Plugged In
A Death on Facebook
Two Saturdays ago, a 7.8 magnitude earthquake ripped through Nepal, resulting in widespread damage to infrastructure, irreparable harm to historical sites, and, most tragically, the deaths of thousands and thousands of human beings.
Such an event should inspire mourning and contemplation—sorrow for the people who lost their lives and gratitude for the lives that we still have.
When Is Rotten Tomatoes Wrong?
James Madison would have hated Rotten Tomatoes.
Sure, he might have appreciated the fact that movies existed, but Madison was also the man who, in the Federalist Papers, formulated perhaps the foundational argument against mob rule.
Are You a Stalker?
Should you feel guilty about stalking someone on Facebook?
On the one hand, why would you? Facebook gives users the option to hide their profiles entirely, and if someone elects to do the opposite—to place a few photos and a few posts beneath the public spotlight—then that someone has accepted the possibility of stranger-gazes. Here is the difference between real-life stalking and online stalking: Social media users choose what to reveal about themselves. There’s no such thing as a Peeping Tom on a nudist beach. Moreover, the fact that so many people participate in Facebook stalking indicates that society at large has made peace with the behavior.
Losing Yourself on the Web
There is anger, there is rage, and then there is the comment section of YouTube.
Misspelled expletives run wild. Capitalization is reversed: The first letter of a sentence is lower case, but everything else screams in all caps. One exclamation point is never enough.
15 Amazing Thoughts About BuzzFeed
1) It is my belief that BuzzFeed, the widely panned purveyor of meme culture, meaningless quizzes, and general inanity, is the most effective website on the Internet.
2) Let’s take you as a case study. Do you really care what your favorite Disney princess reveals about you? Is your heart truly warmed by “21 Finger Faces That Are Strangely Heartwarming?” The more you intellectualize BuzzFeed, the more absurd it becomes that the website has attracted over half a billion page views and, by implication, has taken up around half a billion hours (57,039 years!) of human life.