Relative Something

*this* John W. Hays' take on things and experiences

Posts Tagged ‘social media

Not Real

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Apparently we are all in this together in these challenging times. That’s the message coming through the airwaves and print ads day after day. Doesn’t really feel like it to me. There are an awful lot of people who are voicing an interest in self over others. I continue to argue that all times are challenging in one way or another, so repeatedly echoing that trope gets annoying.

In the face of the ever-present risk of COVID-19 virus infection spread, we have avoided doing a lot of things. Today is the Memorial Day holiday in the U.S. and we have not hit the road to the lake place this year.

I spent yesterday trying to mow our amazing crop of dandelions. The ability of those dandelion stems to survive the spinning blade that severs all the green leaves and grass blades around them is difficult to fathom.

Staying at home provides a little extra time to peruse the news floating around the interweb and I have found a new favorite morsel of absurdity in the Associated Press page of “Not Real News.” It’s a look at what didn’t happen each week.

A roundup of some of the most popular but completely untrue stories and visuals of the week. None of these are legit, even though they were shared widely on social media.

For those of you who tour Facebook and Twitter, I recommend you review claims being shared there which raise your ire might turn out to be untrue. There are multiple cases where photos used to make a point have been manipulated, often using images that are years removed from what they are intended to portray.

I do not participate in the primary social media apps so I don’t learn about some of these claims until finding them in the AP article.

Really? There is a circuit board for a 5G installation that has COVID-19 printed on it? Um, no.

A couple of the claims are aiming to make government officials and policies look more inept or corrupt than they really are. Is it much of a stretch to imagine the source of such noisy disruption to our actual news information could be coming from foreign governments? No.

Let’s all be in this together and none of us allow any of the flaky claims to spread. We want the disinformation to all shelter in place!

Be safe out there.

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Written by johnwhays

May 25, 2020 at 9:02 am

Green Gray

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Are you as impressed as me over my deft avoidance yesterday of whining over how we could possibly be in the month of May already? It could be a new me!

Naaaaaah.

I have a tendency to be way too authentic with my online presence. The majority of people’s social media personalities has evolved to look like life is all rainbows and puppies, feet up with a glass of a favored beverage, overflowing with noble opportunities to do good in our worlds.

Who can blame us? No one automatically wants to paint their public portraits showing what they really look like in the moment of walking from the bed upon waking in the morning and seeing the first glimpse of ourselves in the mirror. Aaahhh!

That’s not how we want ourselves to look, so that’s not how we want others to see us. We want to be freshly groomed and all made up before venturing out.

Then why am I so quick to write about many of my stumbles and embarrassments? Maybe I’m too lazy to stop and comb my hair before stepping on the stage. It’s easiest to simply tell it like it is.

Life is filled with a mixture of good and bad. It just feels more worthwhile to share it all. All interesting stories have a conflict to be resolved. It gets darkest just before dawn. If all I wrote about were my triumphs, this blog would develop into a false, hollow representation, and I think that would be boring.

Well, more boring than my creative whining about how fast time flies and how extreme the weather is.

In the last two days, our grass has greened dramatically. Yesterday, we saw the arrival of some gray clouds that added a distinct contrast.

It occurred to me that, in many ways, it was more interesting than a clear sunny day.

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Written by johnwhays

May 2, 2018 at 6:00 am

Additional Steps

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You might think the title of today’s post refers to walking, after all the promotion we have done recently for our World Labyrinth Day event, but that’s just me being cute. The added steps to which I’m referring are in the realm of expanding the promotion of Wintervale Ranch and Retreat Center. We are slowly updating the pages of our Wintervale Ranch web site, and we have now launched into today’s world of social media.

If you are on Facebook, you can now follow Wintervale Ranch there, because we have our own page. That is where we will regularly share news on upcoming events and workshops.

Those of you willing and able could help us out in our quest to grow our online presence by “Liking” our page and sharing it with your Facebook world.

I’m told, this is how it works. We solicit others to like our page. Honestly, it feels a little contrived to me, but my sources have assured me this will be a familiar and accepted request to regular Facebook users. So, if it makes sense to you, we would love to grow a wide pool of followers from near and far.

“Relative Something” fans, do your thing…

And thanks, from Cyndie, me, and all of our animal family at Wintervale!

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Written by johnwhays

May 8, 2017 at 6:00 am