Source: https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/conceal/

Something that I always found funny is people’s dedication to going back and concealing stuff they’ve al­ready put on the Internet.

On multiple occasions, I’ve seen people I know apply for a job, and hide or delete as much content on their social medias as possible so their prospective employer can’t figure out information from their past. This prac­tice has become so common that I expect people with hidden social media histories to automatically have a disadvantage, simply because their employer would probably assume they went back and hid every­thing, because they had something to hide.

I’ve actually personally chosen not to hire people almost solely based off their lack of social media history. Not only is it a bit suspicious, but in the Internet and entertainment industry, a solid social media presence (or at least a solid understanding of social media) is pretty important.

I personally have never really had a problem with concealing stuff I’ve put on the Internet. Apart from going back and deleting accounts off gaming fansites that I made when I was 10 years old and acted like an imbecile, I’ve never really regretted anything I’ve posted, simply because I’m such a cautious and calculated person.

It might just be that I started taking the Internet very seriously starting from a very young age, and I became familiar with reputation management when I was first starting to produce content. Every time I post something online, I think about how people will react to it, and how I will react to it in a few years, and this process seemed to help me quite a bit.

The problem for me actually goes the other way around – I’m not trying to hide anything that I posted in the past, but rather, stuff that other people might post about me that is false or misleading. Although I haven’t really had this problem go out of control, there have still been multiple attempts in the past for people to make things up about me, or impersonate me and pretend like they’re me making a statement.

Having an official website as a central hub to all my content has helped mitigate any damage that might’ve possibly caused. I tag in the URL to my website pretty much everywhere I post, and it’s very clear that my own website is important enough to me that I would post anything important or official directly on here. This has also become clear to most of the people who know me, so if there’s anything with questionable validity, they usually come here to check for the facts.

Overall, reputation management can be a difficult thing, especially if you haven’t really been thinking about it, something bad already happened, and you’re trying to backtrack and fix things. However, if you always keep it in the back of your mind and change your approach to posting on the Internet, it really isn’t that difficult, and with time, it comes naturally.

Source: https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/edge/

When I see the word “edge,” I think of “edgy,” which means to be uneasy or nervous about something.

Then, I think about how words change over the years, and how edgy is now used in pop culture to mean some­thing that is trendy or cool. I’ve seen it used more negatively than positively, where young children are edgy when they think they’re cool, but they’re actually not, and they’re just falling victim to marketing strat­e­gies that make them think they’re being cool.

Seeing as I’m pretty involved in the gaming culture, I most often hear this word being said by Twitch chat in the few moments I have to read it before I navigate through my settings to turn it off. I also hear other words, like “salty,” being used in ways the word was not intended.

Being salty, even in the informal sense, means to be tough and aggressive. Salty does not mean to be upset or resentful. There is another proper word for that, and that word is “sour.”

I absolutely hate that, for whatever reason, Twitch chat decided to change the meaning of a word to mean something it does not. It continues to boggle my mind that so little people know the true meaning of English words that everyone is willing to hop onto the bandwagon and say people are salty when they’re actually being sour.

Sure, I’m in support for the evolution of language. Words can change meaning over time, based off shifts in culture. But, when one word changes in meaning to mean something else – a “something else” that was already perfectly described by a different word – then we start having problems. That is no longer evolution of language, that is being stupid and not calling out other people who are being stupid.

Another thing that Twitch chat seems to have birthed is placing the United States dollar sign on the wrong side of the numeral. Monetary values are written $1.00, not 1.00$. Infants learn this in elementary school. It confuses me out of my mind that adults are getting this mixed up.

I’ve heard absurd arguments where the dollar sign was put at the end of the numeral because it prevents people from adding extra numbers to the end of your value to increase it. Take a few seconds to think about how stupid and invalid of an excuse that is.

If you write a check for 1.00$, I can change that to 11.00$, or if I’m infuriated at your stupidity and want to make you go bankrupt, 9,999,991.00$.

