Socially Removed

Something I like to observe when I'm sitting with a group of my friends is how many of them are involed in separate activities using their technology. I touched upon this topic in the post about 'screens' so I took it upon myself so observe some of my friends closer.

My roommates and I have dinner together often. We all like to cook and we invite our other friends over for dinner pretty often. Recently there were about 7 of us sitting at the dinner table. Usually it is silent because everyone is eating, but this time I looked around and 5 out of 7 people were on their phones. I had just put my phone down so only me and one other friend wasn't engaged with their technology. I made two or three comments before anyone really looked up and reacted. I said something like "what is going on?" assuming there might be something interesting going on.

One of the most common reactions when everyone looks up from their phones at the same time is something along the lines of "did you see what 'so and so' tweeted?" or " did you see her status?". Even though a large group of my friends could be sitting in the same room, everyone is still contsantly occupied with knowing what everyone ELSE is doing. Although everyone is engaging in the same social activity of sitting together at the dinner table, people are socially removed from this specific situation and are entering themselves socially through their phones or other forms of technology.

I find myself doing this and get mad. If we continue to be so involved with our screens, the future will look quite depressing. There is a scene in Wall-E that reminds me of what the future could come to if we are constantly involved in our screens. Everyone is large and round sitting on motorized chairs with screens surrounding their heads. No effort needed at all. It's a scary though.

What is your Tattoo Saying?

Several of my friends spent a semester abroad in Thailand during their junior year. Near the end of their journey, several of them decided to get tattoos. One particular friend of mine, Patty, shared her tattoo experience with me. Her tattoo, which is displayed across her left forearm, is written in Thai and is translated in English to “wild is the wind”. At first I assumed that ‘wild as the wind’ was just a traditional Thai phrase that Patty liked so she decided to get it tattooed on her arm. When I asked her about it, she told me it was actually something she always says. When she was younger and still to this day, “wild is the wind” is just a phrase she always enjoyed saying in regards to freedom and spontaneity.

“It just means, you know, be like the wind, be free, be spontaneous. It’s a phrase I always say so it really means something to me,” Patty said.

Most people I know with tattoos say they do not regret getting them or at least claim they do not regret getting them. Patty was one of these people. When I asked her if she had any regrets about getting her tattoo she said absolutely not. She told me that she only loves it more and more every day. “Wild is the wind” is a phrase that has made her who she is and will continue to shape her in the future so she thinks it is meaningful to have it inked onto her skin. Will she change her mind in the future? Who knows.

For Patty, getting this tattoo was a way for her to outwardly express something that is meaningful to her, which is an aspect of pop culture. Today, we are able to tweet about something we care about, or post a picture or video, many visual things. Getting tattoos falls somewhere in this category. We can change our mind a lot on the internet, but getting something as permanent as a tattoo shows a strong devotion to that topic. It is a way for Patty to express her identity and will forever remind her of the amazing journey she had while studying abroad. It relates one particular time in her life to something that defines her whole identity and whole life.

Another person close to me that has a tattoo is my sister, Katherine. For about 16 months after she graduated college, she traveled around Australia, New Zealand and Papua New Guinea for a volunteer program called Oceans Watch. Near the end of her experience, sometime when she was in Australia, she received a tattoo on her ribs in a nice thin font saying: “mad to live”.  Similar to Patty’s reasoning for getting her tattoo, my sister has lived by the quote “mad to live” for a while. It comes for her favorite book On the Road by Jack Kerouac. The full quote reads: “The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow Roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars, and in the middle, you see the blue center-light pop, and everybody goes ahh...” This is her favorite quote from the book as she feels it relates to her life. My sister loves to travel and meet interesting people along the way, and during her travels she was only reminded of her favorite quote and felt it was important to her to get it tattooed on her body. When she first got the tattoo, she told me that as her life goes on, she could eventually add more to the tattoo to go along with the quote. For example, under her original tattoo, she might eventually get the tattoo “mad to talk”.

