Tag: dangerofmemes

Living in the era that I do, I have been exposed to various types of persuasion, whether they are trying to get me to buy something, give information, or persuade me to believe something. These articles are shared through social networking sites and I happen to have accounts on almost all of them such as: twitter, snapchat, Pinterest, and Instagram. Sometimes these articles are pointless entertainment, though I have come across few that have taught me something useful or brought something to my attention that I was not aware of. For example, I was scrolling through twitter and I came across this article about a cop shooting a young boy, I was in disbelief, I honestly thought this must be false, there is no way a cop would just fire a gun on a kid for no reason. As I read the article, I no longer had the belief that cops were here to protect and serve, although some still do, not all cops are like this. Unfortunately, there have been many articles and news reports that have come out and have shown white cops shooting at or killing African American males. Again, even after the first article, I could not believe it, I was sure they had done something to provoke the officer or it was false and a made-up story. As a child I was always taught to respect police officers and that they were here to help me, and I should not fear them. Although I am not afraid of them given I am a white female, I lost respect for those who have blatantly murdered a child or adult because of racial ignorance. I remember watching a video of a boy being shot, he had nothing in his hand, nor was he not cooperating, and they shot him, and he died. I also saw the police officer who shot him try to justify it, although it wasn’t an accurate justification the department stood behind him. I was in complete disbelief. I am very privilege and never had personal experiences with discrimination, but after those articles I read I realized its everywhere. In the ted talk “what makes something go viral” by Dao Nguyen, she list off ways content can go viral, whether it deals with your emotions, it helps you understand, it deals with family or it is relatable. For this article that I read the reason it went viral is because it portrays to the emotions of the reader and is informative. Therefore, it caught my attention because its news that is very appalling and shocking, I truly believe that is how it caught others attention as well. In the video “Dangerous Memes”, with the speaker Dan Dennett, he mention that the creator of memes believes memes are viruses. Memes are defined as ideas that spread from person to person, what they have become is not necessarily what the creator of memes had in mind but, in this case the article about the shooting is meant to be shared from person to person because it is a topic that needs to be brought to others awareness.