Review Of And Then There's This By Bill Wasik

Suddenly losing his eyesight at a young age and having to deal with living in a whole new world, Marcus Engel tells his story of how he coped with losing his eyesight. Marcus Engel described his hardships and struggles after he became blind in his book, After This…An Inspirational Journey for All the Wrong Reasons. The book begins with Engel mentioning his college life and how he was excited to be going back home for vacation. While he was with his friends he got into a bad car accident that left him blind. The rest of the book tells his emotional life changing story of how he learned to accept his blindness and to do daily tasks. In his stay at the hospital he made a goal to get back to college.

In “ How a Tweet Can Ruin Your Life”, an extract from Jon Ronson’s book So You’ve Been Shamed, Jon Ronson uses interviews of people, appeals such as pathos and logos, and language from both sides of a situation in order to get answers to the question of how social media got to the point of causing such serious consequences. Both interviewees, “Hank” (in quotes for privacy purposes) and Adria ended up losing their jobs. The interviews show the emotions and thoughts from both people. “Hank” one day at work said a joke to his friend, “It was about a fictitious piece of hardware that has a really big dongle - a ridiculous dongle.” which was overheard by Adria.

This can create individuals to feel a sense of disconnection from their real life leading to insecurities and self-consciousness. Recently, there was a trend that went viral on Twitter known as the #KylieJennerChallenge. Hundreds of young teens try to mimic the “perfect lip” of a famous celebrity fashion icon, Kylie Jenner. Teens are seen in several photos and videos sucking the air out of the shot glass for several minutes to create a lip pout. Kristina from Massachusetts explains how she wanted to achieve the Kylie Jenner look and took the experiment to the extreme by trying it “for the 8th time…. and [found herself] bleeding.” According to the Washington Post, Dendy Engelman, a dermatologic surgeon, told Seventeen Magazine “Not only can significant pain, swelling, and bruising result from these suction techniques, but there is potential risk for scarring and permanent disfigurement with repeated attempts.” This comes to show that social media can play a negative influence in forms such as competition and the compulsion to fit the society’s definition of “perfect” leaving people to feel self-conscious about their current image. Not only will this disconnect people from their own lives, but from their own identity as

The majority of events we get involved with on Facebook Twitter are diseases, cancers, and donations. Gladwell states, “Donating bone marrow isn’t a trivial matter. But it doesn’t involve financial or personal risk; it doesn’t mean spending a summer being chased by armed men. It’s the kind of commitment that will bring only social acknowledgment and praise.” (Gladwell 321). A majority of “likes” #hashtags and “@retweets” are notable for those who express a minor interest for a cause they just read about. This is a strong claim from Gladwell because he shows us that we have weak ties to other individuals and noting that our friends on Facebook are

Social media has been a huge way that companies get people to buy things or donate money. Social media can have huge impacts on people by showing the things that are going wrong; like how the elephants are dying by poachers. If people don't help the elephants they can become extinct and they will not be around any more. The way social media knows me is by knowing what kind of things that can catch my attention, they do this by showing my things that I can buy to donate to this charity. Ivory Ella catches my attention by showing me how the elephants are dying in the wild by poaching. A way that social media catches people's attention is by the way they can catch the reader's attention by the things that are going wrong. Most people know that the charities need help, but social media makes people want to donate to this charity. With social media doing this it will make people know that this organization need help to raise money. For example the social media sites may give you shirts or pictures to show that you have donated money to that charity. Some other social media sites try to get people more involved in

When videos are posted on social media, they have a good chance of going “viral” if the content is right. Bennet writes about a boy, Raza, that creates a video and the video was posted by someone else onto a social networking website. Raza, also named “Star Wars kid”, “…became a source of public humiliation” (579). Another viral victim known as “Dog poop girl”, in Seoul “…refused to clean up after her dog in the subway…” (579). She was eventually humiliated enough that she had to drop out of college. Being publicly shamed and humiliated is a price paid when it comes to viral videos and social media. Bennet does a great job demonstrating how social media and viral videos can humiliate an individual. Humiliating a person can

The era of technology went from being fun and games to social media, ways to talk to strangers, and keep close with family. I think that when people misuse social media it can make something good turn ugly, such as a simple hello to/from a stranger. Putting an opinion online about someone or something. Posting profanity pictures and hateful comments or posts. For something to go viral all it needs is publicity such as likes, comments, and shares, and then it is out there, where someone can see it and take it the wrong way or draw attention sexual predators.

It is said social media has corrupted the generations past and to come in astounding ways. In more than a couple occasions social media have put out “news” that were utterly useless. Filling our minds with nonsense and unimportant information about a certain celebrity's life for example. Many choose to turn a blind eye to the idea of how corrupt our society is. In a handful of ways social media playing a big part in the ignorance Satire also plays a fraction .

