Slacktivism Awareness

I recently came across this picture of the website "Something of that Ilk" and was instantly reminded of the political activism discussions that we had in my English class.  The term "slacktivism" is basically a way of describing how people choose to like the pages and statuses that people have on Facebook/Twitter with titles such as "Like to end world hunger" or "Like if you hate cancer" in order to feel like they are making a change in the world. This form of activism is so lazy and slacker-like that it has been titled slacktivism. I personally believe that this is ridiculous, as does the person who made this picture. If people want to make a difference, they can't just Like pages. They need to get up and go do something to help solve the problem.

How I Use Social Media

I use social media of some form every single day. The main ones I use are Facebook, YouTube, StumbleUpon, Blogger, Instagram, and Skype. I consider social media to be a major part of my life, and I think that it is also a major part of society today. Social media is a great way for people to communicate with each other, especially once friends go off to college and no longer see each other. I get to read my friends posts on Facebook and talk to them on Skype to see how they're doing. I like to use Blogger to post my poems and short stories online to see what people think of them. Instagram is a great way for me to see pictures of my nephews, and since my older sister is a model, a lot of her work gets put on there, so I can see that too. YouTube is fantastic for listening to music as I do other things on my laptop, such as use StumbleUpon*. I find that while social media can be used to do bad things, it is generally a very nice tool.

*StumbleUpon is a website that allows people to take a quiz on their interests when they create their account and then surf the web for things pertaining to their interests using a simple button at the top of the page entitled "Stumble". Every time that someone clicks that button, they get sent to a random webpage concerning one of their interests. The person has the choice to either like or dislike the page, and that is put into their online profile which helds decide what site to send the person to next. One nice thing is that the user can pick just one specific interest to search for, such as humor or fashion, and see only sites pertaining to that. Link-http://www.stumbleupon.com