↪ And Support Journalism

Whilst working on a video all about media literacy, a grab of which can be seen above, I’ve couldn’t help but compile a list of some of the points that I was trying to make in order to promote better media literacy. Below are ten easy steps to become more media literate.

1. Download Twitter

“The more media-literate you are, the less likely you will be tricked by propaganda” –@BrianStelter https://t.co/FgbqiGtr1z

— Reliable Sources (@ReliableSources) November 20, 2016

Download Twitter. You may not know how to use it. You might now know how to use it. You may even think that it is a dying company, you know, with one of it’s most recent asset shutters. Trust me, it’s worth it. Twitter organizes its tweets chronologically with the few algorithms in place shifting the order of tweets in relevance. All of which is run by an algorithm which can be turned...

To be device that a person can’t go without owning, you need to fit these two qualifications: 

Accentuate The Day

Take a look at the most successful consumer device in history to easily understand this principle. The iPhone single handedly launched the smartphone revolution, creating a world in which not having a smart phone is not only against the grain, but a hinderance to day to day life. Smartphones perfectly illustrate the principle of accentuating the day. By generally creating greater ease of an aspect, or in a phone’s case many, of day to day life a device gains real world use and need. For a device to maintain its popularity, buying attraction, and place in your life, it needs to have real world use and necessity throughout a day of its owners life.

Accompany A Sense

Arguably the most important aspect of device’s success is its ability to connect with, and amplify a...

I have a problem with dust. It circulates in the air that I breathe, it coats itself on the devices and tools I use every day, and it makes me miserable due to allergies. I am the source of the problem. 70-80% of the dust in a house can be your own dead skin. Disbarred from your body, it floats around in the atmosphere, hovering as a ghost, until it finds a home where you never look.

Perhaps dust wouldn’t bother me if I could not see it. Out of sight, out of mind. The swirling vortexes that flutter about in afternoon sunlight would pass unnoticed, staying out of my perception. Life is full of dust. Things that swirl in and out of vision at a whim. Some people can’t see it. They’re vision poor, or maybe they have better things to look at. I don’t. I just see dust, swirling around in my life every moment of the day.

Where dust bothers me the most is on my phone. The very thing that I...

As of now, Gawker.com has shut down and is gone. Where there had been a fundamental publication that helped found the very concept of online journalism, now sits a static page; full of articles bemoaning and celebrating the death of a staple in the journalistic world for the past thirteen years.

Chances are, if you’re an online writer, journalist, or creator who is any part familiar with the base construction of Gawker, you’ve been shaped by the publication in some way. Though as of today, the entire world will forever be shaped by what has happened to it. Today we learn that an angry childish man, who never learned to not let words hurt them, can take a foundational cornerstone in the freedom of this country (read: news and journalism publications) and shut it down using the penis of a man who wears a bandana and gets greasy for a living.

Though I find the result abhorrent, this is...

Try hovering your mouse over bracketed superscript text, you’ll like what you see.

This week has been interesting in regards to news.^[test] From the U.S. launch of news aggregator Blendle, to the launch of Microsoft’s A.I. Tay (an A.I. mind meant to act like your typical American 18-24 year old), there has been a spike of news related to media publishing and new methods of communication and interaction.

Originally I was planning to write the inaugural post of Aspires on the topic of news media and the evolution of media transmission (for a Journalism and Media Communications major, this fascinates me) specifically focusing on the struggle of modern media and news corporations to turn a profit in a world of online content and ad blockers. Now however, I feel compelled to write about the future of news media and turning profits in the rapidly greying area of online publications. An...

I love this website. I always have, I always will. But things are changing, and sometimes change isn’t always what we expect it to be. This website, as it has been known for the past year and a half is changing. Some of the changes are pretty obvious. A new logo, A new title, even a new domain. But some of the smaller changes are less obvious. All personal and professional posts will be shared on my website. [tristanisham.com](tristanisham.com/blog), while more thoughtful posts will be shared here. Both small and large. Hopefully this new website, Aspires, will become something that I and everybody who reads it will enjoy. I make no promises on it’s publication and simply will write here for fun to fulfill in myself a desire for better content on the internet to read. In all regards, this site is nothing more than a publication of uncertainty. One who aspires to be great, will one day...

Recently in my life I’ve begun to toy with the idea that I do not belong. Maybe due to my music choices that speak of the for-longed youth of the singers edging out of their own spruced years, or perhaps it’s from the uncertainty that I face for the entirety of the rest of my life. I feel as if I don’t really stand in a well off position in this life. Maybe that comes from the shallow desire for the certainty in life that a normal high schooler has, or perhaps it comes from the real me, that yearns to have a meaning in his life and to understand what he wants from it. Regardless I find that in my life I lack passion. I lack passion in school, I like passion in music, I lack passion in video. The passion, the real passion I find I still have is in these.

The reason why I rewrite the same story in every post I make is that the story is a piece of my past that defines me more than anything...

It’s the final day of 2015, a year full of some good, and some really bad moments. It’s a year of change, for myself, for our nation, and for the world. It’s a year full of lasts. It’s my last season of Marching Band, the beginning of my last year in high school. It’s the last year that Avon will be my only home. It’s the last year where my future is certain.

2015 is a year of fear. Fear of the future, fear of climbing the mountains in life that years ago were just specks on the flat horizon, and before not visible at all. It’s the year that terror struck the world, first in the Middle East and then in Paris. A year when we had to look at terrible actions and stand up for those in need. It’s the year that we saw that we as a country were not as perfect as previously thought. Wrought with domestic terrorism and shootings to the point where we page through the stories, which are seen...

Some people know that there’s something they have to do in life since the moment they’re capable of understanding “self”. Make, the word itself carries a deeper meaning for me. It calls like a siren’s song on the wind. I know that I’m supposed to be making something, I have so many ideas, so much ambition to do something that I just don’t feel like I belong following the standard path. I’m walking on the path of life, surrounded by frosted glass walls. Occasionally I grasp a light glance at what lays beyond, at destiny, but It’s not enough to be definite. I just keep on looking then. I think I know now, before I go off to college and live my life I have a slight idea. But I’m alone in it. I don’t have anyone to work on it with. It’s impossible to do by myself. I’m trapped by this city, I can’t wait to get out. Maybe out there I’ll get a better view outside of the glass.

I hope you know that I am terrified, unequivocally terrified, of my future as it stands from the point of my writing of this onwards. Specifically in college and what I see myself doing with the entirety of my life. Never before has my future been so uncertain, or as important as it stands right now in monumental decisions of minuscule scale. I’m not certain of where I want to go, or what I want to do. At least in the specific sense of accomplishment that you need to pick where you want to go or want to do. I just know that I want to make things, to be able to be a voice louder than the crowd and to be able to affect people through things I want to make. I want to be an artist in the most basic sense but in the grandest sense, I want to be a creator. An individual in a crowd of so many of those who are the same.
For as long as I can remember I’ve always dreamed of becoming successful...