SPEAKER_03

Welcome to Virtual Expat, where we investigate the interplay between living overseas and living online. What happens to our online presence, our online persona when we change countries? Does anything happen? Does one support the other? Does one conflict with the other? I don't know, but I wanted to find out. So I'm going to interview a lot of expats in order to get to the heart of this question. Is there interplay between our online selves and our geographically varied selves? We have a few different ways that you can feedback. So if you go to stephfuccio.weebly.com forward slash contact. Let me do that a little slower. S-T-E-P-H-F-U-C-C-I-O. W-e-e-b-l y dot com forward slash contact. You'll see all kinds of ways you can contact me and let me know what you think of this podcast. I have email, WeChat if you're in China, Twitter, LinkedIn, and my new favorite thing is SpeakPipe. Over on the right hand side of that page, you'll be able to leave a sound recording, basically a voice message. You just hit the start recording button that's in bright orange. I can also respond in a voice message there as well. It's a really, really cool feature. I can't believe they have this available for free, but until they get smarter about that, I'm gonna take advantage of it because it is such a cool feature. Thank you so much. I appreciate all of your input. When I lived in the middle of the US, I found it really helpful without to live without a car and to use public transportation and to have Amazon deliver things that really, really wouldn't don't go on a bus. So I found Amazon delivery services really, really useful. And so I'm excited to have an affiliate link with them. Here's how it works: you don't pay anything, you also don't get a discount. But when you shop normally with the link in the show notes that I'll give you, um, I get a slight percentage of what you buy when you purchase something with my Amazon affiliate link. That's it. That is the whole story. I've never done this before, so I'm not entirely sure how well this works. So please do feedback to me if you if you go to the link and something weird happens, let me know and I will sort it out. Their customer service for this program is actually very quick uh in responding, so we'll figure it out. I'm pretty sure it's not it's it's uh a no-brainer. You click on it, you order, you pay, and then I will see some money show up in my account. And considering how much technology I need to get for the podcast, because I'm still working on one of those clip-on shirt mics, um, I I I I need some funding. Let's face it, I can't go on for free forever. I am so thrilled to have you listen to the conversation between myself and Somewhere about her living overseas nests colliding with her online nest. This is a different conversation than I've had with a lot of folks on the very new version of the Virtual Expat podcast. And part of it being so different made me wonder if it belonged in this season. But I think it does. Because not everybody is really, really into putting their real selves into so many different versions of virtual selves. So I think Solmia's matter-of-factly blunt and honest way of approaching things that a lot of us talk about a lot and do a lot, is really refreshing and a really interesting perspective on all of this. So this definitely belongs in this season. Now, full disclosure, SoMe was actually a professor of mine in the PhD program, that is no more, that I consciously left, although had a very good experience in. If you listen to the Chinese script podcast that I have or watch my YouTube channel where I'm awkwardly but moving forward in learning Mandarin Chinese, you'll hear my confession that I wasn't able to actually tackle reading Mandarin Chinese and the complex characters that encompasses it until I was able to push past learning coding. And it was in Somia's classes and working for her during the summer as well, that and working for her as a research assistant as well. It was in under her lead that I was able to push password to that. So ironically, Somia's influence on what I'm doing now with my life was strong. Initially I thought it built up my coding confidence so that I could build my own mobile apps with without a bigger organization attached to me. And what it's actually done is led the way for me to actually finally, I think, acquire a second language while I live in a country that uses that language. So thank you so much for that. But this is not a language podcast that's over there. This is about onlineness and expertness or living overseasness and how those two support or don't support, conflict or don't conflict, but how they affect each other. And what the person living overseas thinks of that theory. And what the person that we're talking about living overseas, in this case, Somia, thinks about if there is a relationship between those two worlds and if they interact with each other. Without further ado, here is Somia. Thank you, Somia, for joining us today on Virtual Expat Podcast. Can you briefly introduce yourself to our listeners?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, my name is Somya, as you already said. I work as a data scientist in Toronto. I am originally from India, but I lived in Germany and the US for some time before being here like four months back. Yeah, I guess that's it.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, great. All right. So what we generally do first is kind of go through your online chronology. Basically, what did you use online when you were in India? Did it change when you were in Germany? And then finally, when you reached North America and sorry, Canadians, but we're gonna clump the US and Canada probably together because they're so close to each other. So when you were in India, what did you do online? It could be email, social media, websites, anything that you frequently did online.

SPEAKER_01

Email, a lot of email, um Facebook, but not a lot. But then in those days, like I mean, it was not a lot in any way because uh I so I was a lot on our put for some time and then I moved to Facebook, but then it was not really that much on Facebook because I met most of my friends physically. Yeah, but then I realized that's not true because when I came to Germany, I still didn't use Facebook for a long time and then I started using a lot. No, I use it a lot, but then I realized that even those friends back in India use it a lot.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

I thought I'm using it a lot because I'm outside the country, but then these people are in the country with their families and they still use it a lot. So I don't know.

