And 99% of those people have NEVER used facebook! They didn't even give it a chance! Yet, they're just Soooooooooo certain it's all bad!
Just like one of my uncles who I mentioned in my unusually short blog post from May 2011
http://pablowegesend.blogspot.com/2011/05/my-debate-with-facebook-hating-uncle.html
That blog post totally disprove this bull-waste about "facebook making us more isolated". Also, because of facebook, I made peace with someone accused of talking trash behind my back, I finally told off another jerk from the old days with comebacks I wish I thought off back in the days, I apologize to another classmate I disrespected, and much, much more! I wouldn't have had the chance to do those things without facebook, because we would've never come into contact post-school-days if it wasn't for facebook.
I also had birthday guest and was a birthday guest for one classmate that I wouldn't have re-united with if it wasn't for facebook! I bet it happened to millions worldwide!
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But there's more benefits by facebook then just meeting former classmates!
For one thing, it can gave you info that save lives
But hey, don't you just call your doctor for that?
Well, doctors aren't perfect people, and sometimes they miss some serious warning signs. Deborah Copaken Kogan had that experience concerning her son, and it turned out when she shared photos of her sick son, her facebook friends told her that her son's illness was more serious than her doctor made it out to be!
http://www.slate.com/id/2297933/?gt1=38001
While Paul, in his normal state of denial, dressed for work, I snapped a dozen iPhone photos of Leo from various angles to send to our family doctor via MMS, the least frightening of which I posted on Facebook so as not to alarm my (Facebook friend) mother. "Swelling worse," I typed, "especially eyes and chin. Fever still crazy high. Poor baby." Was I consciously trying to find an answer out there in the hive mind? No, but some subconscious part of me must have been wondering whether one of my hundreds of "friends" might be privy to some expertise on the befuddling Nutty Professor syndrome that had my child in its grips.
Ten minutes later, I received a call on my cell phone from Stephanie, a film actress and former neighbor. "I hope you'll excuse me for butting in," she said, "But you have to get to the hospital. Now." Her son Max had had the exact same symptoms, and was hospitalized for Kawasaki disease, a rare and sometimes fatal auto-immune disorder that attacks the coronary arteries surrounding the heart. "The longer you wait," she said, "the worse the damage."
(skipped paragraphs)
My cousin Emily, a pediatric cardiologist who often has to deal with the fallout from untreated Kawasaki, also called after seeing the photo, urging me to go to the hospital. "The damage begins as early as five days after the onset of symptoms," she said. At this point, we were well into day three or perhaps even day four, depending on when the symptoms had begun. I wasn't sure. I'd spent all day Saturday working on my book, and my husband doesn't notice rashes and fevers.
I called my family doctor and told him I was heading to the hospital. "I just have a Spidey sense," I said, "that he's really sick." Not a lie, but not the whole truth, either, though what was I going to say? Three of my Facebook friends think my kid has an extremely rare childhood auto-immune disorder which I just read about on Wikipedia, and since they all contacted me after I posted a photo of him on my wall, I'm going? It seemed … wrong! Reactionary. And yet as much as I wanted to be my usual mellow self, the immediacy of the Facebook feedback was enough to push me out the door.
From the hallway in triage, I finally called our family doctor. Admitted what I'd done—furtively filling in the reason-for-visit blank on the hospital form with "possible Kawasaki disease"—and why I'd done it. "You know what?" he said, "I was actually just thinking it could be Kawasaki disease. Makes total sense. Bravo, Facebook."
Over the next three weeks, as Leo was treated, released, retreated, and rereleased for, yes, first Kawasaki disease and then the Kawasaki-triggered liver disease from which he's still recovering, Facebook transformed from my son's inadvertent lifesaver to the most valuable tool in my arsenal: to keep family and friends abreast of his ever-mutating condition without having to steal time and emotional energy away from him; to pepper both Beth, the pediatrician, and Emily, the pediatric cardiologist, with an endless series of random questions with which I was too embarrassed to bother my own doctors; to feel connected—profoundly connected—to the human race while living, breathing, eating and sleeping in the isolating, fluorescent-lit bubble of a children's hospital ward, where any potential humans I might have "friended" on our floor were too distraught over the fates of their own children to make any room in their hearts for strangers.
