media

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I’m not dead!

Just wanted to let you know I’m still alive and hard at work! Most of you probably won’t care all that much, but as long as no one is downright disappointed, I’ll take it as a win! Most ‘writer’ sites will have you believe that you need to blog at least once a week if you’re going to succeed in this line of work, which makes me about 59 weeks overdue. Oh well.

I don’t mean to sound sour or anything; they might be right for all I know. I’m planning to post more in the future, but for the time being I have my hands pretty god damn full with other things.

This post/update/newsflash/whatever serves three purposes (purposi?): It helps me get my affairs in order before the new year hits; it gives you all an update on what I’ve been doing and where Frostbites is; and it serves as a kind of ‘new beginning’ for myself and this site. (Did I really just write that? Ugh!)

That’s write (harr, harr, harr) folks! Robert is going to try something he’s never tried before: He’s going to work harder and be more structured when it comes to his writing! (He’s also going to stop addressing himself in the third person.) I have like, two or three readers now, as well as a writing gig on the side, so I need to step up my game. As many of you know, something strange and wonderful happened right around my previous blog post, and that is my sole excuse for delaying Frostbites and everything else:

Scary, wonderful, breath taking and time consuming!

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When did the world become so black and white?

Polarization – a sharp division, as of a population or group, into opposing factions. 

I’d like to talk about this little thing called polarization. Why? Because we’re all doing it every single day. Personally I blame the media, but we are all at some fault here. This problem is halting everything that even remotely looks like progress, and it’s dividing us into separate camps when it comes to even the smallest things. What the hell am I talking about? Everything, actually, but to make it easier I’ll stick with two examples. Today’s youth and our bodies. It seems to me that in every discussion regarding one of those topics (or a myriad of others), people are neatly split into two camps.

I realize that even as I’m typing this, I am putting myself in a third camp. I’m sure many others are in here with me, but we’re the quiet ones, so in the hyper-global screaming contest that encompass today’s papers, blogs (self-burn) and social media – we’re practically non-existent. (All it takes for evil to prevail, and so forth . . .)

Let me start by calling out the media. (Easier to blame an institution than real human beings, right?) Almost every single fluff piece written by ‘journalists’ today is based on a straw man, and often void of any credible source. Clickbait articles disregard all form of censorship, ignore all fallacies and end up in bold script on the ‘front page’ as it were. And we fucking click it! Upon reading that ‘your candy has had poop-fingers on it’, ‘youths today have it worse than ever!’ or ‘fat is the new skinny and is actually quite healthy’, we immediately have a reaction to it. (Some pretend that we don’t, and that we simply clicked it ‘ironically’ and don’t care or are above such matters. I know I do, but I can assure you some deep instinct in me always react.) These reactions vary from fluff piece to fluff piece and from person to person, but since the articles are written the way they are – bold statements and downright fact-claiming – there’s not much wiggle room: We either agree, or we don’t. Often strongly, at that. The problems begin when we vehemently disagree. Because, of course we must voice our opinion on it if we feel that it’s wrong or that it misrepresents us.

The thing is, though, it doesn’t! Because it doesn’t represent us at all!

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Activism, social media and you

Okay, so here’s a thing that’s been bugging me lately.
It would seem today’s boredom and easy access to social media has combined to form a new generation of activists. I don’t know if there’s a term for this yet (someone has probably already made a far better observation than me), so let’s call them “couch activists”. That’s where the bulk of their activism stems from anyway, reading the internet, then redistributing through the internet. With a phone and an internet connection, you can appropriate all the information in the world; simplify it, mold it and interpret it, and then share it with all your friends. (We’re living in the future, y’all!)
Still, that doesn’t always mean you should!
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