Recycle, Reduce, Retweet?

             IN THE BEGINNING

When looking for an area of focus for this assignment I was dumbfound on what exactly I wanted to analyze. Everything that I decided on doing had already been taken or was too boring to tickle my fancy, but instead of waiting around I decided focus on social media accounts of universities and their effectiveness on campus. Some of the questions I created were are campus social media accounts pushing resourceful information to students, what percentage of students follow the social media page(s), and are there more than one and if so what the reasoning for multiple accounts? There were so many variables that came into play and many questions that I wouldn’t be able to find an answer for due to not following the social media accounts of various college campuses long enough to find data. Though this would appear to be a failure in most books I viewed it as successful because this topic, by accident, showed me the topic that I truly wanted to analyze, meme recycling.

SO WHAT ARE RECYCLED TWEETS?

There is no true definition as to what recycled tweets are but we’ve all seen them all around twitter. It’s basically when you see a tweet, meme, or gif, being used in the same exact format on multiple websites. A prime example of this would be the tweet where Dexter from the hit 90’s baby television series “Dexter’s Laboratory”.

Friends: "be ready at 8:45"
Me at 8:45: pic.twitter.com/iobXXK4ZB0

— LMAO 🎄 (@MEMESTOOLIT) November 23, 2016

The picture consists of Dexter standing in the shower with his but facing the viewer. The quotation at the top says something along the lines of, “When my friends tell me to be ready at 8:45, me at 8:45,” which shows a naked Dexter still showering. Even with all of the humor the question still remains why do recycled tweets exist? Personally I hate seeing the same tweet in multiple places on social media sites, Twitter being the point of reference. They tend to be worse than pop up’s if anyone remembers those, but in picking this topic I could not stop asking myself why recycled tweets exist. This simple question became the foundation of my topic and almost immediately many questions began to pour into my mind. Is recycling tweets stealing and if so, are there any boundaries? Why do we retweet recycled tweets even though we have seen it on various different occasions in many different places? Does timing happen to play a role in whether or not a recycled tweet retweeted? Does account credibility have anything to do with whether or not a meme gets retweeted by regular people? Well personally, I believe that the need for accounts to create or push content in a particular manner results in the creation of recycled tweets due to their popularity, credibility, crowdsourcing, and flow. In order to prove this to be true I will be discussing the popular Kermit the Frog Memes along with my data and research on the topic.

KERMIT THE FROG

@hannahbentley30 it's the "But that's none of my business" meme in emojis pic.twitter.com/WVYjKe7Z3g

— Dallin Carrier (@dcarrier24) March 29, 2016

when you show people a movie you love AND THEY DONT PAY ATTENTION or react to any of the important scenes pic.twitter.com/OziMNfXbB4

— DOM (@beingdomino) December 12, 2016

Me: I'm never drinking again

Inner me: We both know that's a fucking lie. pic.twitter.com/QfvkGy3krT

— 🐸 (@BadMoodKermit) November 27, 2016

Whether Kermit is giving his opinion on something and saying, “but that’s none of my business”, or looking at his inner self contemplating on whether or not to make the right decision, most people would agree that Kermit the Frog memes are funny; but why Kermit? Why does Kermit the Frog the face of meme goals in social media? As I began searching for answers I didn’t find myself sitting in the dark for too long, so to speak. In the Designing for Spreadability chapter in “Spreadable Media” there is a section speaks about Spreadability and how the content produced must be relevant to multiple audiences. The popularity centered on Kermit the Frog is reason enough to continue creating multiple memes about him. It goes back to that old saying “If it ain’t broke don’t fix it”. The chapter then reads, “Content that appeals to more than one target audience, both intended and surplus audiences, has greater meaning as spreadable data. That is to say that the reason of how and why Kermit is so popular for memes is irrelevant. What is important is the resources that it provides when attempting to push content. I guess the question now becomes why these memes are continuously recycled?

