News Article, Feb 28

http://gma.yahoo.com/chardon-high-school-shooting-gunman-identified-tj-lane-140607186--abc-news.html
I read about the Chardon High School Shooting that just happened yesterday in Ohio. They just released that the second victim of the shooting has just died. He was pronounced brain dead at about 12:42 A.m. In the article I read, it had a lot of quotes from  some of the students  that were right there in the lunch/breakfast room when it happened. One of the students said "You see glances of your friends laying all over the place. There's blood, there's people screaming, everybody's just running in different directions and you're just trying to get out. That's all you can do, get out of the school and not look back even though your friends are back there." I think that's horrible that they had to go through something as horrible as that and I hope it never comes to our school.

           

Social Media

                        What is social media? According to sources on Wikipedia, social media is defined as "a group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0, and that allow the creation and exchange of user-generated content.” The more simple definition given by Susan Ward is that it’s a type of online media that lets you chat, share photos, and communicate with one another in a more convenient manner. An example that probably everyone would think of is Facebook. Facebook is now a worldwide online website that started out with only a few Harvard friends knowing about it, then rose up to the top of every other Internet website.  It’s become so huge that Zuckerberg, who’s the founder of Facebook and only twenty-seven years old, is said to be the next Bill Gates. Facebook is everywhere now! It’s on everything you do and it’s everywhere you go. This can be good and bad at the same time. Wurster and Williams share a lot on those subjects in their articles on what Facebook has done to benefit and take away from us.

         Brian Williams, America’s favorite anchor and “100 most influential people” has a lot to say about Facebook. He warns us all of what Facebook hides that none of us notice. He says, “Today, everyone gets celebrated.” He’s trying to express that there is no balance anymore, that how we grew up, we only celebrated winners and not losers. He also says that since

Facebook has been here, there’s no privacy anymore as well. We’re all so used to putting exactly what we’re doing out on the internet, not even aware that we’re not writing on a piece of paper that we can just erase; we’re putting it on the internet where it will never go away. Williams and Wurster both agree with each other on one big thing: Facebook puts out the “Me, me, me attitude.” Now, we’re able to see and look at only what we choose to. It hides us from a lot of future choices and options we’ll have to make. It’s now a “User-Generated Generation.”

         Andie Wurster, on the other hand, sees more benefits then drawbacks. She gives a few good points why it should be looked at in a good way rather then not. Some of her main points follow: you can meet new people, discuss music or homework assignments (ect.), go to parties that you’ve been invited to online, talk to long distance friends/family, or even learn about new cultures from all around the world. Although it is for the most part a benefit to Wurster, she is also very aware that there are some mishaps of Facebook. She knows how addicting it can be and how it can also be dangerous sometimes too. I agree with some of the things that she said, like how you can talk to long-distance friends and family, but I think that Williams had the best points. Facbeook can be really addicting, judging by people I know. Some of my friends get on Facebook 24/7. They literally put everything they’re doing in their statuses and post so much of their private lives on Facebook that when they go to school the next day, everyone already knows if they got in a fight with their girlfriend or boyfriend. I don’t like it very much compared to about a year ago when I use to do the same thing. When I was on everyday, I would love to read and put myself in drama. Now, I’m aware of how stupid I was because it took a lot of my time away and I probably put way more personal information out there then I should have.

         We just recently watched a movie about how facebook first came to be. The Social Network is a 2010 movie that won over the critics with its great editing, acting, score and screenplay. I really liked the movie more than I thought I would when I first saw the previews for it. Studying a little about Facbeook and Social Media before I watched the movie made it more clear as to what exactly was going on the whole time. The movie exaggerated a bit of how Zuckerberg acted during the creating of Facebook. He claims that there were never really any wild crazy parties that he went to and that he didn’t create Facbeook to get chicks. Zuckerberg says in one of his interviews, “I just wish they waited until I was dead before they made a movie about me.”  This made me think that he didn’t like the movie as much as they probably hoped. All and all, I think they did a really good job on the movie. It was really suspenseful when it needed to be, and I liked knowing how it all got started.

         At the end of the movie, Zuckerberg got away with being the creator of Facebook without any more troubles from the twins he supposedly “stole” it from. Zuckerberg straight up told them “If you guys were the inventors of Facebook, you would have invented Facebook.” I think that’s a good point he made that they really can’t argue with. Zuckerberg is currently the youngest billionaire in the world and has made a great change in the way we look at Social Media. I have come to understand that Facebook can be good and bad, but in my opinion, it leans more on the bad side. Facebook has taken away a lot of little things that people really don’t think about too often. It’s taken away our privacy, our time, and most of all, our respect for one another, which are things we may not be able to get back.