Hashtagging The Debate

Me and a couple of my roommates actually got together and watched the debate.  It was kind of nice to see that Millenials are interested in politics rather than just voting for a candidate because of what they hear or what their party affiliation is.  As we were watching it, I compared my twitter and what was being shown to what was being shown on their account and I was shocked.  I never really realized how tailored my twitter was to show me what they thought that I wanted to see.

My views and the views that I express on my twitter are more aligned with the Democratic party so I thought it would be interesting to compare my feed to my roommates who is much more on the Republican side.  I was shocked by how much hate there was on both of our feeds.  But, it was usually just hate on one person.  When I looked at my feed and my trending hashtags, it showed people bashing on Donald Trump.  But, when I switched to my friends account, it was just an overload of hate on Hillary.  The thing that surprised me the most is the fact that neither of the accounts showed much positive on the candidate which twitter thought was being supported.  I thought it would show a lot of support and positive materials about the said candidate, but it just showed more hate towards the candidate which the algorithms figured that you didn't like.

Until now, I had not realized that twitter was like this.  I thought it just showed the most current and relevant trends and fed them to you.  This was interesting to really show how something as national as a presidential debate can still be tailored to show you exactly what you want.  It makes you realize how hard you really have to look to get the whole picture of a story from the media.  Every outlet is going to be bias to show you either what you want to see or what they want you to see.  With the increase in media availability, it is still just as hard to get the whole picture of a story.

Well Informed "Race Baiting"

The whole argument with race baiting and police brutality is a very hard topic to discuss because so often we believe that you cannot stand with both sides.  You are either with the police or you are against it.  That does not always have to be the case.  I believe that the police, when they do their job correctly, can be a huge positive in our society.  It is hard because a new or uneducated officer makes a major mistake and that mistake is broadcast nationally and that sets back all of the efforts that the police do to protect us.  They put their lives on the line every day to attempt to ensure safety for all of us.

To fix a problem the first step is to recognize the existence of the problem.  And there most definitely is a problem with our police system.  No one wants to be a police officer right now because of all the negative thoughts about them so there is a shortage of qualified applicants.  They also are not paid very well so people may not want this as a long term career because there is not a lot of money in the profession over time.  The solution to this is to get people through the police training academy as quickly as possible so that they may get out into the workforce so that they can fill up these understaffed units.  The problem with this is these new officers lack real training because they were being rushed.  Because of this they do not know how to correctly handle a delicate situation so they are often times trigger happy when they shouldn't be.  This then creates a larger divide because it continues to happen more and more.

We must get officers the training that they need so that they may handle these hard situations correctly.  As we do this we must also get these officers in the community away from their job so that when they are sent to handle a situation, they are comfortable around the people they are around.  The people will then be comfortable with them because they recognize them as a part of the community.  This has to be more desirable of a job so that people who truly want to be there are there.

Kids These Days

I chose to listen to "Kids These Days" and i'm very glad I did.  The main part of the podcast that really struck me was the talk about how kids these days are being coddled and protected from anything that we might find offensive.  While I do not believe you should be introduced to anything that could be very harmful in class, I do believe that you must get into sometimes uncomfortable discussions to learn.  I think that it can be a good idea to make students aware of what the topic will be that is going to be discussed in class.  This can help students to fully gather their thoughts so that they do not misspeak when they are talking about a topic that is already hard to discuss.  But, I do not believe that students should be offended by anything discussed in class because this is a place of academia.  An environment that preaches questioning of everything so that there can be as much learning as possible.  We should cater to our students to let them know what will be coming but we should not coddle them and make them feel as if everything that is ever discussed has to be completely comfortable.  The most growth comes when we are uncomfortable.

I don't believe that polls should be relied on as heavily as they currently are in our society.  Especially in politics, they are way too easy to manipulate to show the data that you want.  There are certain techniques that these poll makers can do to have the poll show the outcome which they desire or is desired by the source requesting the poll.  I think that a big problem with these polls is that the public is not very knowledgeable about the sources which these polls come from, which means they are being taken for what is shown rather than taking into account the other things such as biases that go into these polls.