No more Mr Nice Gaius

Graduation

Ok, I went with my family to my sisters graduation, and it was really fun, but the drive sucked. God the drive was horrible. Really it was horrible. Like really horrible, on the way there, at least, yeah on the way there. On the way back the ride was much better.

I don’t feel like telling you everything about what happened, even though it was really fun.

There was one thing I anticipated more than anything when I went there. That was to meet new people without having to introduce myself. How did I do this? It’s easy, just have the same face as your sibling and you’re good. Right when I shook hands with somebody I didn’t even have to say who I was they just said “hey you must be Amanda’s brother, you look just like her.” This happened more than I ever dreamed. I thought I would have to tell people to guess whose sibling I was but they recognized the face immediately. 

If you don’t know what either of us look like, here’s a photo, can you see the similarity?

Differences…

I think there is a significant difference between meeting someone online then preceding to meet them in person, than to meet someone in person and then talk online. I think an entire friendships basis will be different in that way.

There are people whom I’ve met online but not met up with in real life. I’ve realized that when you’re talking to another person online, you don’t know their real personality or how they treat others, you just know how they treat you, and likewise.

With an online friendship, the you won’t know what the real person is like, and how they treat people. You can meet somebody online who has never been mean to you only to reveal that they are a dick in person. It is all about the lack of knowledge of their real personality.

There was once a person whom I talked to online, one day we decided to meet up in person. And in the day we met up, it was like we barely knew each other. We had no actual idea of what our real personalities were like, because we had only talked online. What I learned from this: Once you meet up in person with someone whom you’ve only known online, it will be like meeting a whole new person. Because THEN you will know their real personality, and you will know who they really are. and it WILL be like meeting someone new. Whether you like it or not.

People portray themselves one way online, but that doesn’t mean it’s their real personality down to heart.

That is what online friendships lack: the real knowledge of each others true personality.

Genuine inspiration

I’m in a mode where I really want to post something on some social network, just for the hell of posting it, but then I can’t think of anything. I waste time just trying to come up with something to share/publish/post/tweet to my stream/dashboard/newsfeed/home with no success. So then I do post something, but it’s not genuine, or real. It’s unoriginal. 

When I do shablosweet on a social network almost all of the time it’s from genuine inspiration. It’s a thought that happens on accident, and those are where the best posts come from.

The thought has to come naturally, it can’t be forced, because it doesn’t work like that.

That’s what happened now actually.

I was trying to come up with something to post, and I couldn’t think of anything, and then I thought “I’ll make a post about not making a post!” 

So here I am

making a post

posting

about

not making creative posts

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Facebook has become more and more revolved around sharing more with your friends. That’s not how it was originally. The reason I’m starting to dislike Facebook more and more as time goes by is exactly that: more sharing. It’s gotten to the point that the “subscribe” button became available (whose idea came from Google+ first) and at that point, it wasn’t about sharing stuff about your life anymore. To anyone who I see a subscribe button from, nothing originally shows up. “Like in 2 seconds if you remember this” “like if you can’t go a day without music” “like if you loved this show”. And to be honest, that’s all you ever see from the people you subscribe to. If you have google plus the people that you follow/add to your circles (which amounts to the same thing) (oh and that’s where facebook copied off of google) come with a different approach. The people who make public posts don’t care about you liking something or getting more subscribers. On Google+, the people you can follow will post what they actually want to post, not something that they use to beg people to like their content. I personally don’t make public posts, but you don’t need a subscribe button on your page just to let people see your content.

I’m going to be honest here, I consider Google+ to be a better social network than Facebook

I love Facebook, and I’m very hooked on it too, but it’s becoming less and less appealing. Majority of the time nobody likes the improvements Facebook is making, and it’s adding on so many other applications. Spotify, Netflix, articles, even exterior sites with likes. People can consider this a good thing, but in my opinion, Facebook has become too caught up in the idea of “more sharing” and that it needs to happen more. I personally don’t think that exterior applications such as spotify or netflix make it any better other than for expressing ones interest in a song or movie when in reality nobody gives what they’re watching/listening to. That and Facebook has become unappealing appearance wise. See, it’s gathered up so much information from almost a billion unique users (which I don’t believe for a second, think about how many fake accounts are made and how many accounts people make for their dogs and whatnot)that it’s stored so much information that nobody looks at that it made Timeline, where you can look totally back. Sure, this is nifty, but also extremely creepy. It’s a stalkers paradise.

I give Facebook respect for improvements its made and how it’s trying to expand, but I don’t see it getting much farther than this.

Google+ on the other hand seems to be going somewhere. The layout was initially almost exactly like Facebook, but now they’ve changed it. It doesn’t look like Facebook, Twitter, Myspace (JK) and Tumblr, it looks like it’s own social network. 