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Again, this was from http://www.slate.com/id/2297933/?gt1=38001
Show that article to any loser who thinks facebook is all negative!
Because of the people Ms Kogan was in contact via facebook, she gained important information that her all-so-expert doctor overlooked! Even if her facebook friends might've made the wrong guess, it would've inspired Ms Kogan to get 2nd or even 3rd opinions from different doctors, that could save her child's life!
The more people you're in contact with, the more information you have access to! And facebook makes very easy to contact a lot of people all at once via updates!
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Facebook doesn't just save one live, it can even be the road to peace, something that could save millions of lives!
The following link is about how facebook has allowed Israelis and Palestinians to communicate with each other. Remember, those 2 groups live really segregated lives, with security measures making it hard to interact with each other, even though they live a few miles from each other.
From New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/10/world/middleeast/10mideast.html
Moad Arqoub, a Palestinian graduate student, was bouncing around the Internet the other day and came across a site that surprised and attracted him. It was a Facebook page where Israelis and Palestinians and other Arabs were talking about everything at once: the prospects of peace, of course, but also soccer, photography and music.
“I joined immediately because right now, without a peace process and with Israelis and Palestinians physically separated, it is really important for us to be interacting without barriers,” Mr. Arqoub said as he sat at an outdoor cafe in this Palestinian city.
It has been nearly two years since Israeli and Palestinian leaders have negotiated their peoples’ future and, with the region in turmoil and prospects for peace dim, interaction between Israelis and Palestinians is increasingly limited to Israeli military checkpoints in the West Bank.
But over the past month, the Facebook page has surprised those involved by the enthusiasm it has generated, suggesting that the Facebook-driven revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt may offer guidance for coexistence efforts as well.
(skipped paragraphs)
But most interesting so far have been the interactions online. At a time when Arabs generally shun contact with Israelis, those on the site speak openly about their desire to learn more about one another.
“This is my first contact with Israelis,” said Lyth Sharif, an 18-year-old Palestinian student at Birzeit University in the West Bank who comes from Dura, a town near Hebron. “A friend of mine told me about it, and I think it’s cool. I joined a few days ago. It helps me understand the difference between Israel and the occupation.”
Unlike members of his parents’ generation who worked in Israel, learned some Hebrew and watched Israeli television, Mr. Sharif has never set foot inside Israel or Jerusalem, a result of the security barrier and Israeli regulations.
Mr. Arqoub, who is 29, knows Israel better. As a youth he sneaked into Israel and worked for a family he grew to love. Later he was imprisoned by the Israelis for two years without explanation, he said. But he rejected bitterness.
Salah al-Ayan, a Palestinian Authority official and a friend of Mr. Savir’s who is helping with the site, said the lack of interaction today between Israelis and Palestinians about ordinary things was alarming.
“Believe me, they don’t know each other at all,” he said in his Ramallah office. “Our goal is to start by talking about art and sports. Since Israelis and Palestinians don’t meet face to face anymore, this is a virtual place to meet. I was happy when I saw that some Palestinians had voted for Israeli photos in the contest.”
(skipped paragraphs)
He said: “I asked one Egyptian why he had contacted me and why he was taking part in this, and he said: ‘After the revolution, everything is permitted. I want to see what Israelis are like.’ ”
Nimrod Ben Ze’ev, a 25-year-old student of Middle Eastern studies at Tel Aviv University, said much of the interaction on the site was still rather wooden — what he called “a peace dialogue mentality.” But he is optimistic.
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So much for this nonsense about "facebook keeping us isolated". Facebook and other social networks allow for a social bridge between groups that have been traditionally divided! Younger people who are ready to ignore the bigoted attitudes of their family can go online and interact with those of other cultural groups. They can find out the other groups aren't as scary as the stereotypes make them out to be!
While face-to-face communication is great, online social networks can create social interaction when face-to-face interaction is impossible!
Online social networks are still a new thing! If it can encourage Israelis and Palestinians to interact with each other in 2011, imagine what that can mean for the peace process in the future! It could also mean other people of rival ethnic groups can communicate with each other online, learning each other's side of the story, learning how their life is!