She was extremely nervous to tell my parents about getting the tattoo and both of us had to keep the secret until one day we were on a family vacation in Florida and my sister had to wear a bathing suit. Fortunately, my parents were not angry at her, and actually had expected that she would get a tattoo. My parents, however, do not think that getting a tattoo is the best way of expressing something meaningful. My mom always says to me: “when I die, please do NOT get a tattoo of my name”. Although I will rightfully respect my moms request, what’s to stop me from getting a tattoo later in life when something meaningful rolls along. Is it more meaningful for me to express something with a tattoo, or with something simply social like a tweet or Facebook upload? Do people really get tattoos because it means something to them, or is it a way or showing the rest of the world something about his or her identity. Eventually people go from just having one or two tattoos to having 10 or 20. Each of these tattoos might say something about a person, whether it is extremely personal, or very simple, like a tattoo of a wave because that person likes to swim. It’s a different way of expressing identity.

What Screens are you Using?

I took this picture of my roommate in our apartment the other day. We were both sitting on our separate beds on our separate computers simultaneously doing really nothing. Even though we were three feet away in the same room, instead of talking to each other we were staring at the screens of our computers. My roommate’s computer screen also shows that she is on facebook chat. In this case, her use of the screen is helping her communicate easily with others. Chatting via facebook is one way that people find extremely necessary to communicate through and it would be impossible to do this without a screen, whether it be a computer screen, iPhone, Android, etc. This particular photo would be an example of how screens can sometimes create isolation. More often than not, when I see people walking around campus alone I see them on their cell phones or ipods. I am definitely a victim of that as well. Since we have the option to whip out our “screens” to interact, play a game, listen to music or browse the Web, why wouldn’t we? We are physically alone, but we are using our sources of technology to feel surrounded and interactive. In reality, I’m sure there have been times where I’ve been too glued to my phone and didn’t look up to say hello to someone. With that person criticize me for being isolate on my technology and ignoring them? Or will that person not have seen me either because they too were distracted by a certain screen.



This next picture is of my friend Gina intently watching a Justin Bieber music video. I took this picture a few months ago when my roommates and I had serious Bieber Fever. We would occasionally watch Justin Bieber’s music videos for entertainment. Although Gina could have easily been watching the screen alone in a corner, we were indeed surrounding the screen as a group so it was a somewhat inclusive activity rather than isolation. To go into deeper context, the use of the screen in this case was our way to get closer to a celebrity. Since we can’t be with them in person and have them perform for us, we turn to the use of screens to get a close enough feeling. The sad thing is we didn’t just watch one music video, the time flew as we watched about six Justin Bieber videos. So we watched for about a half hour. Maybe that’s pathetic, but it felt like we were just watching an episode of television, except we were able to control what we wanted to watch, and that’s the bottom line. The role of technology in pop culture today has a lot to do with control.




These two photos are a before and after picture of my friend when she died her hair. She made a split second decision while we were abroad last year to die her golden locks brown. In the first picture, she is using her computer screen to follow directions on how to use the hair dye. She used her computer screen as a reference point during the entire process. Although printed out directions also came with the dye, which is also visible in the picture, for some reason it seemed more trusted to look up how to do it online. This also says something about screens and pop culture: instead of trusting one source, we feel it necessary to use our technology to see what other people have to say. The next picture is when her hair is actually dyed. After using her computer screen to follow instructions, she is now using her screen to communicate to people “Hey! I just dyed my hair! Omg!” In one situation she has used the screen in both an informative and a communicative manner. Did this isolate her? No, not exactly. The screens helped her to feel more comfortable and confident during her hair dying process. It also enabled her to keep all of her friends and family in touch with what she was doing. Not only is a ‘status update’ wildly used in society today, but it was also helpful since we were in Europe and using our computers was the easiest way to communicate with people.



