We are one, We are many, We are Just Call Me Frank.
Candid, adjudicating, philosophy wielding, life journaling, mental health advocating, writing and art therapy enthusiasts, lovers of learning; adventurers with a finger on all the buttons.
Writing to survive and thrive.
The assignment for public speaking class tonight was to write a tribute speech about yourself 30 years from now, as told and presented by someone else.
It was amazing to hear all the awards and accomplishments fellow students figured they'd perhaps achieve in 30 years. Everything from ending WWIII, to curing cancer, to inventing flying cars, to achieving World Peace, reviving entire villages in third world countries...and it just goes on and on. Where do these crazy kids come up with this stuff, hey?...silly kids with their silly dreams ;-)It was almost vomit inducing.
And then along came Frankie...with her eulogy. Yes. We wrote our funeral eulogy. Out of 21 students, it was the only one. It's unclear how it was received, though the instructor enjoyed it, using it as a specific, and only, example of using humor and imagination (ha!) in a tribute speech.
What did the speech sound like?
Something like this...
It began very beautifully talking about how "She" "succumbed to wanderlust" in her early adult years living a "nomadic life" often "punctuated by forays into secondary education" desiring to achieve "something personally remarkable" by living a fulfilling like full of experiences. Then later in life "She" became a "recluse"
"often finding solace in
retreating to the online world of 1’s and 0’s, having philosophical debates on topics dear to her like food security,
poverty and equal rights, fighting for social justice and equality, spending much of her time writing about personal philosophies on current events, often escaping to the comfort of her
brushes and paints, spending hours in her studio painting.
In the last months she spent most of her time in solitary confinement
of her own making, writing, alone in her studio, drinking copious
amounts of Gin and putting the final touches on her masterpieces. She passed away in her sleep, just as she had always wanted, having lived a life just as she wished."
This is a transcript from a speech we did about two weeks ago for a Public Speaking course (holy crap it'll be nice to get done with that class). We were initially going to audio record it for you, but you know what? We can't be fucking bothered to do it...it's amazing we can even continue trudging through the reading, writing and studying...we're starting to lose focus, partially due to mental interruption and stress.
Anyway. The topic, Social Media Literacy and Responsibility, should be important to you. We chose it because it's important to us and thought it would be important to the other students in the class. (We've written on similar topics here in the past: What Happens On Twitter Doesn't Stay On Twitter)
This is a bit more "technical", as it's an informational speech...and since it's for a university class, it is written, and was presented, in the "I" and not the "we". It was also limited to no more than 5 minutes (a second over resulted in losing all timing points).
*sigh*
Without further adieu...
"Imagine you have a really great job, the work is fulfilling, your coworkers and you are good friends, and then one day you are called into a meeting with the board of directors of your organization. In this meeting your “anonymous” Twitter account is mentioned as a concern, and some of your Tweets are referenced. Despite the public not knowing who you are, they have found out and they don’t like the things you have to say. And they fire you.
This happened to me.
Social media literacy skills, that is, the ability to communicate appropriately and responsibly, while approaching interactions critically, and understanding the consequences, while online, is an important 21st Century skill.
According to a report by Pew Institute, 93% of teens and 72% of adults use social media, yet few schools and businesses teach social media literacy and responsibility skills even today; meanwhile participation in social media can have immediate and long lasting impact on a person’s life, from education to employment and even relationships, all simply based on who you allow in your network or the way you express yourself.
The Library of Congress has now archived, and continues to do so, every Tweet from as far back as 2006. From the words you use to express yourself, to the pictures you use in social media, they can have immediate and long-term consequences. And it’s not just what you write, or who you are, that can cause problems.
Who you allow in your networking circles can effect your life. For example, in the case of Flordia vs George Zimmerman, prosecution questioned a witness on her connections with Zimmerman’s brother on Twitter and Facebook for a full eight minutes.
Your social media connections can also impact you financially in the future.
As reported by Mother Jones, The Economist and Investor Place, there are currently three minor loan companies that use the credit and spending habits of Facebook connections of those seeking loans, to determine the risk factor of loaning money. According to reports, this may be a trend for larger loan companies in the future.
When people look at social media they often see it as a platform of free speech and self-expression, but rarely, do they consider the consequences.
For example, Johnny Cook, a Georgia bus driver, learned that one of his middle-school passengers got denied school lunch because his account was .40 cents overdrawn. Upset, he vented on Facebook about the unfairness of the situation. It was a reasonable rant, but his employers discovered it and he was fired. According to Business Insider, in 2011 there were 17 similar cases.
Again, in the case of Florida vs George Zimmerman, witness Selene Bahadoor was confronted by the Defense for a Facebook petition she “liked” that “championed” the arrest of Zimmermann.
Both of these unfortunate events are results of poor social media literacy.
Further what people write can be misinterpreted because there is often little context, no voice inflection or meaningful facial expression in social media communication.
Your actions on social media can even have an effect on future employment.
According to a report by Reppler, a social media image consultant company, 91% of the 300 sampled hiring managers report using social networking sites to screen potential employees, of that, 69% reported that they rejected an applicant because of what they saw of them on a social networking site. Another survey by Kaplan Test Prep, a college prep organization, stated that 35% of the 500 college admissions offices they surveys admitted that something they saw online about an applicant negatively impacted their application. That’s up nearly 25% in a years time.
The good new is two states have currently passed laws protecting students and employees from having to turn over their log-in and password information to their schools and employers, and there are currently 36 state bills designed to do the same thing waiting to be passed. But they can still monitor your accounts, so the National Labor Relations Board has also passed ruling to protect the first-amendment rights of private sector employees. Of course none of this is a guaranteed protection.
