The Relationship Status

Facebook  has been in the news more than I can count recently, due in part to movies like The Social Network and privacy scandals involving how Facebook uses their users' data. However, one thing that Facebook does not get much coverage for, positive or negative, is how Facebook affects relationships. The relationship status is something we take for granted on Facebook today. According to the movie, the idea of marking who is taken and who is not was not part of the original plan, but rather came in a sleep-deprived state from Mark Zuckerberg. But today, the relationship status is one key pieces of information people use when looking at the profiles of people of the opposite sex.

In older days, to find out if someone is single or taken, one had to ask. Now, information is shoved in our faces. What does this do for communication? The level of communication required to have any information about somebody has now been significantly reduced. What people do on Facebook when "investigating" a potential love interest now would be considered stalking only a decade or so ago, but now it is the norm, the requirement for staying ahead in the "game". As a result, people are losing the ability to talk to other people. This is an alarming result: if people cannot talk to one another in the real world, imagine the ramifications this will have on the dating scene and intimacy in the future. An interesting trend that would be the subject of a much larger study is the dual rise of both technology usage and divorce rates. It would seem that the increase in Facebook communications, and even texting and phone calls, has reduced the ability of humankind to communicate and resolve problems in the real world.

Its not all bad however. There are definitely upsides to the level of communication that Facebook provides. Facebook allows communication with people that would normally never hear from us again. It also gives us information that gives us the means to establish communication in the real world. However, all this communication ability is pointless if we do not continue to communicate and establish skills in communication in the real world, or else relationships, which one could argue are hinged on communication, will not survive nearly as well.

Different Perspectives on the Texas A&M 2013 Recruiting Class

The end of football season has descended upon us, and until late August, most fans will have to sit idly by and debate with others about who will win the Alabama game next year. However, for those that want a sneak peek at the next season, one needs to look no further than the recruits Coach Kevin Sumlin has brought in this year. Sports writers love to analyze the recruits, grade each school's recruiting class, and even break down how many recruits were "5-stars", "4-stars", and "3-stars". However, as expected, writers hold different opinions, and these opinions are sometimes not immediately evident. By examining the way the author constructs his argument for how well Texas A&M recruited this year, we will be able to tell what kinds of attitudes they are trying to bring out of the reader.

Wescott Eberts of SBNation (link) makes a claim about the class right off the bat, using the title "...Smiles all around", words of pathos, to evoke an emotional response from the reader. He has not yet quoted any facts, but has already started manipulating the reader's emotions. Facts do not come until later in the article, when the author calls the receivers that were recruited "talented", and goes on to give the grade an A-. Later in the article, the author evokes some sentimental feelings for fans of Texas A&M football, by discussing the "rise of Texas A&M" and how this really hurt LSU's recruiting class this season. All around, this author is showing nothing but praise for the Aggies.

On the other hand, while not explicitly negative, Kate Hairopoulos of SportsDayDFW (link) is a bit more cautious when discussing the recruits. She is careful when describing the class as ranked #8 by ESPN to also point out that the class is still ranked #5 in the SEC. Her headlines in the article are "maybe later", "still searching", and "notable", respectively. The careful use of words that are not too sensationalistic seems to provide the idea that, while the recruits are good, they were not something that has not been seen before in the history of college sports.

Overall, the tone in Hairopoulos's article seems to reflect the attitude that most fans perhaps even have: caution. After such a great season, some peopl, such as Eberts of SBNation, prefer to play up the momentum that Texas A&M developed and carry it on into the offseason, but others prefer to stick to reason and hope for the best but stay grounded in the reality that this season was something special, not something to be taken for granted.

The Korean Invasion: From Gangnam Style to Samsung

Ask anybody to name three countries in Asia, and almost certainly, China and Japan will come up. In fact, when I asked my friends,  Up until recently, odds are very slim that Korea would come up, and, if it weren't for North Korea gaining so much time in the media for the acts of its dictator, people would not even know that Korea usually refers to South Korea. However, recently Korea has been invading the United States, not by means of military force (we leave the threat of military force for North Korea), but through its culture, as seen through music (as in Gangnam Style, now the most watched video in the history of Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bZkp7q19f0), products (such as Samsung mega-corporation and their Galaxy S3, which has now surpassed iPhone sales worldwide), and more.

Culture infiltration is, of course, not a negative thing, especially from such a conservative country as South Korea. But how does it start? I hypothesize that it starts with immigration, for without immigration, music and products has little reason to cross the borders (and oceans) and come to America. Especially for a country whose primary language is not English, there would have to be some attractive force in America to bring the cultural elements of South Korea here so that Americans can become exposed to it. Eventually, as is the case with Gangnam Style, the cultural element reached a critical point where eventually, instead of Korean-Americans sharing the song with Americans, more Americans were sharing the song with Americans. At this point, the song spread like wildfire.

Samsung (www.samsung.co.kr/) is a different story, however, because in most cases consumers are not even aware that they are buying a Korean product. However, in Korea Samsung is a massive corporation, called a conglomerate, that owns their own sports team (the Lions), as well as a host of other subsidiaries. But the reason their products got to America were, I hypothesize, driven by the same reason. They came to America through economic trade, but that trade would have only happened had there been Korean people living in America.

Culture from Korea has not only manifested itself in America through song and products. Hollywood has remade several movies that were originally produced in Korea (such as the Lakehouse, a remake of Il Mare, and My Sassy Girl, a remake of the Korean movie by the same name). BB Cream (http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/the-experts-at-garnier/bb-cream_b_1214401.html), while originally formulated in Germany, was embraced in solitude in Korea until recently becoming popular in North America. Needless to say, the small country south of China has a global reach much further than ever before, and this will likely continue to grow as its culture becomes more intermingled with ours.