International Holiday Giveaway!

     As a way to kick start my blog, and as a way for me to give something for the holidays, I will be hosting my first giveaway starting today!

     I will be giving one $10 Amazon Gift Card code by email to one random reader on the day this giveaway ends, December 24th. To enter, you must FOLLOW my blog on Blogger (button in the sidebar) and COMMENT on one of my posts which all have questions at the end for you to answer. You can also follow me on Google+ for an extra entry.

Thank you and best of luck!

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Do we Know What News is Real?

     Over the course of the election in particular, I'm sure you've run into some fake news stories if you have spent any time at all on social media. Fake news stories aren't by any means something new, but they have been getting more attention lately due to some people believing that they influenced the recent presidential election.

     Facebook and Google are the two companies receiving the most hate for their fake news stories, particularly due to stories that might influence people to vote for Trump or ones that are falsely reporting that Trump won the popular vote for president.

     According to CNET (a trusted news source, I promise) Mark Zuckerbook, head of Facebook, doesn't think that the sharing of fake news stories can sway that many people's opinions, especially when it comes to the election. Google, on the other hand, confessed that they use an algorithm to decide top news stories, and the one they have right now is obviously not perfect, but they are working on it.

     Facebook supposedly used to have real people filtering through their news stories to make sure they were legitimate, but eliminated those positions after the company was being accused of favoring democratic stories.

Conversation

     I want to sit here and say that everyone is dumb for sharing news stories on Facebook just because they are there without bothering to verify their truth. But in reality, I have fallen victim of it too. In the back of my head, I know that the stories might not be true. But, when we tend to have an idea or belief in our head, we get excited when we see someone else expressing the same one, so we want to click that "share" button as a way to say "See! This is right, I knew it! You might not believe me, but there's a fancy article written about it!" It's not really a matter of them being true or not.

     With that being said, it will be impossible for the spreading of false news to come to a halt no matter what companies like Facebook and Google do about it. People are going to believe what they WANT to rather than what they SHOULD. My advice would be to just understand that a lot of the news on social media is not real. If you are looking for the truth about a story, look on multiple credited official news websites, not just one. If you see someone sharing a false news story, they might not know. So instead of arguing with the point of the news story, maybe just let them know that the article isn't real and point them to the right direction.

     Do you ever share fake news stories? Do you think social media companies should be held responsible for filtering them? Do you think they could have swayed the election? Let me know in a comment below!

Who's Fault is Racism?

     The only way I can imagine that you haven't heard that Donald Trump is the new U.S. president is if you've been living under a literal rock. There's so much I would like to talk about in regards to the election outcome, but first I want to address the recent news stories about racism and hate crimes that are seemingly popping up EVERYWHERE. Here are the top news stories about the subject on Google.

     There are a countless number of articles about the racism and hate crimes floating around social media including this popular one titled "Day 1 in Trump's America" that highlights some incidents that have happened since Trump won the election 2 days ago. Most happen on college campuses and involve some sort of graffiti or someone forcefully removing another person's hijab.

     Individual stories like the one below have also been shared all over social media.

Conversation

     I want to start out this conversation by saying that I don't like Donald Trump at all and I did not vote for him. I personally don't think that who people vote for determines much about them, but I wanted to confirm that I didn't vote for Trump so that you can understand my opinion about this entire situation without thinking that I'm biased.

     There are two reasons all of these stories of discrimination are bothering me and the first is that WE as ordinary people are using social media to help these people justify discriminatory and hateful acts since the election. The hundreds of thousands of Facebook statuses and Tweets in which people are talking about how everything changed in our country overnight and how the morals and values this country used to have aren't there anymore are fueling people to commit hate and race related crimes. People can read this stuff and think "Yeah, you're right, our country has changed overnight! I can commit hate crimes now!" Posting stuff on Facebook about how our country just became racist is a self-fulfilling prophecy if I've ever seen one. It's almost like we are saying to all of the hateful people in our country that we expect them to commit all these crimes now that we elected a new president, and that if they do commit crimes, we're going to blame the president instead of them.