In this last picture, the screen is actually not visible. We were having a party in my apartment a few months ago and an important sports game was playing so everyone crowded around our awkwardly small TV screen. This was the only ‘screen’ in our apartment that was playing the game and therefore it became a priority for people to pay attention to it. Most of the people who were interested in watching the game stood around the television screen for the entire remainder of the game, not really aware of what was going on around them. It didn’t really bother other people at the party because it seemed like a normal occurrence
Screens are everywhere. In our day and age we cannot avoid them.  Most of these photos, I took without the intention of pointing out that people pay far too much attention to the screens in our lives. That says something about how accustomed we are today to using these screens in every episode of our life. We look at a screen when we wake up. We pass several screens on our way to class. We use several screens while in class. And in this class, we assess the use of screens themselves. There is no way to avoid them. If someone asked you how much time on average do you spend in front of a screen, you might not give an accurate answer. We spend so much time in front of screens that we couldn’t even calculate it.

Is Pinterest Here To Stay?

In total Internet traffic in January 2012, Pinterest placed fifth, beating out YouTube and coming extremely close to overcoming Twitter. Can Pinterest compete with other social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter? I think it can, but only to a certain extent.

Recently, Mashable posted an article reporting that Pinterest has developed a new layout. Rather than having five cluttered columns with photos for people to pin, Pinterest will do something that is pretty similar to Facebook’s timeline, although CEO Ben Silbermann claims that Pinterest is very distinguishable from the timeline setting on Facebook. Yet, it’s hard not to relate it to the top social networking site.

For those who are unaware of the recently popular website Pinterest, the site allows users to “pin” photos and descriptions that interest them. This could be anything from pinning a picture of a ridiculously cute bulldog riding a swing to pinning a picture of a blue window that you want in your future home.

This might seem like a strange concept; in fact, similar ideas have failed in the past. Pinterest, however, works. Pinterest gives users the ability to monitor whose pins they can see and what genres of pins they are exposed to. Each person can personalize his or her profiles with different pin boards. For example, I have a pin board entitled “Home Sweet Home” where I pin everything home-related that I like, such as gorgeously decorated kitchens or funky staircases.

Pinterest is unique enough to work as an additional social networking site rather than as a replacement for sites like Facebook or Twitter. An extremely visual site, Pinterest can be highly addicting, especially during class time. Sometimes browsing on Facebook can get extremely repetitive and boring, whereas Pinterest is rather, “pinteresting.” Pinterest also incorporates the idea of the “retweet” by allowing users to pin others posts.

I do have one concern, however, and that is Pinterest’s lack of appeal to all demographics. How many males are actually using Pinterest? Out of 133 people I follow on the site, only four of them are males. As successful as the site may be for females, I feel like males have other sites to express their interest in “masculine” pastimes. Pinning pictures of a basketball might not really do it for them.
Pinterest is definitely an exciting website to be part of the social networking mix, but how long will it last? I enjoy Pinterest, but new sites launch daily. Who knows which site will grab my attention next?

Inconveniences of air travel don’t detract fun

As a result of the recent fuselage breakage incident that took place on a Southwest Boeing airplane, air travel has not been viewed in the most positive of lights. We all have certain fears about flying, and it is a rather serious endeavor, but I get such a thrill and pleasure out of the flying experience as a whole.

For me, most of the entertainment takes place in the airport. I love airports. I spend most of my time people watching and contemplating the endless possibilities of someone's "story" that I make up in my mind. Do you think that man and woman are dating? Hmm, their body language is a bit awkward and they are wearing professional clothes—maybe they are on a business trip?

Once it's time to go through security, make sure to have your identification and boarding pass readily available. The security guy hardly cracks a smile as I hand him my NY License and flimsy boarding pass. He takes out his handy dandy flashlight and grills my ID as if I am a terrorist hiding weapons in my Vera Bradley duffle. The girl in front of me looked like Lily Pulitzer barfed all over her, yet the guard was just as serious. Better safe than sorry.

If you are a frequent traveler, you are prepared for the routine that takes place at the security belt. By the time I'm up to the security belt, I've already got my laptop in hand, shoes off, liquids in plastic bags and jewelry clutched in my fist. Unfortunately, it is probable that you will get behind the traveler who takes their sweet time during this process, and when they approach the security belt, they have merely squinted at the sign to see what size liquids are acceptable. Three ounces, people.

