Cr PARTA Read Text 1 and answer questions 1-19 on pages 1-4 in the Question-Answer Section for Part A. Text 10 15 20 25 30 Its all about Me, Inc - how to get ahead in the age of egonomics Ina world ruled by social media, online image is the key to success, and now a host of services are springing up to optimise your personal brand [1] Soyou want to write a bestselling book? Of course you do. Literally everyone and their dog thinks they have a book in them, And while not everyone may be able to write, with enough guile behind you pretty much anybody can make it to the top ofa bestseller lst. {2] Take Lani Sarem, for example. For afew hours in August, the novice author's debut novel, Handbook for Mortals, ‘was No 1 on the New York Times bestseller list for young adult literature, Soon after Sarem’s fantasy novel reached the top spot, however, there was a plot twist. People on social media began questioning exactly how a book nobody had ever heard of, by an unknown author, put out by an unfamiliar publisher, had suddenly magicked its way on to a prestigious literary list. The answer was somewhat prosaic: bulk-buying copies of the book from bookshops that report their sales to the New York Times. [3] Bulk-buying isa tried and tested way of getting on the bestseller list and there are even specialist consultancies that will help you do it. However, the practice presents two problems: you actually have to write a book and you have to spend a fair amount of money buying it up. Thanks to the wonders of the modern Internet, however, there are less arduous and expensive ways to get bestseller status. [4] The fastest, cheapest way is probably via Amazon, Last year a guy called Brent Underwood wrote a bestselling book called Putting My Foot Down: A Book Featuring My Foot, which consists solely of a picture of his foot. There are no words. There’s no story. It's just a picture of a man’s left foot. Underwood wanted to tell the world about the ‘biggest lie in publishing ... the word “bestseller,” so he took a photo of his foot and self-published it on Amazon. [5] Here's the thing about Amazon: it has hundreds of uber-niche categories you can choose to self-publish in and tracks the highest seller in each of these categories. Hit that spot for a mere hour and you get a shiny “#1 Best Seller’ ‘banner for life, So Underwood put his book inthe Freemasonry category and set the price (another thing Amazon allows you to do) at $0.99. He bought a copy of the book and got a coupe of friends todo so. Al-n-all it took three sales, « princely investment of $2.97, to make his masterpiece the biggest seller in the Freemasonry category and get an orange bestseller banner next to his name. (Amazon removed the book when he published an account of what he had done.) [6] Underwood isn’t the first person to discover you can game Amazon’s algorithms. As he points out, there’s a whole cottage industry around it: myriad online courses, webinars and consultants promising to get you to bestseller status for just.a few thousand dollars. While the accolade may be hollow, it’s far from meaningless; as Underwood notes, being an Amazon bestselling author ‘dramatically increases your credibility and “personal brand”. Ifyou ae a businessperson, that bestseller tag helps establish you as an exper, which helps you land lucrative gigs and generally parlay your faux fame into real fortune, [7] The Amazon Bestseller scam isa prime example of what you could cal modem ‘egonomics’. Ifyou want to be successful in the age of the Internet, then image is everything. And so numerous services have sprung up that allow you to optimise your ‘personal brand’by far meas or ful: you can buy fake followers to infate you social media presence; you can get a search engine specialist o put your website onthe fist page of Google. ‘Book $ (Set B) + Paper 1 Unit 5 Practice Paper (Reading - Part) =.ve lldldlUL 0 idea of everyone having a personal brand has been around fora while. In part this has to do with the ri , th the rise of 1 jancing a5 2 care TE and more people are actually becoming CEOs of ‘Me, In’, turing selpomation into a ares. coring * ns recent base hed ST tt Independent Professionals and the Self Employed (Ipse), 008 e number of freelancers in the UK increased by 43%.“ is "proclaims the ae "and this tend extends ouside the UK. AOE Teehiecels toe" (3) THe Hlaving a strong personal brand essentially just means having a strong reputation. However, all too often this is 7 py the sizeof your social media following. Inded, in industries tte the media baving large reanieeee thatyou can leverage to amplify your employer’ brand, has become a huge competitive advantage, ifnot a prerequisite forbeing hired. Take, for example, arecent job adver for a news editor role at Mc, an American news start-up that caters fomilenals. The advert stipulates that not only do you have to ‘identify, assign, eit and publish at last 10 articles ger xy" (088 contractor, rather than a full-time employee) but you ‘must have’ an ‘amazing personal Twitter feed”. 