Look, 4 decades ago, most people couldn't imagine an African-American president of the USA! Today, it's reality! Sports, entertainment and other media forms gave exposure of African-American role models to millions of Americans who don't live around that many African-Americans! It's hard to be an anti-black racist if your favorite team has an African-American star, or if the song that makes you dance is sung by an African-American! It will also be harder for the younger generation to be anti-Latino with Dora on the TV and Pitbull on the radio!
And pop culture doesn't just unite cultures in the US! Bollywood films have both Muslim and Hindu stars, often appearing in the same films. It also has bridged the divides between India & Pakistan!
From Shikha Dalmia
http://reason.com/archives/2011/07/27/bollywood-vs-jihad
India is a country riven with religious, linguistic, socioeconomic, and regional clashes. But the battle that split the country in two last year concerned a far more basic, existential question: Munni or Sheila?
These are the screen names of the sex sirens who danced and lip-synced in Bollywood’s two biggest hit songs not just of 2010 but likely in the Indian film industry’s entire 112-year history: “Munni Badnam Hui,” from the blockbuster Dabangg, and “Sheila Ki Jawani,” from Tees Maar Khan.
Bollywood has done MORE to counter-act against the Muslim fanatics than all the US military power in the world! Bollywood has done MORE to counter-act against the Muslim fanatics than ALL of the FoxNews/right-wing talk radio/Islamophobic blogs COMBINED!
Islamic fundamentalists have long worried about the threat that Bollywood poses to their puritanical demands. Of late, they have even taken to making videos—rap videos, no less—condemning Bollywood movies as being the product of an infidel culture trying to brainwash Muslims against their own religious values and duties. They have ample reason to be worried: About 3 billion people, or half the planet, watches Bollywood, and many of them live in the Islamic world. By depicting assimilated, modernized Muslims, Bollywood—without even trying—deromanticizes and thereby disarms fanatical Islam. If you can have Munni and Sheila in this world, why on earth would you want to strap bombs to your waist and blow yourself up for the sake of 72 theoretical virgins?
For a decade now, America has been fighting the scourge of Islamist terrorism by deploying its considerable hard power.
Washington has launched wars in two allegedly hostile countries, launched drone attacks in allegedly friendly countries, tortured countless terror suspects, and unleashed Transportation Security Administration inspectors to grope and fondle its own citizens. But with the debt and deficit spiraling out of control and with civil libertarians up in arms over the loss of liberties for a war that has no conceivable end, American hard power is arguably maxed out.
And pop culture also did MORE to counter-act communist propaganda in Cold War era Eastern Europe than all the nuclear weapons in the world!
Not that hard power is all it’s cracked up to be anyway. It is widely recognized that the West won the Cold War in at least some significant part because its music and culture won the hearts and minds of Eastern Bloc youth. But the kind of Western soft power that proved so crucial in bringing down the Soviet empire—jazz, Hollywood, the Beatles—is arguably less relevant in the struggle against fundamentalist Islam. American culture, despite its alleged ubiquity, doesn’t have the same resonance in Eastern countries that don’t share the West’s ethnic, religious, and cultural background. While hip hop and heavy metal have helped inspire some of the street protesters demanding more freedoms across the Middle East and northern Africa, outside of the hardcore early adopters these cultural subgenres remain more voyeuristic than aspirational. Their popularity arguably stems more from a curiosity about how exotic people in alien countries live than from an inclination to emulate them.
On Bollywood's influence in bridging the divides between India and Pakistan, even during times when Pakistani government banned Indian films.
The Muslim country most in the grip of Bollywood mania is Pakistan, India’s cultural twin in every respect but religion. The more aggressively that Pakistani authorities have tried to purge it from their soil, the more Bollywood’s popularity has grown. During the country’s four-decade-long ban on Indian movies, Pakistanis watched them via satellite dishes and smuggled VHS tapes. When the ban was finally lifted in 2008, the Bollywood scene in Pakistan exploded. Not only have Bollywood movies been playing to packed houses, but Indian movie stars are treated like demigods, despite Islam’s taboo against idol worship. The latest fad among Pakistan’s urban nouveau riche is Bollywood theme weddings in which the bride and groom dress in outfits worn by a particular movie’s stars and hold their wedding reception in elaborate tents constructed to resemble movie sets.
