The birth of a Hipster

Hipsters are known for liking things that don't go with the mainstream. If everyone is wearing pink, hipsters will wear blue and say they liked blue "before it was cool." This "trendsetter" mentality, of liking things that go outside of the mainstream, was a type of personality that was completely ignored during the era of blockbusters and music "hits". Directors and producers did not care about the hipsters of the world and only wanted to sell things that spoke to the greater good. They were under the spell that popularity sells and anything obscure will just take up shelf space. These people were not entirely wrong, but a new era was born in the midst of all of this: the HIPSTERS. Hipsters loved Niche markets because these markets would offer less popular material that still sold to a large number of people, these people including hipsters. There will always be a niche market in the world because not everyone likes the same things and not everyone wants to listen to the same music and watch the same shows. We are NOT robots. The hipsters ate up these niche markets and now niche markets are popping up everywhere. Record players are making a comeback as well as Polaroid cameras. I will admit that i even have a Polaroid and I absolutely love it.   

The Arab Spring

Wow. It is almost hard to articulate words that represent how the Arab Spring video we watched in class made me feel. That woman was so inspiring and brave to be able to express her true emotions on a universal platform where she felt safe enough to do so. The internet can be a beautiful place, when used correctly. This woman was able to share her story, and relay her messages to people because it was the only way she felt free to express herself. Egyptians in general used blogs and vlogs to talk about corruption, police brutality, and the sexual harassment of protesters. This video inspired me to use more platforms, like blogs, to express myself freely. I also applaud the woman's effort in breaking gender roles and admitting that she would like to go out and fight, while challenging the mens' manhood. I hope her video doesn't get forgotten and young women who struggle through the same governmental issues that she did, use platforms to speak up!   

The Dangers of the Filter Bubble

Diversity is key in any scenario, but especially online and in virtual communities. Diversity of the mind allows people to share different perspectives and increase their knowledge on a certain topic. The dangers of the filter bubble is that it increases group polarization, and when too many like-minded people are in one room, chaos is usually there to follow. You need different opinions to balance the extreme voices in each group out because too many extreme voices will silence the voices that have any different opinions towards the group. This will ultimately cause more extremists and no neutral voices to balance the group out. Think about it, if pro-life activists come together and talk about how much they hate planned parenthood, they can get so riled up where they decide to bomb a facility. This is very scary and virtual communities need to allow more diversity to avoid these extremist views.

Bully for Attention

Online bullying is definitely a problem that shouldn't be ignored, but when handling how to approach bullying, some different perspectives and solutions come about. Is there any right or wrong way in approaching a bully?The act of bullying is never just a black and white issue. The bully typically has a terrible home life and gets abused in his or her own way, and the person getting bullied typically has self esteem issues that root deeper than the bully is even aware of. Kids are impressionable and sometimes purely evil when it comes to how they treat others. There is no way in truly containing the bullying epidemic because of the grey area involved and the psychological issues that go deeper than someone calling a person fat or ugly because they think it is funny. 

I feel like no laws or punishments will be severe enough or effective enough to get people to stop bullying. Bringing attention to the bullies just highlights their behavior, and bullies can mistake that attention for something positive. Bullies usually are attention seekers so it is just adding more unnecessary fuel to the fire. Only when people start accepting therapy and psychological help, will bullying begin to die down. There is no law that will stop them and bringing more attention to it will only worsen the situation. Support groups for victims of bullies like this one can start opening the conversation and closing the bullying window.