      The second reason these stories are bothering me is because the people involved and these millions of other people sharing them are all using Trump to justify what's happening. In the instance in which a woman gets her hijab forcefully removed and is threatened for wearing one in the first place, Trump is not the criminal. The other WOMAN who initiated such a hateful act is the ONLY one responsible. There is no doubt in my own mind that Donald Trump is racist. But that doesn't mean that he has changed an laws or policies on racism or hate crimes (He couldn't even if he tried) So the fact that people are crediting all of this individual racism to Trump being elected just blows my mind. We didn't loose the personal choice of being hateful or not just because we got a new president. Unless Trump makes discrimination and hate crimes legal or somehow used telekinesis to get you to commit a hate crime, then YOU are the ONLY one responsible for that hate crime. Not Trump and certainly not his supporters.

Think about it this way. If we elected a president who is Catholic, does that mean everyone of a different religion should feel threatened? Does that mean that all hate crimes committed by Catholics should be attributed to him? It just doesn't make any sense. We all have our own voices and all of our rights still. We choose whether or not we want to be hateful. So maybe instead of directly blaming Trump for all of the hate, we start blaming the perpetrators of the recent hate who are our friends, our acquaintances, people we know. Let's all educate and support each other so we can continue to strive for an equal country as people, even if our president disagrees. I promise it's possible.

What do you think about these recent hate-crimes? Do you think they're all justified because of our new racist president? Do you even believe that Trump is racist or that some of us have reason to fear for our lives? Leave a comment below!

Is Starbucks Politically Brainwashing Us?

     If you somehow haven't already heard, Starbucks released a new disposable coffee cup on the first of this month which, of course, immediately sparked conflict among Starbucks lovers and haters. Because what doesn't start conflict these days?

     The cup design released is primarily green and features a drawing of over a hundred people completed with only one stroke making them all connected. When Starbucks first announced the cup on Twitter, people twisted the intention behind the cup to be something political, despite the coffee chain simply stating that the cup is supposed to "...remind us that we're all connected".

     It seems like most people are accusing the company of 1) Promoting a Democratic/liberal agenda especially around the time of the election and/or 2) Suppressing Christianity by not carrying a holiday message which is a similar argument in response to last year's cup design.

     However, it has been confirmed that these new green cups aren't even the holiday cups for this year. The green "unity" design will only be around for a short time, while the notorious red holiday cups will return soon.

Conversation

     At first, I thought this outrage around such a beautiful cup design was absurd and unnecessary. I don't believe that Starbucks was trying to make a political statement as nothing about the cup's design directly implied that. It was probably trying to avoid political backlash by making the cup green which is a color that isn't associated with either major political party (like red is) and by promoting ideals that most people SHOULD agree with despite their political identity like community, unity, and peace. Those ideals are not strictly liberal or Democratic ones.

     However, I rethought the situation after reading this one tweet. Maybe we shouldn't be surprised that a simple cup is receiving such political criticism considering it is being released at a time when political tensions are at their height and everyone is freaking out about the upcoming election. I still think Starbucks only meant good while releasing this cup and that the hate being received is stupid, but I do recognize that it was probably inevitable due to the timing of the release.

     Even though the theory that this was the company's holiday cup has been debunked, I still think all of the complaints received last year and this year due to the lack of a Christmas theme on the cup are incredibly ignorant. Neither Starbucks or the U.S. has an official religion and by only representing one, we are ignoring the others which, in my opinion, is not in the spirit of our country's morals. I think the reason people were so upset about the removal of Christmas themed cups last year is due to the negative associations so many people have with other religions and the fear of loosing Christianity as the dominant religion in this country.

What are your thoughts on the new Starbucks cup? Do you think the chain had a hidden political agenda? Do you think they should continue or discontinue the Christmas themed holiday cups? Leave a comment below!