Comic Strip.

I have had a laptop since I was twelve, so I could play sims and watch movies on long road trips. I've had a laptop longer than I have had a cell phone. I love my laptop, I've taken it to the bathroom before, at home it would sleep in my bed with me, and when I go on trips it of course travels up front with me. I do everything on my laptop now, even my math homework. It controls my mood, if the internet isn't working and I don't get to see all the cute puppies, clothes, crafts and what not on Pinterest then I am grumpy. Similarly when I miss my shows on television for a silly "severe weather warning" I become very upset. My television and laptop tell me all thats going on in the world I don't need a newspaper anymore, and I can now read all my Charles Dickens novels on my fancy Iphone. I don't need to interact with the human world, Siri will talk to me. I don't need my mom to remind me of my homework that is due, I have Siri for that. I don't need to ask Mamaw for the recipe for her delicious italian cream cake, I can just google that. I have waited in an hour and a half long line with 150 other crazed nerd for Harry Potter and Batman releases, and yes I was dressed up, but I won't wait 15 at a restaurant to eat. I have never felt like I my life was being controlled by anyone like in George Orwells "1984."

There isn't a single person that I feel has any real control of my life, but when I'm sitting in my dorm alone with daunting chemistry problems and Pinterest up I know who has one: my laptop, again. 

Now I've been to Ghana and they're happy there; without their laptops and pooping in troughs, but not me. I need my indoor plumbing, movies, airconditioning, cell phone and above all my laptop. Technology hasn't taken over everyones lives, their are still Mamaws and Papaws out there like mine that only have a television for their grandchildren and big blue madness, and there are poor areas of the world who can't take in the luxuries I have been blessed to have. For me though, I live in a community and a lifestyle where the things I love now have a control over me, a pull on my priority list, and I really don't think I want that to change. Its not hurting me: all of my homework has been turned in on time thus far, and I have yet to loose sleep. My technology will never tell me to harm anyone, keep me from living a full life, or restrict what I do, usually it only makes it easier. I could cheat on a test with my laptop, I could find a friendly nerd to write a paper for me, I could hack my neighbors laptop camera and spy on them. Technology opens up a whole other world of possibilities of things I could do, and never tells me what I can't do. No big brother here, only a million more possibilities to distract me from the outside world. 

My social network idenity

For my social network identity project I will focus on my facebook usage, and how I went form needing to look like the most popular girl to only using it to engulf myself in other people's lives.

Oh Honey Boo Boo...

Honey Boo Boo child and suicide make quite the combination, I mean she makes me want to kill myself too. Wait, no. That was wrong, I shouldn't have mocked the very serious and sad suicide of Tony Scott, but as Mitch Alborn wrote humans now  "...don't want to correct people, we would rather mock them. We don't do, we watch." Just as people tune in once a week to watch as a mother drives her child to failure, they stand by and record, but never try to stop, a man committing suicide. Alborn hit the cynical nail on the head, humans wish to feel superior, most don't feel the need to stop destruction, they assume its inevitability and watch as it happens. I don't think this makes us apathetic even though it would seem you would have to be completely indifferent to allow a man to jump off a bridge or watch as destruction happens, but maybe we're just too interested in human failure. Too caught up in the details of how, or why he would even want to jump to ever get to needing to stop him. Every thing is so over analyzed in the world, we are all organism under a microscope, there is no wiggle room for mistakes that will go unseen, every one is watching and calculating. No one can make the front cover of a trash magazine for just getting divorced without telling why. No one seems to ever asks if they're upset only why it happened, the story is so buried in the details that the actual act of the divorce falls into the background.  The world is suppose to end in 2012 and all people can ask is why, but I have yet to hear someone ask how we would stop it. When global warming is discussed we always hear the theories and details of how we caused it and sometimes even how we could put an end to it, but then again the details sweep up and cloud the how and get straight back to the why. The details distract from the big picture; the ending of the world, global warming, a freaky pageant family, or a suicide. We're the opposite of apathetic, we're too involved, to interested to stop anything we'll just see how it plays out. 

Reality Telivision

Reality television has affected my life very little because my mother, bless her heart, has forbid me from watching it ever since it became popular. Granted, as I grew older I easily could have gone against her orders and watched Judge Judy, Teen Mom or The Bachelorette, but I never. It never made sense to me the appeal of such shows, they are much more drama filled than my reality or even most TV dramas on now. I have no desire to succumb to the trash that is reality television. I do not put myself in situations where everyone is sweaty, drunk and for some unknown reason mad, so why in the world would I want to watch it on television. Nor have I ever decided to date twenty random men at once just to find "the one" and I certainly don't put stock in that method of finding love; therefore, I don't have any desire to watch a show about it.
I know that the young women of Teem Mom really did have children way too early in their lives and that it did make most things more difficult for them, but I find it so incredibly difficult to believe that their life now revolves around fighting, crying and drinking alcohol. I do recognize that if a true reality show was ever to be created, no one would want to watch as I brushed my teeth, napped, watched movies, and maybe did some homework, but then why is it even called reality television? Which I suppose leads me to the largest problem I have with reality television: The name is a lie, its more like "overly dramatized lives of people with problems," but that just isn't very catchy.

puppy