One of the most universal values that make a society is very basic: integrity. There are of course other, very common, very important values, but I choose to focus on this. Without integrity, there is no trust. With no trust there are no relationships. With no relationships there is no commerce, no community, no government- no reason to care what happens to the others around you.

Integrity as we know it has been compromised. When you must fact check every piece of news that you come across, there is no trust in the reporters and thus the media. The only way to truly know what happened is to witness it all yourself. And I have no desire to witness many of the things that are going in the world. I don't want to witness slavery, rape, murder, abuse or racism. I want to read about how the political situation that surround them. I want to hear about successes and failures in combatting them. I want to be told the facts as they are, as unbiased as possible, and be able to form my own opinion.

The media is supposed to be able to keep us in the loop with world events, and keep us on the pulse of our government. But sloppiness is becoming frighteningly common, as these companies strive to report first rather than accurately. To be human is to err, is how the saying goes. But that is where your fellow humans are supposed to come in and you cover each other's errs. For a reporter, an editor, a fact checker or a fellow reporter can easily come to your aid. It is what they are paid to do. All parties involved are failing if it passes through the chain of review that we as consumers have been lead to believe exists for all this time. Perhaps they did exist once, and have gone by the wayside since. Even ignoring the inaccurate news passed on day by day, there are "internet trolls" and also just genuinely manipulative people that want to spread lies and misinformation.

Naturally, I want to believe the best in humans. I'm sure most people do, deep down. But when we know that people are misinforming us, not even out of malice, how can we expect the truth? How can we trust?

As much as I advocate for expanding your horizons, You'd think I'd actively try and seek out things beyond my filter bubble. I do, to a certain extent but only as far as making sure I am consuming accurate information. My fellow liberals seem to dislike if I analyze certain social movements too deeply. I mean I guess if you just want to stand on blind faith, that's fine, but I am really bad at following blindly. You can ask my church groups. But I find that when I begin to analyze, things are not as they seem, and more often than not, I find I don't like what I find.  Practicing what you preach is important, but I almost want to argue that being fully aware of all the facts and what/who you are endorsing is more so.

Which brings me to our topic of the week: biased and fake news. If you do research on a movement and such, I feel like it's more difficult than ever to find fact-based non-biased articles. Honestly, and this really tweaks me, this applies even to the sciences! Science is supposed to be entirely fact based, and I do understand that there is such thing as expectancy bias, but REALLY. SCIENCE SHOULD NOT HAVE A POLITICAL AGENDA.

But that is just my opinion. The opinion of a naive undergraduate student.

Missing the class this week was enormously inconvenient- I'm not sure what all I missed. The readings were fascinating, though I'm not sure how much I can truly understand them, because I don't feel like I can relate to them.

I'm specifically referring to Revolution 2.0, when he puts just about everything else second to supporting his political figure online. This is of particular interest because the idea that so much can be coordinated and organized online, it's so, well, mind blowing! Perhaps I've just not been in severe enough of a situation that I'd be persuasive enough to have any sort of impact, or on the other end, that I'm susceptible to that sort of influence. The idea of the Silent Stand was so. powerful. I could see so many people participating in it if it were suggested by the right person, but I'd still have to be specifically asked in person to go.

It must be such an overwhelming feeling, to feel as though what you say has enough influence to nudge a people toward social and political reform. At your personal request, people you've never met are moved toward action. This is the true power of social media. This is the power that people like Kim Kardashian have and absolutely waste. The power that is used not to influence the people toward the "right" course of action, instead to influence them to buy make up and those sorts of products (which have their place). 

Not to say that celebrities and You Tubers are doing anything necessarily wrong, but simply that they are not making full use of the tools at their disposal. After all, individuals are entitled to not sharing their opinions. And though that's one of the wonderful things about the internet, it's not a requirement.

I really do think my attention span has been shortened since I became an avid social-media user. I used to sit and read for hours upon hours. Now I do good to get through a TV episode. It's really quite pathetic to think about.

But what is interesting is that I've been thinking about this more and more since class- my attention has remained on the topic of its noticeably shorter span, which I find fascinating.  The other thing that really struck me as odd is that I don't want let my attention to focus on certain things for too long. Like serious thinking. I don't want to evaluate my own actions and hold myself accountable. I don't want to start feeling emotions about things I deem "unnecessary".

But if I think about that, about what I find "unnecessary", I discover that the things I don't want to think about are the things I should absolutely be thinking about. That I absolutely should have emotions about. And my denial of myself these feelings is not terribly healthy. But at the same time, if I do think about them, and find myself in need of change... Well, that is why ultimately, whether I want to think about them or not, I do think about such things. Long and hard, and what I hope is thoroughly.

This seems to have gone a bit off topic, but I think this was important for me to explore with myself. Social media helps me to define myself and my viewpoints on certain topics (not that I see them and just adopt them as my own, but that they influence how I might specifically define it). And when the social media reveals a contradiction in my own beliefs, that is one of those things I don't want to think about but really should.