Recently I've been pondering about social media and the internet, is it a good thing or a bad thing? I think its both.
I think it would only be fair that I hold it in a positive light - after all, I basically depend on it, if I didn't use social media, I wouldn't have met and worked with all the wonderful people I have over the last few years, I wouldn't have a constant dripfeed of amazing images to inspire me and my concepts, I wouldn't be able to speak to the people that create these marvels. I owe social media so much.
Looking at it on a non personal level, it allows people to connect with likeminded individuals, find love, friendship, it allows someone to feel like part of this world, people can share stories, music, jokes, images and that's a beautiful thing.
And yet it disturbs me, everybody has access to it - I hear more and more stories of people that have been burgled as a result of saying they were 'going on holiday' in a status or shared that picture of the kids in front of their family home without thinking.
Where social media can be used to spread love it can also be used to spread hate, people spread their dirty laundry across facebooks pages, divorce settlements go public, someone's name gets smeared in the dirt and things get unpretty. Everyone has an opinion but do they have a right to share it? We do have freedom of speech after all.
I see 'news' stories shared of pure horror and shock, nothing but a hoax but if enough people share it, does it become actual news? Lets take a look at the definition of news; 'a newly received or noteworthy information, especially about recent events.'
Seems to be correct but how much actual news are we ignoring as a result of this?
Last week there was a huge mudslide in Washington, the fatalities were high, others were missing; it was a complete tragedy.
The same week A-list celebrity couple Chris Martin and Gwyneth Paltrow announced they were to split up.
Twitter and Facebook obviously favoured the latter.
And so thats what this image is: a question, what really matters and what is just yesterdays news?