10) Having an ‘amazing personal Twitter feed” doesn’t just help you land an extremely stressful job at a millennial- Fused publication it can become a lucrative career in itself A large number of advertising dolas are now being ‘freed away fom traditional media channels toward ‘infuences’, people with large socal followings who are pid to endorse brands. According to influencer tech firm Hypr, influencers with 500 000 to one million followers across ‘rail platforms can make between $5 000 and $10 000 per post, And estimates from eMarketer show that globally, in 2016, marketers spent $570m on influencer marketing on Instagram alone. Tom Buontempo, president at Attention, vocal media agency, explain that ‘the inluencer economy is growing in popularity in part because it's more dificult for marketers to reach their audiences because of adblockers.” {11) Ifyou are eyeing up a career as an influences but have no skills don't worry — you cn just steal other people's ver There are numerous high-profile social media accounts that trafic entirely in ‘aggregated’ content. Take, for Trample, Josh Ostrovsky, the man behind the extremely popular Instagram account @TheFatJewish, whose success he then parlayed into a wine brand: White Girl Rosé. Ostrovsky rose to popularity by apparently taking other people's jokes an sharing them on his Instagram account, ll packaged up under the brand ofthe “The Ft Jew. Tis annoyed fois of comedians who claimed they had their work stolen, but accusations of plagiarism dida’t hut Ostrovsky's career and be was signed to talent agency CAA. Afterall, egonomics rewards those who monetse, not necessarily those who creat, Talent imitates but Internet genius unashamedly steals. Source: adapted from Arwa Mahdaws ‘It's all about Me, Inc how to get ahead inthe age of egonomics’ the guardian.com, 4 September 2017, Copyright Guardian News & Media Ltd 2017 END OF READING PASSAGEPART B2 Read Text 3 and answer questions 43-59 on pages 9-12 of the Question-Answer Section for Part B2. ‘Text3 Irresistible: Why We Can’t Stop Checking, Scrolling, Clicking and Watching - review A fascinating study by Adam Alter explains why many of us find our smartphones and computers so addictive, [1] The school near the GP practice where I work hheld an Internet safety evening recently, subtitled “How to Keep Your Child Safe Online’. It was inthe school hall, hosted by police officers, and explained 5 the role of something called the ‘Child Exploitation ‘and Online Protection Centre’. The blurb on the leaflet promised parents of children between five and 11 would leam more about the dangers of the Internet, and in particular, social media. I’m not sure when it 10 became normal for kids to have to cope with malicious online messages, and be savvy about paedophiles masquerading as peers. In Irresistible, Adam Alter makes the frightening case that even without these hazards, modem connectivity threatens the health of 15 not just our children, but everyone. [2] Achild Tinew of killed herself after a humiliating post was shared widely around her school. An adolescent patieat told me that he wakes three or four times each night to check his phone for messages, and 20. struggles to concentrate in class. Last week a social worker told me thet children in an ‘at-risk’ family were being neglected ~ the mum lying on the sofa playing with ber phone while the kids put themselves to bed, I know a six-year-old who walks with his 25 hands held to his chest, thumbs blurred by movement, adopting his dad’s habitual posture, though he doesn’t yet have a phone. [B] Alter teaches marketing and psychology at New York University and wants to show us how 30 smartphones, Netflix, and online games such as World of Warcraftare exquisitely and expensively engineered to hook us in, ‘AS a kid I was terrified of drugs,’ he writes, ‘I bad a recurring nightmare that someone ‘would force me to take heroin and that I'd become 35. addictedIt's unsurprising he's become a psychologist of addiction, and his intoxicant of choice is the ‘Book $ (Set B) + Paper! + Unit S Practice Paper (Reading ~ Pat 82) 10 4 50 i Internet. In a chapter subtitled “Never Get High on ‘Your Own Supply’ he makes the observation that neither Steve Jobs of Apple nor Evan Williams of ‘Twitter have allowed their children to play with touch screens. [4] Acouple of years ago a programmer called Kevin Holesh, worried that his own screen time was geting out of control, wrote an app called Momeat, which tracks how long a user is interacting with a soreen (it doesn't count time on phone calls). The results were startling, even among those concemed enough to download the app: for 88% it was more than an hour a day, with the average being three hours. The typical user checked their phone 39 times in 24 hours. By comparison, in 2008, before smartphones became ‘widespread, adults spent just 18 minutes a day on their phone. [5] Why does any of this matter? Surely time being informed, engaged and entertained by our phones is time well spent? Not necessarily: ‘life is more convenient than ever’, writes Alter, ‘but convenience ‘has also weaponised temptation’. Childhood has changed. Alter quotes a young girl: I don’t fee! like a child any more ... at the end of sixth grade [when all her peers got phones) I just stopped doing everything I normally did, Playing games, art recess, playing with toys, all oft, done,” [6] Etymologically speaking, to be addicted is to bea slave, and behavioural addiction is ‘a deep attachment to an experience that is harmful and difficult to do without’. Alter is good on the distinction between an addiction (the indulgence of which brings pleasure) and a compulsion (the indulgence of which merely brings relief from restless anxiety). For many of us, ‘checking phones has become compulsive.: of Alter’s book is illuminating iu} Oe aaa engineer behavioural toe He examines goal-setting, and why users of dfn exercise tothe point of injury; the dangers 6 aE nt but rewarding feedback (counting © i. likes’); the importance of a sense of progress aad eae followers, or advancing through a (ova ehaper emphasising gaming he examines eve power ofescalaing difclty (remember Wey) There are a fascinating few pages on “Rtpangers, and the power of steaming TY. As to oa nteraction: ‘a brain raised on online friendships sea eve filly aus 0 interactions in the real world’, te wites, and refers toa 2012 paper, which suggested dat a smartphone, placed idly in @ room, can imoverish the relationship between two randomly assigned partners even if they don’t touch it. The pepe concluded that ‘mobile communication devices 90 such as phones may, by their mere presence, paredoxcally hold the potential to facilitate as well as to disrupt human bonding and intimacy’, presumably tecause they represent the possibility of connection wihabset others. 8 495 [8] Inthe 1970s it was shown that pigeons would peck a bar more frenetcally ifthe reward delivered was unpredictable, A squirrel monkey in a cage, with a wire into te pleasure centre of its brain, will ignore food and water in order to go on stimulating the wire. 100 These neuropsychology experiments are well known, bat Alter retells them to illustrate how the latest technology traps us ina lab cage of connectivity. For amaddict, there's litle opportunity to escape. (] Some will find this shrill and alarmist — 105 new technology has always had its catastrophisers. It may have been thatthe gir! who killed herself would have done so without the public shaming that followed her post; there have always been neglectful parents; my ‘teenage patient might have struggled to 110 concentrate without being woken by his phone, Socrates said that writing would make us al forgetful; Caxton’s printing press destroyed the economy of scribes; television was condemned for vulgarising and trivialising entertainment, Connectivity is here to US stay, and Alter suggests that parents in conflict with their kids over it would do well to stay approachable, calm, informed and realistic, and remember that fechnology brings solutions along with problems. It’s easy to monitor usage or block certain sites, and have 120 the likes and retweets hidden on your social media, It’s worth remembering, too, thatthe status quo won't last long: tablet computers have only been around for seven years, smartphones for nine, and within 10 ‘years both may well have gone the way of pagers. 125 [10] What’s the next big thing? Probably virtual reality, currently inits infancy. Imagine how addictive news will be when you can walk alongside each foreign correspondent. Imagine how addictive games will be when they put you into the scene. Facebook 130 paid $2bn for Oculus VR, and is investing heavily in its applications. Most of us have seen families out for meal ignoring one another while each strokes a Screen; a decade from now they may all be wearing headsets. Soure: ape rom Gavin Francis’ esiatible: Why We Can't ‘Stop Checking, Scrolling, Clicking and Watching’, the guardian.com, 26 February 2017, Copyright Guardian News & Media L1d 2017 fats et Pare Unit § Proce Paper (Reading - Part B2) »_ iRead Text 4 and answer questions 60-61 on page 13 in the Question-Answer Section for Part B2. Text4 Keep calm and browse on 135 [11] Commentators are growing faint with concer over the latest moral panic: digital addiction. Supposing it areal threat, itis insidious in that smartphones and social media are, unlike drugs, visible. This prevalence lets addicts hide in plain sight — everyone is online, so addiction seems no different from normal behaviour. Moreover, even someone who ‘wanted to quit could never unplug from friends and family who demand that they stay in touch, [12] But that’s just it we can’t cut ourselves off from our phones because, unlike drugs, they serve practical purposes. 140 Reliance is not the same as empty addiction. Consider the benefits of smartphones, from making plans to recording ‘memories. There are good reasons for people to check their phones all day. That's nothing to panic about, END OF READING PASSAGES.