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.

Syed Shataj Hosain

Writing For Social Science

Professor Shamecca A. Harris

Discussion Post # 4

25th March, 2020.

Privilege is a special right, benefit and immunity granted only to a person or to a group of people. Every single person in the world is born with a privilege that helps them to build a life. Practicing my own religion, education, health, race/ ethnicity is the privilege that I’m born with. However, owning good clothes, eating good food, using a phone or living in a house is a privilege that I got through my family because they can afford to give me those things. Food is a very important privilege that every human should get. My family feeds me food because they can afford it and that is my privilege to get it. I have the right to practice my religion freely whether I live in America or not. It is my birth privilege.

Age, nationality, gender, skin color, race or ethnicity, education opportunities, freedom of religion or of speech or freedom to travel, socioeconomic status these privileges can affect my fieldwork research because even if we have the privilege for those but we cannot always apply these in our life. Speaking my own language freely is also a basic human right. So, I get the privilege to practice my own language without any judgement. However, sometimes in public places I cannot speak my own language because they think I might be saying something about them or criticizing. Gender equality is also a big issue all over the world because people think male can do things that females cannot. So, that might affect my research because people might not take me seriously just because I’m a female. I chose facebook for my online community. The reason I chose facebook is because it is an online community all over the world where different kinds of people put different opinions and judgements. I see most of the people over social media like facebook do not respect each other’s opinions. It is easier to say things in social media then in person. So people get bullied a lot on social media. So recently I posted a status on facebook saying “Stay home, save lives”. My status is regarding the ongoing virus. So some of my friends agreed with me and others were blaming chinese people for the virus instead of being sympathetic towards the sick people. This made me think, not everyone has the same mentality as mine.

I have the privilege of having a roof over my head, an education, and receive financial aid for my college tuition, a job that allows me to buy whatever I want, etc. These privileges might affect my field research by being biased regarding my opinion of the online community I will observe. But also the lack of other privileges will also possibly affect my field research due to the demographic of my subjects which is way different than mine. The fact that I believe that there should be gun control will affect what I see/notice because the online community I will be studying believes in the complete which will influence my opinions and reactions to their interactions. When I was looking into gun girl’s fan base, they were mostly white and middle aged people who seem to be middle class in the southern region of the US. I, on the other hand, couldn’t be more different than them. For starters, I’m black or Afro-Latin to be specific. Their skin tone alone provides them with more privileges than I could ever get as well as their social-economic status.  My research will include life history facts and events related to the easy access of guns in America and it might also include some personal experiences. I’m planning to look into how their privileges shape their opinion on why they believe that everyone should have access to guns especially due to the last couple of years’ spike in shootings all in the US.

I choose this particular online community because I am a part of it. I have on occasion thought that certain behaviors could be considered weird to outsiders, so I thought becoming an outsider for a moment would be interesting. I have also criticized aspects of the community so to be able to formally analyze it will be fun, I think. My gender would make me notice any misogyny that those in the community may display. I would also not be able to relate or understand what the other genders may be experiencing. I believe my age will allow me to see how other ages are treated versus those around my age. Although people don’t often discuss class outright, my class would make me empathize with those at or below my level and not with those above me. My educational level will affect how I interpret information that is spread in the community. I don’t believe my nationality would have any effect on my field research because it is never really touched upon by the community. My race would not allow me to know what other races in the community may be facing. The fact that I have been a part of the community for a few years will be carried into my research. I will have personal biases on certain topics because I have been in the community. However, I don’t see my life experience having such a large affect. Other than shaping me into the person I am today, I don’t believe my life history being very present in my observations.

In Elise Wu’s study, “Out Patients”, she portrays the community of a medical condition called factitious disorder (FD) and her experience before and after her self-diagnosis of the illness. FD is defined as deliberately creating physical or psychological symptoms simply to take on the role of the patient with extreme cases being Munchausen syndrome. She describes herself as a member of the culture/online community telling her story of herself going into emergency showing some presumably symptoms of appendicitis and “the most acute years of the near decade I spent faking illness”(143).

She creates a verbal portrait of this community through imagery when describing her own experiences and by describing the posts on the thread. Wu did research about the patients, their contact with therapists, their families, and their doctors.Through her research she found an online community in the form of a visual discussion group for people interested in the disorder. She explains her anxieties and fears for herself and other members of the FD community. When researching FD she creates a verbal portrait as she gives an abundance of information she learned that allowed her to self-diagnose herself with FD and give the audience an understanding of the condition. She uses multiple online sources including the Cleveland clinic foundation website, Dr.Feldman’s website, and Munchausen library.She also presents statistics from professionals like Dr. Feldman. 

Wu triangulates the data, research and findings she discovered with her own personal experience with FD. Wu’s footnotes play a role in her text by providing an organized in depth background information. Her footnotes show directly where her information came from and upheld the credibility of her text on FD.

Elise Wu starts her essay by introducing us to her “mental condition” in which she fakes and/or exaggerates illness in order to receive medical care and attention. From here, she then mentions how she found an online forum for people who also share her condition called “Factitious Disorder” while searching up her condition on the internet. What I found interesting was that the community was called ““Factitious Disorder, Munchausen Syndrome, Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy, and Malingering Discussion and Survivor’s Forum” In particular survivor is a word that stands out here. Elise begins to describe that many of the accounts she read from people posting on the online community and she mentions how the “survivors” were people dealing with other people that exhibit her condition, NOT people with her condition. She also adds to her portrait of the community by mentioning how the doctor who linked the website, didn’t seem to offer much help to posters seeking his advice as well. Reading this part, makes it seem a bit hopeless for people who are dealing with this condition in their life and want advice. Elise Wu also triangulates her findings by checking other websites for people with her condition such as a yahoo group community she found. In this yahoo community, she found it was the opposite of the first community she found. This community may have been a lot more helpful to her as it was people who actually have her condition posting. Elise uses footnotes in this section of her essay to describe how the community members she observes had stopped posting, and because of this she chooses not to participate in this community. In the end, I think Elise chooses the best option though and she decides to actually come out to her therapist. I feel like this was probably the most concrete course of action that will likely have the most helpful effect on helping her manage her condition as it involves her actually interacting with someone in real life, discussing her condition.

