Social Media

Every day from your computer, phone, or other electronic device, you can keep up with your friends no matter where they are.  Anyone from your neighbor to a friend 7,000 miles away from home, can update their status from pretty much anything that is getting an internet signal, so you can catch up on what is going on in their lives. You know what I am talking about, Social Networking or Social Media.  You can hook up to the internet and follow your favorite celebrity, the kid next door with the freckles, or your choice of news channels.  You can stay in contact with people that are living in a completely different country.  Facebook, Myspace, and Twitter all offer you an option that has changed our world.  It can have it’s positive and negative effects, but we all know that it does affect all of us.  Social Media has changed how we communicate to everyone.  This truly has affected the whole world!

Advice Columns

I think that some letters in magazine advice columns are real but I also think that some are fake.  I’m sure that magazines like to spice it up a bit here and there and use fake letters to get readers reeled in.  Whether they are real or not does not hurt anyone, it actually might help someone.  What if someone was too ashamed to send in for advice, but as they were looking through a magazine, found a similar story as theirs?  They may be able to take on some of the advice that they read.  Although this sounds nice the reality is most advice columns are just drama.  I think it is just fine for magazines to run unsigned letters because what is it hurting?  It can either help someone that may need it or get the drama queens excited to read it.  They are just trying to sell more magazines.  Isn’t that what this world is obsessed with now, more popularity, more money, more fame, more attention?  Magazines are just more companies trying to keep up with the Jones’.    

The Fishbowl

Celebrity gossip is one of the most common things that spin out of control over a picture or a sighting.  Our imaginations can lead us on so many scenarios just by one thought or idea.  I believe that celebrities should be left alone.  Whether we want to hear it or not, the celebrities did not put themselves in the fishbowl, we did.  We put them on a pedestal and make their stories so much more significant than the average Joe.  If a celebrity sneezes, we immediately hear about it and every detail.  “I saw it coming from a distance.  Jennifer Aniston squint her eyes and drew her head back when all of a sudden… she sneezed.  She then reached into her purse and pulled out a tissue and blotted her nose five times.”  I know this is a little over exaggerated, but in all reality the things that are reported are everyday happenstances for most of us.  Michael Douglas was diagnosed with cancer some time ago now.  He was wanted for interviews with many television stations and was talked about constantly for a while.  He was in magazines, on talk shows, and of course in the news.  They followed his treatment and talked to his wife about their suffering.  In working in a salon, most of the gossip surprisingly, was about celebrities.  While Michael Douglas is on television speaking of how his treatments are going, my cousin is in the clinic getting Chemo Therapy for his cancer.  We are a world, absorbed in everyone else’s life,  putting others in a fishbowl so that we can be entertained. 

Michael Douglas