Final Countdown

This has been quite the class.

I really did learn quite a bit. I did not always get the assignments finished in the most efficient timely manner, hence why this one is being turned in an hour before it's too late. But in all honesty the class has made me utilize social media websites that I would have never used before.

Hopefully, I will be able to use those sites to better advance my future endeavors, which will hopefully include a dog kennel.

For this final assignment, the final project, I ended up doing my module on LinkedIn. I was originally going to do it on another social media source but since I am always busy and waited so long, most of the good sites were taken since it was a first come first serve. I almost got stuck with having to find a social media source or app that I had never even heard of.

Luckily, a group decided to change their module from LinkedIn to another source.

I ended up doing this project on my own since it had appeared that my group had either forgotten about the assignment or much like me, were very busy and had a limited amount of time to do the assignment. In situations where my time is limited and I have to crunch and utilize my time effectively, I find it very difficult to maintain a efficient group structure.

So since I wanted to get the job done quickly without having to discuss to much with others, I jumped on today and watched the video showing how to make modules on canvas. I figured out how to use the editing functions and started finding resources on LinkedIn.

I had already known that there was an acquisition in progress, but did not know the true impact of this purchase. $26.2 billion. The largest acquisition in history.

What I would do with $26.2 billion.

Anyway, I wrote the module based on the current class audience. I attempted to tailor it toward millennials at first, but ended up dropping the audience focus after I realized that many of the people who are in our class currently are adults and parents.

Figuring out how to create the module was not too terribly hard. With Kurt's instructions, I found it easy to make the module based on the many modules I have had to do since joining NMSU. I heavily based my module on many of the modules in this class.

Thanksgiving

This years thanksgiving started as all great days do.

I was able to sleep in until 10 and then wander into the living room to have a little breakfast.

Biscuits and gravy. Heck ya.

Then the lovely lady I share my days with went to work to walk the dogs who were left at the doggy daycare/boarding kennel for the thanksgiving holiday.

Since she does not read these, I must confess, I then crawled back into the bed with my dogs and took a little nap.

After my fantastic nap, I got up, put on my happy pants, the pants that make me happy and happen to be extra stretchy for any unexpected holiday belly growth, and cleaned the house a little bit just in case anyone was to come over at any point in the day.

Once Tynia got off work we began the real day. We jumped in her little blue car and started on our way to her Aunts house. We simply could not find our way there since I had never been there and she had not been in years, only because we never do holidays there.

Once we got there, and said hello to everyone there, we got to eat. Turkey, ham, enchiladas, stuffing, beans. All the yummies on one plate. Then another. But not another since we still had an entire other thanksgiving feast to attend.

After chit chat with her family ended, we jumped back into the car, with full bellies, and drove to my grandparents house.

My grandparents don't cook much anymore. Rather they buy foods, then reheat them. Like this year, how the purchased a thanksgiving feast from Rudy's in El Paso the day before and then reheated the food in/on the oven.

Either way, the food was pretty damn delicious. And and and they always have all the pies. After a few plates and a couple slices of pie, Tynia declared that she wished to part-take in the black friday festivities.

Not my cup of tea, but I agreed anyway. We went to the mall and to the clothing stores that she simply had to get clothes from.

All in all, the shopping was not terrible, in no way was it anything as terrible as in large cities.

Once we got home, Tynia requested that we put up the christmas tree and lights.

Like any sucker, I agreed.

The night ended in a twinkling glow from the christmas tree.

Who Voted?

I know that there has been plenty of talk about the current election. It seems as though every 4 years this country sees itself split down the middle.At first, they bicker back and forth and it seems that whoever bickers the loudest makes an impact on the rest of the people who are yelling about the same stuff. Then everyone decides that the person who is yelling the loudest should go yell for them in the race to becoming the next president. At this early stage of the process, it is decided as to whom will represent either side of many controversial issues. Once it comes time to have the nation vote on who these two candidates, chosen by an elite few in much earlier months, millions go out to the polls and cast their votes.

This year, we had particularly loud yellers. Both of whom were very much disliked by the opposing party of yellers. It seems as though the reality tv trend finally hit the main stage. This election seemed to play out much like a tv series will its very publicized dramatic events. Every week turned up something new for voters to watch and talk about. Just like a weekly episode on their favorite tv show.

It came down to two rather decisively different choices, both having some major drawbacks. 

But still, millions got out of their homes and voted so that they could voice their opinion on the matter.

