For this assignment, I read “Who are the Flat Earthers?” by Richi Barua. The writer did a good job explaining the Flat Earth society and their beliefs. The writer provided historical background about the community and described their relationship with people who believe the Earth is round. I gave the writer an adequate grade for content, development, and organization. I think the author deserves adequate for these standards because the intro and conclusion could have been stronger, and the quotes could have been more descriptive for the Flat Earth side. However, I gave an above average grade for style, creativity, and grammar. The writer chose an interesting topic and was able to support it with strong sentences with good grammar. To conclude, I believe the author did a good job writing about the Flat Earth community.

Zach Beauchamp’s “Our Incel Problem” highlights the highly controversial online community and their shift to radicalism and misogyny. The Involuntary Celibacy, or Incel community was created over 20 years ago, and it gave “awkward” people a space to be themselves, since they were not comfortable with themselves in the real world. The community was open for all genders until recently, when angry young men overwhelmed the community, and changed how it is perceived as for years to come.

Beauchamp provided many patterns of trends that describe members of the Incel community. For instance, he shows how the early years of the Incel community had members who were shy and awkward in real life. He describes this community as an environment where both genders had the platform to ask their burning questions about the opposite gender in a welcoming way. Afterwards, Beauchamp shows the shift in the community where it became more hostile. This new trend in members became young boys and men who are angry at the world because of their lack in romantic relationships. This shift is very remarkable because the once peaceful online community became one of the internets infamous groups.

These patterns and trends inform the insider experience in the community. It does because the Incel environment before the shift was more welcoming compared to the modern Incel community.  Beauchamp calls the members “Social Justice Warriors” because they positively impacted the lives of other Incel members. Thus, you can characterize the members of the old Incel group as caring individuals. However, after the Incel community shifted into what it is now, we can consider the members of the community as violent because of their anger the members have against women. He writes, the members of the Incel community “reject of women’s sexual emancipation, labeling women shallow, cruel creatures who will choose only the most attractive men if given the choice.” Thus highlighting the drastic shift in the community. To summarize, Beauchamp’s analysis of the Incel community displays the ideals former Incel members had compared to modern members.

In conclusion, the Involuntary Celibacy, or Incel group is a group who helped people feel more comfortable with themselves for over 2o years. The group, who was once welcoming to men and women, provided a sense of community for people who considered themselves as outcasts in society. However, the community’s members and focus shifted into something darker; destroying the welcoming community and twisting into something unrecognizable to its original members. Nevertheless, the community still resonates and gives a strong sense of belonging to the current members which is the communities goal in the first place.

I recently watched a movie on Netflix about the Flat Earth society, and became interested with their beliefs. I chose this community because I wanted to learn more about the communities rationale and why they believe they are right and the vast majority of the world is wrong.

Looking back I notice that they are nor many differing positions between people in the community and myself stemming outside of race and age. A fixed position that may affect what I notice is living in a large city. Living in NYC, you would expect to come across a poster or a random person shouting in the streets that the Earth is flat since NYC is very diverse. However, I personally never experienced that. As a result, I just assume that the earth is not flat. Another fixed position is being a college student. Many of my professor and peers dismiss the thought that the Earth is flat because it is considered common knowledge. Thus, I believe being a college student and living in a city are fixed positions toward my research.

Moreover, some personal experiences that I have entering my research is remembering the first time I viewed the Apollo 8 flight. During the flight, a picture was taken of Earth in space, and it looked pretty round to me. Another personal experience are the Moon landings that happened nearly sixty years ago. Many of the landings provided photos of Earth from the Moon, and the Earth also was round proving that it is a globe.

Thus, coming into my research, I am now knowledgeable of my privileges of living in a city and being a college student and experiences relating to the topic. Hopefully, I can set those key experiences aside and hopefully obtain information about the Flat Earth Society.

Elise Wu’s “Out Patients” portrays her experience with Factitious Disorder (FD)before and after her “self-diagnosis”. Prior to her self-diagnosis, she battled with the compulsion of seeking medical attention without dealing with actual symptoms. This journey also pained her loved ones who was unsure of how to deal with Elise and her health scares because of the disagreement between her symptoms and the results of medical tests. After researching her condition she realizes that she is not facing this illness alone, and discovers communities who are willing to share their stories on how they deal with FD.

Wu does a great job creating a verbal portrait in her writing. She provides details from her past experience in the emergency room. For instance, she recalls one experience when a doctor and a group of interns visits her in a room. She remembers the doctor giving her the speech that many people with FD face; a conversation that does not blame her for faking anything, but gives a “heads up” to the patient that they are aware that nothing is wrong with them. Another instance where Wu applies a great verbal portrait is when she describes Dr. Marc Feldman’s smile. She describes his smile as a smile where his intentions are not wholehearted. This smile deeply resonates with her; “If I am a freak, I don’t want to feel like someone else is making money by sensationalizing my misfortune, self-induced or otherwise”. Thus, these two examples helps the reader a gain a more personal feel to Wu and her thoughts and feelings regarding her illness.

Wu relies on many sources to further enhance her writing. To start, she first gets information about her illness online through Dr. Feldman’s website and his online forum. She describes her experience on this website as unpleasant because the chat included many members of loved ones who faced FD not actual members who live with the illness. Additionally, she triangulates information from her sources to further support her writing. For instance, she notes how Dr. Feldman was not being as effective in his responses in his online forum, and was too focused in promoting his book. Wu then provides many examples where this occurs, further proving her point. Another example where she triangulates information is in Dr. Feldman’s forum. “Odette” is concerned over her mothers behavior with FD and asks Dr. Feldman for advice. After Feldman’s advice of trusting your instincts, Wu starts to speak upon the difference in responses the doctor is advising, showing how unhelpful the doctor truly is.
Footnotes play an important role in Wu’s text. Footnotes provides the reader more information about the quote Wu chose. Additionally, the footnotes provides the reader the source of her information, in the chance that any of her readers would like to further investigate a certain topic.