SPEAKER_03

When did you notice that it started to get really popular with people back home?

SPEAKER_01

Uh maybe five years back.

SPEAKER_03

Five years really, so like uh 2013-ish?

SPEAKER_01

I don't know. I was not on Facebook for some time in the middle. 2011 and 12, I was just not I I just deactivated my account. So I don't know what happened in that time, but by the time I came back, like uh everybody was sharing everything on either Facebook or WhatsApp and they stopped, you know, sending stuff on email. Like people get married and then just yeah, I shared my pictures on WhatsApp, didn't you see? Like, you know, I didn't start using WhatsApp until 2015.

SPEAKER_03

2015. I'm still not on WhatsApp, I don't know why I'm resisting it. Um probably because it's another app and I I feel like I add a new app to my phone every three days.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, like I mean I didn't have a smartphone until 2015. Like, I mean, once I had it, I had it had all those apps.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I was when we went to Arizona in 2012, it was my first smartphone. Before then, it was just I mean, it took me a while to get away from flip phones.

SPEAKER_01

I really liked bulky phones. I mean, I had very thin, small phones which could just fit into any pocket.

SPEAKER_03

I loved them, yeah. And they're just the phones are getting bigger and bigger and bigger, and it's slightly annoying me. They're almost like half a tablet now, some of them are so big.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah. Damn it. Why do you think they're doing that to us?

SPEAKER_01

Small phones, small features, you know? You can you can not use a computer and be fine.

SPEAKER_03

Right. Yeah, I suppose. All right, so when you were in India, mostly email and just a tiny bit of Facebook?

SPEAKER_01

Yes.

SPEAKER_03

Alright. So when you moved to Germany, did you add on any what what did you do there?

SPEAKER_01

Uh it was just I was using some wipe software to call home, and after like a year or so I started using Facebook. That was it. Like, I mean, uh I started using WhatsApp like two or three months before I left Germany. So I survived without WhatsApp for a long time.

SPEAKER_03

Was Facebook mostly to stay in contact with folks, or did you go in any like interest sites or any of this?

SPEAKER_01

Uh no, no groups or no interest sites, it's just my friends.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

So sometimes just posting like um private messaging or sometimes just posting. Like on the Facebook pages. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03

Gotcha. I'm noticing a trend that a lot of folks go on and off Facebook. Did you have that experience?

SPEAKER_01

Oh, I was off one only once when I first moved to Germany for the first one year. That was it. I mean, I like uh staying in touch with people. That's the only way, I guess. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, yeah, yeah. What why did you go off of it for that year?

SPEAKER_01

I don't know. I mean, when I first moved to Germany, I was really not, you know, very keen on staying in touch with people. I wanted to stay away for some time.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Be alone. And you know, make new friendships and that kind of thing. So yeah, it is sure, sure, sure.

SPEAKER_03

So it was your way of saying I need some time alone, I'll come back to you later, maybe.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, maybe.

SPEAKER_03

Maybe. Have you ever been someone that that surfs the web and goes from like interest site to interestite kind of thing or reads a lot?

SPEAKER_01

Not really. I mean, I I found my interest sites way before Facebook. And I'm still in touch with those communities. So yeah, I don't I don't I'm not that person who goes into Facebook groups and then from one group to another and then to one of them. I mean, I don't I I don't think I spend so much of time looking for groups online.

SPEAKER_03

All right. Uh as far as like reading any articles, news, or like any stuff like that, do you do any of that? Have you ever done any of that stuff online a lot?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, that I do a lot. I look at a lot of news websites and uh even general blogs and stuff.

SPEAKER_03

What language do you generally read in online?

SPEAKER_01

Uh English and Telugu.

SPEAKER_03

Are there certain things you read in one language versus another?

SPEAKER_01

Local news, like local news at in my hometown, I read them in Telugu. Local news in Canada, I can only read them in English. I used to read like a little bit of German for some time. Just looking at the headlines and uh looking at the one-sentence blob that they have behind uh under each headline.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Were and I know you were busy in a PhD program when you were in Germany, right?

SPEAKER_04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah. But were there any apps or websites or things that you started to use just when you were there that a lot of people used around you?

SPEAKER_01

The local, it was a website, local.de, which everyone used to browse through. So and there was a website called Tartown Germany, which was for experts in Germany. That was in English. It had a lot of these forums where people post about like, you know, how do I pay file for taxes or you know, these kind of questions.

SPEAKER_03

Gotcha.

SPEAKER_01

Some interesting things that are happening in Germany for non-German people. I don't browse them anymore, of course.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah. Although I did I did read an article today that uh I know you were were not in Berlin, but there was this whole article on why expats are falling out of love with Berlin.