As the nation voted on the future of their beloved country, they looked out onto those who were not casting their votes nor utilizing their voices at the polls and felt a need to educate and shame them. 

I understand that some times a single vote matters, especially when it's combined with thousands of others who felt as though their vote would not radically change the results. Nearly half the nation did not vote and the winning candidate won with only 25% of the nation's votes.

For many of the people complaining about those who did not vote, also feel as though voting for someone other than the 2 major candidates is similar to not voting since it takes away votes from the others. Something I do not comprehend since quite often people are going out of their way to voice their beliefs, even if they aren't popular beliefs.

As for me, here in little ol NM, I did not vote. 

And it didn't change anything. Like at all.

This stare control 5 of the 538 electoral votes that a candidate only needs 270 of to win.

That's less than 1%.

Neither candid ate had a tough fight to lay claim to my vote.

The candidates who were truly popular in these areas, we're either left out of the race in favor for others in their party who yelled louder and had more money or were not in either major party. 

I did not vote because in this election my vote was insignificant and not important. 

Even if every single eligeblet voter in New Mexico went out and voted, the results of how the nation feels would not have drastically changed and let's say that they may have, and NM's electoral votes went to the other candidate, the outcome would have been the same. 

I do not live in a swing state that hold a significant portion of the votes nor in a state that flops back and forth on which party they support. 

I live in a state that has 1% of the votes and traditionally supports the same political party. 

Makes my vote feel sad and worthless. 

I understand that all the votes kind of matter but with the system we have set up, some votes and worth more than others. And it sucks. 

I hope to live in another state someday and maybe if it's a state where votes count, I will vote, but until then I abstain from the political battle known as voting.

Twitter competition

I have never really been competitive but there is a certain satisfaction you gain when you put your everything into something in an attempt to be the best.

This week I get NO so such satisfaction.

I made a quite sad attempt at winning this competition.

I've never been one who has used social media to actually communicate and socialize with others. I've never really posted anything on facebook or twitter unless it has been a request, either by family or for a class.

It's just not my thing.

That does not make my attempt any less sad.

I was to put aside my personal beliefs and rituals in order to branch out and learn new things, such as online rhetoric. Not only to learn about it but to utilize everything I learn to achieve a decent grade in my classes.

I don't believe that I've done this to the best of my abilities.

I only made 2 tweets during the week of the competition. Both of which, we're cheesy Halloween jokes. I hoped that these tweets would make people retweet the post and hopefully follow for future jokes.

This did not work out the way I intended it to. Nobody seemed to notice that I had tweeted. It is challenging to get others to acknowledge what you've done, let alone to share you work.

I've never really spent time on twitter looking at how people rise to twitter fame. I haven't ever really spent any time on twitter period. But my brief amount of time has been used to look up new music that I may enjoy.

So to try and use twitter to gain followers by tweeting short messages, was just a little too much for me. I was unable to really comprehend how the "twittershpere" operates.

It seems to be a sort of chaotic yet ritualistic ecosystem that I cannot seem to find a hole into which I can integrate myself. I looked up a few hash tags while I was in this competition and found that many people retweeted things I simply did not understand, such as people just talking about going to a Halloween costume party.

I do not understand how such a tweet merits sharing.

People share and retweet for themselves, this I understand. But the sharing of others tweets does not quite make as much sense to me.

Maybe I will never understand the exact purpose of social media but I have faith that eventually, I will be able to use them to my advantage.

Obviously it will take more time and effort than I devoted to this competition.

I know that I had the potential to do better but I believe that my own personal al quirks an anxieties kept me from putting my everything onto the competition and assignment.

Twitter Shame

John Ronson's TedTalk When Online Shaming Spirals Out of Control helps to shed light on the true capabilities that Twitter offers. He has blogged and written books on the subject of group shaming. In this video, he reviews what happened during the reactions to Justine Sacco's actions on twitter and what these reactions mean for where the power is on social media.

He begins with the origin of twitter. He states that it was a place for people to come together to feel accepted. Someone could let out a secret and then others would accept them. A safe space for letting others in on your secrets without feeling shameful.

The nature of twitter takes a slight turn in his mind when this group of like minded people realized they could use their collective voice to shame. They could use Twitter as a weapon to bring justice to some entities that were previously out of reach such as newspaper or scholarly journalists. The people
had a voice to be able to combat power people who misused their privilege.

