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. 

The Personal Bias

Andreas Ekstrom presents his dreams and beliefs on the unbiased clean search result. The idea that when you search something on the world wide web, you will get an unfiltered unbiased answer.

I've personally used google my entire life and have never given my search results a second thought. If I do not get the answer I'm looking for, I simply revise my search and try again. I never knew that google may be changing my results.

Andreas presentation was not about whether or not google almighty strength should be quelled or not, but rather just the fact that their influence exists means that our searches can be manipulated for the better or worse.

We are told not to judge or show bias towards anyone. But how do we put our own judgement aside, to let others form their own opinion.

He goes on to show how the personal bias of the google coders influenced the results of the search results during large public events. He google searches images for Michelle Obama and Andres Behring Breivik. In 2009 people attempted to make a mockery of the new first lady of America. They twisted an image of her and made her into a monkey. Google reacted and removed every trace of the image. They rewrote code and erased it. In 2011, again people made a mockery of someone by twisting the image results of them on google. Google did nothing this time. This time, it was the image of a terrorist who massacred children. His image was replaced by dog poop on a sidewalk. There was no mass rewrite of code to remove the images.

Here is the example of a personal bias. Googles personal bias.

Should google treat the two incidents the same? Should they have to give the same services to everyone? Whether or not the person is honorable and deserves such privilege?

No matter your answer to these questions, the point that Andreas is attempting to make is that in this day and age it is difficult to take our personal opinion and separate it from fact. He starts by talking about how we can google facts that are typically universally accepted, such as the capital of France or the chemical make-up of water. If we search these things we will get a factual answer. He says that the problem comes when we search things that are not necessarily factual, rather subjects that have many answers.

When we search these types of questions, we are typically greeted by many different answers, many of which are based on personal opinions. As we have found out from other parts of his video, sometimes these results are altered and controlled by someone else based on what they want someone to see when they search that question.

Andreas thoughts drift to whether or not we will ever be able to separate our personal bias and opinion. Such as thing would allow us to have an unaltered result. He ponders this and then presents the question to us. His audience. For us to form our own opinion on.

You can watch his TED talk here, https://www.ted.com/talks/andreas_ekstrom_the_moral_bias_behind_your_search_results#t-316937 

What A Life To Live

Life may just be the most important thing you do. What life will you live? Why live it like everyone else?

I guess it comes down to what you want out of life and whether or not fate will let you have what you desire.

Whether it will be a life of normalcy or rather on of abnormality, it will be the only one you get. It will be the most jam packed thing you will ever experience, while simultaneously being the most boring thing.

You can be john doe with 2.5 children, a mundane job, and a comfy retirement in humid Florida or Mohammed, a man who had to flee his country in hopes of survival or the grandma who lives on my street who digs through the trash every day just to pull old used monopoly boards from their impending doom.

Life is precious.

The preacher's message of life is not a new concept, yet I see so many treat others lives as though they are not as important.

Are particular lives more precious and important than others?

If so, what gives a life its value?

Right now more than ever, there are massive movements declaring the importance of lives.

Black lives matter.

Blue lives matter.

Refugee lives matter.

All lives matter.

Dog mom lives matter.

All of these lives hold value to someone. Everyone has someone who cares for them. Why does it seem that quite often so many lives overlap, yet have different values depending on the path it takes.

What will be the path that my life takes? I've met so many people that have led perfectly normal lives. People who have found someone else to have a few children with, raised said children to adulthood and then sent them off to follow in their footsteps. All the while working a mundane job, saving just enough to support their families and live comfortably.

In my life, I've been able to meet so many who fall into the category of normalcy that it would be truly impossible to count.

I know that my life holds value to some but yet to entire nations, I am nothing.

Throughout history, we have forgotten billions of lives. Some cultures have ancient ceremonial events to honor the value of their ancestor's lives. The same cultures that forgot I exist. I am able to come to terms with being insignificant to most of the world.

The question that has been on my tongue for awhile is, why spend your own precious life trying to degrade and take away from others precious lives?

