JOU432 Journal

This week has been a whirlwind. Between book releases, award ceremonies, and finals, this week has been insane. And that’s without including my four teenagers, my job, and my elderly dog who is undergoing mobility therapy. 

I’ve found little time to post on social media as of late, but I did post about the Reach book launch on Facebook. 

I posted pictures of the cover, which I painted, and of a poem and painting I did that was selected for publication. 

This week, I’ve read so many ridiculous posts about how the vaccine contains microchips, live viruses, and AIDS. I’m tired people who don’t understand science being able to spread lies that are dangerous. So, I’ve posted a lot about the vaccine.

My posts have not had as much activity on them, which I expected since people are tired of reading about Covid 24/7. Sometimes, it’s important to speak the truth even when others don’t want to hear it. 

I started a bathroom remodel over spring break that will last at least a few weeks. Normally, I would just post a single post with a before and after pic, detailing the entire event. I decided that I would upload pictures and anecdotes throughout the construction. 

I started with this post:

and I have been uploading content along the way to show the progress. 

I have broken up the monotony of bathroom remodeling by uploading a video of my dog at the dog park. 

This week was the week of my birthday. Thanks to Facebook telling everyone that it was my birthday, I had a ton of people post to my timeline.

Usually, I would “like” each post and write one single post thanking everyone for all of the love. This year I decided to do some social listening and respond to each post individually. 

People then liked my comments thanking them for the birthday wishes. A few people would see a mutual friend’s post, wishing me a happy birthday, and he or she would comment on that post as well. 

This week for Journalism 432, I had to analyze three media organizations and two photojournalists on Instagram and Snapchat for four consecutive days. The assignment wasn’t hard or taxing, but it was tedious and even a little worrisome when I realized that one of the accounts did not post anything new for the day. I compared the media organizations to each other and to themselves on the different platforms. The photojournalist’s’ pages were exciting. 

I’ve been spending a lot of time drawing lately. I’m an artist, but I rarely showcase my artwork on social media. I decided to post a series of time-lapse videos of me drawing a duck I named Ducky McDuckface. 

Most of my social media presence is personal. The only professional social media accounts I use are LinkedIn and Twitter. Facebook is the platform I am on the most because it is where most of my friends are. 

This week, many Facebook friends have tagged me in random posts. This one below is engaging friends and encouraging them to share stories:

This post from my partner was a joke that engaged some of our other friends to weigh in on our hot tub search but with a funny twist:

And this one is from a friend who made me a Bernie Sanders in mittens doll:

Some years ago, I started a campaign with a friend, director and cinematographer, Jordan Allen, to bring back the hit television show, The 4400. My role was to create and manage the Facebook page. Jordan made all of the content fliers and videos.

We worked with the stars of the show: Jacqueline McKenzie, Joel Gretsch, Laura Allen, Chad Faust, Patrick John Flueger, Richard Kahan, Conchita Campbell, and more. The actors would send us pictures and videos for us to use in the videos and posts. The actors even participated in a live Q&A on Twitter. 

The goal was to garner enough excitement and gather enough petition signatures to get the show rebooted. 

The Facebook page gained over 14K followers.

The petition gained over 92,000 signatures. 

We furthered our endeavor by asking the fans to send emails to Netflix and Hulu requesting a reboot of the show. 

Unfortunately, the show was never rebooted. We let the campaign die, and I stopped being active on the Facebook page. 

Today, I posted just to keep the page semi-active. 

I tweeted a photo last week of my to-go lunch from Missouri Western State University. I used the hashtags #JOU432 (as required for my journalism class project) and #ScavengerHunt (which is not required, but it is the project I am working on, so I decided to use it). 

Shortly after tweeting, a person who does not follow me and who I do not follow commented on my tweet. Her comments seemed passive aggressive, like she assumed I was a vegan but wanted to point out that I was eating non-vegan foods. 

I clicked on her profile and “Beef-lover” was the second thing she wrote about herself, so it further proved my theory that she was responding to bash veganism. I responded politely and honestly to inform her that, while I am not a vegan, I do like to try vegan foods. 

I chose to not respond to her final comment, opting to “heart” it instead to end the conversation. It worked. 

Many Americans watched in horror as the conspiracy theory known as QAnon spread through the nation virtually overnight. The firmly-held belief that Donald Trump was the sole protector against a cabal of cannibal, pedophile elitists, including Hillary Clinton and many Hollywood stars, seemed so ridiculous that those who didn’t believe couldn’t fathom how others could. 

The conspiracy theory was not benign, however. There were many violent outbursts from believers: a California wildfire, an assassination plot, an armed standoff in Arizona, many kidnapping plots against Democrats, and the deadly attack on the US Capitol. 

Originally posted by Rick Loomis at Getty Images. 

On the morning of Joe Biden’s inauguration, many QAnon believers thought that there was no way that Biden would be sworn in. Many stated that they believed the military would step in and declare Marshall Law, thousands of arrests would be made to bring an end to the elitist ring of pedophiles, and Donald Trump would be installed as our permanent president. 

When none of those things happened, many QAnon believers said the spell had been broken. They woke from a trance and realized just how far down the rabbit hole they had fallen. News reports came out detailing how people fell victim to such a theory, and how others felt lucky to have their lives back. 

But, like all true conspiracy theories with a cult-like following, this one has not died completely. QAnon has adapted and changed its predictions. Now, they claim that Trump will be sworn back into office on March 4th, 2021.