SPREADABILITY IN DETAIL

When discussing the design for spreadability the authors of the book, “Spreadable Media”, expressed the concerns of creative industries and their struggle with the uncertainty principle. The section reads, “The creative industries have had a long struggle with predicting and measuring their products success (Henry Jenkins, 2013).” The section even goes on to talk about how no one really knows if their approach to creating spreadable content is going to work, which is the reason by you continuously recycle the content periodically. This is called “Over Production and Formatting”, which is used by many entertainment companies. Amanda D. Lotz, a Communication Studies professor at the University of Michigan, discusses the degree to which success is unpredictable by saying that 80 percent of what is produced by the Television, film, and recording industry will fail commercially. It’s the other 10 to 20 percent that has a chance at being successful and though it’s not resourceful, industries must producer more creative goods than might succeed. Spreadable media creates a focus on availability, which is having the content available when and where the audiences want it, along with making content portable or shareable, reusable  and relevant to multiple audiences, and creating a steady stream of material. All of the factors for recycled memes to exist stem from these ideas of Spreadability. Those ideas of reusing content along with making it relevant and portable allows for multiple accounts to pass off tweets, memes, or gifs as their own, which is why recycled tweets are created. With the excessive amounts of retweets the meme then becomes credible and then continuously recycled.

After analyzing the existence of recycled tweets and how they are formed the question and or discussion begins to make a shift towards analyzing their success. There are multiple websites who have gone from the darkest depths of the twitter abysses to the top because of recycling tweets. After a while you have to wonder why and how are they able to do this. Sure, I could create an account, throw a cool picture in the background, title the account “Men R Us”, and go recycle all of the already recycled tweets on the “Men’s Humor” page, but what will that get me? Nothing! I theorize many factors that could serve as an answer to the different results of a new account such as (Dank Memes @Hooded_Kermit), compared to a fairly established account like “Hooded Kermit @KermitHooded”.

DATA ANALYSIS

While analyzing the data from the Dank Memes account it is clear to see that the tactics used to create popularity of the account are along the same lines of the things discussed in earlier sections of the paper. You are also able to immediately see content and it’s located in an accessible place. There is an abundance of recycled memes and retweets flowing throughout the page that are sharable, portable, reusable, and the account in itself is relevant to multiple audiences.

DANK MEME ACCOUNT STATS

 With that being said the stats of the account do not reflect the apparent work put into making this account spreadable. The amount of followers for the account is about 400, while they only follow about 50 people. The account was created in November of 2016 and of their 160 tweets, 70 of them are either pictures or gifs. Looking at the last 20 tweets specifically the highest amount of retweets capped at 50, and the highest amount of likes capped at 40. When analyzing the Hooded Kermit account I was surprised to find that the account structure resembled the same ideas presented in the Designing of Spreadability chapter in “Spreadable Media”. 
HOODED KERMIT ACCOUNT STATS
The Hooded Kermit account in comparison to the Dank Meme account showed Hooded Kermit to be far more prosperous, but why? A few factors that could potentially play a role in this is the account activation date which was in October of 2016, a month earlier than when the Dank Memes account was created. Perhaps one could argue timing being a factor? Next I looked at the stats of the account which placed their number of followers at about 52,000, along with 378 pictures or videos out of the 382 tweets made. That is the difference of 16 tweets compared to the Dank Meme account whose pictures and videos only account for less than half of their tweets. I guess an argument that can be made against the Dank Meme account is their lack of strategic planning when pushing content and poor timing. Personally, I think that the real argument goes much beyond this.

CREDIBILITY AND FLOW

Both of the accounts prove to be almost identical in their appearance and methods but what if I told you that that isn’t the only thing needed in order for them to prosper? What if I told you that “Account Credibility” and “Flow” have a big amount of influence in deciding the fate of Recycled Memes and whether or not they will prosper? Would you agree? It’s okay if you don’t because it’s my argument anyway. Just like anything else in social media we want a credible source. I’m not speaking in the aspect of all of the content presented by an account being entirely true, but instead acceptable by our followers. As the head of an account you might feel a sense of responsibility to your “twitter fans” to like, retweet, recycle, and tweet things that they might find interesting or relevant to themselves. We tend to look for a sense of approval which is why subconsciously we will not retweet memes or content that is not already popular and or credible by thousands of others. This need for credibility comes from a sort of crowdsourcing, the internet’s judgement day(s), which question the validity of some it not all of your content. Yes, all of twitter seems to run on a check and balance system and by group effort, other accounts will come for you if you are not being a productive member of the twitter society. Twitter accounts who have more followers or high amounts of retweets and likes per post are seen as worthy of the 1 second that it takes to retweet or like their content. Whereas a less popular account could potentially harm your reputation and in doing so cause you to loose validity within your own tweets. I tried experimenting with this by taking the popular hooded Kermit Meme and making it relevant to the final project for this class.