For this reading assignment we were reading chapters 1, 2, and 3, I find it helpful to me to read, take notes on and write out summaries as if this was two books. I will start off each time with Wes the author. As the book open we have Wes remembering a day that he and his older sister Nikki, were playing a game. Wes caught her and not knowing what to do, punched her in the face. Joy, Wes’ mother was very upset because Wes had hit a “girl”, and set him to his room. Wes’ father calmed Joy down by saying that Wes didn 't know what punching a girl like that meant. Wes ' father came up to speak to Wes about his behavior, as he knocked on the door and entered he call Wes his Main Man. The author went on to say that the memory of his father named Westley speaking to him after he had punched his sister was only one of two memories he had of him. The other was him watching his dad die. Westley had not been feeling well, and eventually drove himself to the hospital. The hospital staff did not know what to make of his symptoms, so for his sore throat they numbed it for him to relieve the pain and sent him home to rest. Later he collapsed and passed away from an acute epiglottitis. His death affected his entire family.

In order to understand the importance of the comments made on social made, we need to understand the intended message of the artifact. This artifact is the YouTube video, which is also the main medium for the message. Other media that will be addressed in this essay is twitter, Buzzfeed, and other common social media,

With Facebook skyrocketing in popularity and being one of the highest visited social media networks it has played key roles in sending important messages through images with text known as “Memes”. In this meme the juxtaposition of the two images cropped together above the text are clearly being used to try and bring awareness to societies urges to praise pop stars over their own military.

Before this class, I never understood how stuff on social networks sites would skyrocket and go viral. Why has everything on social media become such a big deal? It did not make sense to me. I used this class to better myself in the workplace as well as at school. It has helped me in my field of my future career choice of social work. Gladwell’s “Law of few” gives me a better understanding how human interactions work. I am able to apply Gladwell’s “Law of few” and “stickiness” to my current job as a waitress. I have to learn from the past and apply it to the future to know what to do better. I have a better understanding how to market our company because of “stickiness.” “making it the image you can’t get it out of your head. (25) Out of all the money spent on advertising word of mouth is still the most powerful thing. (32) To make an epidemic stick, you need help from three unique talents, a salesman, connectors, and mavens. (34) I as a waitress, is very dependent on my ability to sell and up-sale items. Not only do I have to use what I learned to sell but I handle hundreds of people a week, so in a way I am serving as a connector as well. (38) I am great with people “connectors that by having a foot in so many different worlds, they have the effect of bringing them all together” (51)

Things that get posted on social media can spread extremely fast. Within a couple days or even a couple hours a post can go viral. When a post goes viral millions and millions of people can see it and the content it contains. This can have a severe negative impact on local, national, or even global businesses. “One example is the Papa John’s Pizza Crisis in 2012 that started with a single message on Twitter from a Korean-American customer in New York, who was furious to find a note ‘lady chinky eyes’ written on her receipt by a cashier” (Kim, et. all 1). With this post going viral and being seen by many the people on twitter will immediately relate it to the business. Therefore the business gets a bad reputation for a single individual’s bad

A meme is described by Dawkins as a “unit of cultural transmission, or a unit of imitation,” and the occurrence of the meme is rampant in contemporary society. Today, “tunes, ideas, catch-phrases, clothes fashions, ways of making pots or of building arches,” seemingly last no longer than the blink of an eye before they are replaced by the next new innovation (Dawkins 206). Rather than drifting toward having the most fit genes, we seem to be shifting toward the most fit memes and ideologies. Instead of being worker drones fighting to allow the propagation of genes, we offer our lives as a sacrifice for the propagation of our society’s ideology. Consequently, societal and ideological evolutions appear to closely follow the three main Darwinian tenets of evolution. What are colloquially referred to as memes (images, typically with a caption, that are valued for their comedic appeal) will serve as the quintessential example of the psychological phenomenon called memes to show what I am talking about on a small scale. The first of the Darwinian tenets holds that more individuals are produced each generation than can survive (Darwin 539, 588). This applies to memes in the sense that many are produced, but not all are as successful, widely shared, or parodied, as others. The second and third tenets of Darwinian evolution provide an answer as to which memes do get transmitted and which do not: variation exists among individuals, and if they vary in a way to make them more likely to survive, then they will also be more likely to propagate themselves into the next generation (Darwin 540). In terms of the evolution of memes, this means each meme has its own traits, and, should one have some quality that makes it more appealing to

First, let 's start off by talking about what virality is. According to the 2013 book “Going Viral”, written by Karine Nahon, and Jeff Hemsley, both professors of Information studies at the University of Washington and at Syracuse University states that ““Going viral’ is a social information flow process where many people share a specific media item, over a short period of time, on a social network. The media then spreads beyond the home social network to a different network, resulting in a sharp acceleration of the media.” In simpler