{"id":14739,"date":"2017-02-20T10:38:32","date_gmt":"2017-02-20T15:38:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/?p=14739"},"modified":"2017-06-26T11:02:09","modified_gmt":"2017-06-26T16:02:09","slug":"with-kleen-conscience-inspiration-and-the-informational-age","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/tartan-news\/2017\/02\/20\/with-kleen-conscience-inspiration-and-the-informational-age\/","title":{"rendered":"With Kleen Conscience: Inspiration and the informational age"},"content":{"rendered":"

A few weeks ago I was talking with a woman I ran into while out doing random errands and the topic of youtube came up. \u201cThey just absolutely love this girl. All she does is talk over some toys and stuffed animals but the kids go crazy over it,\u201d she said.<\/span><\/p>\n

It took me a few weeks before I\u2019d go off on one of my tangents, ending with a thought actually worth sharing: I don\u2019t think my generation and those after have role models. Not in the same way those before us had, at least.<\/span><\/p>\n

We can now \u2018follow\u2019 our icons. This past week, I finally got to meet someone I\u2019ve looked up to while I was down in Maryland. I\u2019ve been able to follow this individual\u2019s journey for years, interacting online and seeing them grow into the status they\u2019ve now achieved some four years later.<\/span><\/p>\n

I don\u2019t believe previous generations have seen the degree, nor the raw amount of our icons as the newer generations. If you look at our President\u2019s twitter, even he\u2019s always tapping something. For better or for worse, that\u2019s up to you readers.<\/span><\/p>\n

We have entire streams of content from these people just to eat up at our convenience. We don\u2019t have to go grab the newspaper or the gossip magazine to get some in-depth, never-before-heard exclusives. We can just follow them on Snapchat.<\/span><\/p>\n

Our information is 24\/7. What few streamers I\u2019ve even met or watch on Youtube and Twitch have pretty much daily content. Our role models do the same, giving us a depth to our understanding of them that I contend changes the way society uses role models.<\/span><\/p>\n

We don\u2019t have to abstract them much. I have had the good fortune of meeting and interacting with many people I look up to in my craft of interest. They were barely different than their social media personas. <\/span><\/p>\n

This might have some up-sides. It means our kids may not develop following unrealistic portrayals of success. A lot of the success of these people has been more genuine than their non-social media profession contemporaries. <\/span><\/p>\n

Speaking as someone that used to traverse the extremely odd world of social media, I\u2019ve met quite a few people that are of the elite in my sphere. What you see is mostly what you get with them. <\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s actually much more challenging to fake yourself the entire time, and one way to get a lot of followers is by showing a depth to you that\u2019s beyond appearance. However, I think we all know plenty of people that manage to go above and beyond to fake their social media image. <\/span><\/p>\n

As for reflecting on the years before the social media beast was set loose upon me, my role models outside my direct family were pretty sparse. One was from my year of high school, the other my first two years of elementary. <\/span><\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t know these people terribly well. I knew them just from my perspective as a student. Perhaps there\u2019s something to the potential of having more in-depth role models, even if online?<\/span><\/p>\n

Many times, role models are just from one perspective. We might admire what someone has achieved, and strive to do our personal best. I question whether we would regard those same people as highly if we had known the sheer amount of information our kids can now obtain with ease.<\/span><\/p>\n

Barton Kleen<\/strong>
\nExecutive Editor<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A few weeks ago I was talking with a woman I ran into while out doing random errands and the topic of youtube came up. \u201cThey just absolutely love this girl. All she does is talk over some toys and stuffed animals but the kids go crazy over it,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10290,"featured_media":13706,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3],"tags":[1999,171,1786,1384,1725],"class_list":["post-14739","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tartan-news","tag-barton-kleen","tag-information","tag-inspiration","tag-opinion","tag-with-kleen-conscience"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/Barton-Website.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5s3vR-3PJ","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14739","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10290"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14739"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14739\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15634,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14739\/revisions\/15634"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13706"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14739"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14739"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14739"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}