“Out Patients” written by Elise Wu reveals her experience with Factitious Disorder– a disorder in which a person feigns an illness with the intent of playing the role of a patient. Wu focuses on the subculture within “FD” patients and the way they interact with others. Throughout the article, she creates a verbal portrait of the community by demonstrating the behaviors she observed in an online forum and message board. Wu focuses on her personal narrative and the narratives of those on these websites. She also inserts her feelings toward certain figures and creates vernacular that describes the community.

Elise Wu uses multiple sources to consult and gather knowledge of FD culture. She makes use of her narrative– Wu identified with the FD culture and inserted her opinions into the article. She begins the article with a vivid description of memory that took place in an ER. Wu also consults with an online forum and group message board to better understand different perspectives within the culture. The forum mostly consisted of those the FD patients have “played” for–while the message board is for those suffering from FD. Wu made sure to keep her identity anonymous so that she could respect her privacy during the process. She triangulated the data from her findings by using both online and offline sources to be better informed. 

Throughout the text, Elise Wu uses footnotes to contextualize her use of the sources in the article. The footnotes oftentimes served as a definition for certain terms so that readers with no medical background can better understand the information given. Lastly, footnotes in this article demonstrate a timeline– providing various dates for sources.

While Ms. Wu was trying to find an online community that catered to her specific psychological disability, what she found was the people who were annoyed by these people with FD. When portraying this community she talks about how the families/spouses are confused about how to confront the FD patients who they know are lying, but they don’t know if it is manipulation or not. The verbal portrait she creates is one of worried people who are looking out for themselves, and want to know if they are being tricked into continuing a relationship. Also, these people are searching for a way to get people with FD help, and she comments about how a doctor is consistently trying to plug his book into these comments for people who are looking for help. When describing this doctor, she almost makes him seem desperate for people to read his book instead of actually giving them helpful comments. The sources she’s using are mainly websites that she found linked by the Doctor, and she also looks up what her disorder is on the website which is when she first discovers this condition. To triangulate data she uses herself, and how her experience with FD has shaped her experiences in hospitals and how she thinks her friends/family might see her as a liar (ethos). She then uses the doctor as her logos, and uses his experiences with these patients to emphasize that it is hard to get these patients help since you can’t medicate it but rather manage it. Finally, she uses pathos when talking about how she is afraid to come out of her shell and claim this title, and how she may be ridiculed for lying about her conditions. The roles of footnotes indicate dates, context, texts, and give better quotes.

In this reading “Out Patients”,  Elise Wu realized that she had a symptom of pretending to be sick. She is trying to portray the life of a patient with the same symptoms as her in this article. She searched the Internet for relevant information, but she didn’t think she was completely suffering from the problem. Elise wu creates a verbal portrait of this online community and this disease is referred to as FD. People with FD deliberately create physical or psychological symptoms to assume only the role of a patient. No other motivation But she observed that FDers couldn’t truly face the impact of the truth. For example, family members and friends around them and doctors are angry at them. And the emotion that they are not taken seriously makes these people post their true thoughts on the online community. She found the information and answers given on some of Dr. Marc Feldman’s web pages and learned more about the disease. She then learned about many FDers’ experiences by reading different messages in the forum. In order to get more details, she joined this community and she wants to know how many have found herself here. She triangulates data with different online resources. She looked up web page information, professional articles, and messages from various forums. Elsie Wu will mark the details of each of her records to help her organize the information more conveniently. Later she became aware of it and walked out of her pretending illness. The role of footnotes in wu’s text helps build credibility, not only for readers to better understand but also for articles that look more organized.

In her essay, Out Patients, Elise Wu portrays those who have been diagnosed or self diagnosed with a disorder called factitious disorder (FD), with her being among those people. Upon her history of  faking severe illnesses, she decided to google why she does so out of guilt & concern & discovers a web page dedicated to the condition run by a Dr. Marc Feldman. Though abandoning it for 2 years, she returns to it & sees to her dismay that the forums under his page are not to assist those with the actual disorder, but rather those who know others with this disorder; These entries in the forum also don’t typically ask how to help those in their lives with the disorder, but rather how to distance or cut ties with the person & receive responses in great detail from others or from Dr. Feldman pitching for his book to be bought for more information & assistance. When Dr. Feldman finally posts a response that links to a support group, cravin4care, Wu finally discovers a forum for people who actually suffer from the disorder like herself. This is a drastic difference from the last forum setup & audience, as this forum requires subscribing to the list and will display public information. Ultimately, Wu, despite the noted difficulty there is for recovering from this order, decides to seek professional help upon the comfort crave4care provides her & gets a therapist who genuinely makes her feel supported.

Wu creates a verbal portrait of the two sites by contrasting their different appearances. Upon describing Dr. Feldman’s page she feels discomfort towards fully trusting & relying on the site, as she describes it to have a “sea green background” and at the top of the page, Dr. Feldman with an “expert smile”. In comparison to Dr. Feldman’s site, crave4care’s forum was one that was more trustworthy & comfortable to her as it provided a community for people like her, as well as “coming out” stories that reassured her. The footnotes she displays with her essay provide additional information for the context in which she is discussing and for citations.