Stephan Reed — The American Nightmare

Another amazing bgsu blog

Use Internet to Help You Get the Most Out Of Your Night’s Sleep

Nov 11

Posted by Stephan Reed in Uncategorized | No Comments

One of the greatest lessons I have learned in college is time management . More importantly, I learned how to manage time well enough to get a good night’s sleep.

I have woken up countless times and thought to myself “This is so awful; as soon as I get home, I’m going to sleep.” However, the next evening, I wouldn’t hop into bed until after midnight. This cycle of restless nights and miserable mornings continued for quite some time.

Eventually, I started working out and making sure I was absolutely exhausted before hitting the hay. I would work out for more than an hour and burn off all my energy. I would also make sure I wouldn’t eat two hours before bed, thus feeding less into my metabolism as I was trying to fall asleep.

After a while, this stopped being so effective. I needed something else. I then remembered certain experiences from my childhood that resulted in absolute relaxation. Two instances stood out most: watching Bob Ross’ painting demonstrations and when other kids would “check my blood pressure” while playing doctor.

The  soft speaking, almost whispering voice and the light touching of the childhood game were Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response triggers, also known as ASMR triggers.

These triggers result in a tingling sensation in the head, almost under the scalp. But most importantly, they result in extreme relaxation.

Over time, countless Youtubers took to the Internet to perfect the craft of giving me this relaxing tingle before bed (SilentCitadel, WhisperSweetie and EmoGirlLettersare among my favorites.) These videos are 10 minutes or longer and consist of a lot of whispering, tapping and scratching.

Often times ASMR Youtubers will avoid showing their faces on camera. They say mystery adds to the ASMR effect.

One drawback from this method of winding down is that the mind can get used to the video, resulting in no ASMR trigger, thus these Youtube producers create many of this videos, sometimes even hundreds.

ASMR videos are a good way of relaxing before bed and knocking  you out cold without the use of cold medicine, but I found myself still groggy and miserably tired in the morning. After some Internet soul-searching, I found out that many of us wake up in the middle of our Rapid Eye Movement cycles (REM). The contrast of being so relaxed to being so panicked yields an awful exhausted feeling.

Have you ever woke up 40 minutes before your alarm and thought “Wow, I’m well-rested and I still have 40 minutes to sleep.” Only to wake up 40 minutes later in a groggy state? That’s because you started a new sleep cycle.

A website called www.sleepyti.mehas been created to help people solve this problem. The site is very bare-boned and simple. All you have to do is type in when you have to be awake (or when you are falling asleep) and it will tell you the exact time to fall asleep (or wake up) to wake up in between cycles instead of in the middle of a single one. Sometimes it’s better to get less sleep to make ensure you get the right amount of sleep and don’t wake up mid-cycle.

Sleepyti.me is a very simple website designed to help people get the most out of their sleep cycles.

It is important to note that the average human takes 14 minutes to fall asleep and to feel fully rested, it is recommend that you go through six to eight of these 90-minute cycles.

I have found myself waking up a few minutes before my alarm clock and just using the excess time to roll around in bed until the alarm sounded. Waking up slowly is much more comfortable than jumping out of bed and taking on the day.

These solutions have done the trick for me and I can honestly say I wake up everyday without wanting to keel over in exhaustion.

So, if you’re ever having trouble falling asleep at night or you’re just feeling groggy and tired even after sleeping 8 hours, use these tips to help you wake up on the right side of the bed.

Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

Bloomberg Blooms During Hurricane Sandy

Nov 1

Posted by Stephan Reed in News Related | 1 Comment

If tragedy were to strike Bowling Green, I can honestly say that I would want someone to model an emergency response team after Mayor Mike Bloomberg’s response to Hurricane Sandy.

On a day-to-day basis, Mayor Bloomberg updates his 350,000+ followers about big news events, health tips and other happenings, but his Twitter account served as something more this past week. Before, during and after Hurricane Sandy hit, his account was a method of emergency response.

Days before Sandy started scaring the citizens on the East Coast, Bloomberg was sending out warning tweets. His account (whether it was actually him or just someone who runs his account) tweeted preparation tips for the storm. Not only did he tweet his own preparation ideas, he linked to other accounts and websites to get the word out to his people.

During the storm, the Mayor kept his citizens informed. Even though millions were without power, they still had their phones for a few hours and satellite Internet connection. He posted tweets about evacuation plans and talked about which areas had the most damage. Not only did he give helpful and informational insights, he gave condolences as well.

While Sandy was wrecking his territory, every tweet from Bloomberg had a mini-URL attached. These links brought users to helpful pages with updates on the storm and even personal video messages. In this way, he made himself seem human to the people who needed a human touch.

