Response:  Lifehacker and Watching Me

Text A, a post by Thorin Klosowski on the Lifehacker Web in 2013, and Text B, the lyrics of the song “Watching Me”, co-written and performed by Jill Scott in 2000 deal with the idea of being watched.   However, they differ completely in

• the aspects of being watched that they describe,
• the perspective from which they present their ideas
• the purpose, structure, intended audience and stylistic devices that they employ for effectivity.

The title of text A “What kind of Stuff do Employers Search for When I apply for a job?” immediately presents the topic of the post, who is the watcher, who is ”being watched” and for what reasons: employers do online searches to find information on potential employees that might influence the hiring process.   The text is presented in the form of a letter written to “Lifehacker”, the expert, by a “Worried Searcher” and a couple more questions along those lines posted by other people.  The answer provided by Lifehacker seeks to reply to these questions by providing information to the readers and advising them in relation to the tracks people leave on Internet and how they might affect them. We could say that the purpose of the text is clearly informative and it targets an audience of people presumably in the 20-30 age range, who are looking for jobs and are active on social media and on the Internet. 

Text B, the lyrics of the song “Watching Me” by Jill Scott, present the opinions and feelings of the writer in relation to being spied upon and watched by a “you” who could be the state or the police or a government agency.  We could say it is a form of protest against an oppressive entity that spies upon citizens with “satellites” over their heads, “Transmitters” in their dollars and requires personal information from them with any excuse, like when they buy  “double or triple A batteries”.  The audience for this text would be followers of the singer Jill Scott and people who listen her genre of music.

The idea of being watched is very different in both texts.  Lifehacker presents it as something that is quite ordinary for employers to do (“background checks are common in some industries and a general search online is almost guaranteed for every job these days”); he doesn´t seem to consider it a problem or a threat, but something that can be easily solved; so he sets out to empower the “Worried Searcher” by teaching him to “manipulate the information that pops up on Google” so that it will be “all positive.”  Contrastingly, the song “Watching Me” presents a much more sinister idea of being watched: the government or one or more of its agencies spy on citizens to control them “(how and where and with whom I make my money”) and the first person narrator has no control or power over this situation.  The song is very subjective and we could say that the writer feels quite paranoid about the topic, as can be seen by the repetition of the chorus “watching me” and the references to satellites and transmitters. Here´s the interesting thing, though:  there is really no objective evidence about the spying or any sinister purposes in the watching except “sa-cure-at-ty”: cameras in stores and dressing-rooms which are quite ordinary and prevent stealing, and a salesperson asking her for “her phone number and social security” which could be a form of establishing identity when paying.  So evidently, the idea of being watched, for Jill Scott is much more personal; from the way she writes (“I ain´t got no bars to this cage”, “keep them satellites out” “watchin’” ) she might be African American or belong to a minority which feels oppressed (“dirty  cops in my community”)   and at a disadvantage (can I get that democracy and equality and privacy?) and is protesting against this perceived “scrutinizing” by the police or the government who at the same time “Keep saying” that she is free.  It becomes clear, then, that the idea of being watched is very different in both texts, both in the purpose of the watching as in the perspective of the narrative voice.

Structure is very different in both texts, in accordance with their context and purpose.  Text A conforms to the layout of online informative texts and manages to provide information in an attractive layout, with some images. The magnifying glass augmenting the size of the mask of a horse alludes to the themes f searching and of separating identities, as it seems to be a man with the mask of a horse.  This idea is also emphasized in another small illustration of a businessman and a man dressed in casual clothes .The text itself is laid out as an “Agony Aunt” letter and the reply. The information is provided in paragraphs with headings for the different sections on what employers will be looking for:  “They’ll Search for you on Google,”  “They’ll run a background check on you.”  Sections consist of short paragraphs with clear information and hyperlinks such as “list of details about you” which link to other sites.    Text B, on the other hand, at first sight looks like a poem, always happen with songs, but contains instructions which are characteristics of songs such as “(repeat”) and (x7) which means that a line should be repeated 7 times.  It could be said, then, that both texts conform to the typical layout of their genre.

Tone and language are also very different in both texts due to the purpose they have. Text A is informal, and friendly and the narrative voice situates itself as a friend to the reader, who gives both information and advice (“Here’s what you can expect employers to look for and how you can clean up what they’ll find,”) empowering the reader to be the one who does the cleaning up or makes the necessary changes.  As I mentioned before, the narrative voice doesn´t seem too concerned with the issue of online information being researched as can be seen in the phrase “you can ensure that if nothing else, the bad news is buried pretty deep.”  He seems to think it is quite easy to modify or delete any negative information.  Text B, on the other hand, has a highly paranoid and accusatory tone, present in the repetition of “Watching me” and when she says that “first thing” when she wakes up and right before she goes to sleep she thinks, senses, feel like she´s under “some kind of microscope.”  The watching never ends, in her perspective, which is emphasized in the “ing” endings of the actions “hawking, watching scooping, scrutinizing, tracking, finding out”.  She feels watched and controlled and suspected by everybody   “in every dressing room, on every floor, in every store,” practically persecuted. She also accuses the oppressive “you” of being “blind” because they neglect to see “the drugs coming into my community, weapons coming into my community.” We can infer she is accusing the watchers of a hypocritical attitude towards her minority or community, suspecting and watching ordinary people but not being protective towards them.

To conclude, it’s interesting to see how Text A and B present the idea of being watched from two completely different perspectives and with different purposes, which in turn affect their structure and stylistic devices. In my opinion both texts are effective in achieving their purpose.