Buy – Sexual(ity)

Okay – I’m bored. And Elshizzle isn’t the only one that can post millions of pointless entries in a day.

Today in Lecture one we were looking at the Connotations and Denotations of images. Perticularly advertising and logos. It took me to the end Seminar to get what codes and myth meant. By which time I was sitting there going “ooooooooh – now that’s what myth was for the Dolce and Gabbana advert was!” *facepalm*.

I didn’t realise myth was the “thing” that people bought into when they saw a sexy image of a man and thought “if I buy their products – I’ll be sexy like that man”. I just thought that was… I duno… Guess I never really had to think that far when I was the gullable (fish) person viewing the advert (not that I wanted to look like a sexy man – I think I do that well when I don’t put my make-up on).

I hate late seminars. It’s fact that kids, by the end of the day, or the lessons after lunch, just don’t concentrate. And the funny thing? It’s the same for students! No late lecture or seminar is anyone really going to be that focused. And yeah, we got treated like children…

Anyway!

Um, we had a guest speaker in on Gun Crime for Lecture two. I swear, Thursdays = depressing. And Ameena wondered why I wanted to go home?! Ha. The only annoying thing is how nearly everyone wants to do gun crime. Yeah thats good if you feel for the sujbect, but it’s so biased because of that speaker. There are other things to campagin about, or more importantly, more important things to worry about.
Hello? Whats up with America wanting bomb Iran? Argh. Don’t they get it? No-one has weapons (no more than you do – I bet on it), and I have yet to see you route out this “evil” you insist is in Afganistan. Like how many years has it been now??
It’s like Cold War 2.
Or if they DO bomb Iran, Turkey will get involved, and you bet your life on it WW3 will break out. Doesn’t anyone learn from the past? The mistakes? Yes yes, the past is the past, some things are best kept back there, but people will never forget, and we owe it to those innocent people who lost their lives the respect to remember what they died for. AND LEARN FROM IT.
I didn’t pay gosh knows what to visit Poland, to visit Aushwitz, to feel what it must have been like, to be shocked to realise that what I felt was barely half of what those poor people felt. Could you imagine the hands to those nail marks scratched into the wall as the helpess victimes in blind fear tried to eascape the gas chambers? Could you?
I didn’t think so.
Could you imagine the feel of impending doom, the unknown, this constant niggling feeling that something wasn’t quite right in the atmosphere, that nothing grows on that land left as a scar, as a reminder, as you stepped along that rail track, where millions of innocents waited, not knowing that this was in fact the end of the line?
Could you stand there and look into that toxic green pool of murky liquid and be told that it infact contains the ashes of millions of innocent Jews who lost their life, and even to this day it is still there, pefectly preserved?

My heart will always skip a beat, my throat will always run try, my breathing will always quicken when I hear the name “Birkenau”.

I suggest we don’t let an abomination like that happen again.

Why must it be that the world learns from something when it happens to them. Are we all robots set on self-destruct?

This. Is. WET!!!

*Breaths sigh of relief*

Ahhh… yup… there it is… A completely pointless post to counteract the academic shit before…

:]

Social Networking Sites (SNSs)

Okay, this post is going to get a little serious, a little technical, and maybe on the boring side… Only because it’s a post that is now actually going to be relevent to my JCM1100 module which is what this blog was meant for… ;]

So.

Social Networking Sites?

I am an addicted to them. Maybe it’s because I’m young, or maybe it’s because of the appeal that social networking sites do exactly what they say on the tin. They network, connect people socially. You can talk to random people on the other side of the planet (I personally restrict that because of weirdos), based on whether or not they like the look of you, or because of having the same interests.
Social networking sites appeal to the young for one reason though: the internet allows them to interact with people and make friends, in a society where the youth are picky, mean, and status and popularity count for making friends. Those who either find it hard to make friends, or just don’t connect with people can do so via the internet. People are free to create a type universe around themselves, another form of their personality for the online world. But it comes with its own problems, whether or not people are being true to their likeness, or are freely flaunting aspects of their personality they wished they had to an unknown public, a feel good factor in its own right. Popularity on a virtual level.
But then such freedom of publication of self comes with certain issues, problems almost. It draws upon serveral things, privacy, and the new and vastly popular “citizen journalist”.
It is common fact that anything you post on the internet is placed in the “public domain” (unless of course you have bothered to go to the trouble of copy-right). Anything you say about yourself, pictures, videos, any information is accessed by this world community. It can either be good, or bad.
I shall discuss the bad points first, as I’m sure the good points at the end will act like a pick me up (so long as I can remember them!).
The bad points are pretty obvious. In releation to SNSs information that is personal, suchs as addresses, phone numbers, etc could be accessed easily, and by the wrong people. As the youth population latch onto this other form of socialising that allows them to hand pick and select those they deem adiquette enough to be their friend (or deny and ignore those they think not) they might get targetted by people using the internet for ill means. Peadophilles of course. Ones safety is a big issue at hand with the freedom of what can be posted. Children can be subject to misleading figures as it is so easy to make friends with them, unless of course they have a good head upon their shoulders.
But even in a world where children may add only those they know – internet bullying is also on the increase. Facebook allows its users to create “groups”, a sort of online community where anyone with that interest can join and bask in the joys of sharing that interest with others. But what if someone makes a group that is wrong? Offensive? Against another that could seriously upset them, and do damage? Not long ago I read an article about a man that worked in the Library at Kent Uni. He himself was at the recieving end of abuse from students who had created a “hate” group towards him. People joined and posted offecive things about him, so much so, the publicity of this group caused him to get abuse even in real life. Such behaviour is not tollerable.
My final bad point is on the issue of privacy, because of the freedom to post whatever. Thinking back to my JCM1000 module, we discussed privacy in newspaper, in cases where they were sued for Libel, for printing things that weren’t true, idle gossip, or even photographs the captured person or celebrity did not want published. It is the same case for the internet. Users and annonmously post up pictures, gossip, anything and it will be in the public domain. Idle gossip that isn’t real could spread like wildfire and ruin someones reputation. But if a person was unable to track back to who caused it, how would it removed, and stopped from being posted again.
And now I turn to the good points of social networking sites (although, like I feared… I think I’ve forgotten most of them!). Okay, I really can’t remember so…. citizen journalists!
I think that is a brillant term. Social networking sites, or even the internet, and blogs are great. Why? Because the actually allow a user the freedom a speech. I live in a society that when you are young and growing up you always get told about the wonders of being able to voice your own opinion. But I never had that. I never got heard. The little voices never are. Going through primary and secondary school you are lead to believe that “councils” are there to hear your voice, but you are always made to feel insignificant or not worth while for even having an opinion. And this is where the internet comes in. It is this vast open space where individuals can type what they have to say. “Seen to be heard” on an amazing level (I came up with that quote!! Hahah (JACK IT AND DIE) *^.^*). It means that the little voices have a place to speak, and eventually someone will comes to read what they have to say, gain understanding, recognition for their views (so long as they are fair and not hurtful…). Which is what being a citizen journalist is all about (regardless of how opinionated most of it is….).

I slightly meandered away from SNSs, but you get my point. They are good a bad, so long as they are used in the right way (as with most things….).

Okay… I hope that post was good enough!!

(Loads of spelling mistakes and stuff – I didn’t have time to proof-read!)

I’m off to play Pool on Facebook!