Public Emotion

While I liked reading parts of Trigg’s essay because I felt that having read some works of the authors she mentions I was more a part of her argument, some of it was still quite dense and necessitated a second reading. What struck me was Trigg’s incorporation of social medias in a modern understanding of emotions “to this personally directed inquiry about my emotional state, it seemed the social networking site was tapping into current scholarly interest in emotions, feelings, and sensibilities” (Trigg 3). Perhaps incorporation is not the right word to describe Trigg’s mention of social media, yet it does apply to a show of emotions. It seems that emotions are considered more of an inner state in contemporary society, but that feelings are an outwardly accepted expression of emotions. The term “affect” is not often used in our day to day vernacular but “feelings” is. We have all heard people say “I feel like…” in reference to what they are thinking, not necessarily what they are feeling. In this manner, the term feeling has morphed to represent our thoughts on various subjects. Viewing feelings as thoughts in this way explains why it is a much more socially accepted construct than those of emotions.

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