True changes within the cultures has to come from within! Invasions from foreign powers can only do so much!
It’s hard to emulate—and adulate—a cultural form while simultaneously rejecting its message. And Bollywood’s message is profoundly at odds with the strictures of Islamic extremism. At the simplest level, women who don Bollywood outfits, even when adapted for more modest sensibilities, are resisting the Islamic strictures that would shroud them in a burqa. At a deeper level, Bollywood movies offer a compromise between tradition and modernity that resonates with ordinary Muslims while subverting Islamist designs.
Take romantic movies. You might have expected Hollywood’s more sexually explicit romances to pose a bigger threat to puritanical Shariah law than Bollywood’s tamer approach. You’d be wrong. Both Hollywood and Bollywood idealize true love that conquers all. But the obstacles that Hollywood couples face—previous lovers, infidelity, commitment phobia, baggage from broken marriages—have little to do with the concerns of people in traditional Muslim countries. They can relate far more with Bollywood’s paramours, whose chief impediment is familial objections, given that arranged marriage is still a revered institution in that part of the world.
And just like how movies, TV sports and music has given star-power to the African-Americans in the US, Bollywood has done the same for the Muslim minority in India!
There is another key reason for Bollywood’s appeal to the Islamic world. Since its inception, some of the Indian film industry’s biggest stars, both male and female, have been Muslims. Currently, the three highest grossing male leads are Muslims, all with the recognizably Muslim surname Khan. Bollywood’s most respected music composer—A.R. Rahman, who won an Oscar for the score of Slumdog Millionaire—is also a Muslim, as are many of Bollywood’s best lyricists and screenwriters.(skipped paragraphs)
The best Sufi music these days is arguably coming not from the Mideast but from the Indian subcontinent, thanks in no small part to Bollywood Muslims. By showcasing these artists and their work, the Indian film industry demonstrates to Muslims everywhere that adapting to modernity does not require them to abandon their faith and traditions. In fact, it can be a vehicle for preserving and promoting them.
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On pop culture's influence in collapsing the communist power in Eastern Europe
From John Stossell
http://reason.com/archives/2011/07/28/what-we-dont-know-can-hurt-us/print
I told him that I thought that the Soviet Union collapsed because the Soviets spent so much trying to keep pace with Ronald Reagan's military buildup
On the contrary, Russell said, "it collapsed from within. ... People simply walked away from the ideology of communism. And that began especially when American popular culture—jazz and rock and roll—began infiltrating those countries after World War II."
I demanded evidence.
"American soldiers brought jazz during World War II to the eastern front. Soviet soldiers brought it back. Eastern European soldiers brought it and spread it across those countries. ... Stalin was hysterical about this."
The authorities were particularly concerned about young people performing and enjoying sensual music.
"Any regime at all depends on social order to maintain its power. Social order and sensuality, pleasures of the body, are often at odds. Stalin and his commissars understood that."
American authorities 30 years earlier also feared the sensuality of black music, said Russell, attacking it "as primitive jungle music that was bringing down American youth. Stalin and his commissars across Eastern Europe said exactly the same things with the same words later."
Then rock and roll came.
"That was even more threatening," Russell said. "By the 1980s, disco and rock were enormously popular throughout the communist world."
The communists realized they had to relax the rules or risk losing everything, but it was too late. One of the most amazing and significant spectacles was Bruce Springsteen's concert in East Germany in 1988, when a crowd of 160,000 people who lived behind the Iron Curtain sang "Born in the USA."
And Stossel said this!
People want choices, and you can't indoctrinate that out of them.
AMEN TO THAT!
As the internet age moves along, people can chose to be exposed to more cultures, more ideas, more information more options. Through social networks, they can interact with people they usually don't have much of a chance to interact face-to-face! They can be exposed to more information that can even save the life of their loved ones! They can be exposed to information about other cultures, and learn not to fear them! This can lead to fewer rivalries, more unity, and more lives saved through peace!
Those who want to remain in the old days, and hate on the internet, facebook or pop culture can continue to live in misery and ignorance! The rest of the world has moved on!