SPEAKER_04

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah. I yeah. I I didn't actually read it because I still want to live there. I just I opened it and I realized that I didn't want to be convinced not to go there someday, so I closed it before I even started reading it. I could probably find it, but I was just like, no, no, never mind, I don't want to know. You mostly communicate one-on-one online with folks, it sounds like. Do you post anything for anybody to read? Like for just like general Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01

I post a lot of public posts on Facebook. I blog a lot. Sometimes even I started posting on LinkedIn too now after moving to Canada.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, yeah, I noticed. See, I've noticed you you've been posting I I don't stay on LinkedIn a ter o'clock, but I for some reason my notifications have started to work. And when there's a little number at the bottom of my app, I tend to pay attention. So they must be very clever. And I've noticed that after you left Iowa, you seem to be posting more academic stuff online on LinkedIn. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

What what has I mean being in the industry, I'm reading different kinds of stuff compared to when I was in academia. So not just research articles, but I'm also reading blogs by industry RD folks and general blogs on like you know, good software practices and these kind of things.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01

So when I was in Iowa, I used to actually write blog posts on my blog on these research kind of stuff, you know, teaching research and these kind of things.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

I thought, you know, I I was not actually much of a LinkedIn user at the time, but then after moving here, I also wanted to network with people in Canada, build some professional network here. So I started using LinkedIn more.

SPEAKER_04

Nice.

SPEAKER_01

So I thought, you know, when I'm posting blog posts and when I'm reading stuff, I can as well use LinkedIn to share that kind of information.

unknown

Sure.

SPEAKER_01

It actually worked out actually. I mean, some people, some unknown people come and read it and hold it.

SPEAKER_03

So yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Have you met anybody offline from those posts online?

SPEAKER_01

Not yet, but there are a few meetups. So I always register and not go because they happen in the evenings and I'm al already like tired by evenings.

unknown

Yeah, I get that.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. But I did meet some people outside my work. Uh was at an industry conference sometime back. I met a few people there.

SPEAKER_03

Nice.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, it's slowly building some kind of professional network, I would say.

SPEAKER_03

Gotcha, gotcha, gotcha. Now I do have a confession to make. When you were when it was announced that you were coming to Iowa and I was already a student there, I bl I Googled you. And and I saw a translation of a poem, I believe, that you did. Um yeah, was it a poem or was it just a short story? I don't, it was almost what three years ago now.

SPEAKER_01

But what did you see? Like I translated it into English? I think so, yeah. Did I really translate anything to English? No, I did, but it was like after coming to Iowa, like 2015.

SPEAKER_03

No, I swear to you.

SPEAKER_01

No, no, no, no. Yeah, I translated a book. Sorry. Yeah, that was 2015. I came in 2016. So yeah.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Do you do you do any more of that? Or have you done any more of that?

SPEAKER_01

I'm doing right one right now, but it's slow.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

I mean, although I have a lot of time, I want to do something else in that lot of time, not work.

SPEAKER_04

I get that.

SPEAKER_01

So yeah, I'm doing something and I should see how it goes.

SPEAKER_03

Sure, sure, sure, sure, sure, sure. So there's a lot of research on people in social media and their moods and emotions when they're using it. When you're keeping up with your friends and family online with social media, do you generally walk away from looking at their stuff, feeling good, feeling kind of iffy, feeling overwhelmed?

SPEAKER_01

It's a mixture of all feelings. There were times when I'm just overrun by some posts of some people, and some people seem perpetually happy, which is shocking for me.

SPEAKER_03

Right, yeah.

SPEAKER_01

But yeah, sometimes I'm like, you know, how can they how can they do this? I mean, people tend to share more happy stuff on their Facebook.

SPEAKER_03

Do you think they are perpetually happy, or that's just the they only post the really good stuff?

SPEAKER_01

I think they only just post the really good stuff. Nobody wants to, at least most people want don't want to wash their dirty linen in public.

SPEAKER_03

So yeah, yeah, yeah, fair enough. So we oh we skipped over North America. So when you moved from Germany to to Iowa slash North America slash that general gigantic area, did what you do online change at all?

SPEAKER_01

Uh I actually blog very little when I was in so when I was in Germany, I used to write my personal blog, the non-technical one, a lot.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01

I used to write that even in India a lot. Like I used to uh there were times when I was in India when I used to blog every week. But I almost did not blog at all, I guess, when I was in Iowa. I mean I did, but like it was very infrequent, like once in every three, four months or something like that.

SPEAKER_03

Wow, okay, yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Now I don't do it anymore, actually. I don't know why. I started doing like last week, so I should see how it goes. I think I just got busy in Iowa.

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03

Well, you're only working on a hundred prox projects at once, so I mean just hundred, right?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03

Just a hundred. What would stop you?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, just a hundred, and I was already busy, you know.

SPEAKER_03

Right? Oh my gosh. That yeah, that yeah, okay. Social media websites. So the way that you talk to folks back home, did that stay the same? Like you use the same calling programs, same social media?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, like I actually use the same calling programs in Germany. I'm I'm thinking of changing it now because I think there may be you know cheaper or better alternatives. Things must have evolved in the past eight years.