In conclusion, Elise Wu’s “Out Patient” talks about the experience Wu has faced in her journeying before and after her self-diagnosis of Factitious Disorder. Her writing gives readers a strign insight on the community of FD’ers and the challenges they faced in overcoming their illness.

It is about 12:15 pm as I take a seat in the fourth floor library. The wooden brown tables were filled, as usual, with college students. As I take a seat in front of the long table, I see many rows of other students conversating with each other. Additionally, I see students eating lunch and drinking beverages, so it seems that the rule of no food and drinks on all the floors are not enforced. As I look down at the table, I notice a white poster advocating for the closing of City College amidst of the coronavirus, a paper that was on all the tables. I chose to sit in front of a group of people, I assume that they are friends, who were working on their chemistry homework on Aleks. Their conversation over homework is seen throughout the little section of the library I chose to observe. Many students had their laptops open and were talking to other colleagues in a relaxed fashion.  This trend maintained the whole hour; while the students routinely became louder and then fading. Overall, the library scene remained pretty constant throughout the hour, and this experience helped me gain exposure observing many informants at once.

Jessica Pressler’s “The Hustlers at Scores” tells the story of Roselyn Keo and other women who fished wealthy men by the use of MDMA and other drugs. Roselyn and other women in her group unfortunately share similar backgrounds of difficulty while growing up, and resorted to working in strip clubs in order to support themselves. Some cultural beliefs the article include are the workers’ pride in not accepting handouts. Even though Roseyln expressed her dissatisfaction with her field, she chose to “do what she has to do” in order to support herself and provide for her daughter. Another cultural belief that the article includes is the idea that the workers develop the mentality that men are not real, “they are there for me to manipulate and take money from”. This shows the competition that the workers have even between themselves  in their fight for profit and ultimately leaving the business for good.

Pressler does a great job in giving an overview of Keo and the other women’s stories. Some background information that the author included to help us further understand the story is describing their usual clientele, a male wall street worker. Keo speaks upon the many experiences the group and herself had with these people, and their extraordinary spending habits. She describes one client spending $300,000 in one week at her strip club. This shows that these men were able to spend much money during their sessions, which made them an even bigger target to Keo and her group. Thus, by including the information, the reader is able to understand how the group was able to do this scheme successfully. Additionally, Pressler describes how the 2008 economic recession affected the lives of the workers at the club. Before the recession, many of their clientele, male wall street workers, were spending leisure time at her club which gave the club great earnings. However, the success took a dip once after the recession, and their clientele started to decrease. This also resulted in more clientele that demanded more services than before, which resulted in the group executing their fishing scheme. They drugged these men and maxed out their credit cards in order to support themselves, a way they viewed more wholesome than subjecting to the demands of their “perverted” clientele Therefore, by including this information, the reader gets a better understanding on why the group did these crimes.

Pressler describes her informants in many ways to make them come to life. One way Pressler does this is by describing Keo’s personality. She chose quotes from her interview that help the reader understand Keo’s personality. For instance she includes parts in their interview where she sighs, jokes and curses passionately about their actions. Another example is when Keo talks about her time working at a diner. Pressler describes her time at the diner as a place she did not want to be; working long hours for little pay. Thus, these examples help bring Keo’s personality to life, and made her character more relatable to the reader.

In conclusion, Jessica Pressler’s, “The Hustlers at Scores” tells the story of a group of exotic dancers who, at rough times, were able to plot a scheme in order to support themselves and their loved ones.

James Baldwin, “A Report from Occupied Territory” tells the story of the Harlem Six and two older men who were brutalized under the New York Police Department. Unfortunately, this is not the first case of brutality towards Blacks and other minorities, and it certainly will not be the last.

Through years of brutalization from their white counterparts, Blacks were able to learn from past tragedies in order to help them maneuver safely in the future. Some examples of this cultural information are the belief that the police are “the hired enemies of (Blacks and minorities) and they are hired to keep Blacks in place and protect white business interests”. This belief still stands in the Black community because of decades of mistreatment police forces are displaying towards Blacks. Consequently, minorities learned that it is always best to keep someone around them because of the brutality. Another example of cultural information Baldwin includes in his writing was when he was explaining the purpose of police forces in the country. Baldwin argues that the police are not enforcing the laws that they embody daily, but instead are putting the laws and their interests above the heads of minorities. Baldwin argues that “respecting the law means surrendering his self-respect” and this fact is shared between many Blacks across the nation for hundreds of years.  

There are many questions a fieldworker may ask to further discover the African American culture discovered in the article. One example can be: What is the history between police force in the U.S. and minorities and does that history justify the reason in implementing frisking laws that target minorities disproportionately? A fieldworker can also ask about the living situations of Blacks in Harlem. Why are they only getting menial jobs, and why are some so discouraged that they prefer being in the street?  

Additionally, a field worker can investigate many sources to penetrate the insider perspective. For instance, a fieldworker can interview many people who were close to the Harlem six and the two older men, for instance, family, teachers and pastors. A fieldworker can also interview many community organizations like the NAACP and the YMCA for their takes on NYPD’s policing strategies and their use of excessive force. Lastly, fieldworkers can also interview Blacks who tried to get a higher education and saw no results in terms of success; how has that impacted their lives?