Month: October 2015

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Pornified Culture

Pornography.

Chances are that word made you recoil a bit. There are plenty of stigmas, judgements, and emotions that come along with the discussion of pornography and those reactions are not frequently discussed openly by the church. They may be discussed in one-on-one mentoring or during prayer times but there are rarely seminars in the church, or sermons covering this issue.

On October 27, 2015 Julia Beazley of the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada came into to give a guest lecture at my university on the topic of Pornified Culture. The lecture was well-attended by students and faculty as well as a number of attendees who were not directly connected with the school. Packing out the main Lecture Theatre, where chairs had been added in the back to create more rows, Beazley explained the dangers of Pornography not merely from a Biblical stand point but also from a political stand point.

Through her talk in the morning Beazley explained that pornography is the dehumanization of predominantly women, girls, and boys, and this objectification of people cannot help but spill over, affecting the real-lives and relationships of porn users. Porn teaches that sex is not about intimacy, love, or a relationship with your sexual partner, instead it teaches that women like to be dominated. This translates into a society that views violence against women and children as being “sexy,” directly leading to the “rape culture” we struggle with today where “no” is no longer accepted as meaning no.

As Christians the fight against pornography involves rescuing those who are abused and trafficked for it as well as provided support and a safe space for people to come when they are ready to break the addiction. Pornography is an addiction just the same way as drugs or alcohol can be, in fact, Beazley mentioned studies in her lecture that have proven this fact, it is the same reward centres in the brain that are being stimulated with porn as it is with drug addiction or alcoholism.

There are ways that pornography can be fought however and in her afternoon discussion Beazley mentioned a number of ways the team she is on is trying to fight against it including branding pornography as a public health crisis. I found this a fascinating point. Pornography affects an astronomical amount of people, making up about 25% of all online searches. It is a health issue, starting with the actors on the sets all the way down to the users who are slowly destroying their relationships because you can’t help but damage relationships when porn is brought into play. It’s not real but it can create dissatisfaction with the real.

I’ll close with two quotes that Beazley opened her lectures with, both from speaker Matt Fradd,

“We were made by love, to love, for love. Love is our origin, our vocation, and our density.”

“Christianity is not about the annihilation of sexual desire, but about the orientation of it for the sake of love.”

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#GrecoClass

Instantaneous responses have always been the best way to respond to something.

Someone’s choking? Instantaneous response required.
Basketball coming at your face? Instantaneous response required.
Thought of a really good pun? Instantaneous response required. (Please say it aloud, spread the punjoyment with us all)
In a class with memorable moments and great quotes? Instantaneous response required.

Wait, what was that last one? How does one respond to memorable moments and great quotes? Smile and nod in appreciation? Well, there is another option. Live-tweet.

Today Dr Greco’s Communications & Media classes live-tweeted their days, which for the Writing for the Media students, meant beginning at 9:50am and seeing how long they could go in the marathon of twitter.

Live-tweeting is the idea of posting updates or quotes on twitter as they happen. This can often be organized for a certain event using a hashtag. This meant today, that if one were to follow #GrecoClass on twitter, one would have found reams of tweets from Communications & Media students as they discussed their class.

My father asked me today, what the point of this exercise was. I was tempted to say that is was to catch up to another staff member who said that at one point he tweeted around 50 tweets a day, but the core purpose I believe was practice in reporting. That is, practice in finding the key information and sharing it in a quick, concise, and engaging way. Twitter limits you to 140 characters, you have to be able to draw out and display the key points in very few words. There is an art to twitter! (I don’t believe I have it…)

Whether or not we were successful in the second suggestion I suppose is for our poor followers to decide, however we definitely succeeded in the first suggestion of beating #50TweetsaDay. I was able to hit this goal at around 1pm after just over three hours of tweeting. (Did I lose followers you ask? No, I gained one. How…?)

Instantaneous responding may be the best way to keep followers up to date with an event and to connect with other people participating in the same thing, however, through experience I have learned that it is not exactly conducive to taking thorough class notes…

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#22on22

Today was my twenty-second birthday.

Twenty-second birthdays have become a bit of a phenomenon thanks to Taylor Swift’s popular song, 22 (x). It becomes an excuse to send links for this song to friends, to play it on repeat all day, to randomly break into song and sing it in public places, in a way one might say it brings people together.

When you say you’re turning twenty-two, often the first thing to pop into someone’s mind it that it’s your “Taylor Swift” birthday. For example, this morning one of my friends wished me a happy birthday like this,

https://twitter.com/chelseariffic/status/657221358875643905

https://twitter.com/chelseariffic/status/657222004815228928

My birthday is now directly related to Taylor Swift and between this person (be it friend, acquaintance, or stranger) and me there now exists a bond in the form of this song. We now have a conversation topic to break the ice, or a common passion to be excited about.

My birthday this year had a little extra T-Swizzle in it because you see, I was born on the 22nd. I turned 22 on the 22nd. I may have started using my own hashtag that some friends were then using when wishing me a happy birthday… #22on22 At one point are you celebrating your own birthday too much, you might ask? Well another question for another post…

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Mayday, Carpool Down!

I commute to school. Now commuting has benefits, I get to have a forty minutes adjustments period to allow my mind to slowly realize it’s awake and needing to function before actually being in class. I can study in the car. I can socialize with my friends. However, there are some downfalls when it comes to carpooling. If the driver is down, chances are the carpool is too, and if you don’t go to school in the same city, other modes of transport aren’t really an option.

