Showing posts with label facebook. Show all posts

Politics & Facebook - A Witch's View

This week has been pretty tumultuous in politics.  We have seen the POTUS actually ban an entire group of people based on their national origin which directly violates out Constitution. While everyone seems to have an opinion on this action, I believe few seem to actually realize the real implications of what this means.  This changes what American is to everyone one around the globe.



What is interesting here is that Reagan is the Conservative saint and yet they seem to have moved so far away from their path.  Some may say much like Christians today who scream ProLife and then say no to refugees or starving children.



On issues like gun control, abortion, racial relations and so much more the access to information about our friends and family has never been so immediately available. When we visited our family we didn't really know how they felt about specific things.  This is, in my opinion the whole, ignorance is bliss situation.  Facebook has made it so easy to see that people you love are racist or leaning a little too far left for you.  The power of a simple Facebook Like can change the entire course of Christmas dinner. Even to the point of people being killed over posts.

Recently a friend of mine, who I worked with for several years in real life, posted their concern at how Conservatives are being demonized by Liberals.  They said that Liberal were guilty of doing what they accused Conservatives of doing and it was wrong.  This particular friend did not vote for Trump and felt wronged due to everyone blaming Conservatives/GOP members for the massive swing in rights that is happening right before our eyes. When I mentioned that for the most part, I was surprised at the missing Conservative voice in the shouts for action they said that it was no different than asking all Muslims to condemn ISIS.  I thought for a moment and then agreed.  Even though we would love to hear from our Conservative friends and family on this, we're just not going to.  And you know what, they don't have to.  Thirty years ago we would not know who our friends voted for or who they supported. We wouldn't see their like to a Facebook page supporting White Nationalism. We wouldn't know they were OK with LGBT rights being taken away.  We would sit obliviously at Christmas dinner, tell them we loved them and go about our day.

Social Media and Facebook specifically has given everyone a voice.  A loud, and sometimes obnoxious voice.  We have keyboard warriors and home row bullies coming out of the woodwork to share their opinions, even if we don't want to know them. Everyone seems to have an opinion on something today and with this change in climate in American it seems to now be OK to promote hatred, bigotry and infighting at every turn. From a little restaurant in South Carolina to a yarn shop in Tennessee, we get information and misinformation immediately.  We have to look at this information and determine if it is something we need to respond to or not.  We have to see our brother like a post that says Trans people should not be allowed to use the bathrooms of their gender and weigh our response.

So what can you do?

The first thing you have to do is understand that people have a right to their own opinion. No matter how much you disagree or even how wrong that opinion might be. You have to decide if you can not only accept that opinion but also be able to engage with that person in a safe manner. Sometimes it just isn't possible to sit down at Christmas dinner with someone who you know feels that you are not equal.  And quite frankly I'm not suggesting that you do. There comes a time in life when the student becomes the teacher. Before you worry about should I go over for a visit, ask yourself what do you want from this relationship? What do you need? What do you have to give? If you were not related by blood to these people, would you want to be around them on a daily basis? With those questions answered you can decide if you want to move forward with it.

Not everyone is OK with Uncle Joe's drinking on the weekends or Cousin Ryan's constant belittling of his wife. You can remove yourself from the situation and end the drama. I never recommend confrontation on hot button issues. Usually this only ends in fights. If you have friends and family that you can talk to about these issues you are probably not the person I'm writing to. Discussion is great, when it can be civil.  Be sure to take care of yourself.  There is a reason why so many people have families of choice. Be with your family of choice. Be who you are and remember to protect yourself.

Be kind, be honest, but don't be a victim.  You can control social media simply by turning off the switch.





Winners of the 3700 Likes Giveaway!

The winners of the 3700 likes have been posted.  Each entrant was emailed and has 48 hours to respond with their mailing address.  If after 48 hours there is no contact another name will be drawn.

Congratulations to our winners and a huge THANK YOU to all of our loyal fans!!






Start Where You Are - The Giveaway Begins

Over the last few days I've been blogging about this book, "Start Where You Are, a Journal for Self-Exploration."

A giveaway for this book will begin now run for a week.  The winner will be shipped a free copy of this book by the publisher. (Blogger, Facebook & Twitter do not endorse this contest) One winner will be chosen at random via the rafflecopter tool.  The winner will be notified via email.  The winner will provide their shipping address for delivery.





Today I'm going to chat about the exercise that references a quote by Martin Luther King, Jr.

Only in the darkness can you see the stars.

The exercise is to think about a difficult situation and write down what you learned from it.

Some of you may be familiar with some issues I have had with family certain members of my biological family.  One member has decided that I am abusive to them, even to the point of blocking me on social media and taking to outlets under assumed names to bash me.  I found such and entry and as I always would began to address the situation directly.  It wasn't until after I really thought about it that I realized that what I was saying wasn't going to change anything at all.  I was actually more concerned that people see that the family member was wrong and I was right.  The drive to become right soon outweighed any positive benefit of the dialog.