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03

Wait, is it a paid service?

SPEAKER_01

It's a paid service.

SPEAKER_03

What? Okay, Skype. This program is free if you're talking to one person.

SPEAKER_01

This is Yeah, but my mother does not use Skype. Like I have to call on her phone. This is to call on her phone.

SPEAKER_03

Okay, with this cloud Zoom cloud recording thing, you can give them when you share, you can either share a link to use on a computer or a phone, or you she does not use internet, or you can give them a phone number. It gives you a phone number that somebody can call.

SPEAKER_01

So she does not do all these things. Like I have to she has a phone, but she does not make these calls. I have to call her. It's a different setup, and then I have other people. Like sometimes I call my grandparents, they don't use at all like all these things. They don't have a cell phone, by the way.

SPEAKER_03

Right, right. No, that's fine. That's fine. This gives a landline number for her to call.

SPEAKER_01

I don't think they are up to these things anyway. So they're uh grandparents, and then I call some of my mother's aunts and uncles. So there are a couple of people I call, not regularly, but you know.

SPEAKER_03

Right, right, right. But yeah.

SPEAKER_01

But with my mother, I call every day, but with others, you know, once in a month or something.

SPEAKER_03

Sure, sure. Yeah, well, if you're only if it's only calling a landline, I have no idea.

SPEAKER_01

I don't know but it's like it's it's just one cent per minute. It's not like you know, it's not like super expensive.

SPEAKER_03

That's really cheap.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. That's the reason why I don't mind paying.

SPEAKER_03

Like, you know, that's that doesn't seem like it would be worth it to research and find something else.

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. It has been one cent per minute like for eight years now, so that's yeah, that's really, really, really cheap. Thanks, Pets and Geopats. What do you do with the annoying paper mail that you get to your old addresses in your home country? For a few years I'd have all of my mail forwarded to one friend, and then I'd feel guilty for bothering them so much. So then I'd have a family member um deal with my mail and so on and so forth. And I did this for about like what, twelve, thirteen years. And it got annoying, and let's face it, I missed some mail because people have better things to do than look after my paper correspondence. So I finally broke down and got a service from traveling mailboxes where they will literally receive your mail, you get a US address, you get to pick the city that it's in and you receive mail. And they'll let you know when mail comes in. They'll open it, scan it for you so you can read it. If you really need to, they'll forward it to you for a fee. You can also get packages delivered as well, and so there's like a variety of different services that you can have where you don't have to keep bugging your friends and family to deal with your paper mail. So if you go to stefffuccio.weebly.com, it's S T E P H F U C C I O uh dot weebly, W-E-E-B-L-Y dot com. If you go to the bottom, you'll see the blue ad on the right, traveling mailbox, click on that. I am now an affiliate program with them, so if you join their services, we both end up very, very happy campers, and you never have to ask your friends or family to receive your mail again. It's truly a beautiful thing. So okay, looking back at the three areas we're talking about India, Germany, and North America, do you think your movement uh from one place to the next affected how you used the internet?

SPEAKER_01

No, not really. I just use it more and more now because I use more on phone now. I have an actual commute. What? Yeah, I go by train for like some half an hour.

SPEAKER_03

Oh.

SPEAKER_01

I didn't have that before.

SPEAKER_03

That's not too bad of a commute.

SPEAKER_01

No, that's not too bad. It's just that it's bad for me because I don't like commutes.

SPEAKER_03

I hear ya. Yeah, that's true. That's true. So, what do you tend to do on your phone while you're commuting?

SPEAKER_01

So, for the past two weeks, I'm just playing sudoku.

SPEAKER_03

Nice.

SPEAKER_01

But before that, I used to read. I had a few books on books of like primarily poetry because they're easy to read on phone.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01

So poetry both in English and Telugu. So it depends on my mood, really. Like sometimes I just play Sudoku. Sometimes if the train is crowded, I don't want to spend time reading and stuff. So I just play.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01

If it is not suffocating, you know, I can I can peacefully read. Sometimes I just you know print out some research articles or something.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01

But I use my phone more now. Like that's that's the thing. I even browse sometimes. I just browse Facebook.

SPEAKER_03

Before you were using more of a laptop, a tablet, or yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Before, I mean I was not I I didn't have a commute, right?

SPEAKER_03

So I didn't like sit in a train and just browse stuff and uh when you talk to people online, your friends or family or strangers or professional contacts, do you find that you're talking to them in a different way than you would if they were in in front of you?

SPEAKER_01

I don't know. Probably how because it's physical interaction is not there, you know. I have to, I should not sound I don't know, I should still sound professional, polite, and all those things. So I probably will use some words which I don't use when I'm physically talking to them.

SPEAKER_03

Oh, okay. Even if it's a video A video, probably not. Okay.

SPEAKER_01

A video, I don't like I think I'm okay with uh talking like I would do physically.

