THE SEA LIFE
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 20. 2013
PAGE 4
TEXT FREE FOR ALL
Text your FFA submissions to 785-289-8351 or at kansan.com
The best thing about tonight's game has been not having to listen to Dick Vitale wheeze his way through stupid comments.
I think that since I pay KU tuition I should be able to access a live broadcast of the KU game. Why is that not a thing?
There's nothing quite like that feeling you get when you arrive at the stark realization that you should have wiped one more time.
Just witnessed the KU band Wabash...is it too late to transfer?
Shoutout to Joel Embirid for waiting an extended period of time to hold the door for me... TWO DAYS IN A ROW! What a classy guy.
If I had a dollar for every time the BMX guy on Wescoe wrecked...
MUSIC
How to dress for game day without breaking the bank. wear a KU t-shirt and jeans because this is Kansas, not Texas.
Do you ever knock back a few shots on a Tuesday afternoon, just to make life more interesting?
Why is the game day flag not flying over Fraser??
EDITOR'S NOTE: It was ripped up pretty badly on that windy Saturday.
We got bats in Eaton!!
People feeling "insecure" about Momo... Us gays have this forids. We call them Grind.
The bathroom doors at Wescoe are a dearthtrap. Both ways can't push, it just doesn't make sense. I am perpendually slamming the door in faces.
Can I write commentary on sidewalk chalk?
You think the KU Kstatefb game over Thanksgiving is bad? Try having the KU Kstate game be over Winter Break, which it is.
What if I told you that all of my FFA submissions were secret codes to the "Honk for Hemp" guy that used to stand on Mass?
I am a capable, independent woman,
unless there's a spider or I need the
nails on my right hand painted.
I like to go to the quiet zone of Anschutz to take naps.
Did anyone else notice that the piscolos did NOT do another wave ;{
Please. For the love of God. Don't do the wabash cannonball again...
Congrats to Joel Embid on his first double-double!
Digital economy requires new consumer consciousness
Back when playing the game "Never Have I Ever" was fun and considerably entertaining, I would always start with the same one. "Never have I ever stolen something." It somehow didn't occur to me that I had in fact stolen not just one thing in an isolated incident, but I had stolen many things many times. I had stolen music.
stolen music.
The concept of "stealing," or illegally downloading music on the Internet, is no new phenomenon. In fact, the word stealing might even seem a little harsh considering the commonality of the act. But that's what it is after all — isn't it? Why is it that when it comes to the digital economy, our consumer conscious disappears?
On June 16, 2012, a newly hired intern at All Songs Considered, a multimedia blog through NPR, posted an article titled, "I Never Owned Any Music to Begin With." The article immediately crunted, causing an Internet
avalanche of responses — some hasty, some supportive, but ultimately feeding fuel to the already heated debate over piracy. In the article, the intern stated that while her iTunes library exceeded well over 11 thousand songs, she had only purchased 15 CDs in her lifetime — an unsettling imbalance.
"I never went through the transition from physical to digital," the intern stated in the article. The same goes for most of us that may be reading this — as part of Gen-Y, we were raised in the rapidly growing digital economy — never fully comprehending that we were losing things we barely had.
The intern acknowledged this in the article by saying, "I wish I could say I miss album packaging and liner notes and rue the decline in album sales the digital world has caused. But the truth is, I've never supported physical music as a consumer. As
monumental a role as musicians and albums have played in my life. I've never invested money in them aside from concert tickets and T-shirts."
Honestly, for some time, I too believed that this could be enough. Though I have, and still do, praise the importance of live performance and often fashion concert and band T-shirts — I learned that this is no way to truly support any musician for their work. Is it possible that we the fans have become the sell-outs here? Applauding ourselves for attending a show or buying a shirt, when in reality most artists
want is to be making money for just that - their art.
A documentary currently in the works titled "Unsound" explores these exact concepts in detail. According to the official site, "Unsound" will reveal "the dramatic collapse of the music industry and the unintended consequences the Internet revolution is having on creators of all kinds. Featuring noteworthy musicians, filmmakers, journalists and beyond," "Unsound explores the struggle for creators trying to survive in the age of free," according to unsoundthemovie.com.
While the most prominent digital music marketplace, iTunes, along with streaming services such as Pandora and Spotify, seem to have figured out how to generate a ton of money in this "age of free," the "creators of all kinds" still have a ways to go. Last October, the Future of Music Coalition held their annual Future of Music Summit. The summit
addresses current issues facing the music industry, and the "ins-and-outs of digital business models and revenue generation" certainly made the list on futureofmusic.org.
- some magic fix that will glue together pieces of the past with fragile fragments of the future
- I think that for now, we as the Internet savvy, social-media-addicted, digital-dominating generation, need to develop a consumer consciousness applicable to the digital economy that we will continue to live in.
While everyone in the music industry desires and craves some sort of digital business model
From the industrial revolution to the digital one — never have I ever been more eagerly concerned to see what we will do next.
BEING THANKFUL
Lyndsey Havens is a sophomore majoring in journalism from Chicago.
Don't take everyday happiness for granted
I was 9 years old when I realized that life is one twisting, epic story. I started to see the world in colors, words and appropriately scored musical themes. I saw my personal day-to-day trials as the small ups and downs that keep each chapter of my life interesting. But with this revelation, I've noticed — and subsequently struggled with — the assumption that my life should be as easily managed as a fictional story. With the exposure to relatable, yet wholly made-up narratives, it's easy to get caught up in the tropes of writing and expect our own lives to function in the same way.
