Tag Archives: social media

Instagram Feeds Hamburglarized by McDonald’s and Nobody is Lovin’ It

McD Instagram

Hey McDonald’s! Get Your Garbage Food Out of My Instagram Feed!

We’ve known they were coming, but sponsored posts have finally landed right smack dab in the middle of what may be my favorite social media channel.

“It’s quiet over there” I wrote of Instagram recently, when a friend was questioning the medium’s purpose.

That’s been disrupted. Our site gets its bread and butter from ads, so we’re not hating on Instagram for making some dough. But, Instagram… McDonald’s… know your audience! We, along with thousands of others, are raging against the cheap hamburger machine because no amount of food styling is good enough to make that FrankenFood desirable.

Instagram, you’ve got highly capable technology holding up that back end. You know what I post. A lot of food? Yes. I post a lot of food. Has it once ever been of a fast food burger?

Not a hamburger-flippin’ chance. (more…)

Posted on August 14, 2023 by Natalie K

Shame on Social Media for Shaming Our Bodies: Instagram and Facebook Censorship Goes too Far

If you want to post a picture of yourself — or someone else — on Facebook or Instagram, you better first make sure you’re not too fat, thin, sexy, or maternal. You can wear a bikini in your photo, but only if you look like a celebrity, or actually are one. Definitely don’t post a picture of yourself breastfeeding unless you’re famous. You also can’t post pictures that show your breasts, no matter the circumstances. Unless they’re covered by an itsy-bitsy, teeny-weenie bikini of the color of your choice.

censorship

Got all that? Don’t worry, we don’t either. That’s because none of those “rules” are mentioned even remotely in the Terms of Service of Instagram or Facebook.

From Instagram’s Terms of Service:
“You may not post violent, nude, partially nude, discriminatory, unlawful, infringing, hateful, pornographic or sexually suggestive photos or other content via the Service [Instagram].”

From Facebook’s Terms of Service:
“Facebook has a strict policy against the sharing of pornographic content and any explicit sexual content where a minor is involved. We also impose limitations on the display of nudity. We aspire to respect people’s right to share content of personal importance, whether those are photos of a sculpture like Michelangelo’s David or family photos of a child breastfeeding.”

Why then, do you think so many women are complaining of their photos or accounts being deleted for posting photos that comply with the rules, or at least comply with them as much as anyone else’s? Here are some of the most recent examples of ridiculous body-shaming by social media sites.

banned selfie

Nineteen-year-old Samm Newman’s Instagram account was deleted after she posted this near full-body selfie. Shortly after the photo was posted, Instagram suspended her account. While Newman is wearing only bra and underwear, she’s hardly posing provocatively or suggestively.

Newman told her local news stations that she felt there was a double standard on Instagram since her account was deleted while other, thinner girls could post even racier photos without consequence. (more…)

Posted on July 22, 2023 by Elizabeth

Facebook Can (And Maybe Already Did) Mess With Your Mood

Sometimes social media can feel like a giant social experiment. As we learned this week, sometimes it actually is.

Facebook

It was recently revealed that for a week in early 2024, Facebook tweaked the content almost 690,000 users saw on their Timelines. Some were shown more positive posts, while others were shown more negative posts. This was done as an experiment by researchers from Cornell, the University of California, San Francisco, and Facebook.

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Posted on June 30, 2023 by Elizabeth

2024 SXSW Explores The Future of Food (HINT: Insects Play a Role!)

Just a bit of background in case you are like me and only recently learned about the glorious SXSW. SXSW—which is short for South by Southwest—is a collection of film screenings, “interactive events,” music festivals, and conferences that happens in Austin, Texas every March. (Today is opening day!) It started as more of an indie-music thing but now it’s one of the top tech meet-ups in the world. And there truly is something for everyone, including dozens of food-specific offerings like discussion panels.

sxsw-app-logo

Below, a sampling of this year’s SXSW food-and-health related seminars:

March 8
“Dear Taco Vendor, How Are You Securing My Data?”
This important seminar explores the idea of exchanging personal information as currency. SXSW, like many other festivals and events, offers free swag in the form of clothing, grab-bags, and, of course, food. You’re not often charged money for these items, yet you have to “earn” these free things by logging into your various social networking accounts and promoting the company. This seminar discusses the process from logging in to ways the companies benefit from your information. The security of your personal life is important. Get to know the way of the world in 2024! (more…)

Posted on March 6, 2024 by Jessica Tholmer

When Did We Let Digital Fat-Shaming be OK?

