tikatok book

for my project i used tikatok to make a book for my sister.

i remember.

what are the implications of increasingly widespread use of social media?

            Twitter. Blogspot. Formspring. Facebook. Myspace. Xanga. These commercial website have been taking over the internet for years. As soon as we get used to one website, another one pops out begging us to use them. We can’t help but to give in. We love the thrill of being able to post pictures, comments and statuses. We love the power to be friends with who we want to be friends with, and block the people that we hate. This is the revolution we have been waiting for. The internet is taking over our society. We find ourselves more concerned with checking Facebook, than going out and doing something of use. We spend countless hours on the computer every day ‘creeping’ on the people we envy, or viewing pictures that our friends have tagged us in. We find ourselves so obsessed with updating the latest news in our lives, posting comments that agree with other friends, or tagging pictures of a weekend gone wrong. This is why we are consumed by these websites. The more popular these websites get, the more people join. The more people that join, the more popular the website gets. We are constantly advertising these websites for others, and we don’t even realize it. Websites like these are taking over, and nobody knows.
            Earlier in this class, I learned that if Facebook was a country, it would be the fourth most populated country in the world. That’s not the fourth biggest state in South America. That’s not the fourth biggest city in a state. That’s the fourth biggest country in the entire world. What kind of a world do we live in where Facebook controls our lives to the point that so many people have activated an account? That Facebook has enough users to be a country? That’s huge. The internet continues to get more and more popular with every day that passes. As the days go by, more and more things are added to the internet, and taken out of any other kind of media. For example, most newspapers are now available on the internet. Yes, it helps save trees. Yes, it’s a nice thing because you don’t have all this newspaper lying around your house. But, at what cost? Many people have now cancelled their newspaper subscriptions because the newspaper in readily available online, and for free. What are all the paper boys going to do? How are teenagers trying to snag some extra cash going to cope?
            The widespread use of the internet continues to get worse. As more material emerges onto the internet, we find ourselves spending time sitting at our computers, watching the latest episode of Glee or Jersey Shore, rather than watching it on TV when it’s actually on, and doing something more useful. We are consumed by the internet and check it multiple times a day, really for no reason at all other than to upload a picture, update a status, or comment on someone else’s page. It’s getting to the ridiculous stage. They say with certain things, that once you start it’s impossible to stop. With the way things are going, I fear we will all become addicted with the internet more than we already have been, and life will start to be lived virtually rather than for ourselves.

freewrite

i think it is very weird and unusual that people are constantly getting fired just because of what they put on their blogs, myspace, facebook, twitter, whatever it is. i understand that the freedom of speech doesn't apply to things published on the internet, but as americans with rights we should have the freedom to do, say or write what we want to, and not get any punishment because of it. there's a huge difference to me at least between talking crap about people and venting about people. i definitely don't think people would write what they have written if they knew someone was spying on them. if we can't even trust a person and feel the need to spy, what kind of world is this? it's really annoying that right now if i went home and posted a status about a teacher at my school, i could be suspended because of it. it's not fair at all. yes, facebook may not be the best place to broadcast venting feelings like that but at the same time i wouldn't think anyone would print out my facebook pages and bring them into mrs hanson or another teacher in the office at eastview. it's ridiculous that people are getting fired for having a profile that's "too sexy". who ever said you couldn't put what you wanted onto your OWN profile page. if office's and workplaces have a problem with it they should say something when hiring, or if its a new policy, they should let the employee's know. it's not fair to take away someone's job when they feel they did nothing wrong, simply because the office was not smart enough to tell their employee's. that falls on the office's head, not the employee's.

social media revolution

watching this video pretty much just disturbed me. i never imagined that social networking and websites like facebook, twitter, formspring, and myspace would take off the way it has taken off. it's kind of messed up that panama, ireland and norway's populations were less than ellen degeneres and ashton kutchers tweets. some people obviously don't have that great of lives if instead of going off and doing something, they would rather spend unneeded time on their phone tweeting to their millions of fans who would be just fine if they didn't tweet so much, coincidently. with the upsurge of this media network, we as humans are starting to become lazy. our thought process is "why go do something, i have my computer right here" and that's just sad and embarrassing. in the video it said if facebook was a country it would be third on the list of largest countries based on population. sure, the creators are really happy because their rolling in dough, but what about the rest of us. would we rather sit at home facebook chatting our best friends or would we rather be with them? i would definitely rather be with someone than chatting them from my couch. it gives us something to do, but nobody seems to care about doing things. people only care about the internet and media, and eventually america and other countries around the world are always going to be on the internet, watching tv, or tweeting, instead of spending time with people. we'll be living our lives virtually, and that's what i'm afraid of.