I went back a few hours later and removed my comments from the conversation.  There was nothing to be gained.  I learned the hard lesson that when people have the mind set to misunderstand you, there's nothing you can do to change.  You must just move on.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on this exercise.  Feel free to share your stars.

Mass Invites and Why We Hate Them

Being a part of social media on places like Facebook does a lot to get a message out to the general public.  You can post a cause, a rant or even share a funny video and see a reaction from a large number of your friends.

And sometimes this can cause issues.  In some of the applications on Facebook you can send a mass notification/invite to all your friends to either come in and play a game or vote up a cause you sponsor.

These have become so annoying to some that a special line of memes has been created for just such an occasion.


Google Search Result
Google Search Result

As an avid gamer, I really have no issue with game invites.  If I don't want to play I go over and click the notification and choose to ignore the game.  I do it once for each game and boom no more invitations.

The steps are -  Click on Games under the APPS heading

Facebook Screenshot

Click the X next to the invite or notification and choose "Block game name" and you're done.  Now that being said, I would never block Words with Friends, that's really the only game I play and I love Barbie-gard so I would never block her either.

Facebook Screenshot

The point is that you can easily block a game invite while keeping your friends and don't have to post the crazy aggressive threats to kill people if they send you game invites.

Now, let's talk about the sender.  While Facebook makes it so easy to mass invite your friends, why not take a moment and think about the invites you're sending.  Sure, they can click no and move on but really why send a game about killing turtles to a friend who is an animal lover.  Why send an invitation to add nativity displays to the atheist on your friends list?  It really doesn't make sense.  I can see why the anti gamer group gets so upset at having hundreds of these in their inbox at one time.

So before you hit that "send to all my friends" button, take a moment to think about a few things.  Is this something I care so much about that I want to send it to all my friends?  How about I just share it on my wall and those that want to click on it, can?  Remember to be polite when notifying your friends about games or other things you follow and want to invite them to.  Mass invites are like junk mail.  You're not asking Barb to play Words with Friends, you're asking the world to play and that's just not cool.

By the way, I love Words with Friends and that is pretty much the only game I play.  Those that want to play are welcome to send me an invite.  Other games that are sent, I will just block.  I won't get mad, or post a nastygram on my newsfeed.   :)


The Wages of Pagan Sin

Earlier this week I started writing a post about Pagan Sin.  Inspired by a post in a group I was in, I thought about contemplating what would a Pagan call sin?  How would one be a bad Pagan, and if they were a bad Pagan, would they have some sort of Hell they would go to?

This thought was furthered along by two things that I experienced yesterday.  First, there was a situation regarding the attack of someone who was claiming the title Pagan Elder online.  The second, was American Horror Story – Coven. 

For those that missed the excitement of the online shenanigans, I’ll spare you the gory details and just say that one witch was using another witch to attack a third and fourth witch and tragedy was averted by open dialog.   Something the current Pagan community desperately needs.  Instead of blocking people, chitter chatting behind people’s back and whispering veiled threats there should be more direct conversation, open community and frank honesty.  In this instance, we have one Pagan calling another Pagan “bad”.  They are being labeled as a blight on the community, someone who is not worthy of the place they hold in the community.  

While I understand that we have those that are indeed role models, people that do a service to the overall community; we also have to understand that we are not going to agree.  Some may see a spider as a necessary part of the ecosystem, others may see it as … EEEEEK KILL IT!   There’s no changing that.  We have to learn that even if we revile the spider, the spider will continue to be a spider.  We cannot expect the spider to suddenly say, “Oh shit, I’m not going to be spider any more.”  He has no choice but to be a spider.  Now I’m not saying that we should allow mass chaos.  The world needs level heads and understanding.  We need to be more concerned about our neighbor and less concerned about who is the “Bestest Witch”. 


Taking our incident from yesterday, let’s for arguments sake agree that a certain photo was faked.  Let’s also say that it was done intentionally and with malice and forethought.  I present you with this question.  Who cares?  What difference does that make in the grand scheme of things today?  How does it change anything?  Is the person who did that guilty of some great sin? 


Stay with me for a moment, fast forward from a photo from the 70’s and let’s turn on the TV and watch AHS-Coven episode – “Go to Hell”.  The characters Marie Laveau and Madame LaLaurie, who were immortal, were both killed and ended up in their own hell.  Understanding that this is fiction, I’m completely sure that showing that two obviously Pagan people were in hell is sort of an oxymoron.  Hell is a Christian concept.  It was created by those followers of Abrahamic religions, which would by definition exclude Voodoo and Wicca.  I’m using the term Wicca, very broadly here.  Now, as I am not a scholar in Voodoo, that isn't to say that followers may have some sort of punishment area or something of the sort.  What I am saying is that the term “Witch” is used with a pretty broad brush and for the most part, the majority of the people I know that claim that title do not believe in hell.