If you write a check for $1, then sure, I can add a bunch of zeroes at the end of the 1 and make myself a billionaire. That’s why you use both halves of your brain and write the check for $1.00, so any additional numbers I add at the end are fractions of a cent, and you don’t have to foreclose your house to pay me.

Yet, I’ve seen people continue to put the US dollar sign after the number. That is incorrect. Stop.

I continue to see people using the word “salty” to mean “sour.”

That is incorrect.

Stop.

And, because I know this is coming … no, I’m not being salty right now. I’m being sour.

If you could split your time evenly between two places, and two places only, which would these be?

Source: https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/a-tale-of-two-cities/

It’s been almost one full year since I last responded to a Daily Post prompt.

It’s the weekend, and I feel as if I haven’t really done much today, so I decided that I wanted to write some­thing creative, and looked to the Daily Post for an idea. The Daily Post has been a project that’s been going on since 2011 (and possibly even before that), and I’m impressed that they’ve kept it going for this long.

When I first participated in the Daily Post, it was the blog-everyday challenge in 2011, which I successfully completed. It’s nice to know that the people running the Daily Post are continuing the project, and if I ever want to write but don’t have any topics, I can still look to them for help.

Today’s topic is about living in two places. Unfortunately, because I don’t really like traveling, I can’t really give a comprehensive and informed answer to this prompt. However, with the little knowledge I do have about the world, I would like to live in one cold, snowy place, and one very warm place. To make things more concrete but keep it simple, I guess we can say Chicago and Los Angeles.

My opinion about the snowy winter has changed throughout my life. For the past handful of years, I have been strongly against snow, because it only ever causes hassles for me. But, the first snowfall happened yes­terday, and there is something I appreciate about snow that I haven’t felt before – the pure white light­ing up the dark night.

The reason I never really liked snowfall is probably because it always held me back from doing something. It prevented me from driving safely to another location, it prevented the bus routes from continuing on schedule and made me walk back home during university, etc.

Yes, this snowfall did prevent me from driving – I ended up spending the night at our family business in­stead of making the half-hour drive back home. But, I regularly spend the night at our business anyway to save gas, and I actually prefer it there because I get to be alone and peaceful.

With all these concerns gone, it was actually soothing watching the snow fall and pile up in our parking lot.

Once it’s time for me to move on to the other city for the remaining 50% of my day, I would head on over to the warm environment. My car with ten inches of piled snow and frozen windshields/windows wouldn’t even matter, because it would probably instantly melt as it arrived in the hot sunlight.

So, not only would these two different cities be used to counteract the hassle that the winter brings, but it also satisfies my new appreciation for seasonal diversity – being able to enjoy great weather, as well as the interesting sights brought to us by snowfall.

Today’s daily prompt from the Daily Post is titled “Winning Streak” – “What’s the longest stretch you’ve ever pulled off of posting daily to your blog? What did you learn about blogging through that achievement, and what made you break the streak?”

It’s funny that the Daily Post is the website that’s asking me this, because, back in 2011, I blogged for 366 days straight from December 31, 2010 until December 31, 2011. The Daily Post had a blogging challenge in 2011 where they encouraged everyone to blog every single day of 2011. To help people out, they posted topics and prompts every day of the year.

I actually decided to participate in this, and successfully completed the entire challenge. Some days I had things to blog about already, but on the boring days when nothing happened, the prompts were pretty useful.

Although I don’t really make any effort to blog daily anymore, I still check the Daily Post website once in a while to see if there are any interesting topics, and this one caught my eye because it was so relevant to something I did three years ago.

From this experience, I learned that in order to be committed to something like this, you really need to want to do it (or be forced to do it). Seeing as I wasn’t being forcefully required to blog daily, I had to find some intrinsic motivation to keep going, because it’s very easy to skip days or fall behind on busy days.

It helps that, not only do I enjoy writing, I also enjoy posting content for others to read and enjoy. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, making content for people to enjoy started getting difficult because I was also blogging on days I wasn’t feeling very creative, but regardless, I still like sharing my thoughts to people who want to listen.

