Looking through the 17th and 18th centuries and specifically the diaries of Samuel Pepys and William Byrd, I aim to explore the medium specificity in the diary as well as its particular moment in manuscript culture. Being written by hand preserves the author, it is the shortest distance of mediation from the brain to the pen. A diary is a book that happened. It transcends time and space. When the diarist dies, he takes on a new life on the shelf in the form of his diary. The best allegory for the diary is a mind palace, a place for sincere self-analysis and the preservation of movement over a lifetime. Think of the diary as a balance scale. Harmony can be achieved through oneness or through exact balance–a private yin to a public yang.

This project, a hypertext science fiction story entitled "Plenty," aims to explore our relationships to labor, leisure, and technology. Hypertext, a form of interactive fiction, resembles a choose your own adventure story, but incorporates digital elements which wouldn't be possible on the printed page. Set in a fully automated, post-scarcity world, the story aims to spark reflection and critique of current systems of labor and global capital. The work also exists in conversation with a broader framework of game critique, including examinations of interactivity, immersion, and ludology.

ThemTube is a 3-part video essay, running about an hour in total. I aimed to characterize the contradictory, ambiguous status of YouTube, a site that claims to level the playing field for video creators while promoting certain users over the others. I looked into a particularly successful production company that publishes multiple short videos onto YouTube every day, and dissected the familiar nature of their production model. In comparing the company's work with that of an outspoken former employee, I asked if a sphere fostering corporate monoliths alongside independent underdogs can be truly "public," and ultimately attempted to answer the question: who is the "you" in "Broadcast Yourself"?

Through an analysis of gender and image theory as well as data gathered through survey, coding and interviews, I sought to explore how twenty-first century women both perform femininity through social media and challenge gendered stereotypes while doing so. I argue social media contributes to a jackpot economy that drives free private-public image production, primarily that of young women hoping to gain fame through sites like Instagram. Overall, I submit the culture industry, sorority recruitment and gendered expectations place an incredible amount of pressure on women to perform for the online public. With that in mind however, female social media users are not selling out online, rather they are complicit in their own objectification to attain power in the jackpot economy, which often forces them to police themselves to reap reward from the male audience and consumer culture.