Imagine a person just standing there minding his or her own business, and that person happens to be fat. If you place a clever caption underneath of the photo pointing out just how fat that person is and suddenly, somehow it becomes funny, right? Wrong. I’m sure you’ve these photos floating around on the interwebs. This is what is referred to as fat-shaming.

fat shaming

Personally, I have never found any photos exploiting overweight individuals as a “joke” to be funny at all. Being overweight in itself is not funny. And I have to wonder why this type of discrimination and bullying is still so acceptable in our culture. Even in Hollywood, consider how much negative attention a celebrity gets when they gain weight. Their image is shown on the cover of a magazine with a caption stating something about how fat they’ve gotten, and we’ve allowed that to be acceptable!

I gained a great deal of weight in my early teenage years and in high school, I was somewhere over 200 pounds. My saving grace was that I was funny and well-liked, so I didn’t become the target of much bullying (and most people would never have made fun of me to my face). I thank my lucky stars that things like Facebook and Twitter (heck, even cell phones or texting!) didn’t exist back then, because it’s so much easier to bully someone when you’re sitting behind a computer. (more…)

Posted on November 21, 2023 by Lauren Martin

Respect the Selfie: Why Oxford’s Word of the Year is Nothing to be Ashamed About

It seems anywhere you go these days the odds are pretty good that you will catch someone taking a selfie. What’s a selfie? Well, Oxford Dictionaries just named it the 2024 Word of the Year, and defines it as, “a photograph that one has taken of oneself, typically one taken with a smartphone or webcam and uploaded to a social media website”.

Honestly I think selfies get a bad rap. I think often times people look at others who take selfies and write them off as possibly being arrogant, full of themselves, and at times down right annoying. We, as a society, are quick to judge others from the outside without actually knowing the story that person has to share.

You see, for me, selfies have a unique meaning. I have been overweight for most of my adult life; the picture below was me at my highest weight in 2024 at 480 pounds.

sweating it off
I don’t have a lot of pictures of myself from that period of my life; the reason being I was scared of the camera. I didn’t want to capture myself or what I looked like. I didn’t want to see the reality of what I had done to myself. At social functions when people would pull out their cameras wanting to capture the moments, I would mysteriously disappear or be that awesome person who volunteered to take the pictures for everyone else.

There were even a few times when people would sneak up and take pictures and I would kindly ask them afterwards to please delete any of the pictures I was in; they never really understood why.

The bottom line was I was not happy with many aspects of my life and I didn’t want proof of that published in the form of a picture as a constant reminder. (more…)

Posted on November 20, 2023 by GuestBlogger

ShiftCon to Bring Together Health, Wellness and Environmental Bloggers

Next October, Los Angeles will be the home of the world’s first international social media focusing on wellness, health and environment. Presented by Bookieboo and Mamavation, ShiftCon Social Media Conference will bring in bloggers from all over who write about wellness, health, the environment, food, fitness and natural living.

ShiftCon 2014
Leah Segedie, the event’s founder, hopes that it will provide these bloggers with a way to connect and share. “ShiftCon was born out of the idea that together we can create a profound impact on the world around us. We can literally shift how we eat, raise our families and our impact on the environment,” Segedie said. “That shift has begun, and now it’s time to come together and leverage our collective influence to accelerate that shift.”

As the first conference of its kind, ShiftCon was created in the spirit of providing wellness and eco-friendly bloggers with a chance to network, share ideas and learn from industry experts. Robyn O’Brien, author of Unhealthy Truth: How Our Food Is Making Us Sick and What We Can Do About It, is already slated as one of the keynote speakers. (more…)

Posted on October 17, 2023 by Elizabeth

Roni Noone’s #WYCWYC Challenge Inspires the Interwebs to Move!

UPDATE 11/20/14: #WYCWYC is going to print! The What You Can When You Can book, by Carla Birnberg and Roni Noone, will hit bookstores in April 2024! You can get your first preview of the WYCWYC book here.

wycwyc

I’ll exercise tomorrow. I’ll start running when it’s not so cold outside. I’ll diet when this chocolate cake is gone. I know I’ve personally uttered every one of these excuses and I’m probably not alone. Fitbloggin’ founder Roni Noone wants to take away the excuses and show people that living healthier lives doesn’t have to be a monumental commitment of time, money and energy. She encourages people to do what you can when you can (#WYCWYC). Now, her hashtag campaign, nay, challenge, has gone viral.

