Tag Archives: internet dangers

Teen Wisdom

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Teen Wisdom

The children are all burgeoning into adolescence,
though like shaken sodas, they emerge with effervescence.

Not thinking of the consequences, behavior audacious,
argumentative and therefore maddeningly pugnacious.

Parents’ beliefs are fallacies. Teens think that only they
have the means and knowledge to clearly know the way

to surge into the future, the internet their guide—
believing all its stated truths are bonafide.

They don’t listen to their parents because, for sure, they’re wrong.
They’d rather get their wisdom from TikTok or a song.

For this generation, electronic media rules,
dispensing equal wisdom from sages and from fools.

Is it truth or fiction? Is it wack or cool?
How can they know the difference? Clearly, hormones rule.

 

Prompts today are consequences, fallacy, pugnacious, burgeon, mean and soda.

(The non-teen who wrote this poem was so wack that she misspelled TikTok as TikToc. Some teenager just clued her in.) And to be fair, there are probably just as many adults misguided by the internet as there are teens who are.

Extra! Extra! Forget All About it!!! (Sunday Whirl Wordle 529)

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Extra! Extra! Forget All About it!!!

Once daily papers split the air, landing with a “plop”
on each house’s stairway, two steps from the top.
Truth was dispensed each morning for a price tag nearly free—
a neatly packaged bundle wherein we all could see
how the engine of the world moved forward bit by bit,
and the shiny torch of journalism helped us witness it.

But while we strove for justice and fairness and the truth,
other forces in the world were fighting nail and tooth,
trying to pollute the facts, and we all know why.
They were simply greedy for their share of the pie.
Did fair reporting save the day? Blind justice serve us all?
Or is it now too late to try to save us from our fall?

Rhetoric now flies freely at us through the air.
No more is it delivered daily to our stair.
Any mother’s son expounds with words twisted and ruthless,
all too often based on hate with logic cruel and truthless.
Words winging through the internet too easily meet our eyes
without the screen of logic to filter out the lies.

Reality is now for sale, scripted and rewritten,
that phony glamorous almost-world with which we all are smitten.
Our politicians, movie stars and buffoons playing roles
all have ulterior motives and short-sighted goals
wherein they build their egos, getting richer year by year,
and news of it just fades away into the atmosphere.

 

 

Prompt words for The Sunday Whirl Wordle 529 are free, papers, morning, price, wings, split, truth, shiny, engine, witness, why and strive. Top illustration by Melpo Tsiliaki, bottom illustration by Logan Weaver, both on Unsplash.

Line of Reasoning

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Line of Reasoning

His baleful eye and mawkish grin
reveal the sort of state he’s in.
Anybody can see he wields
an attitude that never yields
to any view different from his.
He’s up on everybody’s biz.
On world matters bacterial
and all things managerial
he knows more than the experts do
and gladly shares his point of view
with doctor, scientist or crew.
He’ll educate them all anew
by sharing truths that only he
in his superiority
has figured out. He is so clever
that even though, in truth, he never
went to university,
still, surely, all the world can see
it’s simply common sense that how
he sees things is a sacred cow.
In fact, you need not go to school.
Just listen to this puffed-up fool
to hear how science has it wrong.
He’s known the true facts all along.
How much more proof is there to get?
He heard it on the Internet!

The Dunning–Kruger effect is a hypothetical cognitive bias stating that people with low ability at a task overestimate their ability. It is related to the cognitive bias of illusory superiority and comes from people’s inability to recognize their lack of ability.

Prompt words today are bacterial, crew, mawkish, wield and anybody. Image by brandi ibraho on Unsplash. Used with permission.

 

Reality Check

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Reality Check

I’m  withdrawing from the argument. I have no more opinions.
I abstain from giving voice to what I think to my few minions.
Thoughts fly swift and easy lately on the internet.
They are so filled with hate. How much more rancorous could they get?
Our fearful hateful leader might hem and haw and hem,
but the problem with such enemies is, they turn us into them!

My grass is fresh and verdant. Fresh flowers bloom every day.
I’ll watch them from my hammock and put politics away.
From the troubles of the world, I need a short vacation.
My back yard is so lovely, and nature an education
to stop and rest and notice all the pleasures of this life.
We need to take in all of it, not just the pain and strife.

I contemplate the garden, suspended in my nest.
Morrie jumps up to join me—an uninvited guest.
Suspended in my private world, I find no rancor there.
Just mariposas fluttering, suspended in the air
above the tabachine blossoms—a sort of meditation
better for my blood pressure than any medication.

I fall asleep and doze for hours. Awakening from my nap,
I try to rise and gently spill the small dog from my lap.
It’s feeding time for animals. I go to find the cats.
They swarm around my ankles, both for sustenance and pats.
It’s when I find the hummingbird they’ve left me like a treasure
that I’m reminded that all nature is a blend of pain and pleasure.

 

The prompt words today were abstain, verdant and swift. Here are the links:

https://fivedotoh.com/2018/09/15/fowc-with-fandango-abstain/
https://wo/rdofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2018/09/15/verdant/
https://dailyaddictions542855004.wordpress.com/2018/09/09/daily-addictions-2018-week-36/swift

“Share Your World” Challenge

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This is a hilarious parody of the ‘Share Your World” prompts that I’m sure we all love. They are great ways to get to know each other and to reflect on happenings in our own lives. Things get sinister, however–a great reminder to us all that we need to be circumspect regarding what we share online. It starts out great and I’d love to hear people actually answer #s 1,2,3,5,6 and 8 and then to heed the warning the rest of the questions project.

okcForgottenMan's avatarserial monography: forgottenman's ruminations

I’ve seen many “Share Your World” challenges over the last couple years, so I figured maybe I could do one, in my own unique style of course. So, here goes.

What is your favorite flavor of ice cream? (Yeah, I’m easing into it.)

What is your most wonderful memory as a child before age 7?

If you could relive any moment of your life, what would it be?

What are the last 4 digits of your SSN?

We all remember our first kiss. Without describing the kiss, what led up to it?

What is your earliest memory?

What is your mother’s maiden name?

If you won the lottery, what would you do with the money you don’t keep for yourself?

What are the first 5 digits of your SSN?

What was the name of your first pet?

What was the name of the first street you lived on?

What was…

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