Chillax.in

What happens to a controversial tweet?

More often than not, it gets deleted.  Quickly.   One of my greatest/silliest fears is that I will send out a personal tweet on the Academy account.  It’s not that I make a habit of tweeting controversial things, but I doubt folks who follow the @GattonAcademy account want to hear about Doctor Who.  Well, maybe.

Even when errant or ill-conceived tweets are deleted, the problem is that screen captures help these statements live on forever… or at least as forever as the rapid pace of the Internet will allow.  That is what is so troubling about the web app lemmetweetthatforyou.com.  I can’t say it’s an incredibly complex or genius bit of code, but I do assert it could be fairly dangerous.

One simply enters the username of any public account on Twitter.  Lemme slurps the name of the user, the profile photo, and page background as well.  If you use links, @ mentions, or hashtags, they will also appear in the color palate of the profile.   You can event set a time stamp for the tweet.  It looks like a tweet… but it’s a tweet that never existed.

The image for this post is a fake tweet I made for my wife.  She has never read The Hunger Games.  I doubt she would get the joke above.  With the movie coming out tomorrow, it’s all good fun.  What if I made a fake tweet from our university’s departing athletics director that said “Bye suckas!”?  What if there was a fake Academy tweet that said “No dumb people.”?  While there are very minor, tell-tale signs that these aren’t real tweets, imagine the time it would take to explain it away.

With how quickly incorrect information moves across the Internet, who would even care?

Sometimes a dumb tweet can even result in a bit of social good; however, I don’t think this tool will promote that kind of action.

Click on the image above to view the full photo.

Even though Elliott only took a fifteen minute nap today at daycare, Stephanie’s mom was insistent that Elliott watch the broadcast version of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer on CBS tonight.  Nevermind the fact that we own the special on DVD and there is such thing as DVR at our disposal.  But Grandma gets what grandma wants, and here’ the proof.  We had to ply him with leftover pumpkin cake to keep his attention, but I think Lynn would say it was worth it.

Click the image above to view the full tweet.

When did we stop teaching students the differences between “free speech” and “responsible speech”?

The Atlantic Wire offers the following story of a high school student who offered the above tweet after her school’s visit with Kansas Governor Brownback.  Turns out an aide who monitors the social media channels forwarded the tweet to the school principal, who reprimanded the student and demanded she write an apology.

The interwebs have erupted in a mix of free speech, overreaction on the part of the Governor (note: it was an aide of the governor who contacted the event organizer who then contacted the principal; it appears Brownback was not directly involved), and the usual flame-wars that come out of this sort of thing.  As a result, the following update was made to the story this afternoon with this note:

As the blowback spreads across other social media platforms, Sullivan’s also become a surprisingly sharp thorn in the governor’s side. And no, she will not apologize for it. By Monday afternoon, however, it was Brownback who was apologizing. “My staff over-reacted to this tweet, and for that I apologize,” Brownback told Yahoo News. “Freedom of speech is among our most treasured freedoms.”

Again, this is where I return to the terms of “free speech,” “respectful speech,” and “responsible speech.”  The notions are not mutually exclusive, but I increasingly find that the later two elements are surprisingly absent from the former.  Schools should teach students how to be respectful digital citizens and realize that there are consequences to their actions.

Will the governor lose sleep over name calling? Of course not.  However, what this says about Ms. Sullivan is that she is extremely flippant in her use of social media. Her comments are far from the kind of constructie dialogue that is part of good human behavior much less engaged citizenship.  What does it say that individuals would rush so quickly to her aid over being rude?  Disagree, satirize, and debate all you want, but do it in meaningful, constructive ways.

Perhaps the school should not have demanded she write the letter, but I think it is wise to use this as a teaching moment about reasonable online behavior for young adults.  I would certainly do the same–and have done similar–in the case of Academy students.  This has often led to similar kinds of headaches for myself, but I wholeheartedly believe that a student is a representative of their school and their own self.  With so many concerns about cyber-bullying, privacy, over-sharing, and a host of other digital concerns, it makes sense that we seize this opportunities to help students become better young adults.  DigitalCitizenship.net offers nine comprehensive themes of such instruction: digital access; digital commerce; digital communication; digital literacy; digital etiquette; digital law; digital rights and responsibilities; digital health and wellness; and digital security (self-protection).   Of these, digital etiquette resonates mostly strongly with me:

Technology users often see this area as one of the most pressing problems when dealing with Digital Citizenship. We recognize inappropriate behavior when we see it, but before people use technology they do not learn digital etiquette (i.e., appropriate conduct).   Many people feel uncomfortable talking to others about their digital etiquette.  Often rules and regulations are created or the technology is simply banned to stop inappropriate use. It is not enough to create rules and policy, we must teach everyone to become responsible digital citizens in this new society.