 The meme stated, “Me: Start working on your final project so you can finish early”. The meme then stated, “Me to me: Wait until the last minute, you work better under pressure anyway.” Though this is actually pretty relevant while also being funny I only received 20 retweets, 33 likes, and 1 comment about how I suck at life, compared to the 118 people who clicked on it and the 3,321 impression it made. The same comparison can also be made by examining the Dank Meme account vs the Hooded Kermit accounts. There are a few recycled tweets that they have in common that they both share to their pages. However, the results are polar opposites. With that being said many accounts like the Dank Memes account I follow works extremely hard to become more popular in the twitter world by using the same methods of more credible pages to build credibility. With that being said it is possible for new accounts to pop up and attempt to gain credibility by recycling a popular meme.

On the other hand it doesn’t take too much time for us to decide whether or not an account is credible and this is paid in part to the process of flow. As we scroll through our timelines just to pass the actual time we began to subconsciously retweet or like random things including recycled tweets regardless of whether or not we’ve seen them before. I imagine it being something similar to watching a rerun of a random television series and as soon as it cuts to a commercial, flipping the channel to something else. There are many recycled tweets that are no longer entertaining to ourselves per say, but when we’re looking to pass time for a couple of minutes it becomes almost more convenient to retweet or like a recycled tweet. They allow us to leave sort of a twitter footprint to show your activity for that small amount of time. During the process of flow, account credibility is subconsciously checked and if the retweets and likes have a high number, let’s say 300+, then the recycled tweet will get liked or retweeted continuing the cycle.

FINAL THOUGHTS

So what does this mean? Recycled tweets, memes, gif, whatever you choose to call them, are the products of spreadable media. A series of many attempts of pushing specific content which resulted in the popularity, credibility, and validity of the once regular tweet. Once popular and credible they are basically fair game to all who use the internet which results in the popularity or credibility of multiple twitter accounts. Popularity and credibility create a separation within twitter making it easy for basic accounts like yours, yes I called you basic, to see so we can identify the top accounts to retweet, like, or follow. SHADE! The separation is subconsciously analyzed when reading the recycled tweet because we are able to see the number of people who liked and retweeted it before us which due to flow, creates an endless cycle of reused tweets. It there ever and end to this recycling cycle? They say that the internet is for life and I can believe it. It won’t be long before a new popular meme/tweet is being recycled and no one will even wonder what happened to Hooded Kermit. Until he pops back up throwing sneak shade and telling us, "But that's none of my business", to soften the blow. 
Special thanks to Dr. Vrooman for teaching me how to blog a little bit. 

Bibliography

Henry Jenkins, S. F. (2013). Spreadable Media. New York: New York University Press.

Crowdsourcing? Is that what that is?

Crowdsourcing seems to be the internet version of judgment day and all of the users are sort of the Gods of the internet. The internet literally gets to decide whether or not your content is worthy of living in the inter-web. The internet is also the decider of whether or not the content of your post earns you internet fire and brimstone, or internet heaven where you live to post another day. What I mean by this is crowdsourcing seems to work in an unusual way and depending on the day it may or may not work in your favor. Take Beyonce for example, with her fine ass. She literally has numerous amounts of her fans who take their love for her too far. They call themselves the "Bey-hive" and they are very busy beys. The Bey hive fans pledge their loyalty to singing sensation Beyonce by attacking anyone on social media who says something to tarnish the legacy to their "Queen Bey".  Post like the one below is one of many Bey swarms began attacking anyone criticizing Queen Bey.