If you manage to make it this far without being chosen at random for a full-body frisking, it's time to proceed to the gate listed on your ticket. All of a sudden, you are swarmed by travelers in every direction, and the airport begins to look more and more like a shopping mall. Something I find funny about airports is that regardless of the time of day, it seems acceptable to eat whatever you want before your flight. It's 9 a.m. and you're chomping down a Big Mac or a full chicken parm dinner? There's no way I am sitting near you on the plane.

"We are now boarding all passengers in group C." If you fly on a seat-yourself airline like Southwest, this announcement usually results in passengers swarming to their respective poles, anxious to fight for the last two window or aisle seats. Once you've mashed yourself in between those two people you saw eating McDonalds, you pray they won't start biting your ear off. Sure enough, the man sitting to your left has a niece who graduated from Loyola, so you can't help but dread the hours of forced enthusiasm that await you.

The flight attendant finally interrupts the painful conversation by offering free drinks. I obviously always choose to order a ginger ale because, as Mommy taught me when I was five, it settles your stomach. Suddenly, the plane begins to shake and the pilot gets on the loud speaker: "We are currently experiencing some turbulence in the area. We should start to fly smoothly again in about 10 minutes or so." As much as you can claim you have no fear of flying, you can't help but think for that split second, "What if we went down?" Then your heart starts beating out of your chest, and your hands get all clammy, and suddenly you are convincing yourself that there's no way the plane can crash because Rihanna is sitting three rows ahead of you, and how dare a plane crash with a superstar on board. The flight gets smooth again and you sigh to yourself in relief. The next song you choose to play on your iPod is Bob Marley's "Everything Is Gonna Be Alright."

As the plane begins to descend, the flight attendant catches you with your headphones in and iPod on and restates her words of authority, "ALL electronics must be powered OFF."

As soon as the wheels hit the ground and the plane has safely landed, you anxiously reach into your carry-on bag and turn your phone on. No text messages. No BBMs. Only an email from the New York Times. I guess you're really not as important as you think.

Once you've exited the plane, you weave through people and rush to the exit, nauseated yet heartwarmed by people holding "WELCOME HOME" signs and flowers for their loved ones. After spending hours of travel time people watching and curiously observing strangers, you can't help but wonder if anyone is looking at you and thinking to themselves: "What's her story?"

FOX’s teen drama Glee illustrates perils of underage drinking

The power of Glee has reached a whole new level. The show started off as a simple group of high school students battling between the desire to be popular and being a nerd in the Glee club (more formerly known as New Directions.) Working off of its high horse, Glee has recently featured celebrities such as John Stamos and Gwenyth Paltrow, but that's not all. The show, at times a heartwarming depiction of reality and at others ridiculously farfetched, has now begun to incorporate teaching life lessons into every episode.

One of the first issues tackled was bullying. Dave, the Glee character who plays the role of the consistent slushy-throwing bully, finally came around a little bit in the premiere of the spring season. He was so inspired by the choreographed dance to "Thriller" at the halftime show that he hopped right on the field to join in and forgot about all the tension and differences.

The following episode revolved around Valentine's Day and featured many love songs. Here comes the unexpected: Puck, the hot football jock, fell for Lauren, the nerdy, female wrestler. Maybe opposites do attract. In this same episode, everybody caught mono, mainly because Quinn cheated on Sam with Finn. Here it seemed as if the directors of Glee were teaching us that it is wrong to cheat on your boyfriend or girlfriend.

The third episode was all about the Bieber experience. Well…I guess the only lesson learned here was that Bieber Fever really does exist. I'M A BELIEBER!

The most recent episode, "Blame it on the Alcohol," tackles one of the most controversial issues in our society: underage drinking. The audience of college students probably all had a similar reaction: "YES! THEY'RE GONNA GET DRUNK!" Parents of younger children and high school students might have been disappointed, claiming that the episode sent a provocative message. However, it wasn't until the end of the episode that viewers realized that Glee actually approached this topic with a smarter strategy.