Now with the improvements I’ve seen today on Google+ and just from prior knowledge and experience I consider Google+ to be a better social network than Facebook. Facebook has become too complex and just isn’t the same anymore. With +’s new layout, it is very attractive and extremely easy to navigate with. Profiles are different too, and things have changed. Facebook keeps on adding on features, making it more complex. Google+ doesn’t make itself complex, it’s simple and easy to use.

And it’s perfect for me personally, too. On Facebook I constantly delete friends because I don’t like having a lot of people seeing my profile but with Google+ it’s easy to filter out what certain people see. Yeah, Facebook has “lists” but that requires effort and time where + has circles and is easily accessible.

I also think Google+ has made other things easier such as photo sharing, you don’t have to find the file on your computer in order to upload it, you just click and drag it onto the screen, heck, you can drag and entire folder and it’ll upload it. Circles are also a very good innovation, making it easy to share with the people you want to share with, and filtering everyone else out. Hangouts is the most fun, where you can videochat with several people at a time for free, whereas services such as Skype charge for such a thing and Facebook doesn’t even provide.

Google+ was at first a major knock off of Facebook but I think that with the changes it’s made it is going to end up dominating Facebook in the years to come.

The white man kills black kid case

I don’t think that the public understands that this isn’t q racist crime. George Zimmerman killed someone. If the media publicized “male kills other male”, nobody cares. But if its published as “white man kills black man” then the country gets pissed off. We all know the story, but nobody cares to know any background information about zimmerman. He wasn’t racist at all, he had nothing against diversity, he tutored black kids. People don’t care to know that though so they assume he’s racist. Zimmerman said his life is over. He is still a terrible person, but this wasn’t a racist crime

Having one or two classes at east wasn’t a problem at first considering that it would not make a difference whether I was in the cage or not, it’s changed now.

My sophomore year I was very open about telling people I was in the cage, but that was just one or two people in my classes that I liked, not the whole class. Since I started this junior year, and especially this semester, I have to explain why I don’t know this or why I didn’t experience that, or I didn’t know where this place is, or why I don’t have a pass etc

The biggest class that has impacted this is gym. For one reason, it’s health to I’m the only person that isn’t a sophomore in the class. It’s not as if people talk to me that much, but I soon have to explain that I don’t have the necessities for gym such as a gym locker or even a lock when the time comes when I need it. Then people ask me questions outside of health.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind telling people that I’m at the cage, I’m open about it, but it’s irritating having to explain to a teacher a lack of knowledge or possession of some sort in front of the whole class.

People at northfield sometimes don’t respond to me in the hallway because they know I’m in the cage, sometimes people laugh when they see me walk out of it.

It just irritates me having to explain it so much.

East is a huge school. If you take into proportion how populated the cage is compared to the rest of the school, it’s about .5%.

Nobody knows what the cage is about or what it really is so they make stereotypical judgments about the students there.

When you think of the stereotypical cage zombie, there is none this year. This years class is ordinary, everyone is very normal. When I started there freshman year, every person who came in had a new persona that they would bring to the cage.

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To be quite frank, I wasn’t really aware that you would be judged for being in the cage. We’re no different than anyone else, we’re still human. Just because you’re in the learning center doesn’t make you any less of a person regardless of how many labels the rest of the school puts on it.

No, there’s no pregnant girl, no, there’s no psychos, you know I really don’t know what the other rumors are because people don’t really tell me, but we’re not crazy.

Nobody seems to understand that the learning center is there to help you, not trap you. Sure, the learning methods may suck and it’s not a normal high school experience but it’s not a terrible place like people make it out to be.

Though most assumptions about the cage are probably not true, I’ll admit that it isn’t that great academically. 

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We’re the most isolated part of the entire school. The learning options are very limited too. Gym shouldn’t be considered gym. Generally the cage won’t get you far in life, it shelters you when you need protection. I needed that protection at one point, but now I’m completely ready to go back to the main campus. That’s the term they use: “when you’re ready to go BACK to mainstream”. The thing is, I never started in mainstream, I didn’t get a single class mainstream for over a year. 

The cage definitely has an impact on a persons high school life, it has with mine.

Going to be fully mainstream senior year

For the first time ever. It’s kinda weird considering that people usually make their high school friends in the first year or two in high school. East is filled with people to get to know, the only problem is, is that I’m not exactly well-known mainstream and everybody has already produced their own friend groups in the first few years. I’ll be coming in the last year of high school barely knowing anyone or having any friends/

Classes at east will be no difficulty to maintain, creating new companions seem to be more difficult than it was back at the cage.

This site is getting old….