As you can see the use of crowdsourcing to come to Beyonce's defense is very prevalent in the internet. While these fans feel that they are doing crowdsourcing some justice by defending Beyonce others will view this type of crowdsourcing as negative. Crowdsourcing is what turns the tides in the internet, though it's surprising the things that people will rally behind or defend

Media Spreadability in a nutshell

In class we were tasked with the challenge of determining 5 things that makes media spreadable. When looking to find solutions I began to think about the content of things that are commonly shared on my social media accounts and why. In order to figure this out i immediately grabbed my phone, logged on to Facebook, and then scrolled through my wall post to find the latest post that i shared. Seeing the type of content shared on my page throughout the week made my mind race at how little thought it takes to share a post. What was also startling is how short of a memory i have as to what type of content i posted. The reason being is sharing various post or videos means that you have some sort of connection with what is being talked about in it. This made my mind race even more as i attempted to figure out why this last post was important enough for me to share to my timeline. Here's a look.

So why? Why did i share this post to my timeline. What made this post spreadable? As i looked at stared studying the post in it's entirety the answers began to start flooding in. The reason that this post was spreadable is due to the 5 key things that, in my opinion, make social media spreadable.
1. Accessibility
 The post is located in a place that is visible and easy to access. There is no need to click on a link and load another page to view the video because it is open and already playing for you. The social media outlet that this video was created by know how to use their resources, seeing that they shared their content to facebook. Videos shared to a persons timeline on facebook is easily viewed because it is open and already playing once visible on the screen of any user. This immediately catches the eye of the user and they are then trapped in the video. If i become stuck watching your video chances are it will interest me enough for me want to share it with my followers and friends. With the this video being open, laying, and containing a link to the original page of the social media outlet i was able to share it, then gain access to their other content as well. As i scrolled through my timeline the i was then drawn to reading the brief explanation located just at the bottom of the page which brings me to my next idea of what makes social media spreadable.
2. Be short and sweet, but make them beg for more.
While it is easy to notice a random video playing on your timeline, it is just as easy to scroll past it looking for other content that you fine more entertaining or valuable. This is why the content must give a teaser of what the initial post, video, blog, etc, is about. It wasn't the video itself what made me want to click on the volume and start the video over. It was what the brief stated which was, "The U.S.-Mexico border opened for 3 minutes – and what happened after will move you to tears." It took only one sentence to make me invested in what this video had to offer as I'm sure it did for the other 33 million viewers. Was this video truly going to bring anyone to tears? Maybe not but with human beings being empathetic for one another it more than likely appealed to our emotions. The brief sentence left just enough mystery to make the user want to view the video. You have to look at this sentence as if it's a movie trailer and not like the bad ones that basically summarize the movie. In a blog post written by "Guy Kawasaki" he stated, "I’ve never seen a post that was too short. Most posts are too long. Obviously Twitter has a 140-character limit, but posts for other platforms should be three to five sentences long. If you want to go longer, write a blog post and use social media to drive people to it. You have a few seconds to capture people’s attention—think Tinder, not eHarmony.  I definitely agree seeing that every facebook post on my timeline that exceeds more than 3 sentences usually gets overlooked due to my dislike of reading. No one wants to read a novel about a video and no one wants to pay $8 for a movie that they already saw in the trailers. This social media outlet does an amazing job of making the users beg for more which is why their views are so high. 
3. Daring and Bold
The title speaks for itself. In today's society our freedom of speech tends to be restricted due to cultural literacy. We are taught what can and cannot be said in specific places because of the context in which our words might be taken. For whatever reason many people tend to look at social media as a healthy alternative to express their racial thoughts that they must bottle in everyday society. Just kidding but not really.  Creating blogs, facebook post, twitter accounts, and yikyak's allows the opportunity to speak your mind. For a more positive outlook it also allows the opportunity to be creative, be heard, speak on many issues that others are too afraid to. This video in particular spoke about a program that allowed families that are divided but the U.S and Mexico boarder to unite for 3 minutes in the Rio Grande river. I consider this video to be daring and bold simply because there are many people within the united states who are for more strict immigration laws and techniques. A program like this one called, "Hugs Not Walls" won't be favored by individuals who criminalize illegal immigrates while others who support immigration reform in favor of illegal immigrates will support a cause like such. Personally i can empathize with people who participated in this program because being separated from your family by a wall must be awful. This post sends the type of controversial message that creates a chain reaction of re-posting and debates. Daring and Bold content creates shareable media.
4. Tractability
You have to look at pushing your content kind of like aspiring music artist look and getting their music noticed. By creating alot of content and pushing it through numerous outlets you will be able to create a name for yourself. What makes content spreadable is if someone is able to see your work, recognize it belongs to you, and can trace it back to a place that contains the rest of your work. In this video you are able to tell who the creator of the content is due to the logo of the social media outlet being present and the top right hand corner throughout the duration of the video. You are also given the link to the actual "Now This" website which gives you and opportunity to save and share the link or look for more content. To tie this back into being the spreadability of the video most people are familiar with videos created by "Now This" because their logo is stamped on all of there videos. By doing this they are making sure the user can recognize their content and track it back to their very own site.
5. Relevance 
As stated in chapter 5 of "Spreadable Media", "Content that appeals to more than one target audience , both intended and surplus audiences, has a greater meaning as spreadable media." I can agree with this because if the content being pushed have some sort of relevance to a current event of something going on in society it will more than likely get shared by users. With immigration reform being a topic of discussion in the debates I felt the need to share this video to shed a bit of light on the subject. The video being relevant to the election made it spreadable.

