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Final Blog Post - All About Our Presentation

This presentation actually went a lot better than I expected; especially considering the difficulty that is synchronizing 4 different schedules. We had a bit of dilemma with integrating the tool into the presentation in the way of, we weren’t sure how well it would work or how it would be viewed if we essentially pre-recorded our presentation. That is basically what we had to do if we wanted to incorporate videos into the presentation. It was either that, or record the videos during the presentation then upload them onto youtube. Then, we also had to contend with possible long upload times, which was why we only uploaded one video live, and potential buffering issues, which was why we only had one already in youtube. Another issue with using youtube in our presentation was just simply the very nature of youtube. It is very different from other social media platforms. You are either making a video or watching videos. If you are making a video, you are not on youtube until you post it....
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I am a little bummed we didn’t really get to talk about addiction and the articles pertaining to it – so I am going to talk about them and it myself

These articles happened to be some of my favorite that we read in the entire class. I am angry with myself for not saving the links – I thought I did. I have been touched by many different addictions in many different ways. Internet addiction was certainly one of them. However; in one of the articles, Potenza made a good point about the internet being a medium and not an activity in and of itself with his notion that if you are spending your time on the internet gambling, then perhaps you have a gambling addiction and not an internet addiction. The same could be said of shopping. This was a really important distinction to me because I, too, had kind of lumped it all together in order to blame the internet. One of my exes was horribly addicted to online gaming – to the tune of staying up for days at a time, not taking showers, having piles of food, drinks, wrappers, dishes, empty soda cans all over his desk. He was incapable of holding down a job. He wouldn’t even help me by watch...
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Crowd Sourcing, Unity, the Good and the Bad

Crowd sourcing really is a double-edged sword, when you think about it. On the one hand, you have the notion that two heads are better than one. That certainly often seems to ring true, as the extremes of the individuals are often cancelled out by the consensus of the masses to reveal a very accurate answer. Additionally, unity can be incredibly powerful and can accomplish a lot. However, you could also end up with a groupthink phenomenon if this group becomes too isolated and begins to play off of one another – creating a group polarization effect. There could also be room for a large amount of error considering how (un)reliable eye witness accounts are when you are trying to consult a large number of people to find out something that happened and who caused that something. The Boston Marathon bombing is an example of this. Even with the success of finding the bombers through the use of crowd sourcing, law enforcement still had to contend with large amounts of misinformation that th...
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Society is not exempt from responsibility for their influence on children

The subjects of bullying and punishment, punishment for bullying, and using shaming as punishment are all such complicated subjects. Everyone’s easy answer is always that it is ALL on the parents. And while that is technically true, it is so much deeper than that. Even the best-intentioned parents do not always have the best tools to guide their children. Sometimes it is simply a matter of educating them. Other times it is a host of other things. Further, the society that we live in bombards children with mixed messages, and messages that are entirely opposite of those that parents try to send to their children. Children constantly see images of people, especially celebrities, doing things without repercussion, which the majority of the rest of the population would be punished for. Then the children are left mystified when they are punished for something that they see other people doing without punishment. And parents are mystified when their children copy the actions of those who do...
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Humanity is not entirely made up of [people who act] human(s)

Yeah. So it is impossible to focus on the readings after watching such powerful videos. There were several times that I had visceral reactions to what John Ronson said. I had never really thought about how Twitter (social media in general, really) was somewhat of a place of radical de-shaming, not in those exact terms anyway. But then I thought about it and remembered that I myself, multiple times in the past, had even remarked about how no matter how “weird” you are, there is ALWAYS someone, somewhere, that shares that same weirdness with you. But, I had stopped there. I didn’t completely recognize that potential power. Imagine the possibilities if it stopped with two people’s realization that “OMG, I am exactly the same!”. Imagine the solace people could find. Instead, humans have to go and turn this potential positive power into something disgusting. Instead of building each other up, supporting and comforting each other, we tear each other down in the most horrific ways. Instead ...
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Unless you are a parent, zip it, when it comes to your opinion of other parents

I was surprised at the strong opinions that were presented in class about posting naked/censored naked pictures of children, and just pictures of children in general. It turned into more of a conversation than I would have predicted, especially given the other content that has been covered. It was surprising that this topic was what got people to talk. It irked me a little bit, as it often does, when people without children talk about the decisions of parents. Naked/bath baby pictures have always just been one of those things that all parents did. It’s kind of like a right of passage/milestone/tradition type thing. Yes. The world has sick people in it. It has always had sick people in it. But sick people are going to do what sick people are going to do. When you begin not posting pictures of your kids (and I’m not saying not to cover them up, because you definitely should regardless. Keep the unedited ones in your albums – if for no other reason than embarrassment in front of signifi...
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Social Media: The Ultimate Oxy Moron

Throughout the entire class on Tuesday, (the entire semester for that matter) all I kept thinking about was that I wished my husband could be taking this class. I literally said to myself that I needed to get him the “Social Media Guard”. It’s amazing how numb or oblivious we become to how removed from the real-world technology makes us. As advantageous and socially enhancing as social media is, is exactly how disadvantageous and socially hindering it is. It can quickly become an excuse to avoid interacting with people. I’ve done it myself - see someone that I am not in the mood to interact with coming toward me, and I pretend that I am busy on my phone. Sometimes it is as overt and deliberate as this; others, we may not even realize that it is happening/we are doing it. It can also act as a sort of buffer when you are in public, say at a restaurant eating alone, you feel somewhat less of a loser because you are (appear to be) at least important enough to be “spending time” with some...
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