Facebook: Cartoon Default Photo

Tweet

If you are actively using Facebook, by now you have certainly seen some (if not many) of your friends change their default pictures to an image of a cartoon.

If it wasn't explained why, and you were curious - I'm sure you inquired and found out. But a lot of people still don't understand why -- which is one of the reasons I question it in the first place.

The explanation attached to the profile picture change is something to the likes of "Change your picture to a cartoon from your childhood. The goal? To not see a human face on Facebook until Monday, December 6th. Join the fight against child abuse & copy & paste to your status to invite your friends to do the same."

In the early stages of all of this happening, I would get annoyed each time I saw it -- but not really think too much about it. But when I saw my brother Faraz post "If you know a child is being abused, please call 1-800-4-A-CHILD instead of just changing your profile picture to a cartoon" I immediately smiled and thought THIS is something I could go along with and promote. Instead of belittling what is a serious problem in the United States and across the globe, this was good information that should be passed along.

My number one question or problem with the cartoon scenario is: does the problem or at least the severity of the problem that is child abuse suddenly disappear after December 6th?

I'm sure many of the people who changed their Facebook profile photo thought that by doing so, they were promoting a good cause... but most didn't even bother explaining the reason they were changing their photo in the first place. Instead of passively participating, we should all take an active stance.

Over the last twelve hours or so, I'm pleased to see several of my Facebook "friends" change their statuses to what my brother wrote and I urge you to do the same.

This whole thing reminded me of a little while back when females posted on their Facebook statuses where they "liked it" in order to promote breast cancer. It was supposed to imply where they liked to leave their purses, but it became so racy and provocative and I don't think it raised any awareness at all. Breast Cancer is the number one cause of death for females, and to undermine its severity just baffles me each time.

What cause will be next?

Instead, why not provide people with information? Or provide links to where people can donate to for further research and prevention. Wouldn't it be amazing if both of these problems became a thing of the past?

There are many pros and cons to social media. You can use them to promote great causes like child abuse and cancer amongst many others, but there is a way to do it. The growing trend unfortunately is that social media just desensitizes us more and more.

 P.S. Don't forget to leave me a comment below on your thoughts! As always, I'd love to hear from you.

Shallow People

Tweet

Arrogant and/or shallow people annoy me.

There are a lot things that annoy me about Facebook. Everything from the stupid things people say on Facebook, to what they share on Facebook about their lives, and the stupid things people invite you to (game applications, for example). Every now and then there are meaningful things shared on Facebook, but usually not.

When I signed onto Facebook this morning, I saw that a girl I've gone to school with since middle school (but don't really talk to much) had updated her status to this:

I hid the picture and the name to protect the person's identity.

I don't now if this person thought it made them sound cool or what, but it just made me laugh at how shallow she was. It made me almost remove her from my friends list too, but the other two people were obviously a lot smarter than me since they actually did it.

How many of these 1300 people are really her 'friends'? She's in one of my classes this semester and the only time she has talked to me was when she needed notes from the two classes she missed. The first time, I gave them to her, the second time... not so much.

I don't know about you, but I would rather have a small group of close friends any day in whom I can confide in and actually enjoy their company.

We all have acquaintances that we are friends with on Facebook -- those that we don't normally talk to -- like people we went to school with in the past or worked with, but they are just that -- acquaintances.

I'll probably go through my Facebook friends list later to see who I actually talk to from the list.



P.S. Don't forget to leave me a comment below on your thoughts! As always, I'd love to hear from you.

Why I Like Twitter

Tweet

When I originally joined twitter, I played around with it for a few hours and then gave up because quite simply - it looked too complicated and I didn't get it.


Months later, I was convinced to give it a second try. And I'm glad I was intrigued to do so because now is it probably one of my primary sources to get the news (I talked about this here). This was just around the time when it seemed as if all the journalist and broadcast news organizations were creating twitter accounts as another way to stream the news. At this point, it's been about a year since twitter became really popular amongst journalists and news reporters and other public figures.


What I love about twitter is that I can follow whatever I am interested about from my laptop or my phone ... or anywhere else where I'll have access to twitter. Say I'm sitting in class or in the student center in between classes and can't watch the news coverage of something I really want to be watching. Chances are someone many people are tweeting quotes or paraphrasing the content of whatever is currently happening that I am missing.