Of all the things that one could argue i find these to be top 5 things that make media spreadable. This is not to say that my thoughts our correct, but this is just an opinion. Let me know how you feel in the comments section.

Push it Real Good

Through my analysis I've come to the conclusion that with social media you want to present as much relevant content as possible. That isn't to say the content that you present must only be presented in the form of post. There is other ways to help promote yourself through your Facebook page. One thing that I cannot stand is getting an invite to "like" a blank ass page created to advertise for a business, as if i'm going to be interested. It frustrates me because in attempts to not be a douche bag I clicked on the page but more often then not it's a few post talking about how this is a start up business and the location. Newsflash! That information should be in the bio section. As i scrolled through the Facebook page of a restaurant located in Hondo, Texas by the name of "Billy Bob's Hamburgers", I realized that it wasn't the amount of content that was pushed out by the restaurant, but the type and way it was pushed that made all of the difference. Take this post for example.

This post tells me exactly what I want to know. I don't care about the owner, the fry cook, or the what's already on the menu. Create a post that give me a little incentive to look for new appetizing things that are coming soon. That way i'll revisit the page to find out if the new menu item is now available. They obviously have this figured out judging by the amount of likes, comments, and shares. To be honest I can barely get 100 likes on an actual picture of myself. I uses i'm not that appealing as a foot long double cheese chili dog. It's also amazing that they said only a few words to get a tremendous amounts of tickets.
When evaluating the The Animal Welfare Shelter of Luling, Texas it was easy to notice the mission of the the organization. They push a great deal of content towards the followers of their page which doesn't allow for each post to receive an excessive amount of attention. That being said it allows the followers to have options and that's exactly what someone interested in rescuing an animal wants.When evaluating the The Animal Welfare Shelter of Luling, Texas it was easy to notice the mission of the the organization. They push a great deal of content towards the followers of their page which doesn't allow for each post to receive an excessive amount of attention. That being said it does allow the followers to have options and that's exactly what someone interested in rescuing an animal wants.


Post like the one you see here are found on the Luling Animal Welfare Society page with many others and they only receive a small amount of likes. However the content is always there and available for the person who happens to browse the page and sees the perfect dog for them whether that's today of months from now. For a business continuously pushing content through their web pages is fairly important for their success.

Always On Politics review

I'm not even going to pretend that I'm the slightest bit interested in this year's election simply because it seems like we're pissing in the wind with all of this. With all of the negativity surfacing I find it hard to ignore the election simply because this election period is dramatically different from any seen before. It's always in your face, especially Donald Trump and his tweets. People tend to gravitate towards Trump because they perceive him to be honest and direct, which they find a change of pace. Trump supporters also like that he will go completely "off script" anytime he sees fit to throw some shade, which is unheard of in a presidential election. His sense of political correctness is non existent and that's what the people like. Even though i think that he's a little i'll have to agree with the thought's that Hannah presented in her blog. Trump can be pretty funny.
 