So many educators are quick to throw the social media baby out with the bath water.  Ultimately, I think that does more harm for students than good.  It is only when we engage in appropriate, respectful dialogues do students grow, mature, and realize the power of these resources.

Click the image above to view the full photo.

Honestly, I’m a sucker for a good Christmas TV special.  From Rudolph’s morality play in otherness to dancing Ewoks, it’s hard to go wrong with a tale of magic, wonder, and merriment this time of year.  I was a bit surprised when An Elf’s Story rode shotgun for CBS’s slate of Christmas specials.

Based on the 2005 book Elf on the Shelf, the special profiles the adventure of scout elf who is adopted by a family, reports to Santa on their behavior, and teaches one special boy the magical gift of believing when he begins to doubt the existence of Santa–all in a tidy thirty minutes, minus commercials.

Here’s the kicker, though, the entire thing is a commercial.

My brother’s family–particularly his two kids–love Elf on the Shelf.  You can get the gist of how this works from the official website for the product.  It’s a charming game for kids to play while counting down the days to Christmas, but there’s something about this blatant hawking of a product in the guise of a cartoon that really upsets me.  Granted, Hasbro’s “The Hub” cable network and most Saturday morning cartoons for the last thirty years exist for this purpose alone.  Year after year, few will argue against the notion that Christmas has been taken over by capitalism.  We’re even at the point of Black Friday eating away at Thanksgiving.

If the Christmas message fails to inspire and you can stomach the commercialism of the cartoon, then maybe–just maybe–you’ll find the most inspiring part of the story is how it all came to be.  The story of Elf on the Shelf is really more about American entrepreneurial spirit than of Holiday Cheer. Carol Aebersold and her daughter Chanda Bell wrote the story and, in absence of a major publishing house taking them on, self-published the book.  Fast forward six years, and they’re up for round two.  Inc. offers a fascinating tale on how Pitt convinced self-produced the feature and convinced CBS to air it, while underscoring that the company is one of the top 5,000 privately-held companies and earned just shy of $10 million in revenue in 2010.

Warms your heart, right? But Hank Stuever of The Washington Post’s lifestyle section offers this critique of such parental tactics of scaring kids in behaving this time of year:

Who can resist the holiday fun of scaring the children into good behavior? Ask any of history’s most efficient dictators — they’ll tell you. Christmas just isn’t Christmas without the naughty-nice punishment paradigm. Where would this holiday be without its good old-fashioned behavioral paranoia? Charles Dickens may get all the credit for this, but do also consider George Orwell.

While you’re at it, spend a few minutes with Kandace Creel Falcón’s discussion of Elf on the Shelf in the context of Foucault’s panopticon, order, and race/gender politics.

There you have it.  Somewhere among Christmas and Capitalism, Fear and Faith, you have Elf on the Shelf.  If you’re inclined to outsource surveillance this Christmas to a Kewpie doll, Target is offering a complimentary $5 gift card with purchase of the box set this week.

There comes a moment in time where each generation is defined by a product. 1970s: Bellbottoms. 1980s: The Walkman. 1990s: Jnco skater jeans. 2000s: Any iDevice.

Perhaps the Millienials of the 20-teens will be defined by the magic that is the Taco Bell Doritos Taco.  Geekosystem probably states it best as the opine below:

Since there is no hope of stopping this gastronomic train wreck, I’m hoping that TacoBell will embrace it and other recent stories on their food with a slogan along the lines of: “The Dorito Taco: 36% meat, 100% Doirtos.”

I’m down with that.  A company that espouses the value of the 4th Meal concept must understand the inherent strangeness of such a product.  At the same time, I’m fully okay with the concept.  From the KFC Double Down to Man vs. Food, we’ve become accustomed as a society to gastro-abnormalities.  Surely if we can stomach the foodstuffs of This is Why You’re Fat, then we can handle a little nacho cheese powder.  (Maybe we can’t stomach TiWYF, since it appears the site no longer exists.)

The Doritos Locos Taco was first served up in test markets across the US earlier this April.  With a second wave of Internet excitement this week, let’s hope a full roll-out isn’t far behind.