After the Glee club performed "Tik Tok" by artist "Key-dollar-sign-HA," the episode came full circle. As bothersome as it was to watch the Brillo-headed teacher Mr. Schuester act as a father-figure to the kids in Glee club, the overall message made complete sense. Underage drinking is inevitable. Although our parents and elders may not accept it, the least they can do is be available for us, rather than scare kids into making even worse decisions.

Maybe you drank in high school, maybe you didn't. Maybe you drink in college, maybe you don't. Maybe you were an early bloomer and started drinking in seventh grade. I remember my first drink, and I certainly didn't come running home to share the news with my mom and dad. Instead, I rummaged through the fridge when I got home to find anything with garlic or chocolate to cover up the smell in my mouth.

Things have certainly changed since that day, mainly because I did my best to respect my parents and their rules as they respected me as a growing teenager. They were by no means buying me bottles of Bacardi Razz and pouring me shots before my friend's Sweet Sixteen; however, I did know that my dad would pick me up at any time and anywhere without question. To this day, my dad still wouldn't deny me this promise. (Yes, he is the greatest man I know.)

At the end of the day, Glee is making a smart move. Although the show might appeal to the younger crowd, there are a large amount of adult Gleeks out there. Maybe those extremely strict parents with kids who get blood alcohol poisoning their first night out at college might rethink the way they handle underage drinking.

So fellow classmates, if you ever find yourself in an unsafe situation due to drinking, just call Mr. Schuester's cell and he will pick you up no matter where you are—even if it means he has to drive all the way to Baltimore from McKinley High in Ohio or some flashy set in L.A. Or you could call my dad.

And that's what you missed on…GLEE!

Greek life at Loyola would only complicate a divided campus

Last weekend was the conclusion to Loyola's sorority and fraternity pledge week. The sororities on Guilford Avenue were excited to announce that they have received the highest number of recruits in the history of Loyola, and the fraternities on York Road didn't share much information, though we do hear they plan to throw more keg parties than ever this spring.

One of the rules during pledge week for sorority Kappa Kappa Gamma was that no pledge could look another member of the sorority in the eye on campus or acknowledge pledges of other sororities.

Rumor has it one freshman recruit for KKG forgot to wear sunglasses on the bridge and accidentally waved to someone she thought was her RA. It wasn't her RA—it was the Member Chair of KKG. She received a note in her mail stop later that day stating: "you made the glance, you lost the chance. You're out." Not even an extra-large Red Mango fro-yo with extra strawberries could cheer her up.

The fraternities have been taking a more competetive approach. Rather than ignoring each other on the bridge, the upperclassmen of fraternities such as Delta Phi and Kappa Sigma run up to their freshman pledges and whack them with lacrosse wands or trip them with their hockey sticks.

Pledges interested in joining the lacrosse players' fraternity were forced to bring their sticks everywhere they went; they attached leashes to them and used them to take notes in class, used them like a bindlestiff to carry their books; and if a girl approached them, would place their lacrosse sticks between them gaze into the mesh net of their sticks while saying, "Sorry, I'm taken."

Though none of this is terribly far-fetched, you catch my drift. None of this happened. But imagine if it did.

Imagine a world at Loyola where the already egotistical sports players and brand-occupied girls walked on the stone decorated campus feeling an even stronger power because they were part of Greek life.

The other night, I was finally next in line after a long wait for a bar bathroom. I was approached by a girl who, with arms folded, gave me the death stare and said, "I'm a senior."

All I said back to her was "Cool. I'm a junior…"

Though I would have loved to grab a lacrosse stick and whack her or trip her with a hockey stick like my fellow frat-bro's would do, I held back and let her take her pride and pee into the beer-soaked seatless toilet.

That night, all I could really think was how grateful I was to St. Ignatius for keeping Loyola grounded as a truly Jesuit institution. Even though there might be a certain divide between grades at Loyola, it doesn't come close to the segregation schools with Greek life experience. Loyola may have a hierarchy of sorts, but if we can live without the abundance of theme parties and deal with having at least '80s night and a hoedown or two, I'm content with the nonexistence of Greek life.