When I saw this I immediately clicked on the account to see if it was verified and sure enough it was Trump Daddy in the flesh. I couldn't believe that he tweeted something so bold. This could've affected the politically race negatively but he didn't give a damn and did it anyway. With Trump being so open and reckless on social media it almost becomes appealing to a younger generation, spiking our interest. If you think about it he's sort of a rebel and most of us are in our rebel phase. His recklessness on social media allows the younger generation entertainment while allowing him a doorway to push content towards us pertaining to his plans and goals as president. Though i am not a supporter his methods are sort of crafty.
Obviously Hilary can't get away with this because people find it hard to trust the words coming out of her mouth. This is why she has to push her content in a different manner.

Oh Instagram

Oh Instagram, how we love and hate you all at the same time. We tend to love you when Kim Kardashian West post her selfies while turning her backside to the camera, reminding us that she can afford an amazing plastic surgeon. We tend to love you when we see Snoop floating in the clouds. It reminds us of why we continue to drive to Colorado every time we get a break from school. However, we almost want to delete our account when DJ Khaled talks reminds us to, "Put some RESPEK on it". I don't understand any of this! Why is flaunting your body on social media conditionally acceptable? How is Snoop Dogg allowed to the worlds strongest weed before our very eyes and not share or be arrested? How is DJ Khaled still relevant in 2016 while annoying screaming "We da best" over every song that he produces? I don't find any of this entertaining and i'm not quite sure why others do, which is why i invest my time and effort in other places and things.

I'm honestly not the modern definition of "cool" anymore and i'm starting to see this. I blame it on college simply because in high school I was able to follow the lives of celebrities, view the latest twitter drama, and know all of the latest dance moves, while maintaining a decent GPA. Now I find this not only difficult but i don't have the same desires. As a college student I've realized that my time is precious and i'm not going to waste it on non-sense. If i'm on social media in the middle of the day i'm probably looking up current events for class or studying on Quizlet.com. While on campus I feel as if i'm surrounded by intelligent people who want to have intelligent conversations. Even when we are relaxing our subject matter isn't as pointless as Kim K's latest booty pic or Snoop's super weed. We talk about issues going on in the world, our futures, and actual life; things of importance. That just may be the thing now that I think of it. I'm at a point in life where i find myself putting away childish things which is why I only use to see content and not broadcast as much.

I'm sure to all three of the celebrities that i mentioned earlier they are doing their jobs, hobbies, etc but to me it all looks like non-sense. You shouldn't have to advertise that you're better than everyone else by smoking weed. It's a normal thing that millions of Americans do. So what if you have an outrageous ass? You don't have to continuously remind us. That thing is so big it'll advertise itself just fine. DJ Khaled isn't "da best" , no disRESPEK. Just because you say it on every album doesn't make it true. At the end of the day i don't really know the intended goal of the celebrities but i do know that because I'm not amused and entertained by their post I'm pretty lame.

Gifting Response Post

So the blog post regarding Gifting that I found most interesting come from....

Megan Larsen http://meganlarsen.blogspot.com/ @megannlarsen15

Tyler Rentfro http://tfro18.blogspot.com/ @bj_for_prez

Matt Villarreal http://socialmediainsociety2.blogspot.com/ @ttamvill

While reading their different point of views I noticed that there were many common ideas that I've always heard about gifting. Let's take Rentfro's post for example. He states, " I personally do not believe anyone gives as they say, "from the bottom of their heart", and doesn't expect anything in return." He later on gives an scenario in which a local church is doing "the Lords work", feeding a homeless man and claiming that they expecting nothing in return but in actuality hope to see the homeless man in church. When you take a moment to step back and analyze the scenario one could agree with Rentfro's point of view because the church either expects the homeless man to come to God through them or to change his life. This point of view often leads others to believe that humanity is selfish in the sense that they giving gifts for no reason creates a positive stimulus within the body in which we crave. Basically, we give gifts just to feel good about ourselves which makes it a selfish act. Megan's post had a similar idea behind it but she took it a different direction by saying that gifting isn't limited only to physical objects and that social media can be used as a tool to give gifts to the world. Personally I'm not a true blogger because I don't care for the opinions of others typed up in paragraphs with a 12 pt font, nor do I believe anyone else actually care for my opinion on gifting in the last paragraph of this page. I also use places like instagram to post pictures for my friends to like which makes me feel good. I don't consider it a gift but I guess that some could see it that way. This is why I can agree with Megan's point of view and Renfro's as well.

