Phones have Become Clothing....... Almost

This past week in class we have hit hard on the slacktivism of social media, and discussing if and when it is appropriate. Many of the Facebook posts have focused on memes showing what slacktivism is and how it is actually ineffective for the most part. My views on slacktivism keep going back and forth between totally useless to best thing ever. On one side I can see how people think that it is pointless and that it really just encourages lazy people to change statuses and act like they are changing the world. I believe this view is true when there are local issues at hand that you can have an impact on personally. But as we spoke of in class what about the times when the job or issue at hand requires government intervention and as a single individual we can’t do anything except speak out on social media to try and rile up enough people to force our government to get involved. The best quote I read this week came from my Facebook post and it said that Slacktivism should be the begi...

The internet can help humanity                 This past week we began talking about some positives of social media and the Internet that is a completely different direction than most of this course has taken. For the past several weeks we have delved into the study of the dark side of the Internet. Articles about the dark web, trolls, bots, and shaming have all been discussed and shared. All of these things show the darkest side of humanity with some of these even causing the death of people, although usually indirectly. Until this week I had started to honestly believe that social media offered few if any benefits to humans, and that we would most likely be better off without it. I mean the mere fact that it can change the way you think should be enough to determine that it is not normal or completely healthy for you. But a little faith was restored this week with the talk about crowd sourcing being a viabl...

Be careful who your friends are they may shame you. This past week’s discussion was about public shaming and its role in ruining people’s lives in a number of ways. Numerous tales exist online about how people who have been publicly have had their lives ruined, to the extent that some were willing to end their lives over these events. One of the best quotes that I read from the Facebook posts this week was that people need to stop and think about whether the joke they are about to say or post is worth a lifetime of humiliation if someone takes it the wrong way or intentionally twists it so that they can portray you as a horrible person for whatever reason they choose. Another good piece of advice that goes along with the above scenario is to always assume that you are not with friends due to the nature of social media connecting more and more people that previously would have never spoken more than a few times. To counteract this you can be more conscious or you can be more care...