Everyone has some form of social media. But is social media secretly turning our world into a dystopia? Is it making people become less caring? Would you rather post something that gets more "likes" and comments or post something that will actually help people? I see countless fight videos on Facebook. But instead of filming, why don't the people behind the camera try to stop it? I believe that because of social media people are becoming less compassionate. Some may argue that social media has a positive impact on the world. However,I feel as though the vast majority of people that use social media are making this world into a dystopia. The three outcomes of social media that I believe are contributing to a dystopia are cyber bullying, people who would rather post than participate, and the easier spread of fake news.
I will start with cyber bullying. This has become a major topic in the world recently. Cyber bullying is when people attack others online because it it easier for them to say mean things when they can hide behind their computer. It's even worse when they use a social media platform that allows them to be anonymous. They don't see the effects of what their words do to people. As an example, I am going to talk about a 2012 case involving a girl named Amanda Todd. Amanda started to use video chatting to try and make new friends over the internet. One stranger convinced her to show her breasts to him. However, that stranger then used the pictures to blackmail this poor girl by creating fake profiles with her picture of her showing her breasts as a profile picture. This man ended up becoming become a stalker - every time Amanda would move schools, this stalker would go undercover and make another Facebook profile. Amanda made a Youtube video to talk about her bullying, her self harm, and potential suicide. She posted that video on September 7th, 2012. About a month later, Amanda hung herself. There are countless stories like this all over the place. People, especially young people, can't escape cyber bullying because the internet is everywhere. Amanda's video is posted below.
My next point is that social media makes people less likely to step into a situation because they are too busy filming it in the hope that it will go viral. Before social media, if a fight broke out, some people would watch, but people were more likely to step in and break it out. Now, iIf a fight break outs, all people do is pull out their cell phones and record it to post it online later. No one steps in and stops the fight. People are behind their phones laughing and having a good time while people will brutally beat each other up. Or they think to themselves how this video is going to get them famous when it gets shown on the news. A recent example occurred when a the man that was forcibly removed from a United Airlines flight. There are many videos of this incident on the internet right now, but one stands out to me more then the others. That is the video that shows the man being pulled by his arms and the other passengers are just sitting there filming this. No one is stepping up and saying that they will take his place. Everyone is too busy recording the incident or saying out loud that this is wrong. Not a single person stood up and took his place because people are being desensitized to events like this. After the event was posted and circulated both online and in the news, when others would talk about it they would claim that if they were on that flight, they would have done something to stop this man from being kicked off. But I wonder if they really would or they would just be another person filming it. Another example is the website, which has videos of people who have filmed fights and other extreme events where they could have stepped in and stopped what was going on. But instead, they decided to pull out their cell phones out and try to get famous for it. People care too much about their popularity or how many views or likes they can get rather then doing what is right or just simply helping someone. This is how people of The Man in the High Castle are. They stand idly by and watch people being arrested or killed for nothing. Because they are scared or are so used to it happening around them, they pay no mind to it. There is a scene where Japanese soldiers are taking people and executing them in front of other people just to show their strength and people are just watching. No one tries to stand up and fight back; they are just content with going with the flow of the world.
My third and final point is that social media allows for the spread of fake news. Social media sites like Facebook make it easier for people to not just share their own news, but world and local news stories as well. Sometimes people share articles from legitimate news sources such as The Washington Post or The New York Times. Sometimes, however, they will knowingly or unknowingly share articles that aren't true and haven't been fact checked by legitimate journalists. Fake news really became popular during the aftermath of the 2016 presidential election when some people felt that the spreading of fake news stories that painted Hillary Clinton in a negative light led to Donald Trump's win. Some of the stories were downright lies, others were half-truths, all were created as click-bait in order to drive more eyes to the website and thus more advertising dollars. According to David Pogue's article in Scientific American, 44% of American adults receive their news from Facebook. Additionally, the top 20 articles circulating on Facebook that were false received more clicks than the top 20 articles that were true. And more clicks means more money for those sites. Although fake news can't be entirely blocked (as the article suggested, what do we do about satirical articles?) Facebook is making efforts to reduce it by adding warning labels to articles that users have marked as false. However, once a story, especially a conspiracy story, gets lodged in someone's brain, it can be hard to shake it out. And social media just makes it easier and faster to spread these stories (2017). Social media is leading to a dystopian world because it allows people to cyber bully others, makes people more interested in posting a video than stopping something that they could easily prevent, and makes it easier to spread false stories. Yes, social media can be a valuable tool for people to share their achievements or connect with others who have similar values. It can help with organizing marches or relaying information about safe passages for refugees. But you can't have light without darkness, and social media continues to show its dark and ugly underside. Bibliography Pogue, David. "How to Stamp out Fake News." Scientific American, vol. 316, no. 2, Feb. 2017, p. 24. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com.libdb.dccc.edu/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=120664496&site=ehost-live. "The Top Six Unforgettable CyberBullying Cases Ever." Nobullying.com, 27 Mar. 2017, nobullying.com/ six-unforgettable-cyber-bullying-cases/. Accessed 25 Apr. 2017. Zdanowicz, Christina, and Emanuelle Gringerb. "Passenger Dragged off Overbooked United Flight." CNN.com, 11 Apr. 2017, www.cnn.com/2017/04/10/travel/ passenger-removed-united-flight-trnd/. Accessed 25 Apr. 2017.