As I dove into Matt's post I was thinking he'd share the same ideology about gifting as Rentfro and he did, but in a different way. Though Matt believes that the idea of gifting is selfish he went a different direction with it by making the claim, " Gifting gives power over someone else, you gave them something they didn't have before or you shared a social media post that they would have never seen if you had not shared. All of these "gifts" give power over someone making them higher on the social ladder. " Now this is something else huh! I never looked at gift giving as some sort of power. Then I remembered how shitty I felt when my ex girlfriend got me something for our 6th month mark after we agreed not to exchange gifts. She whipped out the gift and the looked around the room as if I was hiding her gift somewhere out of site. Let's just say she stormed out of my front door pissed off after the movie I put on finished. I knew then that I had to get her a gift or she'd hold that over my head forever, or at least until I did something else wrong. The notion that gifting gives a person power isn't too crazy of an idea and is something that I could potentially get behind.

Now here's the part you've a been waiting for where Damn Danny gives his point of view on gifting. I'm about to sound life a real nerd because I pulled my idea of gifting from a popular Anime television show titled "Full Metal Alchemist". In order for you to understand where i'm going with this i'm going to have to break it down for you.

1. Alchemy is the science of understanding the structure of matter, breaking it down, then reconstructing it as something else. It can even make gold from lead. But alchemy is a science, so it must follow the natural laws: To create, something of equal value must be lost. This is the principle of Equivalent Exchange.

STAY WITH ME NOW!!

The idea of equivalent exchange isn't too far fetched is it? Even though it's a term used in science it seems to hold true for humanity. There is nothing on this earth that we do in which we don't expect anything in return. I believe that this is part of the natural balance of the universe. Just think about it, the world is give and take. A honey bee wakes up everyday knowing that it will be able to drink the sweet nectar from a rose on a bush. The plant in return is pollinated by the bee and continues to live on. I bet that bee doesn't consciously know it's helping in the pollinating process but he sure feels good as hell when his belly is full of nectar. The plants are also able to continue their pollination cycles which allows them to exist a little while longer. There was an equivalent exchange that took place there and it happens with everything in this universe, especially in humanity. Full metal Alchemist makes a statement at the beginning of every episode that says....
 

2. Humankind cannot gain anything without first giving something in return. To obtain, something of equal value must be lost. That is alchemy's first law of Equivalent Exchange.

Whether you are gaining something physical or gaining satisfaction gifting is stemmed from the natural balance of the universe, equivalent exchange. Which is why you feel obligated to give gifts in return when you receive one. BOOM! MIND BLOWN!

 

Let's talk about Wikipedia

Let me first start off by saying the old days of Wikipedia not being a credible source are long gone. I don't care what your high school teachers told you, they're all liars. They had you convinced that Christopher Columbus discovered America and you see how that turned out. With that being said I remember writing short essays for classes and having to use a few internet resources to prove my information credible. Finding the right information for my essay was always easy because Wikipedia was notorious for having the goods. The hard part however, was looking for random websites that generally presented the same information that I used in my actual essay. With that being said I never once had any teacher say that my information wasn't credible which means that the information isn't necessarily wrong. It's just too easy to find and if everyone used Wikipedia all essays would generally be the same.
Personally I only use Wikipedia as a tool to verify or find quick information of the most random things. Don't act like you've never done the same thing. Especially when you get in your "let's be a creeper" type of mood, looking up when and where Zac Efron was born so you can resolve your high school musical fetish. I tend to look up Hollywood actors and actresses from old tv shows that I grew up watching mainly to verify ages and to learn more about their careers, personally lives, and siblings.
So is Wikipedia creditable? Yes! Should you use it for essays and other school things? Yes, but don't get caught. If you're using turnitin.com pray over your essay and say like 20 hail mary's and you should be in the clear of plagiarism.