1st Blog Post

Class this week revolved around the topic of slacktivism. This term is used to refer to the phenomenon whereby people put in minimal effort, generally through the medium of the internet, to help with a cause. People tend to still get a good feeling from there minimal effort because they feel like they have made a sufficient contribution to the cause. Therein lies the problem. Most of the time their minimal effort is not enough to generate a change. The question that remains is: is it better to have millions of slacktivists or thousands of activists? Slacktivism is no doubt great at raising awareness about issues. People seem to have no problem sitting behind their computer or phone and retweeting or sharing posts about charity events. GoFundMe pages and other major charity organizations looking to raise money garner millions of shares on social media platforms each year. However, out of the millions that share the article or link to donate, only a small percentage actually contri

Crowdsourcing was the topic of discussion this week in class. We talked about how the internet can rally people together (the crowd) to offer resources for a certain cause. Ultimately this can turn out to be for very good reasons. Some of the positive things that can come from this include crowdfunding money for a certain cause, helping people find a lost item/person, and raising awareness about a certain idea/ailment. We covered one of the most successful crowdfunding events to occur which was the ALS Ice bucket challenge. This campaign raised millions of dollars and helped promote awareness about a debilitating disease. I had always assumed that everyone was in awe of this positive impact and didn’t see any reason why not to donate, unless of course you just didn’t have the money to donate or simply didn’t feel like it. I am glad that our professor shared with us the story of why Mike Rowe chose not to donate or jump on board with this idea. Mike Rowe reasoned that in the world

The topic discussed in class this week was the plague of public shaming vectored by social media. More specifically, we looked at parents using social media as a means to punish their kids through embarrassment. We watched a multitude of videos of parents disciplining their children and posting that for the world to see online. Many of the videos were strongly condemned such as a father shaving his daughter’s head and another father shooting his daughter’s laptop. Some of the punishments were tamer such as a father making his son run a short way to school in the morning. However, all of these means of parenting receive a failing grade in my book for one critical error, posting the punishment on social media. There has been heated debate for years on how to properly parent kids, whether it be through punishment or reinforcement, and the severity of each. However, the current day and age has introduced a new tactic of public shaming kids on social media that some parents are exploi

Social media may have originally been thought to be an outlet for socializing with close friends, but it has outgrown that limited role. Social media is now a billion dollar industry that companies will pay to advertise to its users. Social media has also become so commonplace that employers are now looking into potential candidate’s accounts before hiring. Countless stories have surfaced over the years of applicants not being hired because of what they have posted online. Not only have applicants been hurt by what they post, but people who have already landed the job have been fired over their inappropriate posts. Some of those posts have included inappropriate rants, foul language, drugs, alcohol, or illicit actions. Not only have many people lost their jobs because of a post, but many have been thrusted into the spotlight and been publicly shamed for their inappropriate actions and resulting consequences. It’s crazy to think that the 2 minutes it took you to post a pic or type a co

We have all heard that nothing is ever really free. In class this week we looked at how services such as Google and Facebook make money when they charge nothing for their usage. It is through advertisement companies that these online businesses generate their revenue. I was always under the impression that we, the people, were the consumers of these free online website. However, we are the product that these sites are selling to ad companies. The purpose of these free sites is to get as many users as possible that way the ad companies will pay more to have the rights to put their products in front of our eyes.  In the past several decades it seems that people are becoming more wary about people gaining access to their information through the internet. Some of this worry is understandable due to deleterious acts of hackers stealing personal information such as credit cards, social security numbers, passwords, and bank accounts. However, much of the concern is over hyped and unneeded.

Class discussion this week centered on the negative aspects of social media. Has social media ironically made us anti-social? Many people would argue that users are too consumed with their virtual friends that they don’t speak enough in person with their real friends. I confess that I am guilty of this too, but not with social media as the culprit, but video games. I play video games several hours each day and talk online to my “friends” through text or my voice via a mic. The friends I have on Xbox are a lot like the friends I have on social media; several of them I know really well in person and the others are people I rarely communicate with and have never met in person. With this being said, I don’t think it’s just social media that has stripped society of the natural, in-person experiences with the environment and people that used to dictate norm in previous generations. I believe technology at large is to blame for people being too invested in the virtual world. How do we change