0 Comments
The hills are white. They shine with a bright intensity so that sometimes it is hard to even look at them. A man sits on them pondering what he should do with his life. He is young and recently married. He just lays back and looks up at the blue sky; it seems even brighter then usual, almost like the blue is vibrating with color. The clouds go by and he calls out what shapes he sees. "Oh look an elephant, a bunny, a very weird looking T-rex." This man is Chris and he is the hero of this story. Now, when I say hero, I don't mean like a knight fighting off a dragon. I mean a hero in the sense that he is just like you and me - he doesn't know what he wants. He hasn't found his groove. He has been sitting here for two days trying to figure out how to write what he wants to write. The stories he reads get lost in his head. Thoughts dance around like a breeze in the wind. In one ear and out the other. He reads the stories over and over again. The images he makes run wild. The cloud he called an elephant starts to move towards him. It lands on top of the hill that Chris is laying on. Chris gets up and looks at it and the elephant stares back at him. It is a cloud, there is nothing to see, yet Chris can feels its eyes staring at him, telling him that he will eventually figure out that what is blocking his path is something he can easily climb over. So Chris sits up and begins to write and write and write. He has done it; what needed to be done is done. He slams the book closed and looks up at the sky, but to his surprise there is no sky. He isn't on the same white hill he was on. The elephant is gone. He looks around and he sees yellow. He looks down and he is in a chair. He gets up to head to the door but it is locked. There are bars on the windows; it's like a prison. He begins to feel trapped and doesn't know what to do. Suddenly, a woman is seen in the wallpaper. He can barely make her out. He is trying to read between the lines and understand why she is there. But it is hard for him to see it. He looks again; still nothing that he can figure out. The woman is moving around the room like a ghost haunting him. The woman gets behind him and he can feel her hands on him. She is trying to pull him into the wallpaper. He thinks that this is the point where he just fades away into the wallpaper and doesn't figure out what his problem is. He is about to let go when he remembers the elephants. He remembers that he climbed over that obstacle with ease. Chris begins to fight back pulling himself away from the woman. He finally breaks free and he looks at her. She is crying. "Are you ok?," he asks in a faint voice. "Do you need anything?" She looks at him but even though she has no eyes, Chris can feel her stare. He can feel her gaze on him. He then is able to read between the lines of this story. He opens up his book and begins to write and write and finally when he is done he closes the book. The yellow wallpaper room is gone. He is back home sitting down and everything is ok. He sees that he isn't lost anymore. Like I said our hero doesn't slay a dragon or kill a giant. He is just like you and me. He gets lost sometimes but eventually he finds his way. Our hero concurred the tales of Hills Like White Elephants and The Yellow Wallpaper.
1. Man in the High Castle impacted my thinking of what motifs I want in my own pieces. It made me think if I put this here will the reader understand it or just read past it. It made me think that even the tiniest of information can be valuable to story or a show or anything.
2. The micro fictions that we read made me think about each word. It made me think that every word counts when I use to think that it didn't. It made me realize how hard it is to take put some much meaning into only a few short words. 3.I read a lot of manga I love it. So reading manga helps me with reading others writing that doesn't have pictures in it. I can make up a picture in my head and play the scene that they writing is trying to convey. It helps me get through reading because I have a very sort attention span. |
AuthorCollege student majoring in graphic design. This blog is for my english class. Archives
April 2017
Categories |