Social Media & Fame

Over the weekend I watched a movie about blogging and I could relate to it a bit because I am a blogger. The theme of the movie was this young girl was writing a blog about her sex life and she was being brutally honest, giving names, details, dates, etc. By the end of the movie she is pregnant and she doesn't know what to do. Then you come to the final scene and it shows her getting into the bathtub to take a bath and the screen goes black, but the movie is not over. Her mother begins to type on her daughter's blog and begins to explain her daughter received a one minute phone call the night before she disappeared and she is reaching out to those in the blogger community wanting help to find her daughter. The audience finds out that the young girl is way younger than what you actually think she is, and she has, of course, changed some details about the people she wrote about so that if one of her readers tried to contact her personally they wouldn't be able to find her exactly. 

Anyway, this movie really made me think. Why do I write this blog? Why do I want my voice to be heard? Is it true that everyone wants to be famous? (I have a confession to make.....when I was a young girl, even a young adult for that matter, I dreamed of being a famous singer. Alas, I have a good alto voice but how many great altos do you know? Every great alto wishes they were a soprano! I must not have wanted it bad enough, because I did a few competitions and things but life got in the way and that was that.) What is our fascination with the way everyone else lives their lives? 

I write because I need to. People get tired of hearing about others problems so I decided to start writing so I could get them off my chest. I had no idea I would gain followers or that anyone would understand what I was going through, but people did understand. I hope to be able to reach people that I can't otherwise reach with the writing of this blog. To me, this is a creative outlet. Somewhere that I am safe to say what I want, how I want, how much I want and when I want because there is freedom in that. 

As a society, we have all watched things change over the years. I remember when the news and people in general wanted someone who fell from grace to be publicly shamed. There have been Televangelist falling from grace, politicians whose private lives were exposed and it is all caught on camera for us to watch over and over again on youtube. I have noticed on my facebook feed stories of "hope and inspiration" where a random person helps an officer or someone helps the homeless. When you help people that are less fortunate than you are, you do not do it for the glory, you do it because it is the right thing to do. I am beginning to think those stories are staged so we don't get discouraged with all the fighting and killing that is going on in the world today or I could be wrong.  Keep your eyes open on your news feed on facebook, you will see what I am talking about. 

Back to the lecture at hand.....Why do you write a blog? Do you want to be famous? Is it a creative outlet for you? Please share in the comments below. 

Social Media

As I was driving to work this morning I was listening to one of our local radio stations and they were talking about the shooting yesterday of  reporter, Alison Parker, and camera man, Adam Ward, in Moneta, Virginia. I am sure you have all heard about it, they were doing a live broadcast with WDBJ-TV when they were shot by an ex colleague. 

As we all know, whenever anything horrible like this happens it gets picked up by the all the news stations, the Associated Press, and so on. The DJ's were talking about how events like this get sensationalized and the video can be watched on Youtube, Facebook and the public is just bombarded by those images. The male DJ was saying how it came up on his news feed and the option was not given to him whether he wanted to see it or not. I have noticed on my Facebook feed when I see something that I don't want to see I can hit the little drop down tab in the top right and click on I don't want to see this. There is also a I want to report this option. The thing is that I actually see the offensive post first and then I can opt out which defeats the whole purpose of the opt out button in my opinion. 

What role does society play in this? We are so voyeuristic it seems. Why do we have to know every single detail about something that happened? I felt this when 9/11 happened. There was non stop news coverage. Of course there should have been because it had an impact on all Americans but there were actual pictures of people leaping to their death. Should some images and video be censored? 

I know my stories to my children and great grand children won't be like my Father's. He will say "When I was a kid, I had to walk five miles to school with patches on my knees and I was happy to have clothes on my back and two good legs to walk with" or "I remember when gas was 40 cents a gallon and we could buy a bag of candy for one cent". I will say "I remember when I used to play outside and used my imagination because we didn't have the technology you kids have now a days". By the time I am in my sixties there is no telling what leaps and bounds social media will have made. 

What do you think? What is your take on how our world is changing?