The Real Rave Scene

The Seattle Rave Scene often gets a really bad reputation. Raves have become synonymous with drug culture, recklessness, hyper-sexuality and all sorts of negativity. This story is here to say that, yeah, the Seattle Rave Scene has all of that. But that there is more. Raves have a history that revolves around the concept of positivity, free love and open-mindedness. This story shows what real people involved in the scene have to say. It shows photography from shows, interviews a local DJ and has audio interviews with people who have been going to raves for years.

The Real Seattle Rave Scene

Living Life

Life moves quickly and so many of us just let it pass us by. Some people don’t live life like that and it is very unfortunate. This story shows just how powerful a single person can be and gives some insight into how someone can actually do anything that they want to. You can always dream of what it is that you want to do. Or you can stand up and do what you’ve always dreamed of.

Twitter: Giving Power Back To The People

Twitter was always a strange concept to me and I was always one of those people who said things like, “Why would I care to be updated on what someone is eating for lunch or what they’re doing every five minutes?” Due to this mentality, it took me some time to really get involved with Twitter despite having created my account over a year ago. This class really opened my eyes to the concept of using Twitter as a tool. This essay is supposed to discuss Twitter as a tool for journalists and it definitely is an incredible tool for them to use but I have also noticed that Twitter can be a tool for an incredible amount of things.

Journalists now have a way to communicate directly and immediately with the public. One could say that that was accomplished the day that newspapers were created but in a world where everything can be accomplished in seconds, newspapers could no longer keep up. Our world is becoming faster every second and, honestly, many people cannot waste time on something more than 140 characters.

It is also important to realize that Twitter is something of a Pandora’s box. I could say that we’ll see it become that but it already has. The entire structure of journalism that used to call for years of schooling and having to get a job has been thrown out the window.

Stories have gone viral on Twitter published by thirteen year olds. Lane Sutton is currently fourteen years old but has been teaching classes at colleges about how to use Twitter for over a year now. His Twitter biography, “14 year old Entrepreneur, Social Media Strategist, Kid Critic, Blogger, Speaker. Passionate about business. Love technology!” is perfectly correct and perfectly mind-blowing. I remember being thirteen and dreaming of being a journalist. Twitter has enabled those with drive and ambition to rise to the top immediately.

Stories have been broken on Twitter before being broken on major news outlets before and many people even use Twitter as their news outlet. Citizens are able to take on the role of a journalist now because the whole world can communicate with itself. A good example of this happened recently when the president announced Osama Bin Laden’s death and it had already been all over Twitter for over an hour.

I had always thought of Twitter as a social networking tool and it can be used for that. However, after only a few weeks of using Twitter as a journalist would, I see the power of it. I am now able to communicate with the entire world about issues I find important. I gained more followers than I assumed I could and because of that was able to tell them about things that were important to me.

A friend of mine who lives in Bellingham recently had a run in with a local paper there. I found out about this over Facebook and Tweeted about how poorly the paper had treated him. I expected that this tweet would be just as effective as one of my thirteen year old livejournal blog posts but it got retweeted and then I got followers who worked at that paper. I realized in that instant that Twitter was powerful. I realized in that instant that Twitter had shared that power with me and it all came together for me.

Twitter has given the power to the people and will definitely have a lasting effect on the world of journalism, on communities in general and on the lives of citizens everywhere.