So what do they believe in?   What will happen to those people who harm others?  What will happen to those who use the craft to further their own personal vendettas against the world?  What about those who don’t follow the rule of three?  Will they continue to thrive while those that respect the earth and the world only just get by?  What about fooling the entire community? What about stealing the work of others?  What about spreading lies via blogs and backbiting?

Here’s my take on the whole thing.  The success of one does not equal the value.  Just because someone has a 100,000,000.00 home, or a fancy car doesn't make that person successful.  Your success, your failure is within you.  You are the one who determines your worth.  If you sit all day, grumbling and complaining that page X has more likes than you, or blogger X has more followers, you will continue to see that come to fruition.  You are sending that energy out in the world and it is coming back to you.  You have to accept that there are those who will benefit from being nasty.  There is no great cosmic parent who is going to come rain down fire and brimstone to defend you. Ever heard the adage ‘misery loves company’.  It’s sort of like that.  You keep talking negative, being negative, living negative and you will attract negative.  Regardless of your belief in the rule of three.

I believe, there is no judgment at the end.  There’s no hell or heaven.  We are the masters of our destiny.  We make our lives good or bad.  Live your life openly, honestly and stand by what you believe in. 

Ultimately, you are the judge, jury and executioner of your life.  You are the only one that you need to please.  Live your life to be who you are, even if you are a spider.

Namaste & Blessed Be
Sosanna
)O(


I Like It Like That - A study of Facebook Likes

Royalty Free clip-art - Office.com


So over the past few weeks I've been paying attention to Facebook “Likes”.  There have been several articles shared that talk about how likes mean nothing.  Levley Marketing recently posted an article about Likes and Success.  I completely agree with the following from their page:

“Another misconception is that social media will automatically get you sales. This is a common misconception. Social media is there to have a great ongoing relationship with you clients. In layman’s terms, it is extremely good customer service and brand representation. It can drive people to your website, but that should not be your main focus. Your main focus should be connecting with your customers and giving them information that they need about your company or new products they might be interested in.”

Similarly, Sprout Insights posted this article last year.  When looking at an artist for example, last year Eminem surpassed Rihanna in likes, what do they really mean? Sprout Insights had this to say:

“There are thousands of comments on each of Eminem’s posts, but very few of them are actually related to the artist, his music, or his label. The bulk of the comments are requests for people to Like other Pages, Internet chain mail, or other spam posts. That gives Eminem fewer opportunities to reach out and connect with real fans, since people who really do appreciate him will likely get turned off by all the excess noise on his Page.”


In one of the Plagiarism groups I belong to there was a discussion around a bot that is used to basically ‘steal’ your Facebook Like and add it to page you haven’t gone to.  This intrigued me.  How is it possible that someone can take my like and go to a page and add it?  I did a quick Google search and found tons of pages that not only offered likes for sale in packages but also pages on how to hack these pages.  Meaning there are some people out there that are using hacks to steal YOUR LIKE. 

When I navigate to a page, I judge that pages validity based on how many of my friends have liked this page.  This is what some people are counting on.  You see ten friends have seen the page and approve of it with their “like” now you like it.   There are even pages that say you can get paid to sit down and like pages on Facebook.  We've all seen the “get your free iPad” by clicking here messages on our friend’s status messages.  The page Facecrooks.com reports on spam pages like this.

Buying likes has become such a business that there are even sites created that will give you the best and worse buy likes out there.  I found the following page with just a google search. 

Photo Credit - Screenshot header - FB Likes Reviews


I also noticed I’m not the only one out there interested in this trend.  A quick search of Goggle lead me to Pam Moore, CEO and Co-Founder of Marketing Nutz.  I found this great article related to fake followers on Twitter.   Using a tool called “Status People Fake follower Checker”, Pam shared an image that shows that 51% of a particular user base is fake and 29% of the remaining are inactive.

Just stunning.  She goes further to refer to a Cnet article where Facebook stated what in 2013 8.7% of their accounts were fake.

So what can you do?  How can you be sure that the businesses you are dealing with are legit businesses and worthy of that like you hold?

One thing you can do is check your source.  Before you share something or like something just because a friend does is follow up.  Sites like Facecrooks.com and Snopes.com are great ways to find out information on the newest scams as well as do a bit of digging to see if what you’re sharing is legit.  If you’re a blogger, sites like Copyscape.com allow you to add a url directly in and check to see how many times content has been shared.

Photo Credit - Screenshot - CopyScape



Another thing you can do is check your own page.  Check out the activity log on your page to identify if the pages that you are shown to like, are pages you actually like.

