Good social media usage

In my last post, I referenced what I consider some of the downsides to social media in general and Twitter in particular - namely, being flamed and trolled as well as the inability to fully articulate complex or controversial subjects. However, that is not to say that social media is useless or not worth using.

Earlier this week, I noticed that a national corporation whose offices are on my way to work was flying a very tattered and torn American flag. Frankly, it was disgraceful display as it was hanging almost upside down and torn to pieces. I'm sure it was there for a while (something that was subsequently pointed out by others) but it seems like no one had said or done anything about it. I intended to go over to the office myself later in the day to tell them to fix it but then thought, why not see if they have a Twitter account? So, I looked them up and discovered they did. I tweeted to them asking them to please take the flag down as it was a disgrace. Within 30 minutes, I received a response (via Twitter) asking for clarification of the offending location and the flag was taken down shortly thereafter.

I am deliberately not stating the company here but I did later send them an email to express my appreciation for their prompt response to the issue. Prior to Twitter, it may have stayed there even longer which would have tarnished its image locally as I know I was not the only person to observe it but, with just a few minutes and an online connection, the issue was resolved. And, instead of publicly embarrassing the company by sending pictures viral (which is another scenario made possible by the advent of social media), it was handled promptly, professionally and with minimal embarrassment.

I guess we can chalk one up in the win column.

More gun-related thoughts

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote up a post on the raging debate on guns and gun control. Part of my diatribe at the time concerned how both sides of the debate stake out extreme positions and neither side is willing to listen to the other. Over the intervening few weeks, this has not changed. If anything, both sides have grown more vocal on the issue. And, as I have pointed out previously multiple times on this blog on another controversial issue - racism - neither side is immune to being guilty of arrogance, ignorance or outright stupidity in their handling of the issue.

Last week, I responded via Twitter to a comment made by a New York Times journalist who commented that "responsible" gun owners support new gun control legislation. My response was something along the lines of "it seems that 'responsible' is a subjective term when it comes to your views on gun control". The journalist did not respond back but a few of his other followers did. While I tried to rationally clarify my point on "responsible" gun owners, they spent their time stating that I was an idiot, a gun-lover, a redneck, a hillbilly and worse. (I will simply state here that I am none of those things.) In other words, I got "trolled".

Granted, trying to engage in a serious debate on Twitter probably isn't the smartest move because of the inherent limitations of that medium but I found it curious that people who are arguing for gun control should be so full of vitriol and, in hindsight, I hope that they are not gun owners themselves because they were terribly angry at me for what I felt were very reasonable comments. To me, it seems similar to my issues with Democrats when it comes to their claims about diversity and minorities - they believe in it so long as those diverse minorities support them, otherwise they are race traitors (for lack of a better general term). But there is a perception that those who support gun control are the more peaceful people but this seems to be a farce based on those comments.

This is not to say that the opposite does not occur with those who support the right to own guns trolling and antagonizing those who oppose them but they are rightly called out for it when it occurs. However, it seems that the criticism for such actions is one-sided. Just because gun control advocates are perpetrated as being more peaceful and reasonable does not hold it to be true. Now it is time to hold gun control advocates to the same level of criticism as proponents when they act like idiots.

I am ever the eternal optimist...

Random Thoughts

A couple of things that I've overheard recently that I found interesting:

Spike Lee posting the address of someone who he thought was George Zimmerman (responsible for the shooting of Trayvon Martin) - and it ends up being the address of an elderly couple completely unrelated to Zimmerman or Martin. Sure, he apologized for it and settled with the couple, to whom he called and apologized personally, but the problem was that he felt it was ok to post anyone's address on Twitter - particularly when you have 240,000+ followers who may think it is ok to do whatever they want with the address. And, considering the inflamed passions that have resulted from the Zimmerman-Martin case, surely he didn't think that people were going to be sending polite letters to Mr. Zimmerman. No matter where an individual stands on the case, publicly posting someone's address is bound to create another situation that will, in most cases, only worsen it. And the problem with the immediacy of Twitter is that such a mistake is very difficult to take back or rectify once it has been committed.

The same goes for baseball players who post the personal phone numbers of their former teammates. What made CJ Wilson think that such a prank (as he described it) was acceptable is up for debate but it was clearly - and understandably - not well-received by Mike Napoli. In this case, Napoli can simply get a new phone number and he can get on with his life (without being harassed by the numerous idiots, er, people who think its acceptable to compound the tweeting "mistake" by actually calling the number). But as people continue to seek the fame that is so readily accessible by the online world where fame is counted in the number of followers/friends/viral videos a person has, there must be a point where common sense will kick in and they will realize that there are very real consequences for their actions. I used to think that the Human Flesh Search Engine was only a Chinese concern but I worry it is not so limiting and fear that the consequences will become all too real all too soon.

Along the same lines of technology concerns (aside: is it good or bad that a techie such as myself is worried about these technical advances?), this article on flash trading was both interesting and worrying. These systems that are being developed are making calculations and decisions that have very real impact on the real world in terms of financial transactions faster than the human mind can do, let alone be able to stop in time before they become reality. When I first read this, I kept thinking this must be the first version of Skynet where the machines begin to operate outside the immediate control of human hands and minds. The understanding that these machines are making these decisions (as it relates to trading) with little apparent understanding on the part of their human "masters" is just slightly frightening. I always enjoy when the inner workings of an application and the logic behind them are black boxes to the people who allegedly operate them. Yep, nothing to see here, please move along...

Finally, something to consider. Without doing a Google search, what were the headlines three days ago? Even one headline? What was the related story? I would be willing to bet that most people can't come up with a single headline. Which leads me to wonder about this 24 hour news cycle that we go through and whether it is sensory overload and results in a situation where people actually learn nothing. Life today, in the 24 hour news cycle, is a constant barrage of information that people remember so long as it's being blasted at them continuously and only stays in residual memory for so long as it's a headline. Immediately thereafter, it is discarded and nothing is truly learned until the next time it makes a headline. And forget about context - that only comes if people care to dig deeper into the stories and learn more - and that doesn't often happen. So, quick, let's go see CNN Headline News (which is only a very small selection of actual news stories and typically very little that has anything to do with the average person - "OMG, a kid fell down a well!" or "OMG, someone contracted this really weird disease that affects one in 2 billion people - everyone PANIC NOW!") and see how much we retain until tomorrow.