I don’t often hop on my soap box I keep my personal thoughts to myself on a lot of topics and try to keep all of the information on the blog useful but I guess I’m looking for some feedback here.
I was reading a post earlier which resurected a a thought/prospective post that I thought I had put to sleep.
Firstly, what’s up with iJustine (Justine Ezarik) and the whole homeless theme?
There are a couple of times that she has just plain made fun of being without a permanent residence. See the picture to the left (hopefully photoshopped, I don’t see a nice manicured thumb) where someone placed her (with her great glee) as a homeless person because of her ‘addiction’ to a game and there was the sleeping in a box thing simply because it was so big.
If you’ve never come close to being homeless or have likely never actually held a conversation with a homeless person how about not mimicking them?
Before I go on I have to say that I have worked in social services.
Recently there was some ruckus about Jakob Lodwick and the term ‘Norbum’ [see here] "Norbum.org is an open, crowd-sourced, web 2.0 application powered by Tumblr. Why the name "Norbum"? Simply put, Norbum is like Nordstrom for the homeless." Soon after Jodwick shot down the idea of him making fun of the homeless in a statement claiming he was not mocking the poor [see here].
Both Ezarik and Lodwick love attention.
Of the 13 definitions of the word Social on Dictionary.com about half of them are directly relating to helping others. Others not just meaning those who you email or IM, not those who comment on your blog or subscribe to it ‘others’ don’t necessarily have a computer or internet connection.
As ‘Social Networkers’ how much are we really doing socially and how much ae we just in stuff, promotion, exposure, fame and the like for ourselves.
I have voiced my opinion before that there are certain people who could use their fame for good – i.e help a volunteer fire department [see here] or something.
There are services out there like the Chris Brogan affiliated GrasshopperFactory.com (coming soon again) and the new HoosGot where users try to leverage the power of the community to help others. There are those who help their communities, there are those try to highlight the plight of others and I know there are more individuals and services.
We like to describe ourselves as a social networking community. How about extending the community and using this new found power and community that we have for a much greater good.
What do you think? Do you have any ideas how the Social Networking community can extend out to the community some?
