#if you guys could look at my browser's history would make this less enjoyable

[cassianandor]

A Chayenzo fic where Chayoung saves Vincenzo from one of Babel’s plans? Hehe thank you!

Hello! This was a little hard for me, but I think I managed? I apologize in advance if there’s misuse of legal terms, I just have Google Knowledge™

-----

READ ON AO3

The line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart

Pairing: Hong Cha-Young x Vincenzo Cassano

Word count: 1049

Warnings: none

The camera flashes blinded Vincenzo at the entrance of the courthouse, pushing him into the reporters’ frenzy of a thousand unanswered questions. Hong Cha Young got a hold of his arm and dragged him with her, glancing at him with reassurance. It was hard to believe things were ever going back to what they used to be, though.

Vincenzo wasn’t stupid. He knew that, sooner or later, if he chose to stay, someone would catch up on his past and use it as leverage, as a weapon to destroy everything good he had done since he had come back to Korea. It was judgement day — quite literally — and Vincenzo was more scared to lose what he had built than he had imagined.

In the court of law were, of course, the Wusang CEO and Choi Myung Hee, alongside Jang Jun Woo. They were there just to watch his downfall, but Vincenzo wouldn’t let them have the last word on that. He was going to fight until the end, like he had been doing his entire life.

The judge arrived in the room and everyone rose to their feet, only to be told to sit down again by the man.

“So,” The judge coughed, placing his hands over his desk. “The prosecution can start.”

From the opposite side, a prosecutor got up and took a stand in front of the judge’s bench. “This is The State v. Vincenzo Cassano. Your honor, as stated in the files, it is widely known that Mr. Cassano is a consigliere for one of the biggest Mafia families in Italy. The prosecution requests for him to be criminally charged for illegal gun possession, multiple assault and attempted murder. We also urge for his deportation, so that he can no longer escape justice in his homeland.”

Hong Cha Young wanted to protest, but Vincenzo held her down. It was inevitable, he did see it coming. Such thing didn’t mask the bitter taste spreading on his mouth as something heavy dropped on his stomach, though.

Their plan was to push the idea that it was all a scheme from their enemies to stop them from fighting; Cha Young and Vincenzo had spent the past night brainstorming, although not much had come out of it. Vincenzo had made peace with it, but, strangely, he felt nervous for the first time in years.

“The defendant’s attorney has the floor,” The judge declared, and Cha Young jumped off her seat beside Vincenzo.

“Your Honor, I’ll be succinct,” She said, rounding the table to stand in front of the judge.

Cha Young then proceeded to cry, lamenting something in a mumble and making the entire room uncomfortable. Vincenzo raised a brow at her, uncertain of what he was watching, but little did he know that the show had just started.

“Oh my,” Cha Young wept, head low with a hand over her face. “Oh my. It’s so sad. Your Honor. It’s so sad…”

The judge and the people in the courtroom were stunned by her act. “Lawyer Hong,” He called, frowning in concern. “What’s the problem?”

“Mr. Cassano’s story!” Cha Young jolted forward, throwing her arms up. Vincenzo would think she looked like a crazy person, but that was her modus operandi. She walked back to their table, caught a folder and started to read. “‘Left by his mother at the age of eight at an orphanage, Park Joo Hyung was a solitary child who—”

“Wait, wait, wait,” The prosecutor cut through her speech. “Who is Park Joo Hyung?”

Vincenzo hadn’t heard that name in a long time, and knew that nothing good could come from it. But he trusted Cha Young, trusted her experience and intelligence the same way she put all her faith in him. Their relationship worked because they didn’t ask much of each other, but were true to what they believed and what brought them together.

“That’s the golden question!” Cha Young pointed at the prosecutor, doing little jumps. “Park Joo Hyung is Mr. Vincenzo Cassano! Ta da! He was adopted as a child by an Italian couple, but he was born in Korea. You can’t deport someone from their own motherland, if I believe the law is right.”

