead of gaining knowledge from the university life. Your academic levels should not be valued by the GPA! GPA just represents the grading from the universities or even the society but you should not be valued by grading! If we are not friends, I will not spend so much time typing those words for you!.

It seems that studying in Hong Kong universities is a anti-intellectual matter. They propose that you should be familiar with the topic which taught for three to four months. In fact, we need to clear our mind for the new semester when we just finish the courses last semester. I am sure that we are not as familiar with our major as expected when we graduate.

It seems that the universities in Hong Kong want to torture with the tight study plan. I think I should aim for knowledge instead of grading or even a piece of diploma in this four years. Otherwise, why do I need to study in university?

Sorry for confusing" [posted on 2/12/2017, 60 reactions, 1 comment]

Comment

學生 hksecret This is university (SO SAD

Link: https://www.facebook.com/HkbuSecrets/posts/1582136228496288

#BU10452 We are three CPW students. In light of the assignment of WRIT 3007 Writing for New Media, we chose to start a writing project on HKBU Secret. We posted #BU10339, #BU10352, #BU10405, #BU10366 and #BU10414 on the platform. It is about two guys argue because of someone absent in the group project, and complain the system of the university. We hope to achieve these influences: 1, Discuss the problem of free-riders in group project. Moreover, we hope that we can stimulate people to reflect about the system of the university; 2, After people seeing this statement, we hope that they can review the anonymity of Secret and the effects due to this anonymity. Sorry for any inconvenience which was caused by this project. We are welcome to receive comments on this post if there is any question. [posted on 8/12/2017]

Link: https://www.facebook.com/HkbuSecrets/posts/1587233544653223

Technical efforts

In Facebook, there is a lot of “Secret Page” that provide a platform to different people submit their secret to share to others that make them find resonation with somebody. Most of the secret page managed by someone called “Admin” belong to the community that the page declare to. These “Admin” only have the power to decide post the secret or not. In general, most of the secret would be posted only in the case that the secret attack some people with opening their real name, including pornography and violence, and not related to the community. Moreover, apart from the contributor, others comment, share and like the post must through their real account that means they need to express their opinion with their real identity.

Our group find these kinds of secret page have two features. First, anonymity. People cannot be aware of the identity of the contributor. Second, interaction. In these secret pages, other user in Facebook can through “Like” and “Comment” to response the post. For instance, people in real can give “sad” to the post to express they are feeling lost. The features of Facebook help our group grain the response quickly and make our script seems real enough.

Therefore, we submit the secret to “HKBU Secret”, a secret page served students studying in HKBU, create a story about two friends arguing for the problem of assignment. We submit it day by day, after the former secret have posted, we write down the secret was responses to the former one and submit it. After five post, we create a story, which is challenging the purpose of doing assignment and authenticity on Facebook.

Aesthetic influences

The art piece is influenced from “Excellence & Perfection” created by Amalia Ulman on instagram. From April 20 to September 19 in 2014, Ulman performed a brand new artwork within photo and social media, entitled “Excellence & Perfection”. She uploaded an images were made up of “Part I”, in black lettering on white background, and writed down the caption that read “Excellence & Perfection”. After that, the photographs were posted to Ulman’s Instagram account over a period of six months giving followers of the account a heavily engineered insight into her supposed life. In the project, Ulman take on the characters of ‘cute girl’, ‘sugar baby’ and ‘life goddess’, simulating behaving a female on social media.

In the first place, Ulman play the role of an artsy, provincial girl who has moved to Los Angeles, a big city, for the first time. The girl who want to be a model posted the photographs decipt clichés of aspirational living, such as healthy breakfast, yoga, encouraging quotes, visits to the spa, and shopping sprees on instagram. Using middlebrow props looks feminine, hashtags that girl commonly uses, and filters full of pink and white, the Instagram feed became ubiquitous documentation of someone striving for a perfect life. Ulman successfully played the part of a normal, pure and cute girl on the internet. Our group are inspired by this, it bring us a new idea on doing art on internet, make a good use of social media. Therefore, we refer to her idea, make the “secret art piece”.

Conceptual ideas

We have two main idea in doing this art piece, assignment system and authenticity.

Firstly, our upper levels motives is discussing the purpose on doing assignment in university. Usually, all of university students need to doing group project with others, whether they want to or not. And that system derive different problems. The most commend one is “free-rider”, person who put very few effort on the group project. Free-rider not even create an unfair situation to other students who is willing to attain perfection, lose the original purpose on doing group project, complement and inspired each other. The other is "learning pursuit”. Someone want to pursuit the knowledge on doing assignment, but a majority of people are focusing on grading. One of the purpose of doing group project is enhancing the co-operating skill, however, that should not be the main purpose on doing assignment. We think that co-operating oriented assignment limited the developed of students on their learning area. For example, in our story, there is two type of people, one is mainly focus on understanding the theory and the other one is mainly focus on getting a good grade. The group project create the conflict between them, and that cannot help them improve themselves. That is putting the cart before the horse, people cannot learning deeply in their area but need to learn cooperate with others.

Finally, we hope to discuss the authenticity in secret page in Facebook. In this secret page, people can submit any post that is not convenient to talk with their own identity. It seems similar to the forum which also provide the authenticity to users. Originally, the purpose of secret page is building up the sense of belonging to the community members, but that would be mislead when the page would not opened the identity of contributors. Users in this kind of page can easily create the public opinion and lead them with a fake story. In our project, the first post until 7/12/2017 have 104 like and 16 comments on it, it is a quite big number on a page only have 24,976 like and not buy advertising on facebook. That bring us a question about authenticity on social media. Anonymity let the users does not need to take the responsibility on posting any words. That is a danger for the people cannot find out the reality on the community. On surface, it seems bring more real to the community, the members are more willing to share their own secret about the community to the public, but in fact, fake news and slander are more liable spreaded out.

Bio notes

This is an assignment for the course, WRIT 3007: Writing for New Media, in Hong Kong Baptist University. This project was created by Tony, Oscar and Henry. All of us are the students of the Creative and Professional Writing. We tried to use a more creative way through new media to write and discuss some important issue.

0 notes