The "Interface Annotations" exercise from day 1 prompted me to take a deeper look at how I interact with websites that I visit weekly or even daily. For example I had not considered exactly what buttons or words attracted me or pushed me towards interacting with them before completing the exercise. It also made me consider the way that words take on new meanings or dimensions when used in the context of virtual interfaces–to follow, to like, to share, to save, all take on different meanings than they would without the existence of these interfaces and internet culture/norms as a whole. Because of this, when we were given the task of day 2's "Layer Statements" exercise I was much more focused on the words that stuck out to me personally that I had never really thought twice about before this course.

I also found humor in digging deeper into these interfaces and wanted to carry this into my layer statement as well. However my aim is to keep the element of humor while also maintaining a critical view of particular standards (whether from past or present societal expectations). My statement "gossiping for enjoyment in the interface" materialized largely from a nostalgia for these old interfaces that I had seen growing up on the internet and the way that chat rooms used to hold such a main focus over popular culture rather than the current focus on other forms of social media like Instagram or Tik Tok. Although varied, several of the sites I would visit growing up were created with the audience of young girls in mind and have a distinct "girlie" look in terms of colors, word choice, and domain name. Additionally, discovering that "to gossip" is one of the synonyms of "to chat" reminded me of stereotypes about young girls and women, spending all day on the phone gossiping. In a way, I would like to play off of these stereotypes in terms of the look of an interface and the textual content; meaning playing with the pink and purple color schemes, dramatic headlines (!!) and "useless" chatter/gossip.