Vincenzo didn’t know how she discovered the whole story, but it entertained him. The entire room began a buzz of murmurs and the judge called for silence, which gave Cha Young room to continue. “About the following accusations, here we have the word of a renowned specialist about the video the prosecution is holding against my client, which supposedly shows him shooting a few men in a tunnel. It’s fake, Your Honor.”

Looking proud, Cha Young handed the folder to the judge. Vincenzo chuckled to himself and glanced at Choi Myung Hee in the gallery, staring back at him with a mix of contempt and amusement. In the game they played, the losing end would be the one who tried to underestimate him.

“Objection!” The prosecutor got up, livid. “She’s lying!”

“Also, the allegation that my client is involved with the Italian Mafia is pure speculation,” Cha Young ignored him and continued to talk. “There’s no proof of such a thing, they’re only trying to taint my client’s spotless reputation.”

“Overruled,” Sighing, the judge made a decision. “Lawyer Hong may continue.”

Vincenzo smiled when she gave a little punch in the air in celebration, too used to her antics to find it weird. Suddenly, someone in the gallery got up and shouted that he was being framed, causing a commotion in the courtroom that forced the judge to hit the gavel against the wood desk to calm down the nerves. Deep down, he should’ve known that Hong Cha Young wouldn’t come to battle unprepared. All those months working together only showed him that she was tireless in her pursuit for justice, to defend those she cared about.

He didn’t know in which category he fell, but Vincenzo was alright with being her partner. It wasn’t much, but it was what he could offer.

Triumphant, Cha Young turned around and smiled, pulling down an imaginary sunglass as she winked at him. Vincenzo laughed, nodding at her as a sign of approval. She was, by far, his best decision, and poignant reminder that he always wanted what he couldn’t have.

[watching-pictures-move]

Put On Your Raincoats #19 | For Richer For Poorer (Damiano, 1979)

Every once in a while when you come across a porno that does the non-pornographic parts really well, it raises the question: would this be better if it weren't a porno at all? On one hand, I believe in meeting movies on their level (including their genre) and think that explicit sex can be dramatically necessary in the right context. I've seen some of the mainstream efforts of notable porn directors like Gerard Damiano and Stephen Sayadian and it's clear that the demands of the genre actually lend some structure to their work and found those movies less enjoyable than their more explicit output. But on the other hand, it's almost a shame when you stumble across certain elements that are so strong yet few will see just because of the genre. The question came to mind as I watched another Damiano film, For Richer For Poorer, his portrayal of a marriage that's just fallen apart.

The opening scenes are the most devastating. Georgina Spelvin tries to make small talk while preparing breakfast when her husband Robert Kerman tells her in brutally plain terms that they're getting a divorce. He tries to be nice about it, says he's found a good price for the house and tells her to get a lawyer. She only wants to know the other woman's name. The next scene she's sitting alone in their empty, unfurnished house as Kerman tries awkwardly to bid farewell. She smiles coldly and cuts him off. "If you say 'that's it' one more time, I'll scream." Kerman tries to be as much of a good guy as he can and clearly wants to make things as easy for Spelvin as he can, but that doesn't mean this is any less painful for her.

To the extent that there's an instigating event for all of this, it's that their daughter ran away with a bunch of hippies. ("That note, so cold, so final. She really hates us.") I've seen Damiano referred to as a conservative or at least sex-negative pornographer, and while that's probably a bit of an oxymoron, there's a bit of truth to that here. The main characters to an extent blame the sexual revolution for the dissolution of their family unit, and I think he conjures more empathy for that viewpoint than most directors working in this genre. Over the rest of the film, Spelvin has to put herself back together and rediscover her agency. "All those years my thoughts were always plural...Now there's no one, no one I have to worry about except me."

