Bad Customers

Barbara, J. (2012, November 11) Is Social Media Bad For Business? Forbes. Retrieved from http://www.forbes.com/sites/julietbarbara/2012/11/11/is-social-media-bad-for-business/

The Chief Customer Experience Designer at Sensei Marketing, Jeff Wilson, created a sparkling discussion called "Social Media is Creating Bad Customers".  Well every business is it's own media company, it gives them an opportunity to meet potential customers, both good and bad.  To bring good customers though you need a social strategy that takes time and effort.  With a good social strategy, your engagement with customers will promote brand awareness.  While taking these risks on your social strategy, you'll come across bad customers, because your social media creates a guilt free, anonymous environment with no accountability.  With that Wilson concludes that there are four factors that empowers a person with bad behavior against companies: No guilt, the mob, relative anonymity, and no accountability.  

Books vs. Video Games

Johnson, S.(2011). Games.  In S. Cohen, 50 Essays (pg. 196-202). Boston: Bedford St. Martins.

The essay "Games" by Steven Johnson describes the differences from reading a book to playing video games. Video Games promotes eye-hand coordination, but also promotes aggression and violence to conflicts. With that it also helps to increase your manual dexterity and visual memory. With reading though, it's hand to gain a different viewpoint due to the assumptions that the thought of it is boring in our mind. This on the other hand doesn't show the advantage of stretching your imagination while reading a book. Games are good at storytelling, but books give you information and mental work to process and store information. Reading books forces you to make a world in your head instead of going to a virtual world.

Well both reading and playing video games are in their own worlds. Video games are a world that the creators put in while the reading world is your endless imagination. Well as you can see in today's society, games are taking over books. People would rather be lazy and use other peoples imaginations, then their own. I mean we are depended on other people's imagination to entertain us rather, then making the mental effort to entertain us. Plus if we ever want to read, who needs a book that'll cost money, we have the internet to read the book off for free.

What do we really live for?

Thoreau.(2011). Where I Lived, and What I Lived For.  In S. Cohen, 50 Essays (pg. 403-409). Boston: Bedford St. Martins.

The essay "Where I Lived, and What I Lived For" by Henry David Thoreau shows us, his arguments on living in the woods. One of the ideas he brought up is reducing things into proportion, meaning to reduce our time on useless habits and spend it on more useful things. Another point he adds is that we can live without a post office or any forms of communication. When we hear about robberies, murders, and other crimes, we don't read on and see another, because on is enough. This is just gossip to spread around. We think of great and worthy things in reality, and not the fears that shadow us. The lies that we live in can be revealed from the shadows and shows other people to see who people really are.

To be honest some of Thoreau's ideas were hard to translate, but others were easy to see. I see ideas in this essay that are connected to social media, like in the first on I stated. Connecting the idea of reducing things into proportions, going on the social media is a waste of time where it won't help you progress your life. Let's be honest too, when we see a lot of these news articles on the media, we really don't react, but simply ignore it and move on with our lives. This brings us to the thought that when you read these types of articles, you think that this won't happen to you while in reality, anything can happen. Living in lies like these can block your vision of what's real and what's not. Even pretending to be someone that your not on the media can lead to labeling you for life.

It's a another whole world out there.

Right behind your computer screen is another world, where whatever you type, whatever you do, it'll be there forever, for everyone to watch and see over and over again.  Its a perfect place to hurt and ruin someone's life.  This world can either be a tool or a weapon.  It is used both now in our day in age.  People use it to help with their research, show off their ideas, and stay connected all around the world.  People also use it as a fighting tool against someone, to hurt someone, and even destroying cultures.

Television. Is it good or is it bad for children?

Winn, M.(2011). Television: The Plug - In Drug.  In S. Cohen, 50 Essays (pg. 438-447). Boston: Bedford St. Martins.

The essay "Television: The Plug - In Drug" by Marie Winn, shows us the disadvantages that television has on family life.  Now in America, over more then three fourths of the United States owns more then one television sets in their household.  With having more television sets, this led the television to be on of the most important influences in children's lives.  With more then one televisions in one household, this has lead to a decrease and diminish of family life.  Along with the damage to family life, it damages the involvement and relationships to real people while there's a one way relationship with the television show characters.  As children develop a greater relationship with the television and media, it develops a weak and separate bond from their parents.

Well in all honesty I disagree with this essay to somewhat of an extent.  True you'll lose family time watching the television, but it really doesn't mean the destruction of family life.  If you watch it with the family, then you and your family can create that family time by discussing what shows on or make jokes or just laugh together, just have a good time.  Children can be controlled by the television if there wasn't any parent or adult influence or just that connection to talk about what they watched.  I work for a before and after school childcare service and I have kids act out scenes from "Star Wars The Clone Wars" and shows like that, but that isn't bad at all.  We talk about the shows and laugh about it and it doesn't necessary destroy that interaction with real people, well unless you just locked up in a room with just the television, then yes. Television isn't bad at all, just who is enforcing the television is a different story.