This is not to say that you should be afraid of social media, or censor yourself, but rather recognize the potential permanency of social media/internet interactions, and its ability to have a long lasting impact. As you move through your life learning responsible communication and being aware of the consequences of actions that you may consider innocent, can be very important both to you and people in your life."
Kaplan Test Prep. (2012) Kaplan
Test Prep’s 2012 Survey of College Admissions Officers.http://www.kaptest.com/assets/pdfs/Highlights-from-Kaplan-Test-Preps-2012-College-Admissions-Officers-Survey.pdf
The only reason we were planning on not watching it is that we know the Democratic platform. We research and read about their platform all the time. We understand and agree with their platform. We had faith, and still do, that the claims they make will be based on, at least, well rounded facts and data...comparably anyway, when juxtaposed with the "content" of the Republican National Convention last week. We have faith that the Democratic platform involves real people helping real people, involves a more united philosophy, a free America. An America where the American Dream can be a real tangible thing.
And we'd be more familiar with the Republican platform...if they had a clear one that didn't primarily involve gutting the working people of the United States from both pocketbook and personal rights. If their platform didn't make our heart ache and our head pound...if it didn't conjure up images of donning a black veil for the death of the America we know.
We really wanted to watch the Democratic National Convention to see if they dropped as many outrageous "bombs" filled with lies that scattered shrapnel of wild-eyed hate, one way, or another, as the previous weeks political party convention had.
For all intent and purpose, the first night of the DNC was a yawner, for anyone who gets off on wild accusations and froths at the mouth with hatred for what they do not understand...well, there would be not wet panties or raging hard-ons. There wasn't hate-speech, or attacking, no wild accusations to incite rage.
Honestly we flipped the channel right before the speech made by Michelle Obama, which, from what we understand, was amazing. We were sure it was going to be touching, just as Ann Romney's appeared to be, and like we said, we know the platform. We know Mrs. Obama supports pro-choice, supports equal wages for women, supports love between any consenting adults. She supports women. She supports America.
The second night (Wednesday night) we didn't switch over once to the convention, but after Bill Clinton did his speech, we wish had. Twitter was all a flutter over him, even some of our most conservative Republican followers seemed enamoured. And when we flipped over to Facebook and The Father (our dad), our Right Wing Christian Republican father (hi, dad!) had written: "Ah ya, they don't call him slick Willie for nothin !" (not that he meant it in a positive way, however) on his Facebook page...well...there was no question about it, we were going to have to watch it.
So, we caught some highlights on CNN. And holy shit. We got the link this morning so we could watch it end to end (and supply it to you). It was everything a political speech should be.
Bill Clinton can talk, eloquent, witty, unaided by a Teleprompter, from his heart, and with honesty...not just because he believes what he is saying, but because what he is saying is true, and based on well-rounded data, research and facts.
In case you missed it...
(please let us know if this video gets removed from YouTube, or does not show up)
But what about the FACT checking? Just because we support the platform doesn't mean we are blind to folly. We wanted to make sure the people we support are keeping it on the up-and-up.
At the top of our morning our searches kept coming back to, and referencing, this article:
but if you want a quick video because...wow, you have read this far, and it's not over yet...then this brief (but not as in-depth) video from Bloomberg.com (we couldn't get the link to embed properly, so here is the link: No False Claims in Clinton's DNC Speechhttp://www.bloomberg.com/video/no-false-claims-in-clinton-s-dnc-speech-c2Ha7CgMRqm9CIwOZMH2mA.html (Bloomberg TV, September 6, 2012)
Of course you'll be able to find much more information, articles....and a whole lot of other opinion pieces, as the day progresses (For those "Google search challenged", you might want to try search words like "Bill Clinton" "DNC Speech" and "Fact Check"). Content full of information and specualtion about how facts may have been skewed, or how he mis-stepped in some places, how some of his claimed were a little exaggerated, just those same articles will be guilty of the same thing; and the opposition will come out with their guns blazing...but there's not much of a target for them; and it will make some of the more ignorant ones wild with rage and spew unfounded, angry, and hateful. Poor frustrated them.
It's sad to think of the people who will choose to vote this year based on personal agenda, like not being able to accept the idea of two consenting adults in love, of the same gender, being married - as if somehow it effects them on a daily basis; people who think the reproductive rights of a woman they don't know is their responsibility - even though it has nothing to do with them personally; wanting to "Keep America American" (funny enough the same slogan of the KKK in the 1920's), all the while destroying it - stripping people of their person freedom, making it harder to crawl from beneath poverty by reducing PELL grants for higher education, cutting nutrition programs in schools, reducing and wanting to eliminate fail-safes that so many American people depended on in the last recession, supporting big business by giving it more rights than people, keeping the American Dream just that, a dream.
These are parts of the Republican platform. All while doing things like registering their yachts in the Cayman Islands (to avoid taxes), cutting taxes for their rich friends, and hiding thier money in offshore accounts to avoid their responsibilities (taxes) as Americans - completely out of touch with what being American means.
That is not our America.
So, despite the possibility of both political party nominations being no better than the other, we are still going to vote, we are going to vote with the side that feels like it cares about the inalienable rights of the America people. The people who understand what it means to be a responsible compassionate American, and who understands that it doesn't mean forcing a personal, religious, agenda on people.
In the end, we feel even better about our vote than we did before. So much better that we're planning on donating, for the first time in our 15 years of adult voting ability, to a political party. Not just for us, for all the people our donation, our vote, stands for; women, children, the elderly, the poor and middle class, immigrants. For the people that make this country what it is. Our American family.
Because we value truth, and we value freedom.
We value human rights and we value progress.
We value our future. We value America.
And we believe in America.