Photo Credit - Renee Olson


Once you’re in the activity log, check the left column for “Likes”.  When you expand that you can see “pages and interests” and “posts and comments”.  This divides your likes up in a usable format.  Looking through your page likes, you can see if there is a suspect page there.  Remember just because you see a page listed you didn't like, that doesn't mean the page owner is to blame.  They could be a victim just as you are.  Simply remove your like and move on.

Below is a screenshot of my likes from the 31st.  I was talking with a few Facebook Friends about eShakti’s site and a lovely dress they had as well as the new info coming out of the Al Jazeera America network. 

Photo Credit - Renee Olson


Anyone who knows me however will immediately identify the “like” that you want to remove.  Generally I don’t go around liking Christian news media.  To remove the like, click the pencil and choose “unlike”.

Photo Credit - Renee Olson


Keeping a close watch on your account and limiting the information you share will keep your information much safer in social media environments.

I hope this information will help someone. 

Namaste & Blessed Be
Sosanna

)O(

Finally....I'm Done..

So today is the day.  I'm waiting now for the bank to open so that I can go up and remove my name from the account.  It's been a long crazy seven months.  I've put on weight and become completely stressed out.  I'm looking over all that I accomplished over the last few months.

I was able to take someone who was obese and get their weight under control.
I was able to take someone with a 400+ blood sugar and get them down to 110 or below daily.
I was able to take someone who was nearly blind and manage to get not only one, but two pair of glasses.
I was able to take someone who was barely able to walk around alone and get her back up and moving.
I was able to take someone who ate fast food every day, to eating organic, even vegetarian food.
I was able to take someone who had excessive debt and get it manageable.


Even if she doesn't appreciate it, I still accomplished that.  Even if some of my family have disowned me and accused me of stealing.  Even if they are accusing me of lying, I know that I am telling the truth.

I've also found a growing network of friends and family online to help me through all this.  One thing that happened very dear to me was all the outpouring of support not only in my blog but also in the emails and facebook messages that came in.  I adore each and every one of you and am very proud to call you my friends.

I've even been invited as a sister to a very dear friend.  We've known each other many many years, and I found her again by this crazy invention called Facebook.   Thank you so much my sister, you have been amazing with your support, not only in words but your energy and thoughts of me during your spell work have been an amazing benefit and I am proud to call you sister.  If I can't make it up to complete a ritual with you, we'll have to work out something that we can both do remotely and then bind our energies together.  My dearest Kallan, thank you.

I'm a little nervous as I sit here 6 minutes before they open.  Tick tock tick tock... I'm looking forward to being free.  I'm looking forward to being at peace.  I have my friends and family here and I have the Goddess with me.



Happy Wednesday Everyone....

Namaste & Blessed Be
Sosanna
)O(


Pagan Blog Project 2012 – F

For the next two weeks our letter to work with is the letter F.  I thought about all the different magical and pagan words that I could work with.  There’s fairy, fire and familiar.  There are gods and goddesses Freya, Frigga or Faunus and Finn.  Decisions.  Decisions.

I decided that looking at my life; magical and mundane one of the most important things to me is family.  So I decided to write about just that.  Being a member of both the pagan community and the LGBT community I find that our families are most often made of up of what we call our “Family of Choice”.  These are the people we choose to surround ourselves with that give us what our birth family may not have provided.

That love and support that comes from gathering with like-minded people for the purpose of fellowship and fun is something that is crucial to one’s spiritual wellbeing.  I have dear friend that I don’t get to see every day however we share a bond that is closer than blood.  Our families may indeed also include our familiars. My house is filled to the brim with members of the animal kingdom that are very near and dear to my heart.

The world around us is estranged, each person breaking away from the land that nurtures us.  Our lack of communication with the trees and the Earth is slowly breaking down our ability to be one family; a family of Earthlings.  Our families, those of choice or birth are those that guide us when we need guidance, those that support us when we need support and those that love us when we need love.  Our families in spiritual send us healing energies and we in turn grow from that energy.

When I cast my circle and call to the quarters to watch over my rites, my first thoughts sent are protection and positive energy to my family.  My brothers and sisters who follow Hekate, my brothers and sisters in the pagan community and my family in the non-spiritual world.  All of you have a direct influence on my life and help me in one way or another to be who I am today.   No truer words were spoken than “It takes a village to raise a child.”  It also takes a village, a family to raise the world.





Holding my hand while I hold my breath
Family
Lifting me up when I have fallen
Family
Beacon of light when I am in the dark
Family
Loving touch when I am afraid
Family
Bandaging my heart when it has been broken
Family
Most treasured possession and source of strength
Family

Namaste & Blessed Be
Sosanna
)O(

 I'd like to post pictures of a few of those in my "Family" I hold dear.  And oddly enough, they're all on another "F" word.  Facebook!