This being one of Ronson's reoccurring themes throughout his presentation. The people coming together to shame on anyone who misuses their privilege. This occurs during his talk about Jonah Lehrer's public apology, at which a live twitter board with many distraught and angry tweets was posted on the screen next to Jonah, and again during his discussion on Justine's AIDS tweet.

During the twitter events that Ronson talks about, he really makes his view of how people act during these times.

He looks at some of the tweets that were made during these events and breaks them down. Truly analyzes the components of the tweets. One said that Lehrer lacked to ability to understand shame, which he says must have been posted by the world's best psychiatrist since they could completely diagnose this tiny man on their tv screen. Another called Lehrer a psychopath.

A psychopath. Ronson explains that words like these are used to help dehumanize people so that we will not have to feel shame after we attack them and tear them apart.

Dehumanizing someone before you destroy them helps with how you feel afterward, but does it help them at all? Ronson talks to people who have been shamed like this on the internet and asks them how they are doing after all this time. He goes on to share how most of these people who have been shamed, never go on to lead the same normal life they used to. Now they wake up in the middle of the night forgetting who it is they are or stay in their house for years.

During the hours that Justine was asleep on the plane and could not defend her tweet, many different arcs of this story arose. There were many who were angry, offended or even looking to get some of their own publicity by weighing in on the matter. By the time that she awoke and checked her phone, there were people calling for her to be shamed, fired and even raped.

A person called out for Justine to be raped.

The main point that Ronson is trying to make during his presentation is that in this day and age we need to take caution in how we are using social media. It is no longer an opportunity to start a new democratic system but rather a new message board to destroy the lives of people we deem unworthy of freedom of speech. His caution is that if we continue to allow actions such as requesting someone be raped and beaten, go on without consequence, and sometimes even being rewarded with praise, that the social media boards will not be there for the people but rather be a weapon to destroy the people.

Overall I found this video and the articles that I've read over the last week to be very informative and quite an enjoyable subject to having to write about.

Facebook News

Derek Thomas writes about many fantastic points on the news that is shared on facebook. He tackles how the nation has rapidly made Facebook their go to for receiving news. 

He has a strong focus on BuzzFeed's news stories. He shows that out of the top 20 BuzzFeed stories, only 3 pertain to national news and even those are questionable on whether or not they should even qualify for true news. 

Facebook has surpassed google in referral traffic. While google still reigns in many many subjects, Facebook has taken over for link browsing.

Derek analyzes the top 20 searched Twitter stories of 2013 which include stories about the tragic bombings that took place during the Boston Marathon to famous actors passing on. He goes on to say that Twitter has the ability to contain actual news. Which makes it news.

Well, news-ish.

But he does the same search for the top 20 most searched stories on Facebook and compares the results. All of the searches were barely able to be classified as news. He shows how the majority of the stories are from sources such as BuzzFeed.

He also analyzes that while the news on Facebook is anything but hard news, this has been happening long before the creation of Facebook.

He talks about the fact that many of the stories and links that appear on an individual's facebook page appear there based on their friends. The Facebook newsfeed is completely comprised on what is trending and what is being shared by the pages and people that you follow. It is entirely made up of our own likes and dislikes. We can groom the stories that we see. 

Most of these stories are simply that. 

Stories. 

Quizzes.

Videos of dogs catching treats in air.

Just stories of things that hardly qualify as news, but this is what is on the rise.

While this article was not quite hard hitting news either, I found it a good read with good content. 

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/02/the-facebook-effect-on-the-news/283746/

Ethics of Facebook

Global giants such as Facebook always leave a trail of monumental building blocks. The origins of such large companies often leave damages in their quake. Some of the building blocks of Facebook left some rather large devastation as it came to be.

Today, I analyze the ethical value of the actions that brought Facebook into existence. The good, the bad and the ugly. Everything from what sparked the idea of Facebook to the lawsuits filed against the creator, Mark Zuckerberg.

Zuckerberg's initial website that brought him fame was called Facemash, which by all means was unethical. He created it in a fit of passion after his girlfriend left him. She was fed up with his egocentric personality.

He set up a system to where people could view two images of girls and decide who was "hot" and who was "not". Zuckerberg gathered all the photographs that he used by manually hacking into different colleges online databases and stealing the photos. Not only was this unethical, it was illegal and got him suspended from his enrollment at Harvard.

