Twitter Champion of the World

   

I have to start off by saying that this is going to be the most difficult blog I have had to write, I have no idea how I am going to stretch this to meet my 500 word minimum. As a class we were asked to do a Twitter challenge, to see how many followers we could get. Well I have to be totally honest, I had absolutely zero interest in doing this. I have never used Twitter in my life, prior to this class, and I have to be honest, after this class is over I will be deleting my Twitter account.
   
     For the person who receives the most followers on Twitter, they will be awarded an AWESOME point. I have no idea what an AWESOME point is but I figured since a am a rather AWESOME mamba-jamba I would play along and see how it goes. Aside from sheer confusion when I first started Tweeting stuff, not really understanding how this site really benefits people on a personal level. 
     I didn't do much of anything to get followers, I watched a short tutorial about the easiest ways to obtain followers without having to pay a site to get you followers. This tutorial instructed me to start liking and following random crap that was trending, and also to retweet all kinds of stuff that I was interested in, so that is exactly what I did. I started following stuff that interested me such as; #bassfishing, #coyotehunters, #donaldtrumpsupporters, #denverbroncos, #pokerplayers. I then went through each of the major sites I followed and started following all of there followers, I sure hope what I just said makes sense to you. So here I am randomly clicking follow over and over for each site that had many followers, I was also retweeting random crap that I thought people may like. During all the time I was doing this I was questioning why anybody would take this stuff seriously, I grew more and more confused as I was plugging along.

     As far as things I would do to obtain more followers in the future, the answer is quite simple... I wouldn't! I have no intention on ever Tweeting again, unless I have another class in the future that requires it. To me, having many followers is just like having a gazillion Facebook friends. I don't know these people, they truly aren't my friends, so why the hell do I need so many? This whole social media thing makes truly no sense to me. The other day I was sitting at Starbucks and I over heard these two younger people talking about all the friends they had on Facebook and how popular they were, and all I could think is how sad. It is truly a sad day when people consider having a ton of friends on a social media site that they have never met, and consider themselves popular.
    To summarize my "success," I started off with 3 followers and now have 221. I was originally following 3 people and I am now following 1,495.  Anyway I am done for now #twittersux #dazedandconfused #thunderdanout

Twitter...Who really gives a S#!T

    WOW! What can I say about John Ronson’s video on TedTalk, aside from it was absolutely disgusting to watch. Social media shaming is absolutely disgusting, people in general believe they are doing a good deed by shaming someone who has something that others find immoral. The problem is that those who are doing the shaming are worse than those who are being shamed.

The story of Justine Sacco is a perfect example of what I am talking about. Justine made what seemed to be a rather fucked up joke that ended up being taken so far out of context that Twitter followers essentially ruined this woman’s life by shaming her on Twitter. Whether the joke she told via Twitter was funny or not, racist or not, did she truly deserve to be shamed the way she was, and have her life flipped upside down? 

People began shaming this woman without ever hearing her side of the story. Nobody took the time to find out why she said what she did via Twitter. “Good natured people” just began the public annihilation of this woman as soon as they read the Twitter feed that she had posted. It is hard for me to fathom how cruel people can be to others. Hell even if Justine was a flat out racist and you didn’t like what you read, how hard would it have been to just move on, look past it, or even message her and try to help her see the light. Why must people go to such an extreme, and rip people to shreds? Is this what is considered to be social media justice? It seems to be that Justine is doing life without parole in cyber land.   

This brings me to my typical Danny rant that I tend to insert into all of my blogs, however this rant will most likely be longer than most of the ones prior too. I hate Twitter, I find this form of social media to be absolutely pathetic. I have never used this site prior to this English class, and I damn well guarantee that the day this class ends, my Twitter account will be deleted. To this point, the only thing that I have even remotely like about Twitter is that I can get some updates from sites that I like, such as; Nascar, different hunting and fishing sites, and from people who actually like my president Donald Trump. Aside from that, scrolling through all the bullshit to find even one tweet that would interest me, quite frankly is not worth my time. Not to mention, the majority of the tweets that do interest me are posted on Facebook anyway.

I know that my blog may fall just a bit short of the 500 words that are required, but to be perfectly honest, I am too pissed off to write anymore.

REFERENCES:
Ronson, J. (2015, June ). When online shaming goes too far. Retrieved from https://www.ted.com/talks/jon_ronson_what_happens_when_online_shaming_spirals_out_of_control?language=en#t-793032 

Make the News Great Again

     Has the real news gone straight down the toilet? Many people, including myself believe that it has. Facebook has had a significant impact on the way people get world news information. According to the Pew Research Center, 44% of Americans get their news from Facebook. With nearly half of all Americans using Facebook to get world news, this seems rather alarming to me. With the way Facebook can tailor the types of feeds that you receive based on your profile, are we truly receiving "real news?" Or are we only seeing the news in the way we want to see the news?
     I am gonna use myself as an example to further explain my thoughts of Facebook news. I am an avid hunter, card carrying member of the NRA, and gun enthusiast. So the majority of the news-feeds that I tend to see on Facebook are how people with concealed carry licenses stopped a robbery, helped a woman escape from a mugger, were able to defend their family from a home invasion.

 I also receive many new articles about people like Hillary Clinton and Obama who , according to my news feeds, are trying to take all firearms from Americans. Is this real? To be honest, I do not know.
     Facebook and other social media sources have been mentioned as having a huge affect on our last Presidential election, I am not 100% sure that it did. With so much slander, and bullshit being spewed allover Facebook about Trump and Clinton, I feel that it negated an advantage for either candidate. I believe that Facebook is filled with fake news; with 1.4 billion users, Facebook provides the perfect target audience for faux journalists to spread their work. I remember opening my Facebook page one morning about 2 years ago, and was instantly saddened by an article at the top of my news feed. It was an elaborate article about the passing of famed actress (one of my favorites) Betty White.

This story, for the most part, ruined my day. I am a huge fan of Betty White and reading that she had passed away deeply saddened me. I kind of moped around the house for awhile, then decided to watch the show Golden Girls for the next few hours, just thinking about all the laughs Betty White provided in my life. The next day I decide to look at Facebook again and read a ton of posts that the news article of Betty White was fake. I could not believe that someone would go through so much trouble of writing a bullshit article like that. I was relieved that Betty was still alive, and then instantly pissed off that this article was ever written and placed on Facebook. That moment is when I realized how much garbage and "fake news" was really out there. It made me completely suspect of every news article on Facebook that I have ever read.

     To sum this blog up, I am not going to say that Facebook news is the devil, however, I am gonna say be very leery about what you read. Always look at the source that your news is coming from. I think it is a crap shoot these days between what is real and what is total BS. and God Bless Betty White! :)