SPEAKER_03

Right, right, right. But if it's just in text, do you find yourself writing more to make up for that vision?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, I I would think so.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm in China. And Northeast Asia has a fascination with uh cute and with uh what we would call emoticons, and on our biggest year, like WeChat has stickers that are absolutely adorable. And um, I'm rather silly, so I like the whole stickerslash emoticon world, but I know a lot of folks aren't really keen. I don't know if you can see any of these, but there's just what are those? There's tons and tons of stickers that you can put into messages.

SPEAKER_01

Like they're just like little WhatsApp also seems to have a lot of those these days.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, little cute pictures.

SPEAKER_01

This reminds me of Huishan.

SPEAKER_03

What's up? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly, exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I find myself sometimes having almost an entire conversation just in like cute stickers. And I'm like, how would this actually look if this were words? I have a couple of my friends from the US on WeChat so I can talk to them because they're not. Oh, okay, okay. And they think the stickers are cute when I use them, but they're not quite in the habit of using them. I think I don't know. I have this theory that North Americans are slightly more serious and really want to use text when they're on messaging forums. I don't know. What do you think? It's my theory.

SPEAKER_01

I didn't notice, I don't know. I don't do a lot of informal chat with North Americans, so I didn't notice this.

SPEAKER_04

Okay.

SPEAKER_01

Uh but so WhatsApp has a lot of these pictures these days. Like there are also you can search for gifts and uh put a gif for an a for an expression or something. So I use it a lot, but some of my friends in India still don't use it a lot. So yeah, I guess it depends.

SPEAKER_03

Like, yeah. Do they comment at all when you use it, or it's just yeah, they do, they do.

SPEAKER_01

Sometimes mostly they're amusing. Even in a serious situation, you know, sometimes like you look at a picture and you smile.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah. Yeah. Have you ever deleted something you put online afterwards?

SPEAKER_01

No, I don't know. I think I made a few posts private on Facebook. I didn't delete anything, I guess. Not at least what as far as I remember.

SPEAKER_03

Do you tend to share more stuff as it's happening or like a few days or weeks or months after?

SPEAKER_01

Generally as it is happening because something or the other is happening all the time. I can't remember what happened, like in a few days or months after.

SPEAKER_03

Is there something that you've made a conscious choice to never share online with anyone?

SPEAKER_01

No, I didn't think of it that way. I don't share a lot of personal photographs though. Some people do, some people share like everything in public. I don't know how they do that. Like settings are public, everyone can see it.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Why did you I don't think I share a lot of family pictures or anything anywhere online.

SPEAKER_03

Sure, sure, sure. Why?

SPEAKER_01

I don't know. Like, I mean, if it is a public post, everyone can see it, right? I'm not very particularly keen on others looking at who how I look or you know how my family members look. And then I also saw like a few instances of fake profiles. So there was a profile of one guy who was named something else, but he looked like my uh colleague from college. The picture was exactly his, so I sent this picture to my colleague.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

This was on Facebook, and he was actually shocked because it is his picture. I was not like confused or anything.

SPEAKER_03

It is his picture. Wow. Was this on this was on Facebook?

SPEAKER_01

This was on Facebook. I accidentally found this profile because I don't know how I found it. I think I got it in Facebook suggestions or something.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, and then there was one other instance like last year where our ISU professor John Lewis, somebody started creating a fake profile for John Lewis.

SPEAKER_04

What?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, and started adding all of us. So I actually didn't realize John was already on my Facebook list. So I first added this guy, and then I realized John was already on my list.

SPEAKER_04

Right.

SPEAKER_01

And then I sent a message to this guy saying, like, I mean, you're already on my list. Why did you add me?

SPEAKER_04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

And then somebody uh, and then we realized like a couple of people did this, and then we realized John said, like, I don't know who this is, and then we realized it's a fake profile.

SPEAKER_04

Wow.

SPEAKER_01

But this guy actually had publicly available pictures from John's profile on his profile, so it was like difficult to notice this kind of oh difference. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03

What do people get?

SPEAKER_01

I don't know.

SPEAKER_03

Doing that. Yeah, no, that's creepy. In either case, did the person notify Facebook and try to have the fake profile removed or anything?

SPEAKER_01

I think they did. I don't know. Probably they did.

SPEAKER_03

Like, why would somebody do that? Like, what would they gain? Other than followers, what would they gain from well?

SPEAKER_01

Like, I mean, if you add this person as a friend, then uh and you don't keep this person in restricted list and Facebook, then this person has access to all your personal details, right? Like that's what they gain.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Like the photos you share, the other updates you share, your date of birth, maybe your phone number, depending on how you the privacy settings are, phone number, email, and these kind of things.

SPEAKER_03

Right, right, right. Yeah, that's downright creepy.

SPEAKER_01

You should be happy that you're not on Facebook.