Carpoolers rely as much on each other as they do on their vehicles. By saving the environment one less car at a time, they strengthen their bond of trust that they have each others’ backs, that they’ll get to school on time for their classes.

Turns out I have an unplanned day off tomorrow. Good thing I already brought home my textbooks to study for my midterm on Friday.

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Don’t Leave Canada Out!

It has come to my attention that Canadians have been and are being deprived and I am not okay with this. I have discovered just how many specialty limited editions flavours Oreos have had. Or as I should say, have had in America!

As a Canadian I have never had the opportunity to taste a Root Beer Float Oreo, caramel apple Oreo, candy corn, Berry Burst ice cream, honestly the list just goes on and on. I presume there’s a “good” reason to be depriving Canadians of these Oreo treasures but I have been unable to track it down in the recesses of the internet.

Oreo, we’ll eat them if you’ll send them over. Time for Canada to get the cool flavours!

(Can new Prime Minister Trudeau deal with this? He’s trying to be all hip and with it right? How about getting us some cool Oeros up here!)

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Theatre’s Final Curtain Call

Today my university closed its theatre program.

I mean, officially it was closed before this year started, no classes were offered, no department existed, but there was still the Theatre Room.

As you entered the building you couldn’t help but pass it, there on the left, the old cafeteria turned theatre classroom. A heavy curtain created a partition part-way across the room, hiding reams of props, set pieces, and random pieces of furniture. Further in was the costume room filled with a treasure trove of outfits from a range of eras. Though there was no department, there was still the Theatre Room. It represented the possibility of a resurgence, that theatre might yet make its underdog comeback just like in the movies.

But it didn’t.

This morning we arrived at school to find set pieces outside waiting to be thrown away. Fake palm trees huddled together, drooping over each other while they waited their turn to enter the dumpster. It was a sign of the end. Theatre would not return.

This afternoon the call went out, the costume room was being emptied. Everything was fair game. We rushed downstairs. Soon a dozen or so people were browsing the overflowing racks of costumes, filling garbages bags with their new found loot. First-come, first-serve.

The theatre program is gone now, ransacked and thrown away. It’s sad, but as always, parting is such sweet sorrow… because now I own some pretty epic costumes that I got for free. There’s always a silver lining.

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The Unexpected

Sometimes things don’t go according to plan. Notebooks get forgotten, eggs aren’t bought, and bus tickets can’t be found for love nor money. Life happens, the unexpected shakes things up, but it goes on and you make the most with what you have.

You borrow notes, you find a replacement, and you borrow cash. In the past year I’ve learned to roll with the punches a lot more. Today was a day of the unexpected and I think I parried pretty well. I wish some things had gone differently, but I’ll take it and I’ll move on. During exams there’s aways a few mishaps, can’t just have a simple week of midterms! Thankfully, it’ll be over soon

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The Internet at my Fingertips

Today I decided that the temptation to turn on my computer while attempting to study was too great. This, however, left me with a problem. How was I going to write a blog post without my computer?

Now I suppose I could have turned on my computer and been very intentional about not opening any other websites, but I know me, I have a knack for finding loopholes and procrastination methods. I’d probably check my site’s stats and how certain tags were doing, maybe I’d read the news – being informed is good! But all of those things take time and when you have a midterm in just over eleven hours, time is a scarse commodity.

The eureka monent came while I was texting (see, procrastinating). In my hand I hold a mini computer, all the features of the internet available at my finger tips.

I can blog from my phone.

So here I am, to all appearances texting and procrastinating on my studying some more, but in reality I am texting for marks. My phone has been bent to my will and, well, while I suppose I am still procrastinating studying, I am still achieving something. My work has been done.

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Crawling Back to Work

No one complains about a holiday, that would be madness! Time off from work or school is always appreciated and never seems to happen often enough.

No, it’s not the time off I have a problem with, it’s the coming back.

After four days away from writing blog posts my mind is dragging its feet, feeling tired and foggy. It’s not ready to come back, it was just entering vacation mode! But there are exams to study for, papers to write, work to be done, and blogs to post. My mind will get no break, no rest. I begin to wonder if it really is possible for my brain to ooze out my ear. Overworking is a word that whispers itself into my ear.

I ignore it, I’m too busy to consider that possibility.

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Taking a Wave

Today I become famous.

That’s not to say I literally became famous, I didn’t have a video go viral or anything, but my degrees of separation to fame decreased. I had a tweet favourited by one of my favourite youtubers.

Favourited

So why is this so exciting? Why is having a person with 71.1K followers on twitter click a button to acknowledge the fact that I shared his vine a big deal?

Well, it’s not.

Our culture celebrates celebrity. We put people on pedestals for everything, for being funny, controversial, pretty, foolish, or any other thing under the sun and then we look up to them trying to reach them and see them at our level. When these people reach down from their pedestal and acknowledge us of their own accord, well! Then as opposed to bringing them back to our level, somehow we see it as raising us to theirs.

Using this judgement, today I was raised up to take a wave from a pedestal looking down on 71.1K followers. Am I any different? Has my ability to hit share buttons changed? Is William Haynes my new best friend? Has my follower count magically changed?

So no, no, no, and no. Nothing has changed, except I got my little adrenaline rush for the day as I looked down from the pedestal before I realized I liked it better down on the ground with everybody else.