I understand valuing your own life and the lives of your family but how can you forget that there are billions of other families.

I hope that one day I can find who I am and be able to live my life to the best of my abilities. Maybe I will end up a Joe Blow with 2.5 kids and a lame job, but I don't want to forget what I felt this night. Half asleep after getting off from a long work week.

Remembering that life is precious.

How Do Pandas Still Exist?

As of this year, pandas were reclassified as a vulnerable species. The panda is a bear native to ancient China. Deforestation and other human developments have driven the Panda out of the mountains where they lived wild, and made there numbers drastically drop. It is estimated that there are less than 2,000 wild Panda left in the world. Only about 50 are held in captivity such as zoos.

Humans have left a terrible mark on the Pandas existence. We have poached them for their pelts and literally destroyed their ancient homes. All of this has left the panda on an unsteady slope of existence, but the panda has not helped itself either.

The panda is a carnivorous bear. That means that it eats meat to survive. Its biological make up exists to digest meat, but the only thing a panda eats is bamboo.

Bamboo, a giant woody grass that grows chiefly in the tropics. Basically a super thick grass. No meat. No animal products. Nothing nutritious for it. It gains nothing from eating bamboo, but their primary diet consists of bamboo. 

Because the panda eats a strictly vegetarian diet, and it cannot digest bamboo, it poops it straight out. A panda will poop forty times a day without gaining any benefits from the bamboo it eats.

Speaking of poop, the only other thing, aside from bamboo, that a panda will eat is its mothers poop. They need a specific bacteria that is in their mothers poop.

Okay, okay. We have established that all the pandas do is eat bamboo and poop it out. Guess that's not too terrible since they are still able to survive off their stupid diet.

Surviving is nice and all, but passing on your genes to the next generation is a part of every living things biological code. Except for the panda. They do not believe in offspring.

The panda is not a social creature. A panda will keep to itself and fend off others from their territory. They tend to not be afraid of anything or anyone, and periodically get annoyed by anything around them. All of that is fine, if they did not need to interact with others in order to procreate.

Pandas in captivity, and most in the wild, do not have a sex drive. They are not attracted to other panda. There is a 3 month mating period in which pandas may conceive children. During this time, all a panda will do is eat bamboo, and then promptly poop it out. Also during this time, humans will do everything in their power to help the pandas conceive. Quite often this will include giving the male panda sildenafil pills and showing videos of mating pandas.

Viagra and panda porn.

Viagra. Panda porn.

Still, nothing. A panda conception in captivity is truly a miracle.

Actually a pandas existence is truly a miracle. They survive by sitting around all day and eating the one thing that they cannot digest. Then they poop and repeat. Perhaps they do not want to exist. One thing is for certain though, they do not want a future generation to have to exist.

So uh, yeah, pandas are useless and illogical but half the world loves them and wants them to thrive.

Why Google Though?

Google had different goals and ideals than their competitors. They wanted to be a brief yet effective tool. More than that, they wanted to be the very best at what they were doing. They relied heavily on the power of "word of mouth" by the users and as it would turn out, people became incredibly loyal to their web search engines. With a focus on hiring engineers and R&D members, they started their company with different ideal than their competition. With some basic beliefs such as "don't be evil", the company offered many innovative services that helped their users. 

Social Media Life

Today I am assessing an article on the social media phenomenon. The author, Danah Boyd, takes a viewpoint similar to my own but is able to bring more knowledge to the subject. Social media has become an integral part of everyday life. It has not been that way for very long, although for me it has been this way for most of my life.

I cannot remember anything of the dot-com crash. I vaguely remember commercials ending with a catchy dot-com emphasis. The Web 1.0 is completely out of mind for me, BBSs are something I did not hear of until a month ago. Since I've had access to the internet, social media platforms such myspace and facebook have not only been available but prevalent in my everyday life.