For example when the whole 'balloon-boy' fiasco was happening, I was sitting in a class done the assignment I was supposed to be doing and suddenly I started getting tweets about the whole mess from the start and through all of its twists and turns.


Twitter has not only been great for news - sensational, real or otherwise, but it's great for having interactive discussion with others who care about what you care about. If you agree, great... if you don't - I think it's even better.


As I was watching Obama's SOTU address, I was following the trending topic and getting to read other people's thoughts live and have a conversation about something I care about with other people who care about the same thing. I don't know about you, but I feel like in my social group, very few people care about the same things as I do. It puts new media to a whole new level.


Not only that, nowadays, I probably access most of the articles I ready daily off of twitter from what others share in their tweets or what organizations like magazines tweet. Instead of going to different websites to find articles that are of interest to me or anything like that, they are all brought to me in one central location.   


As 2009 drew to an end, it was even cool to look through "Top Twitter Trends of 2009" which summarized what we as a collective groups of people from across the world found most important and worthy of attention across a variety of categories. 


It always amazes me when people compare twitter to facebook because they two could not be any more different and have two completely different purposes.


Do you use twitter? What do you like most about it? Or what do you use it most for? If you don't use it - is there any particular reason or you just don't see a need for it?



P.S. Don't forget to leave me a comment below on your thoughts! As always, I'd love to hear from you.

Games - the Old Fashioned Way

Tweet

I don't know about you, but i LOVE playing old board games with family and friends. Tonight, my little cousin Imran stayed over after a really long time and we (my brothers, Imran, and I) played a game of monopoly (that took over four hours!) the old fashioned way (after a few years) - and it got me thinking.

We used to play so many board games (like chess, checkers, chinese checkers, mastermind just to name a few) when we were little... and it reminded me of that time today. I wish we still played as much as we used to, but honestly no one does anymore. Like i was telling some of my family members some time ago, no one takes the time to play board games or actively play games outside and things like that anymore. Now, 'playing' a game means playing something on the computer or a gaming system like the Wii or X-box. By the way, i can pretty much guarantee my brothers will argue me on this.

Even the newest edition of monopoly now is computerized with a 'credit card' like system to take away the mathematical portion of the game. Don't get me wrong - it's a neat aspect, but part of the fun of the game was the old fashioned way to play it. Sure, the game runs much faster now... but that was half the fun.

I am still relatively young, but i can remember clearly that we used to go outside and play regularly after school and whatnot when we were younger. Nowadays, you don't see that too much. Of course there are changes with each generation, but don't you think some things should always remain the same?

Not only is playing actively outside or a board game with others healthy, but it is great for your social skills. People nowadays, especially little kids, lack basic social skills that are necessary to be able to communicate with others. I can't count the number of times I've noticed people (of all ages) not being to communicate with other people face to face.

Technology is great, by all means - I'm not arguing that. But sometimes, it inhibits people. Nowadays, people 'communicate' primarily though email, texting, or instant messaging (or just Facebook). While all of these have made communicating with people much easier, it should not mean that you are no longer able to talk to people face to face at all.

The next few times you are talking to people from various age groups, take note of it - you'll be surprised at how many people can't even make eye contact when they are speaking to people!

Twitter - the new facebook

Tweet

Is it just me... or did twitter suddenly become really big this week (for news reporters)?

It seems as if all the journalists on the major news channels (at least the ones i watch most often) have joined it this weekend and keep talking about it on their shows. It'll be interesting to see in the next couple of weeks. Even though I've been using it for a while now, I'm not sure yet of all the terminology (I think a person who uses twitter is a "tweep", and the message is a "tweet"... they sound like insults :/), but so far i like getting all of my news updates all at one place. So far, not many people i know personally have joined in on twitter, so for now it's just a news source.. and it'll be interesting to see twitter grow as more and more people join.

It'll be interesting to see if twitter becomes as big as facebook.. or even bigger (it has definite potential).

For those of you who are beginners at twitter, here are some tips to start you off:

1. Shrink Your URLs
Since you only have 140 characters to work with, instead of sharing a long URL, use one of several URL-shortening services to shrink that link, like tinyurl.com.

2. RT = Retweet
To copy and paste someone else's tweet, just put "RT @name" in front of their tweet and post it yourself so you give the original tweeter/tweep(?) credit for it as well.

3. @ Sign
To reply or someone on Twitter, place an @ sign in front of their Twitter name at the beginning of the message.