All of this started over the passion felt after being dumped. He gets drunk and in one night creates a website that hinges on an unethical decision that every wants to make. People get a rush when they can choose such things. All of this because of a girl. Mind you throughout the film, The Social Network, women never had an important role in the foundation of Facebook. They are displayed as objects, which is not ethical in a sense that I am sure that there were many women who helped get the company to where it is, but also ethical in the sense that it helped to show the personality of some of the founders of Facebook.

During his suspension, Zuckerberg was approached by the Winklevoss twins. They had an idea to create a Harvard-only website to allow Harvard collegiates to connect online. Shortly thereafter Zuckerberg comes up with the idea for the Facebook. A new social media platform exclusive to Harvard students to socialize online.Eventually, this led to a large lawsuit from the Winklevoss twins against Zuckerberg for intellectual property infringement. While it is unclear whether or not Zuckerberg was to be creating the Harvard connection site for the Winklevoss twins at the same time he was creating the Facebook, during the lawsuit a judge found Zuckerberg's actions to be unethical and rewarded the Winklevoss twins a substantial amount of monetary reciprocity.

It was not unethical to create the Facebook but the conditions surrounding the circumstances on where the initial idea came from makes it a little more unclear as to whether or not it was completely ethical. But here, I am going on the basis that the actual creation of a site for people to connect with each other, is not unethical.

There is another element I have not addressed the ethics on during the initial creation of Facebook.

Exclusivity.

It has always been a question as to whether or not it is ethical to exclude others from a particular group. Exclusion is a tricky subject due to the fact that it is not always fair to everyone. While Facebook eventually opens up to anyone over 13 years of age with a valid email address, its origins were based on an exclusive entry. A harvard edu. Exclusivity played a rather important role in Facebook's timeline. It was a savvy way for west coast college students to connect with each other. 

As it grew in popularity, Zuckerberg opened the doors for more students at other colleges.

There was an initial investment by one of Zuckerberg's close friends, Eduardo Saverin. He made some ethical strides to help the company get started. His monetary contributions provided all the initial funding to help Facebook have the equipment needed to continue to prosper. 

Saverin and Zuckerberg made Facebook exactly what the students who used it wanted. Together they made the company into a success, but Saverin was ready to get money out of it. Zuckerberg feared that advertisements would kill their creation.

This fundamental difference began the very unethical double cross between Zuckerberg and Saverin.

Zuckerberg continued the growth of the company in California while Saverin finished school and searched for advertisers in New York. 

While the two were apart, Zuckerberg partnered with another website entrepreneur, Sean Parker. He had similar views at Zuckerberg but also felt as though the company had the potential to outgrow anything they had previously envisioned.

Zuckerberg using his newfound connections with Parker to gain access to rather deep and wealthy pockets for funding was an ethical and smart move. 

With the new partnership and continual growth of the company,  Facebook got a $500,000 initial investment. A fantastic initial investment for advertising. Advertising is completely ethical to a point. If you are going to use a free service, and that free service can stay afloat or profit by using advertisements, then that is fine. 

Arguably great. 

 I believe it to be a little more of a fine line between ethical and unethical when the advertisements are catered to individual users. Much of the current advertisement tactics that are employed by Facebook, use programs that analyze the recent search history of individual users to change advertising to match each user on a personal level.

After the company got 1,000,000 users, they held a party and invited everyone, including Saverin from New York. When he got to the party, there was a legal team awaiting him to let him sign some new papers. These papers dwindled the shares that Saverin held down to .03%. 

Everyone else retained their shares completely, while Zuckerberg and Parker had Saverin's were diluted to .03.

The man who single-handedly funded to start of the empire known as Facebook received nothing more than what he invested. It was a very unethical move. 

Saverin responded by suing Zuckerberg and Facebook to restore his shares. 

Yet again, Zuckerberg went to court to defend his actions and yet again a judge decided that the actions were indeed unethical. Saverin received an undisclosed amount and had his name restored to the Facebook mast. 

Speaking of which, the fact that Zuckerberg had his name on every page was ethical. It is absolutely fine to leave your name on your creations, so long as due diligence is given in making sure everyone has an equal opportunity to have their names on the front page.

While Facebook has had some very unethical moves that have been widely publicized, it has also had some ethical movements that have allowed to company to grow to a point that it truly integrated in billions of individual lives.

Every move that we make can get categorized into ethical or unethical but ultimately they are just actions. Good bad or ugly. They are actions we make that cause reactions that are simply good bad or ugly.