Damiano ties this arc to the demands of the genre with a stylish dream sequence where Spelvin sees a more assertive, severe version of herself in a number of sexual scenarios, troubled yet intrigued when her "guide" through this dream (also played by Kerman) suggests that she is indeed capable of what her doppelganger does. I watched this in a less than ideal copy that I suspect underserves the formal qualities of this sequence, yet it still had quite an impact. (How or where I watched this is none of your business, and everybody does it anyway, and I cleared my browser history already so you can't prove anything. I can only hope that Vinegar Syndrome gets around to restoring this movie.) After this scene concludes, Spelvin finds herself a changed, slightly more confident woman, beginning a courtship with a genial, charming Bobby Astyr, which leads to the party scene that ends the movie. She runs into her ex-husband again, and to the extent that this is a competition, it's clear who's come out on top.

A large part of the movie's power comes not just from the performances but from the casting itself. Not to slight Spelvin's work here (she's regarded as probably the best actress in porn for a very good reason, and there's more evidence in favour of that title here), but the fact that her, Kerman and Astyr look like real people gives this movie an immediacy that goes a long way in selling the drama. Would this movie work half as well if you cast more photogenic folks like, I dunno, Annette Haven and Eric Edwards in the lead roles? Probably not. The movie also has a good ear for naturalistic dialogue in the scenes between Spelvin and her sympathetic friends and her and Astyr.

"It's not al dente. What's the opposite of al dente?"

"Wrong."

"Wrong, that's probably what is is."

"It's the only grounds for divorce in Italy."

Now, back to my original question. One could argue that this might have been better as a straight drama, but the sex scenes give the movie psychological texture. And as a movie about the crumbling of the heroine's marriage and the rediscovering of her agency, it's not inappropriate to see her having sex. The sex scenes are probably least effective when they go for close-ups, but Damiano and Spelvin find ways to inject them with psychological weight and character development. In short, while it could probably work as a straight drama, I would wager it would be a less interesting one.

[jordantstatham]

How Social Media Has Changed Us: The Good and The Bad

It’s hard to believe that, only a decade ago, social media was little more than a budding trend. Sure, there were websites such as Friendster and MySpace that had a decent level of adoption, but the population as a whole had not come around to it yet.

Back in 2005, Facebook was still in it’s early stages of its spread across the world. Heck, I was signed up for it back then, but didn’t really see the point until a few years later. Twitter appeared around that time, but a lot of us saw it as a pointless lifecasting toy. LinkedIn was essentially a digital resume and, for some of us, a pseudo-Rolodex. And Google+ didn’t even come on the scene until 2011, followed later by Pinterest and other platforms.

Fast forward to 2014, and social media has become not only a key part of the modern lifestyle, but a useful marketing channel for businesses of all sizes. Yesterday, a friend commented (on Facebook of course) that her elementary age kids were stunned to know that phones were only used for conversations a few years ago. They were dumbfounded to hear that we didn’t even carry phones with us 15-20 years ago.

This tells me that everything has officially and permanently changed. There is a generation of kids coming up (mine included) who can’t even conceive of a world without smart phones and social networking. It has officially embedded itself in our culture.

As someone who spends nearly every waking hour connected in some way, including both personal and business, this really hits home for me. Let’s look at ways that social media improves our life experience, and also a few ways that it uncovers a few of the more unsightly parts of humanity. Surely you’ll agree on at least some if not all of them. Social Media: The Good

Before I cover the “Bad,” let’s start by appreciating the things social media has done to add to our lives. Here are some of the better things I’ve observed.

Immediate Access to Information

Given all the consolidation of media companies in the United States, it is pretty easy to question whether the news we get from the major media is the full story or not. After all, it’s not a rare occasion to hear more about the latest Kardashian scandal or celebrity death than a political uprising in Turkey or elsewhere in the world.

One of the things that attracted me personally to Twitter was the immediate access to other sources of information. Back when the government raided Osama Bin Laden’s fortress in Pakistan, there was a nearby citizen live tweeting his observations of the whole situation through the night. I was out at an event that evening, and learned of it pretty soon after news broke domestically, directly from my contacts on Twitter.