As my years on campus have passed, I have begun to see this more and more in attitudes of my peers — we all expect a happy ending, because happy endings are all we know. This, while surely being something to strive for, is a paradoxical assumption. What I mean by that is, the more we expect happy endings, the less they tend to appear to us.
The fact that happy endings appear less frequently in our lives does not necessitate the idea that happy endings are occurring in our lives less frequently; in many ways, happy endings are occurring in our lives constantly. The real issue here is that our constant search for that typical, fiction-worthy happy ending leaves us ignoring the real happy endings that are actually present in our lives. In other words, we
tend to ignore the good in our lives because it simply isn't a big enough 'wood' to acknowledge.
This is something that has been bothering me a lot lately, because frankly, ignoring — or even assuming — the positives of our lives lends itself to a habitual focus on the negative, even when that negative is so infinitesimally small that it sounds absolutely ridiculous to dwell upon. And hence, the hashtag #firstworld-problems was born.
So, for those of you lost in this endless abyss of pessimism, and in light of the upcoming holiday,
I lend my suggestions on a few things to be thankful for this Thanksgiving:
1 A football coach and players who still have faith enough in our team to improve, even though victory and fans come slowly.
2 The facility workers who, undoubtedly, were left to retrieve the pieces of goal post from last weekend's game out of the toxic waste that is Potter Lake and the jaws of the Potter lake whale.
promising talent, and the signs of a good season ahead.
4 A fresh basketball team with
5 New NCAA rules that make basketball games twice as long, meaning twice as much excuse not to do homework and watch the game instead.
We aren't MIZZOLD.
7 Great faculty and resources,
like the Hall Center for Humanities
and the Honors Program,
that bring in amazing guest lecturers, like Junot Diaz, and provide support and scholarship to high-achieving students.
8 The KU Libraries, their facilities and all of the resources they provide. (Did you know you can check out headphones and laptops at the libraries?)
9 We aren't Mizzou.
10 Mass Street, and the greater area of Lawrence, for being genuinely awesome in all respects.
11 And finally the fact that we are neither K-State, nor Mizzou. If those don't seem like reasons enough to give thanks this year, really stop and think about your life and your privilege. A simple Google search will lead you to endless numbers of resources detailing the struggle of everyday life in poverty-streken areas, war-torn regions and third-world countries. The truth is, life as we know it could be far worse than you could probably ever fathom. And we should be grateful that it's not.
SOCIAL MEDIA
Tasha Cerny is a senior majoring in English from Salina.
'White girl problems' creat self-promoted stereotype
Before I say anything else, you should know that I am white, I am a girl and yes, I do have problems. But not "#whitegirlprobz." just normal people problems that have no gender or race.
As fall comes to a close, the end should also come for the white girl stereotype. Social media outlets like Twitter have created an image of the "common white girl," holding a Starbucks triple-grande non-fat soy pumpkin-spice latte with whipped cream (hold the foam) in one hand and her iPhone in the other, Instagramming a selfie of her Uggs/yoga pants combination. If she drops her iPhone and it cracks, spilling her coffee in the process, she is experiencing a "whitegurl-prob." Other white girl problems include, but are not limited to, saying "literally" too often, being teased for having an infinity tattoo and not being able to load Netflix to catch up on Gossip Girl.
What I cannot understand is how these are solely "white girl problems." Anyone can crack a phone or spill Starbucks, and anyone can enjoy selfies and Instagram. So why are these things pinned to the white girl image?
CAMPUS CHIRPS BACK
To understand why, it is important to understand what this perception is saying about race itself. It seems that these shallow images are projecting the idea that white people can't possibly have real problems compared to other races. This makes the idea of a white girl's definition of a problem seem laughable. While these jokes are initially funny, girls do not realize that they are putting themselves down when they retweet these shallow problems. Not only does it create a negative image for all white girls, but for themselves too, because it implies and brags about having a luxurious life — one that non-white girls might not have. Is that really the image that we should be projecting? An appearance of shallow privilege?
When tweeting about white girl problems, it is also important
to realize these "problems" may diminish actual problems. It may be a white girl problem if the girl rear-ends her car while trying to Snapchat, but it is a real problem if she actually gets hurt in the process. In a less extreme case, it might be a white girl problem when a girl spills her coffee all over her pants, but it is a real problem if those are the only pants she owns. We shouldn't be labeling these issues by the race or gender of the person that has the problem. Remember kids: labels are for soup cans, not people and their problems.
Oddly enough, it may be white girls themselves who have created the image by promoting it. While the individual factors that make up the stereotype can be applied to anyone, the use of Twitter as a way to vent have built the concept of the common white girl. It may be funny to retweet these problems, but keep in mind that every time you RT or favorite, the stereotype continues to build. In the end, girls are only hurting themselves by saying that these stereotypes are OK. It is perfectly acceptable to take pictures of food and coffee, but attributing these exclusively to the "common white girl" is nonsense.
There's being selfish, and then there's taking two frosting packets for one Toaster Strudel. Unbelievable.
So ladies, feel free to get as many infinity tattoos as you desire and take infinite amounts of selfies on Sundays. Don't let the "common white girl" stereotype deter you from being you, and if your phone breaks or Nettflix won't stop buffering, remember that this is not a white girl problem. It's just your problem.
Meghan Ketcham is a freshman majoring in journalism from
@BadBuddhist4
@KansanOpinion Umm, I have a guy.
@Rachel_ELF
@Rachel_EZ
@KansanOpinion YouTube downloaders... ain't got no $$.$. I will buy if I really love the band though.
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@Ben_Samson
@KansanQoinion I buy my music off of iTunes
legitimately, you thieving harlots.
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