It would make sense that once your entire system, Web 1.0, collapses and you begin anew, Web 2.0, that you turn to your basics and comforts. With BBSs, the popularity was on the rise because of the ability to socialized with anyone. The ability to socialize with individuals or communities around the nation was an astounding advancement in internet technologies. With the start of Web 2.0, people still craved the ability to socialized via the internet. Since it wasn't necessarily a start from scratch but rather restarting with a particular desire and goal, the results were incredible.

Modern social media has evolved drastically and quickly in a rather astoundingly short amount of time. In the timeline of social media sites, we have seen some gain extraordinary popularity and then suddenly lose millions of daily users over just a few years. Some sites such as Friendster were quite popular and died out due to more popular sites that offered new features and appealed to younger audiences that had these new methods of socializing become true standards. Others such as MySpace died out as newer sites such as Facebook capitalized on key marketing strategies that made it essential in a wide array of aspects of peoples lives.

Being able to evolve to what daily users want, while still knowing what is essential for all users to have, is a key component in surviving the cut. Today, the entire world is connected through social media sites. A picture taken in Paris can instantly be seen in America when posted on social media sites.

Bringing nations together, whether good or bad, changes so many things in society. Previously, it could take years and extensive travel to bring a large group together. Today, groups can make pages for themselves on these sites and thousands can discover them and join their cause. Profound life changing actions found their way on Facebook when someone posted a live stream of an altercation between police and a citizen. This brought millions of eyes onto their cause. We have even these tactics employed by the United States government when a political party staged a sit-in and streamed their actions via social media.

The changes that have occurred in these sites is brilliant but they are certainly not over yet. We still see new social media platforms arise every day but not many seem to have the right formula to join the phenomenon. Perhaps another crash is needed before the next evolutionary step, although I believe the next revolutionary means of socialization is on its way and will be here before we know it.

If you'd like to read the article I have posted on you can find it here. Social Media: A Phenomenon to be Analyzed

Becoming Princess

I was a dirty and angry out of control child. Growing up was never on my mind, nor were the wishes of anyone else. When I was young and growing up there were not many constants in my life other than my family and Disney. I was quite often a terror to those around me. I bullied my classmates, stole from every store I went in and was fairly convinced that everyone was lesser than I. My mindset was a very skewed point of view. I only ever thought of myself and what people could do for me.

Into my teens, I moved to yet another new town. This time around, my family was split even deeper than before. I began to get a little lost in my own head at this stage in my life. I was finally in a town for more than a year at a time, but so many things were different. One of those things was me. I am not sure if it came with age or with gaining real friends, but my mindset slowly began to change. I started to think about my actions and others opinions. By no means was this the point where I truly began to put others before myself, but it was the beginnings of something new. My friends at the time gave me princess for a nickname as a joke. It was one that was meant to question things about me and make fun of me for having such girly interests.

As I got older and graduated school, I made a move to a new town to venture into a new adventure for self-realisation. I came to a new town for school but ended up finding out who I am and who I want to be someday.  It required many late nights with lots of alcohol. I found out that I still was not a person who put the needs of others before their own needs. After finding out who I was, seeing who I wanted to be was easy. I needed to become someone who has others to live for.

I wound up meeting someone who I wanted to put before myself. She came into my life and helped me see that the only thing holding me from being a princess who helps all those in need, is me. She was unaware that she was helping me so deeply, but she ended up being my guiding light. In a way, she put my needs before her own without even giving it a second thought. She was the princess who helped me realize that I can do it too.

Some princess get their title from birth while others get it by proving that they have all the pure qualities of a princess. As a princess, there are certain expectations and ideals that are expected of you. You must be a model citizen and a guiding light to those who need direction. You must hold yourself to a higher standard and go beyond the call of duty for your people. It is essential that you learn to care for people while still being able to distance yourself, as to not get too emotionally attached to any one person. When people see you, you must gently smile and pleasantly greet them.

I've still a long way to go before I am a princess who undoubtedly deserves the title but I now know that I can help others the way I have dreamt of. I hope to be able to share the journey of becoming a princess with everyone here on this blog.

♔