Social media is also very helpful for expanding our sources of content as a whole. With so much being blogged and written, then curated and shared proactively, the volume of content has grown exponentially. Now, there is no shortage of viewpoints and sources from which we can draw our own conclusions about what is really happening in the world. It’s less important to have a news team interpret it on our behalf.

Pervasive Connectivity To Others

I remember the days of phones with old style dials. We didn’t even have answering machines back then. If you called someone and they didn’t answer the phone, you had to call back and try to catch them in real time.

When a call came in, there was no caller ID. You just picked it up and said, “Hello.” It was sometimes hard to catch up to people, so you had to hand write and send a letter to communicate when you were both leading busy lives.

Today, if you can’t catch someone on the phone, you can leave a voice mail or send a text. Or even better, tweet, Facebook message, or touch base in some other means. You can see what others are doing within seconds of them doing it, assuming they share it on a social network of some sort. It’s not hard to catch up with someone if they want you to find them. Kids have no idea how convenient this is in our daily lives (privacy concerns aside).

Globalized Voices

Similar to the phone situation I just spelled out, it was extremely difficult to access a globally reaching platform where one could share their opinions or findings back a mere 25 years ago. I recall in the early 1990s where it was a huge deal to send in a letter to the editor to a local newspaper, and have them actually decide to include the letter in the paper.

Today, all we have to do is login to our platform of choice. We can rant, rave, kumbaya, tell jokes, share images, and generally mix and mingle to our heart’s content. For those of us who can write, it takes only a couple of minutes to create a new blog and start putting our thoughts into words. And those thoughts could grow legs of their own once the social sphere grabs hold of them.

It is far easier to do something remarkable and noticeable, and have it reach people across the planet, than it has been at any time in our history. We now have truly globalized voices. What a privilege!

Hashtags

Here’s one that originated on Twitter and eventually made its way out to the other social networks. Hashtags served a very important purpose on Twitter in the early days – you could create one tied to a specific trend, event, or topic, and filter out everything that didn’t relate to the hashtag.

This was great for allowing a completely unstructured app like Twitter to enable focused conversation. It’s amazing how people will find answers to problems or needs on their own, and make the most of a platform. This was the beauty of Twitter – it was powerful in that you could take its simplicity (140 characters of whatever you wanted to post) and tailor the experience to your own preferences.

Now, hashtags have grown into a phenomenon of their own. Some people use them for snark, others use them in the traditional way, and still others have been experimenting with completely new ways of applying hashtags. Since they operate almost like keywords for social media, they’ve truly become part of the culture of online discussions.

More Level Playing Field for Business

Some may argue this point, but by providing us with global reach for our voices, social networks enable businesses across the world to amplify their message in a way never thought possible only a decade or two ago.

In the old days, mass media ruled. A company had to pony up thousands or even millions of dollars to be heard in most cases. Very large companies with deep pockets ruled the roost. Only those businesses could afford to have wider reach.

Now, a small company can achieve global reach within days of launching their business when the cards fall right. Perhaps it’s via an ingenious video, by sharing opinions that resonate and haven’t been stated in the past, or creating new knowledge that spreads like wildfire. Maybe it’s by simply sharing the business concept and bigger voices latching onto it. In any case, social media has provided a means to have a voice on par with the big dogs for everyone, including the smallest startups or “Mom & Pop” businesses. Social Media: The Bad

It would be short-sighted to only highlight the good from social media if I want to stay grounded in reality. Now here are som eof the things that make me want to close the browser window and move on.

Selfies

I know, it’s been mocked and made fun of ad nauseum – the selfie. No matter whether it’s because of a shirtless guy flexing in front of a mirror, girls making abominable duck faces, or people with bad judgment taking selfies in front of natural disasters or sunbathing with their grandmother’s ashes, we’re stuck with them.

I get why so many selfies make their way out onto the social networks. Phones come with high res cameras now. Computers have webcams where it’s easy to take a snapshot. You don’t even need anyone present to catch a picture from the top of Mount “Amazing-est View in the World.”

