Hedgie Love

When I was first introduced to Instagram, I didn’t really know what to do nor what to follow. I began searching around and I saw a lot of Hedgehog accounts. I began to delve deeper into these accounts and what I was able to come up with fascinated me tremendously. I’ve seen Hedgehogs before but these accounts on Instagram were getting a lot of likes and followers so I knew that these Hedgehogs had a lot of influence. There are a few Hedgehog accounts that I deem to be the best among my own opinion. The accounts that I would follow a lot and keep up to date with are @tacakotan, @_gogooma, and @shimihazu. Each of these accounts does something very unique to influence followers and each account HEdgehog seems to have their own personality that draws more attention to them and makes them, unlike other accounts.

We can all relate to our youth and how some of us, or people we knew, had blankets that they would never leave behind. The Hedgehog accounts @tacakotan has the same childish and adorable behavior. This Hedgehog has a little blue blanket that it guards with its life.

The author in this accounts, and like the other accounts, focuses a lot of pathos to appeal to the audiences. Though it has been hard for me to be able to read much of the posts since Instagram’s translation of isn’t always the best and it also doesn’t translate the comments people leave in the post. There is still a lot that we can assume about the audience and its that they are huge Hedgehog enthusiasts and mostly are located in Asian countries as well as how they all have a soft spot for Hedgehogs even though they can be a bit prickly. The features of this account are that this Hedgehog has a unique part about it that I would like to incorporate. It would seem that I would post a lot of content featuring Hedgies that have a similar niche to them. The things that I would try to avoid is just to use the same content over and over again and perhaps be very diverse in what I wish to include for my audiences. In the multimodal article, I began thinking about adding perhaps more text to my pictures on my account. Perhaps something quick and flashy that will coincide with the picture to keep it from going stale.

@_gogooma is an adorable little friend which separates a lot of Hedgies from this one. This Hedgehog is a like a lot of people in the world where it’s just lazy. At least, that’s what the creator of this account likes to post. This account posts Gogooma sleeping and just minding its own business. This is a Hedgehog that we can also all relate to. Whenever I look at this account I can only say, “It must be nice” with all of the content of the Hedgehog just sleeping.

    Even in this picture, Gogooma lies sleeping as its owner squishes his chubby cheeks. This creator uses a lot of pathos for its audience. It features a sleeping Hedgehog and cute antics on the Hedgehog as it sleeps. Everyone likes to see animals sleep, its a cute thing, and they also enjoy witnessing Hedgehogs being lazy just like how we are sometimes. Along with this content, it would be best to avoid a lot of material of Hedgehogs just sleeping, though it is cute, sometimes the audience wants the Hedgie to be doing something for their entertainment. Perhaps just scurrying around. Henry Jenkin’s article about spreadable media made me realize that it’s hard for these accounts to post pictures better than the last one so they stick with what the audience knows. This makes me think that sometimes I won’t have any quality posts and that Ill have to resort to a safer alternative so that my progress doesn’t go downhill.

I have noticed that a lot of people like to say their own pets have emotion. Though with a dog we can sense when it is happy due to its tail waggling. Hedgehogs do have tails but whenever they’re happy they don’t wag it. @shimihazu has another way to tell its owner that it’s happy.

@shimihazu makes facial expressions that the owner can clearly tell that it is happy. This Hedgehog in this photo is currently smiling at a knitted cupcake. Honestly, who wouldn’t smile upon seeing a cupcake? It is simple to see that this creator also implemented pathos into the content that they post. The audience seems to enjoy this content as well as its something we don’t see within a lot of Hedgehogs which makes this one particularly unique compared to the other accounts. This feature is hard to avoid and this account doesn’t really post the same content over and over again. I would say that out of all of the accounts, this one is the most diverse and there’s anything I would avoid about it. Steve Krug makes a point about the web and how people tend to use it, how we don’t read pages but scan them instead. A lot of the posts here on Hedgehogs features small text and don’t delve into making long and complex comments on the post that a lot of the readers simply wouldn’t regularly read.

Citations:

• Arola, K., Sheppard, J. & Ball, C. (2014). “Chapter 1: What are Multimodal Projects?” In Writer/Designer: A Guide to Making Multinmodal Projects. Boston, MA: Bedford/St. Martin’s Press, 1-19.
• Jenkins, H., Ford, S., & Green, J., (2013). “Designing for Spreadable Media.” In Spreadable media: Creating value and meaning in a networked culture. New York: New York University Press. 195-229.
• Krug, S. (2005) “How We Really Use The Web” In Don’t Make Me Think!: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability, Second Edition. Berkeley, C.A.: New Riders, 21-29.