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Wednesday, December 14, 2016

Keeping Friends on Facebook

Do find yourself annoyed by an old friend that post political views on Facebook? Where you tempted to delete that friend or do you block that friend, because of their political views? Did your friends repost fake news stories?

This election season was a little rough. The constant negative ads were almost too much to stomach, and then you throw the posts on Facebook that seemed to add another dimension to the election that may or may not have swayed the election in favor of Trump.

Facebook is a nice way to keep in touch with old classmates or old friends, but with the average user spending 50 minutes a day on the social website, according to Facebook. This may not seem like a lot of time spent on the website, but that is an average.

The problem with relying on social media for updates became clear in this election, as people became duped by fake news stories. It also seems that some users of Facebook felt that the company was screening out the fake news. But the real problem was the user that believed what they were reading.

Fake news is not new, but in the age of digital news, there was a lot of easy access to fake news that looked real because of the clever tricks used to make the news seem real, and how easily fake news seemed to attach itself in news feeds.

Yes, Facebook is a nice tool for keeping in touch with friends and family, and it isn't Facebook's job to edit every piece of information that crosses a users news feed. We need to be vigilant and aware of news stories that appear real but are a little too sensational. It is our job as citizens to do the work required to make sure we stay aware that not everything we read is true. A reader should question and always look to verify stories for any errors.




Wednesday, January 20, 2016

Making Time

The New Year is still only three weeks old, and one of my goals was to post more on this blog. I feel I am off to a shaky start--I know I am off to a shaky start. I still haven't figured out why January is the time of the year to set new goals, but this year I am going to use April 15th as the date to set all my new goals.

Yes, you read that correctly, April 15th will be the date that I set my new goals for the year. The tax year that is. Why shouldn't I use the tax year as a the official start of all my new goals? What better day to start, because I am current with all my taxes, and maybe I will get over having to pay in  so much for just being a middle-class citizen.

No, I am not going to make this post about paying taxes. I feel they are an important part of our society, and someone has to pay them.

My new goal this year is to get in a different tax bracket. Can you help me.