But really, it’s not hard to ask some friendly passer-by to take a picture if you really want one. Everyone can see right through your humble brag about the cool places you’re visiting or the awesome people you are hanging out with. If you aim to post selfies, please, PLEASE take at least a moment to consider whether it will come across as narcissistic. In many cases, it will. And those are times to resist the urge. Especially if posting to a business page or Twitter account.

Hiding Behind Anonymity

Although it is getting harder to shield your identity these days, anonymity has been a key piece of the internet since its early days. It’s amazing to see how people behave when their true identity is masked.

Now we have everything from outright trolls to habitual pranksters. This is the kind of behavior that makes the whole internet, and particularly social media, less productive and enjoyable for all. If you want to say something and are afraid to have anyone know you said it, perhaps you should buck up and use common sense before putting it out there. Being offensive anonymously is not only cowardly, it shows a lack of character. We should all be better than that.

All Talk, No Action

In recent years, we’ve seen a ton of hashtag activists and similar behaviors across social media (most recently, the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge). It has become a trend to take a selfie (double whammy) holding a sign with a political or social message on it, and a new hashtag of course. Or take a video in the case of the Ice Bucket Challenge. The idea is to get likes and shares on the picture or video, or challenge others to take part, aiming to have a message spread.

While that’s fine in concept, hashtag activism is all talk. If an issue is important enough to take action, why not take real action? Facebook is crawling with people ready to go to social media war with anyone on a topic they care about, but what else are they doing to fix the problem? Venting on social media doesn’t fix a thing; it just stirs the pot.

There are plenty of charities and volunteer opportunities available. Rather than get spun up on Facebook, go give back on the weekend, or make a donation without taking part in a random stunt. Not only will it make a real difference, but it will make you feel better inside. And in the end, isn’t that part of the story anyway?

Ignorance Amplified

The ugly underbelly of ignorance is easy to ignore while you’re going about your everday life. But on Twitter, it’s all over the place. There have been many blog posts highlighting hateful, misinformed, or just plain confusing and delusional tweets at various times in the past.

It would be easy to laugh at this, but it’s also important to realize that this stuff is really going on out there. The world is not a perfect place, that’s a fact. If something is ignorant and it offends you, sharing it to express that outrage just amplifies the message further.

Like the adage goes: “Don’t feed the trolls.” The more attention you give to this behavior, the more the person spewing it feels compelled to continue the behavior. Let’s focus our attention on the positive sometimes, because the negative gets old and tired, doesn’t it?

Summary

I love social media. As with any communication medium, it comes with its ups and downs, pros and cons. Overall, I truly believe it makes the world a better place in many ways. It also gives a platform to some less savory behaviors and opinions. Each to his/her own, I suppose.

What about you? What else about social media has changed your life for the better? Did I miss any huge negatives that you see? Do you think the world is better or worse off with social networks?

Click here to view this post where it was first published.

[latashamelva]

How Social Media Has Changed Us: The Good and The Bad

It’s hard to believe that, only a decade ago, social media was little more than a budding trend. Sure, there were websites such as Friendster and MySpace that had a decent level of adoption, but the population as a whole had not come around to it yet.

Back in 2005, Facebook was still in it’s early stages of its spread across the world. Heck, I was signed up for it back then, but didn’t really see the point until a few years later. Twitter appeared around that time, but a lot of us saw it as a pointless lifecasting toy. LinkedIn was essentially a digital resume and, for some of us, a pseudo-Rolodex. And Google+ didn’t even come on the scene until 2011, followed later by Pinterest and other platforms.

Fast forward to 2014, and social media has become not only a key part of the modern lifestyle, but a useful marketing channel for businesses of all sizes. Yesterday, a friend commented (on Facebook of course) that her elementary age kids were stunned to know that phones were only used for conversations a few years ago. They were dumbfounded to hear that we didn’t even carry phones with us 15-20 years ago.

This tells me that everything has officially and permanently changed. There is a generation of kids coming up (mine included) who can’t even conceive of a world without smart phones and social networking. It has officially embedded itself in our culture.