Roni Noone #WYCWYC

 As a mother with two young sons, Roni knows all about the cycle of yo-yo dieting and “waiting until everything is perfect” to start an exercise program. She credits the what-you-can-when-you-can mantra for helping her achieve and sustain a significant weight loss over the last eight years. As a self-described “social media fanatic,” she was inspired by other hashtag challenges including #plankaday #yogaaday and #running.

“I love the idea of using social media to inspire,” she explained. “I truly believe that when we share positive, motivating and inspirational things, it helps spur more positive, motivating and inspirational things.” A few weeks ago, the #WYCWYC Challenge was born.

(more…)

Posted on October 17, 2023 by Dani Stone

Maria Kang Didn’t Bully You, She Just Asked What’s Keeping You from Your Potential

I’m sorry, but I don’t get it. What exactly is wrong with Maria Kang’s photo?

maria kang excuse
I don’t think she’s a bully.

I don’t think she’s fat shaming anyone.

I don’t think she’s narcissistic.

I don’t think it’s inappropriate.

ALL. DAY. LONG. people are posting photos of themselves. From selfies in the bathroom (that’s where our outrage should be) to before/after weight loss pics (champion those every chance you get), we are not a people who has a problem with showing off ourselves.

So why is it a problem when this woman does it? My take away – completely neutral of any other commentary – when I first saw it was, damn, good for her!

I often feel like I’m barely holding it all together with one kid; she’s got three, and one is still an infant! She’s right, my excuses, when I employ them, just aren’t good enough.

The photo was originally posted to her Facebook community, a seemingly appropriate place to post photos of yourself. She was in a safe place.

“I thought the caption [What’s Your Excuse] was fitting since I often saw posters of grandmothers running in marathons, paraplegics competing in the Olympics and even a father performing a pull up with three kids in tow – all with the same caption: ‘What’s your Excuse?’.” This as part of a lengthy response she posted on her personal website.

Fully agree; in fact, couldn’t agree more. Look at these and tell me they are worthy of starting a firestorm of controversy on the Internet.

excuses82 excuseskid (more…)

Posted on October 16, 2023 by Natalie K

Digital Weight Loss Consultations on Expertory Virtually Eliminate All Excuses for Skipping Meetings

A lot of us these days are extremely busy. It seems as though we barely have time to do the important things in life, like taking care of our health (or those long naps on a comfy couch, who am I kidding?!). It is increasingly difficult to be able to budget our precious time to make it out somewhere to achieve our health goals. Being that we are so connected to those crazy interwebs these days, I figured I would try to take care of my wellness through an online format. Enter: Expertory.

skype-call
Expertory is a website dedicated to educating on YOUR terms, not the schedule of someone else you have to work around. I had no excuse like “Oh, I can’t make it at this time because of this, or this time because of that.” Your workouts or counseling sessions are achieved through video chats that you schedule with their enormous panel of experts, which range from fitness and nutrition experts to people who can teach you to speak Mandarin!

Being several years off of the Biggest Loser, I have a stubborn 20 pounds I wish to lose which have crept back on me (much better than the 213 pounds I had to lose originally!). I am pretty happy where I am now, as I am fit and healthy beyond my wildest dreams, but just want to tone up a bit more. Since I work out like a fiend, I know it is my diet that needs cleaning up, which is why I decided to book a session with Amy Goldsmith, a nutritionist, whose session was titled “Boosting Your Metabolism.” (more…)

Posted on October 3, 2023 by Mark

Is There a Correlation Between Blogging and Weight Loss? Help Us Find Out.

Martinus Evans is a man on a mission, to get healthy, lose weight, run his first full marathon in October and blog about every step of the way. Known by his popular online moniker “300 Pounds and Running,” Martinus recently attended FitBloggin to mingle with fellow fitness fans and flash his infectious smile. In one short year he’s gone from sedentary college student with muscle aches and fatigue to a grad student writing his master’s thesis on social media/blogging and weight loss.

If you’ve got 10 minutes to spare, he could use your help.

300 Pounds and Running

Martinus is currently conducting a short survey to aid in the collection of data for his thesis. If you’re a weight loss blog writer or reader, he’s looking for you!

Click here to take the online survey about why you write or read blogs about weight loss. You’ll be part of the very first social media study of its kind and just for playing along, you’ll automatically be entered in a drawing to receive one of three $100 gift cards to the store of your choice.

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Posted on July 10, 2023 by Dani Stone