Social Media and Freedom of Expression - insight of Cindy Karmoko

Cindy Karmoko is an Indonesian fashion blogger, who’s currently studying in Milan, Italy major in fashion design. Her passion about fashion and street-style could be seen through her fashion blog “Hippie GoneMad”. Social media surely is taking a big role for her career as a fashion a blogger.

So, I have chance to interview her through the help of social media, where she said yes to be interviewed by me in instagram, and here it goes.

•    What was your first social media account? When was it? And what is your opinion about it?

Oh i remember my long lost Friendster account, I was 13 years old back then. I abandoned my Friendster because I found a better social app, which is Facebook, Friendster was full of annoying people and perverts…. 

• As fashion blogger, how can you define the freedom of expression? 

      Fashion is a way to express myself, who I am and most of the time who I want to be. I started my blog because I need a diary, I love to write and to share my life changing experiences with others. 2 years ago I was a super shy kid, people hate my style because I’m different and my blog was and is my sweet escape. That’s why I always say that HippieGoneMad is my virtual wonderland; I can do whatever I want there. I’m free to wear anything and share my opinions about life. I believe that God created us equally but never the same.

•    How exactly social media can relate to the life of bloggers? And how essence is social media among the bloggers?

Blog itself is a social media, without blog we couldn’t share anything at all. For me, I love my blog whether someone will read it or not. But it’s always nice to know that a lot of people from all over the world have the same opinion and appreciate your style. With a lot of app such as Facebook, instagram etc, we can share and get a lot of opinions faster than before. Honest opinions from strangers were priceless and to get to know a lot of important people within fashion industry.

•   Is the social media playing a big role for your career as fashion blogger?  And if yes, tell us about it.

Yes of course, as a blogger i love to make a lot of new friends and to meet a lot of people from different backgrounds, ages, ethnicities, etc. Social media is like a magic door for me. I can communicate with a lot of people from different countries + people in other countries will recognize my existence (vice versa) . I have a lot of new friends from United States, Australia and of course Europe just because they saw me on facebook, twitter, instagram,blogspot etc.

•      Have you ever experienced a not-really-good situation with other users in social   media? How do you usually handle that kind of situation?

    You need to be tough sometimes, anons were quite mean back than, but people will throw rocks at the things that shine anyway. Success is the best revenge.

• What do you think about the revolution of social media in internet? And is there any effect to the bloggers? Is it positive effect or negative effect?

What kind of revolution? Did you mean evolution? Hmm… I love the new app like instagram, videofyme etc. Everybody can have the fresh starts and a lot of people took the easiest way to gain their followers in some social media but when it comes to the new one people can tell the difference anyway.

• What do you think about the co-relation between freedom of information and freedom of expression as a blogger?

     Hmm… I think in order to express ourselves we need to give a certain amount of infos so that people will know us better. The more you give the more you’ll get, in the virtual world you can give as much infos that you want, and nobody could stop you from doing it.

• Last but not least, share some suggestions to the people in social media on how to use freedom of expression in a right way.

 As much as I love to share, there are a lot of things that I don’t want people to “touch”, like my close friends from high school, my family, my friends who don’t care too much about who I am as a blogger, overexposing your private life is not a good thing, a lot of my friends don’t want me to tweet about  our personal jokes, they prefer to use “Path”. All I can say is , you can be anything you want in the virtual world, but at the end of the day, make sure you won’t regret what you’ve done. No pornography or exposing yourself too much.