As someone who spends nearly every waking hour connected in some way, including both personal and business, this really hits home for me. Let’s look at ways that social media improves our life experience, and also a few ways that it uncovers a few of the more unsightly parts of humanity. Surely you’ll agree on at least some if not all of them. Social Media: The Good

Before I cover the “Bad,” let’s start by appreciating the things social media has done to add to our lives. Here are some of the better things I’ve observed.

Immediate Access to Information

Given all the consolidation of media companies in the United States, it is pretty easy to question whether the news we get from the major media is the full story or not. After all, it’s not a rare occasion to hear more about the latest Kardashian scandal or celebrity death than a political uprising in Turkey or elsewhere in the world.

One of the things that attracted me personally to Twitter was the immediate access to other sources of information. Back when the government raided Osama Bin Laden’s fortress in Pakistan, there was a nearby citizen live tweeting his observations of the whole situation through the night. I was out at an event that evening, and learned of it pretty soon after news broke domestically, directly from my contacts on Twitter.

Social media is also very helpful for expanding our sources of content as a whole. With so much being blogged and written, then curated and shared proactively, the volume of content has grown exponentially. Now, there is no shortage of viewpoints and sources from which we can draw our own conclusions about what is really happening in the world. It’s less important to have a news team interpret it on our behalf.

Pervasive Connectivity To Others

I remember the days of phones with old style dials. We didn’t even have answering machines back then. If you called someone and they didn’t answer the phone, you had to call back and try to catch them in real time.

When a call came in, there was no caller ID. You just picked it up and said, “Hello.” It was sometimes hard to catch up to people, so you had to hand write and send a letter to communicate when you were both leading busy lives.

Today, if you can’t catch someone on the phone, you can leave a voice mail or send a text. Or even better, tweet, Facebook message, or touch base in some other means. You can see what others are doing within seconds of them doing it, assuming they share it on a social network of some sort. It’s not hard to catch up with someone if they want you to find them. Kids have no idea how convenient this is in our daily lives (privacy concerns aside).

Globalized Voices

Similar to the phone situation I just spelled out, it was extremely difficult to access a globally reaching platform where one could share their opinions or findings back a mere 25 years ago. I recall in the early 1990s where it was a huge deal to send in a letter to the editor to a local newspaper, and have them actually decide to include the letter in the paper.

Today, all we have to do is login to our platform of choice. We can rant, rave, kumbaya, tell jokes, share images, and generally mix and mingle to our heart’s content. For those of us who can write, it takes only a couple of minutes to create a new blog and start putting our thoughts into words. And those thoughts could grow legs of their own once the social sphere grabs hold of them.

It is far easier to do something remarkable and noticeable, and have it reach people across the planet, than it has been at any time in our history. We now have truly globalized voices. What a privilege!

Hashtags

Here’s one that originated on Twitter and eventually made its way out to the other social networks. Hashtags served a very important purpose on Twitter in the early days – you could create one tied to a specific trend, event, or topic, and filter out everything that didn’t relate to the hashtag.

This was great for allowing a completely unstructured app like Twitter to enable focused conversation. It’s amazing how people will find answers to problems or needs on their own, and make the most of a platform. This was the beauty of Twitter – it was powerful in that you could take its simplicity (140 characters of whatever you wanted to post) and tailor the experience to your own preferences.

Now, hashtags have grown into a phenomenon of their own. Some people use them for snark, others use them in the traditional way, and still others have been experimenting with completely new ways of applying hashtags. Since they operate almost like keywords for social media, they’ve truly become part of the culture of online discussions.

More Level Playing Field for Business

Some may argue this point, but by providing us with global reach for our voices, social networks enable businesses across the world to amplify their message in a way never thought possible only a decade or two ago.

In the old days, mass media ruled. A company had to pony up thousands or even millions of dollars to be heard in most cases. Very large companies with deep pockets ruled the roost. Only those businesses could afford to have wider reach.