SPEAKER_03

Right, exactly. I was gonna say I I'm not on Facebook for very different reasons, but the the privacy issue is just a a an extra thing that I don't even think about. Um yeah, no, that's creepy. That is definitely creepy. Oh my gosh. That's the thing, what I keep wondering, I haven't interviewed anybody super young and any teenagers yet, but I'm curious because I came to the internet, you know, as it matured and as it became popular, and I grew up basically without it, and then in my 20s and 30s, that's when things started to grow. So I wonder the kids that are growing up now, like what where do they draw the line between what to put online and not put online?

SPEAKER_01

You know, everything online, right? Right. Yeah, that's I mean, at least I don't use Instagram, but a lot of people also use Instagram.

SPEAKER_03

So oh, I I use Instagram, yeah. But there's a a line between what I will and won't post on there. Do you have any younger relatives or friends or or whatnot or that?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, I have a lot of them. They think Facebook is like outdated and for old people. Even WhatsApp, even WhatsApp is for old people according to them.

SPEAKER_03

So, what's for young people now then?

SPEAKER_01

I don't know, they use something, some group, something I forgot. Probably Snapchat, yeah.

SPEAKER_03

Uh oh, I thought Snapchat went down.

SPEAKER_01

I don't know. So even in my class, like when I was teaching 314 like last semester, yeah. Uh there was a small classroom exercise where I asked them to document something related to WhatsApp.

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

So in a class of 25, like 75% of them did not even know what WhatsApp is.

unknown

Wow.

SPEAKER_01

They were using something else. Uh I forgot its name, but they were using some other such tool. It's I mean, some other mobile app.

SPEAKER_03

Right, right, right, right, right, right. I do think WhatsApp was popular in some parts of the US, but I felt like in Europe and South America it was what more popular. And then Line and and was is popular in parts of Asia, WeChat here. I forget what people in Japan were on, but it felt like it's so such a regional thing. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

WhatsApp is very popular in India though.

SPEAKER_03

Is it? Okay.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, super popular. People do everything on WhatsApp.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah. No, I don't know. I don't know. But then again, we were gone from the US for a long time, too. But um, but yeah, no, I don't know. That's interesting. So, what do you what do you think we should be telling the new gen newer generations before they hop online for the first time?

SPEAKER_01

I don't think they will listen anyway, so you can tell anything.

SPEAKER_03

We should let them fall on their faces and then they'll figure it out.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. I think they're better at doing that.

SPEAKER_03

Ah, I don't know. But what if they make a really, really grave, like dangerous mistake?

SPEAKER_01

Everyone can make that, right? Even we can make that. Like, how can we decide that they're making a mistake or not making a mistake?

SPEAKER_03

I mean, yeah, that's true. That's true.

SPEAKER_01

Uh they won't anyway listen. Like, I mean, there's no point in trying to be nice and trying to be that you know helpful senior. And I don't like people advising me, like people, older people advising me, so I'm sure they also don't like me advising them.

SPEAKER_03

Okay. Well, when when kids are growing up, we teach them how to walk, how to talk, how to behave in public, how to eat, how to.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, but that's our kids, right? Like not like our neighbors' kids. We can't we don't just go to a kid walking on the street and see, you know.

SPEAKER_03

Okay, so how should people teach their own kids how to behave online?

SPEAKER_01

Like what should should they even try, or should they kind of just keep I I think like I mean, I think all households will have some sort of parental controls and settings on internet and television and you know Netflix and all these things, right?

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Apart from that, maybe they should just make sure uh their kid does not spend too much of time online alone.

SPEAKER_03

Okay. So I mean, I don't have children and children of that age, so no, me neither, but I taught I taught teens for years, so I part of me thinks about that age group, not so much the younger, younger ones, because I think that is probably pretty easy with solving.

SPEAKER_01

I mean, there's a problem of this fake news spreading on the internet. Yeah, but there's a problem for adults as well. So I don't know if it is very specific to if kids need to be you know educated about how to identify whether something is fake, because uh even adults can't do that, and maybe it's just the way of like it's just something to tell about these times. I mean, we are just living in those times, so it's better to live like others.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, because it's not you're right, it's not just what they're putting out into the world, it's what they're absorbing from the websites too. And that critical thinking of deciding is this bullshit or is this actually real?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, and I mean there's just too much of information around. There's nothing we can do about it. Too much of information around and too much of access around.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah. So what are you enjoying this conversation about our virtualness and our geographicness colliding? Me too. Hey, I would love to interview you. Do you live in a country that is not your home country? Let's talk about your experience. Let's do it. Contact me at stepcio-s-t-e-p h f u c Io at gmail.com. Or you can hit me up on any of my social media platforms. I am Steph Fuccio on Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr. So contact me. Let's line this up. I would love to get your opinion into these questions. Out into the world. Let's do it. I'm I'm slightly intrigued with the messiness of the internet. Do you think we're ever going to organize this creature?

SPEAKER_04

No.

SPEAKER_01

No. No, I don't think so. I think it's impossible.

SPEAKER_03

Ah.