This extended period of blogging, among other things, made me think about the theories behind mo­ti­va­tion. It encouraged me to think about the things I do on a daily basis, and decide if it’s something that I really want or need to do.

For example, if I’m participating in a particular activity and I think it’s boring, I stop to think about why I’m doing it. If it’s something that I’m not required to do, and there aren’t any severe negative consequences to not doing it (i.e., a severe negative consequence of not going to work is having no money), then I choose to stop doing it and find something else more worth my time.

At the end of the year, I decided to break the streak because I got a little bit burnt out from blogging. I also decided that I no longer wanted to blog when I wasn’t feeling particularly creative, or if I didn’t have any interesting concepts to share, because I wanted to change my blog’s reputation to being a site that always publishes content worth reading, rather than a site that publishes something daily, even if it’s not something worth reading.

Overall, I think that this daily blogging experience contributed in helping me find a middle ground for blogging where I am now, and was definitely worth the time and effort invested.

Changing colors, dropping temperatures, pumpkin spice lattes: do these mainstays of Fall fill your heart with warmth — or with dread?

Source: http://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/autumn-leaves/

If you know me, you know that I like everything in moderation and balance. So, I think it would be un­sur­pris­ing when I say that I like spring and autumn a lot more than winter and summer.

Au­tumn is actually my favorite season. Based off what I just said, it’s obvious that my favorite would be either spring and au­tumn. Spring is nice and exciting and foretelling of growth and expansion, while au­tumn is like the evening of a day when you look back at what you’ve accomplished and feel the relaxation of winding down and resting for the night.

Although I like getting inspired to complete great things and finish great projects, I like seeing the results of them even more. Autumn seems to reflect the moment when everything is done and you know that the pleasure of your completed work is on its way. It signals the calm that’s about to come, and I think the calm and peace is very important after a hard day of work.

Less figuratively and more literally, I also like autumn because it’s when my seasonal allergies end. I usually have allergies around August and early September, and autumn is right about the time when my allergies go away. On top of that, the weather is fitting for me to wear a t-shirt, long jeans, and boots – probably my favorite outfit because it’s so simple and comfortable, yet neat.

So, going back to the prompt, autumn actually doesn’t fill my heart with warmth – it actually cools it down. But of course, I like cooling down rather than warming up, so that’s a good thing.

“Your blog is about to be recorded into an audiobook. If you could choose anyone — from your grandma to Samuel L. Jackson — to narrate your posts, who would it be?”

Source: http://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/voice-work/

Although this sounds a bit narcissistic, if I could choose anyone to narrate my blog into an audiobook, I would pick myself.

If I were to ask someone else to narrate my blog, I feel as if they would not be able to portray the im­plied emotions in the text properly, while I could (seeing as I wrote all the posts). So, I think that every­thing I was feeling while writing the posts – excitement, frustration, etc. – would not all accurately be portrayed by someone else at all the appropriate and relevant times.

Of course, these emotions aren’t all portrayed explicitly through the text either. However, because that emotion is not specifically described and written out, it is open for interpretation. Even if someone were to guess an emotion associated with a post or a sentence, there’s no way they can prove if they are right or wrong. Thus, even after a guess is made, that interpretation is still available, and acts as a challenging element to encourage people to question if they are actually right in their interpretation.

On the other hand, in audiobooks, that emotion is explicitly portrayed through the tone of the voice. If the narrator were to read a sentence with the wrong emotion, (s)he is explicitly portraying it incorrectly. There is very little room for open interpretation while listening to the sound of someone’s voice, so if the narrator is wrong, they are simply wrong, and there is little questioning and doubting to do.

Thus, in order to eliminate the chance for error, and for the most accurate possible representation of the content of my blog, I would pick myself to be the narrator. Now, hopefully I won’t forget what I was feeling at the time of each of my 1,000+ blog posts and portray my own work incorrectly.