I'm not ignorant, I'm just lazy

The title says it all. When it comes to privacy online, I'm perfectly aware of how much my data is being thrown around. I'm a senior in EMAC, I've heard every side to every case to every detail of how we are always being watched and how all of our data is being used across the world in mining expeditions all localized in my smart phone. I'm aware, but I really don't care. McCauley found that millennials might share more, but they still care about privacy. Of course I care about privacy, I don't want anyone knowing my passwords or my bank account info, but I'm really not super bothered by data miners knowing how many FaceBook friends I have or how many links I post. It's a little creepy, but I go at it from a broad standpoint. They're looking at millions of people, so my data is not being scrutinized super closely. It's data. That's it.

Sure, there are days where I take a FaceBook quiz and will go through the "What I am sharing with this website" checklist and uncheck nearly everything because I feel like I need to, but 9/10 times I just leave it alone. And every single quiz I take, I have that thought in the back of my mind. "They're data mining, your privacy is being breached, be weirded out!" but in reality, I just care about what President I supposedly look like (I got Obama lol). I know it's a bad mindset, but I simply don't see the harm in it. Until it is proven to me that the data they're mining for will seriously hurt me in some way, I don't care. Mine away.

Human 2.0

Tuesday night I was walking into PetSmart (I always thought it was PetsMart but I just googled it.. TIL) and I was on the phone with one of my friends. He asked how my classes had gone and I mentioned our class and how we talked about the phrase "I am enough." Then I went off on a long tangent about FaceBook and Instagram and how we perceive ourselves and others online. For the most part I was talking about perfection, and how we discussed our society's need to strive for perfection even though we'll never reach it as human beings. Which is hard. We live in a world where we have perfected so many things, and we are charging ahead at even greater perfection, but despite it all we will forever be imperfect. The closest we can get, I told my friend, is by creating a perfect self online.

We post online to make everyone see the perfect perception of ourself. We don't do it with that thought it mind, though, because that's a bit out there... but it's in our mind all the same. It helps validate us when people like our Instagram picture from the boating trip, but nobody is posting pictures from their terrible day. They might, but typically only once in a blue moon and is met with sympathy and pick-me-ups. If a depressed person constantly posted about being depressed, people would unfollow their feeds pretty quickly. Nobody likes being sad. So we enter smiling depression online and show the world we are happy, we are normal. To anyone that doesn't know me, I can be a flawless perfect human being if I post the right things. I know I'm flawed, but they might not think twice about it. And that's how we're seeing others in our world. I get on FaceBook and I see everyone having fun and going out, and I sometimes get sad or feel lonely because I'm home and not living it up. I never once consider the other 400+ people on my friends list and how they are probably at home, too, also feeling a sense of loneliness from this one person's posts about how life is great and how everyone should be partying, too.

That's the funny part to me, too, is how I can post such happy things online, watch as the likes roll in, and yet never feel happy because of it. I never think twice about how many likes it gets. It's nice, but it won't change my life. The only time social media really makes me feel something is from seeing other people's posts, not my own and how much attention it generates. The only thing keeping us from falling into a depression is to see past social media happiness and realize these people are just as flawed as we are. I have seen someone post a cute Instagram picture while crying because one of her friends gave her terrible news. It's an odd feeling seeing the post later on and knowing the circumstances behind it, and in a sick and terrible way, it's a little comforting. My friends don't lead perfect lives, and neither do I. I have to remember that.

All play and some work

It's fascinating reading about millennials and attention span, because I want to come at this post with an authority of "I agree and we should put our phones down!" but in reality, I'm part of this generation and I'm not going to put my phone down anytime soon. I do, however, understand the situation at hand perfectly. I have an extremely short attention span, which sucks in important lectures, because I grew up on the internet. I'm so impatient, I won't even wait for a Vine to load. And yet...

I've always been a more traditional person, at least that's what I've been told by my family and in the past by some instructors. I don't like some of the new age decisions, and one of those is quality of work. I grew up watching my parents work at IBM, heck my whole family worked for IBM, and that company is traditionally businesslike. Employees come to work, they sit at their desk and do their job, and they go home. You get a lunch break and coffee breaks sure, but that's about it. I like this model, because work is work. I'm not saying there should be no fun, but I don't think there's anything wrong with this model of business.

My dad recently started a new career at a business that was founded upon the millennial ideal of work. They have foosball tables and music playing all day, and on casual Fridays they bring a keg out. That is just... ridiculous. I feel like there's some kind of running joke about new age jobs and having a foosball table, but it's very real. Does anyone use them? I don't think so. Anyway, the part that bothers me the most is the music. Everyone is making phone calls all day, so playing music over the loud speakers would be so obnoxious. But we have to love our job, right? It's interesting to watch my dad grow and adapt to this job, because he knows the traditional job more than I do obviously, so seeing him interact with working adults my age is a change I'm not sure he was ready for.

I'm not saying this company, or any millennial company, is doing a bad business model. Clearly it's working for now, but all of the fun games and distractions at work feel like just that, distractions. Had a bad phone call? Go play a game of pool. No, no pool. You suck it up and take the next phone call. They had a Pokemon Go day.. during work.. I just.. it's ridiculous. I don't understand the impatience that comes with being entertained at work. I'm impatient and want fast internet speeds when I'm home, but when I'm at work I need to be doing my job and not letting myself get impatient and expect my job to give me a toy just for being there.

Political Silence

While reading The 'Spiral of Silence,' I began to think about how I don't see a lot of opposing views on my feeds because of the search algorithms that exist online to cater to our interests. Lo and behold, the article goes on to mention the algorithms in question and effectively taking my idea of what to write about. I decided to do it anyway.

Right now we are in the midst of political turmoil, and social media has exploded in attacking both sides of the candidacy (both, because who cares about Johnson and who even is Jill Stein?). The other day I found myself thinking about how my Twitter feed is only full of Trump hate and constant Hillary support, because I consider myself to be very moderate in this specific election. It took me a while to realize that before the full weight of both the candidates fell upon me, I was largely democratic. Most if not all of my friends are democratic, and my feeds reflect my friendships and ideals, whether I think I have them or not.

So, I haven't fought with anyone. I'm not looking to fight, but for the most part everything I see online is agreeable. From my perspective, everyone hates Trump and is pretty okay with Hillary, so I have no reason to attack anyone or argue any points. I stay silent and retweet funny posts. It only occurs to me that Hillary is also being attacked when the occasional odd duck slips through the algorithm and upsets my pre-determined peace. I don't lash out because of the fear of surveillance, but rather the comforting thought (because of my feeds) that they are the strange one for disagreeing with the collective's views and that if we ignore them, they'll go away. More often than not, they do, or so we see.