SPEAKER_01

Simple answer, right?

SPEAKER_03

It is, but but but is that possible? Is it possible to just leave it in its current because it's only going to grow, there's going to be more stuff, more apps, more websites, more precisely why I think it's not possible to organize. So it's just gonna grow and it will get harder to find the right stuff.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, that's what I would guess. You find stuff that uh is marketed enough. I mean, that will be on top.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

There may be good stuff that you don't see, but that has always been the case.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, that's true. That's true. I think I remember when I first started teaching back in the US after teaching overseas for a decade, and I was used to email in kind of a folder system where you put things in their proper spot. And my students were used to the search system where they just kept things in their inbox, which used to drive me crazy because they could never find anything. And they would just search it, and they thought this worked, but they could never find anything. So they were using this method, I was using this method, and we were trying to, like I was trying to help them find what they needed to do, X, Y, and Z. And it was sort of we were dancing around each other. So it sounds like what you're saying is that the the search-ish thing will either need to get better or nothing, because organizing it is not organizing it, I don't think will matter like it will be useful because that was a different time.

SPEAKER_01

Like we emails just started and we didn't have so many emails. Now we have like hundreds and thousands of emails. Like, even just in a day, sometimes you may get like 50 to 100 emails depending on you know what you're doing. Like you may have subscribed to different groups, and each group, like you know, if there is a lot of activity in one group, you'll just see some 25 emails from that group alone.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We were I was also talking with some folks about the messages that we have on our phones with people, the messages, the pictures, those kinds of things. Do you try to keep them or organize them and or save them in some sort of way?

SPEAKER_01

Uh sometimes I just delete some of them. That's that's all I do.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

So I sometimes I copy them like to a disk or something just to keep a backup if there are some really you know important photos or something.

SPEAKER_03

Right, very much.

SPEAKER_01

But other than that, I don't do any other sort of organization. I I mean there's just so much of information floating around. I don't want to waste my time trying to organize. I used to do, but I don't do anymore.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, yeah. Is there a difference between somebody's like autobiographical book and what we're doing, posting about our lives online?

SPEAKER_01

Uh I don't know. Autobiographical book, probably, you know, you know, you're writing a book, so you probably plan and tell only things you want to tell. In social media, probably sometimes you just want to vent out. You're more unrestrained.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01

More uh you may know more about a person's uh from their social media posts than their autobiography book because book is planned. Yeah, I mean some people plan maybe their social media posts as well. I don't know.

SPEAKER_03

Can they go into as much depth with explanation and like depth of emotion in the social media posts as they could or not?

SPEAKER_01

Oh, people post really, really long posts on social media, like uh several times a day. I just wonder how many how do they get time to do all these things.

SPEAKER_03

Oh my god. Okay, have you heard of this new influencer thing? I shouldn't say I sound so old right now. Have you heard of this old fangled influencer thing? Apparently, there's this new job. It's sort of like a freelancer thing where if people are uh popular enough on social media, they're termed an influencer.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, LinkedIn has that, right? LinkedIn influencers.

SPEAKER_03

Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. And apparently to to stay current and active and like super hot, they have to post like 35 posts a day.

SPEAKER_01

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_03

Could you imagine yourself ever posting that much in one single day?

SPEAKER_01

Well, I mean, if people are like social media uh uh representatives of some organization or something, they have to write what other thing they can do. Can they do?

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, no, that's true. That's true. It just seems like a lot.

SPEAKER_01

I mean, maybe it's just their job. Like, I mean, if the job itself is posting on social media, then you know they have to do that, right? I don't see myself doing that like as an individual. Yeah, I'm not that obsessed with myself yet. Uh we don't know what happens in the future.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah. Well, to be fair, some of them are interest-based, like some of them might be like a sports influencer or a music influencer. They'd have different dreams of things. Although some of them are fashion-oriented and very superficial, and this this is this is how I look kind of thing. But yeah, it just seems like a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot.

SPEAKER_01

I don't know.

SPEAKER_03

I think it's just a part of their job I have this theory that this happiness obsession, like you mentioned earlier, some people only post the really, really good things. When TV came to fruition, there were some really like super happy, like the perfect life kind of TV shows, and then we kind of got more realistic, and now there's like a really big range of television shows from the made up to the real and all that kind of stuff. Do you think the internet and social media specifically is going to go through that kind of lifespan too? Or do you think we'll stay in this happiness obsession moment?

SPEAKER_01

I have no idea. Actually, I don't watch so much of TV, so I don't know what is the range.

SPEAKER_03

Fair enough. Okay.

SPEAKER_01

I mean, from what I know of television, I didn't get that impression that you had. I thought uh all television shows are like over the talk, talking about, you know, unnecessary negative emotions.

SPEAKER_03

Ah, okay. All right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Clearly I had an American viewpoint on that. Okay. So if we just look at the the short life of social media so far, it does seem to we do seem to be really, really focused on the happy, the joy, the pretty, the the that kind of thing. Do you think we'll stay there or do you think we'll get a wider range of experiences in the future?