Now, a small company can achieve global reach within days of launching their business when the cards fall right. Perhaps it’s via an ingenious video, by sharing opinions that resonate and haven’t been stated in the past, or creating new knowledge that spreads like wildfire. Maybe it’s by simply sharing the business concept and bigger voices latching onto it. In any case, social media has provided a means to have a voice on par with the big dogs for everyone, including the smallest startups or “Mom & Pop” businesses. Social Media: The Bad

It would be short-sighted to only highlight the good from social media if I want to stay grounded in reality. Now here are som eof the things that make me want to close the browser window and move on.

Selfies

I know, it’s been mocked and made fun of ad nauseum – the selfie. No matter whether it’s because of a shirtless guy flexing in front of a mirror, girls making abominable duck faces, or people with bad judgment taking selfies in front of natural disasters or sunbathing with their grandmother’s ashes, we’re stuck with them.

I get why so many selfies make their way out onto the social networks. Phones come with high res cameras now. Computers have webcams where it’s easy to take a snapshot. You don’t even need anyone present to catch a picture from the top of Mount “Amazing-est View in the World.”

But really, it’s not hard to ask some friendly passer-by to take a picture if you really want one. Everyone can see right through your humble brag about the cool places you’re visiting or the awesome people you are hanging out with. If you aim to post selfies, please, PLEASE take at least a moment to consider whether it will come across as narcissistic. In many cases, it will. And those are times to resist the urge. Especially if posting to a business page or Twitter account.

Hiding Behind Anonymity

Although it is getting harder to shield your identity these days, anonymity has been a key piece of the internet since its early days. It’s amazing to see how people behave when their true identity is masked.

Now we have everything from outright trolls to habitual pranksters. This is the kind of behavior that makes the whole internet, and particularly social media, less productive and enjoyable for all. If you want to say something and are afraid to have anyone know you said it, perhaps you should buck up and use common sense before putting it out there. Being offensive anonymously is not only cowardly, it shows a lack of character. We should all be better than that.

All Talk, No Action

In recent years, we’ve seen a ton of hashtag activists and similar behaviors across social media (most recently, the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge). It has become a trend to take a selfie (double whammy) holding a sign with a political or social message on it, and a new hashtag of course. Or take a video in the case of the Ice Bucket Challenge. The idea is to get likes and shares on the picture or video, or challenge others to take part, aiming to have a message spread.

While that’s fine in concept, hashtag activism is all talk. If an issue is important enough to take action, why not take real action? Facebook is crawling with people ready to go to social media war with anyone on a topic they care about, but what else are they doing to fix the problem? Venting on social media doesn’t fix a thing; it just stirs the pot.

There are plenty of charities and volunteer opportunities available. Rather than get spun up on Facebook, go give back on the weekend, or make a donation without taking part in a random stunt. Not only will it make a real difference, but it will make you feel better inside. And in the end, isn’t that part of the story anyway?

Ignorance Amplified

The ugly underbelly of ignorance is easy to ignore while you’re going about your everday life. But on Twitter, it’s all over the place. There have been many blog posts highlighting hateful, misinformed, or just plain confusing and delusional tweets at various times in the past.

It would be easy to laugh at this, but it’s also important to realize that this stuff is really going on out there. The world is not a perfect place, that’s a fact. If something is ignorant and it offends you, sharing it to express that outrage just amplifies the message further.

Like the adage goes: “Don’t feed the trolls.” The more attention you give to this behavior, the more the person spewing it feels compelled to continue the behavior. Let’s focus our attention on the positive sometimes, because the negative gets old and tired, doesn’t it?

Summary

I love social media. As with any communication medium, it comes with its ups and downs, pros and cons. Overall, I truly believe it makes the world a better place in many ways. It also gives a platform to some less savory behaviors and opinions. Each to his/her own, I suppose.

What about you? What else about social media has changed your life for the better? Did I miss any huge negatives that you see? Do you think the world is better or worse off with social networks?

Content seen in here : http://targetmarketing.tumblr.com/post/138670397627/how-social-media-has-changed-us-the-good-and-the