How I Waste Time.. I Mean Explore Social Media

My ratio of work to play time is not something I should be proud about but at least I'm conscious of it! I realize that a majority of my days are spent making up reasons as to WHY the essay will get done after just 2 more episodes. I obviously know that it's just a waste of time... so I know the first step admitting I have a problem... but what are the other steps?

My greatest addiction definitely comes from Tumblr, which as popularly talked about isn't actually used by many. It's known as a blogging website but I just use it to go through the pictures and it can be very comedic. As unappetizing and vague as I've made that sound, it is VERY time consuming and I could spend days on it without getting bored.

Twitter is obviously known by everyone and I spend a great deal of time on it as well. I do make a lot of tweets myself but mine aren't your usual girl posts that are commonly seen. I'll tweet the first thing that comes to mind and get a lot of mixed responses of confusion because most of the time they only make sense to me. So basically another waste of social media on me.

Instagram I only made over the summer because that's when I bought a smartphone for the first time. I was hesitant to get it but I do a lot of hiking, running and exploring in my free time and loved the idea of showing my pictures off to my lazy peers. It is definitely on my list of most enjoyable apps, but it will take me a good 2 days to decide if the picture is even worthy enough to broadcast to the world.

Facebook has definitely slipped down on everyones scale of media to check, but because it has been around for so long I can't picture it actually ever dying. It is how I made my first impression of my roommates and portrays you as a person in the simplest way. Just by clicking on someones facebook you can see where they live, their schooling, their idea of a good profile picture and if they are in a relationship. That's how serious we take our social media, because if you aren't facebook official with your significant other are you ACTUALLY official at all??

Muslim Lives Matter!

I am still shocked to see how little attention this tragedy is receiving, 3 Muslim students murdered by a white male which hints towards an obvious hate crime that the media will never admit.

Razan Mohammed Abu-Salha, 19, Deah Shaddy Barakat, 23 and wife Yusor Mohammed, 21 were all shot by Craig Stephen Hicks, 45 over a "parking dispute" near the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. All three were shot in the head and the family of the victims said this wasn't the first time he threatened them in a demeaning matter towards their religion.

I believe the media is using this parking dispute as a cover up, it is especially suspicious since at least 6 hours went by before ANY news station started to report on the murder. They are even giving the killers wife camera time to describe how it is not a "hate crime" but If this was the opposite way around there wouldn't be any conversation to have. I've seen a few celebrities chime in as well, bringing more attention to the fact that this is indeed a hate crime.

I know I am coming off as very opinionated on this topic but people still believe that all Muslims are bad, especially with the movie 'American Sniper' basically portraying the killing of Arabs and Muslims as heroic. People don't see a difference and immediately become ignorant to anyone in a hijab.

This is similar to Michael Brown and the Black Lives Matter trend and it just goes to show how much work we really have in moving towards change. I have seen a lot of people try to trend "All Lives Matter" which yes of course is true but they are part of the problem. From what I've seen, white people have been posting that in the hopes of securing themselves along with supporting the cause, but that isn't what we need. We need to focus on the ones being treated with disrespect, especially since whites have never had to deal with these issues. Since I am white myself I haven't experienced this racism, but that is what makes me want to bring attention to it even more! #MuslimLivesMatter

A Day (Lifetime) Without Media

We had one task and it was to simply not use any source of media for 24 hours. This was referring to cell phone or computer usage, and I thought oh yeah I can handle that. I only received a smartphone for the first time in August, so I basically I trained my whole life for this moment... well yeah okay I failed.

ALRIGHT before jumping to any conclusions I tried SO hard. I told myself before going to bed that i would use my alarm and then not check any snapchats or text messages and so on. This went so well until the alarm actually went off and I had 17 unread text messages... I decided to read them but not respond and THEN start the challenge.

Well then that turned into checking snapchats and not responding, which I managed to do... for about 45 minutes when I finished getting ready for class and realized I still had a full hour till I had to leave. I usually reserve this time for Netflix, so i decided to call my mom instead... (Thanks to this assignment I actually called my mom for the first time in a while so thats the only good thing to come from this) 

Then I started going to class and subconsciously responded to a snapchat and thought that was probably my last strike. I decided the least I could do was not use twitter, instagram or Netflix. But then I got to work and this assignment found its tragic end. 

If my life depended on it I believe I could definitely last a full 24hours without media, but because i knew I would find another breath of oxygen after giving into my temptations.. I did just that!