SPEAKER_01

I don't know. I probably it will stay there. I mean, there are always those people who posts on like their like depression and all these things, but in in those forums, I guess.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

But even like people don't want to go read and you know, just feel live with the feeling that life sucks more than I imagine, right? Like people want to have some hope.

SPEAKER_03

So I don't think but there's more, there's more in between happy and depressed. There's there's thinking stuff, there's that is uninteresting, right?

SPEAKER_01

Like, I mean, what is so interesting?

SPEAKER_04

Really?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, I don't know. I don't want to read about like I don't want to read about happy stuff also after point it gets boring. Like I get a feeling that everybody's happy except me.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01

But I don't know, like I I can't say. I can't I can't predict on this, speculate on this.

SPEAKER_03

So there's a lot of fear and speculation about artificial intelligence in the future. Do you think people will start to hire robots or what have you to do their social media in the future so they can do other things?

SPEAKER_01

Probably there are already some Twitter bots.

SPEAKER_03

That's true. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

So maybe like companies will just have a bot tweeting about them, like you know, 35 tweets a day, probably.

SPEAKER_03

Influencer bots.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, influencer bots. So yeah, I don't I don't think that's a very uh difficult thing to achieve in the coming years.

SPEAKER_03

Do you think we should be fearful of technology in the future?

SPEAKER_01

Whether we are fearful or not, it will just happen. We can't control it. That's my uh thought on that.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah. Do you think there's going to be that kind of scientific robots will take over the future that far too many people keep talking about?

SPEAKER_01

Uh okay. I'm I'm you know, I'm sure it won't happen in my lifetime. So I'm not particularly worried about what happens like 500 years later because you know, I can't tell.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

And there may be some solutions, people will come. Up with in that generation, so I should not overly obsess and worry about like you know the future of humanity.

SPEAKER_03

So again, looking at the three areas we're talking about, because I'm I'm trying to with this podcast, I'm trying to tease out if there is something that happens, some sort of connection between us moving places or living in different places and what we do online. So do you think your movement between these three places affected what you put into the world online at all? Or what you observed?

SPEAKER_01

I mean, I write about things like my experiences in these countries, and like I used to blog a lot about my travel, like when I was in Germany, I used to go to go around to other European countries.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

I used to um blog a lot, I even uh published in Telugu magazines, uh, travel blogs, travel posts. So yeah, I mean that is something I would not have done if I did not go to all these places, right?

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01

So yeah, I think it changes. I mean it not changes, but it adds more content to what you usually do.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's so there's this effect where if people are out together in a small group and somebody picks up their phone to do something, that the other people will tend to like pull out or pick up their phone and start to do it. Do you think that's true on a bigger scale that what people do in a certain country or city or location that it affects other people's usage of their mobile usage?

SPEAKER_01

I don't know. It depends on the country. Like if if there is something that is very trendy in the US, I'm pretty sure it'll be seen in India, but not the other way around.

SPEAKER_03

I know you haven't been in Toronto too long, but is there anything you've noticed there that's sort of interesting or quirky about what people are doing with their phones or laptops or technology in general?

SPEAKER_01

No, everybody is just looking into their phones and laptops and train, but I don't know what they're looking at.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And when you were in Iowa, was there anything there that stuck out?

SPEAKER_01

Well, it's a small place, right? So there are not that many people in Ames. That's true. So I didn't notice so much of people staring into their mobile phones and things like that. In the buses, students used to do that, but I don't know, I didn't use a lot of uh public transport or go to a lot of overcrowded places in AIMS because there are not any like Yeah, I was gonna say what overcrowded places. So yeah, so I don't know how like I didn't notice that much of people using their laptops or social media or phones or things like that while going to work or you know in public transport. Compared to AIMS, okay, it's much more in control.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah. Trying to think. The place that I saw the most technology just out and about was like when I went to the library and I'd see people with like their laptop and their phone and their I don't even think they had music players anymore. But I feel like there was more than two. I feel like there was like an array of electronics around them as they were studying. Someia, thank you so much. Thank you so much for joining me today.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, I hope you I answered your questions.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, of course. All right. Well, thank you so much for joining us for this episode of Virtual Expat. And special thank you again to Damon Castillo for the music and to our special guest this time. If you'd like to be interviewed for this podcast, just send me an email or contact me on social media in the show notes. You can find all my information, or you can just jot it down right now. Are you ready? You ready? Here we go. Death Fuchio, S-T-E-P-H-F-U-C-C-I-O, Gmail, Instagram, Twitter, Tumblr. There you go. Contact me. Oh, also LinkedIn too. You know what? I keep forgetting about that one. Hey, thank you so much for listening, and I look forward to your questions, comments, feedback, any information, and volunteering to be on the podcast as well. Thank you so much and have a wonderful, wonderful day. On or offline.

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