Sandy left behind a great deal of destruction. Bloomberg posted updates and positive messages to keep his people looking up. “NYC has been through a lot in the last 11 years: Hurricane Irene, a transit strike, a blackout and more. We’ll get through this too #Sandy” was one of my favorite motivational tweets.

He kept businesspeople in the loop by explaining what the New York Stock Exchange was doing in response to the storm, but he also kept parents informed with school delays and closures. He had the whole demographic in mind the whole time.

All in all, Bloomberg did a fantastic job while responding to Hurricane Sandy. He helped citizens of NYC prepare for the storm, he rode it out with them and helped motivate them to get back on their feet. He never left them in the dark.

Posting of Youtube videos and personal messages offered the human touch that the people needed and the informational links gave them something solid to hold on to.

Good on you, Mayor Bloomberg. You’re the type of mayor NYC needs.

Tags: , , , , , ,

It Will Blend and It Will Sell

Oct 17

Posted by Stephan Reed in News Related | 2 Comments

When Blendtec’s back was against the wall and they were struggling financially, they decided to take to the Internet for an inexpensive and creative means of publicity. The CEO of this highly durable blender company witnessed Tom Dickson grinding up a 2×2 hunk of wood, as a part of a durability test, and he came up with the idea: Will It Blend?

Since 2008, Tom Dickson has become one of the most watched people on Youtube.com. He has ground up super glue, Justin Bieber figurines, a skeleton and even an iPad. His nerdy persona, mixed with ridiculous puns and the hilarity of watching expensive and durable items being destroyed, was a recipe for an Internet success. I mean, who could turn their head away from someone grinding up a gun in a blender?

Now, as I have scrolled through the comments on many of the “Will It Blend” videos, I have noticed negative comments, usually stating things like “Why are you destroying these things? Less fortunate people out there could use them.” These viewers need to realize that many corporate-level advertisements and campaigns cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. To make these videos, it costs Blendtec the price of whatever items they are destroying. That’s about it. And trust me, the return on these “ads” have been phenomenal.

These blenders are not cheap. They cost about $400 each, but when these videos went viral, it substantially spiked sales of Blendtec’s blenders. In 2008, sales were up 500%. In 2009, sales were up 700%. Each video has an average of a million views, with a few of them skewing this average with 7,000,000 or more views. People have even gone onto eBay to purchase the items that were ground up, including the dust of an iPhone.

Blendtec’s “Will It Blend” videos are a great example of a social media marketing success. They had a good product and they knew it, but they needed to create a buzz for it somehow. Why not tap in to the Youtube audience and gets some incredibly cheap publicity? They did this effectively and made one heck of a living, not only off of selling blenders, but also with YouTube ad revenue.

Tags: , , , , ,

The Murder Scene of the Music Scene

Oct 3

Posted by Stephan Reed in Uncategorized | 2 Comments

Much like the early 90s grunge scene in Seattle, Washington, the current music scene has been destroyed by a few bands that made it big in the mainstream marketing.

In 2006, Ohio was a Mecca for local music. Everywhere you turned, there were bands coming out with new singles and pushing their newest merchandise. Band stickers and flyers for local shows were plastered on any open space and, as a young musician myself, this was exhilarating.

That's me in the middle, playing live at Howard's Club H in 2008.

For many young bands, “making it” and getting signed were dreams that rested in the back of the mind, but what really mattered was practicing and playing live, in front of family, friends and complete strangers.

I can tell you, firsthand, that there was nothing more exciting than looking out into the crowd and seeing people moshing and dancing to your heaviest breakdowns or the glow in the eyes of the females in the front row as they looked up during the clean choruses. I’m getting chills just by recalling it.

Bands took whatever measures they could to record their songs. Whether it was through the use of pirated music software, a grassroots record producer (Swordfish Studios in Findlay, Slaughterdog Records in Lima, ect.) or just a hand-me-down 8-track recording device, bands were adamant about printing their own music.

Bands would record anywhere and do just about anything to get their music into a reasonable sounding format and then onto their Myspace music player.

At this time, the music was nowhere near perfect. In fact, it was perfectly imperfect. Listening back, one can hear missed notes, off time bass drum hits and poor leveling. But those little miscues are what make this so special to me. It was more about the message and the experience than the money-hungry attitude that consumes today’s music industry.

Bands began cutting their hair, spending thousands of dollars on recording and acting like complete snobs. The Internet was always a mainstream outlet for pushing shows and your music, but it quickly turned into a cesspool of shameless plugs and “You can only listen to this band if you ‘Like’ it first” messages.

In this way, MySpace.com trumped Facebook. Myspace was a purveyor of music; the guy who would let you play at his church or record your EP for free. Facebook is just that slimy guy who collects the money at the door and cuts your playing time in half.

After bands like The Devil Wears Prada, Before Their Eyes, Bring Me The Horizon and A Day To Remember started gaining speed, other bands ditched their originality to sound like the bands that were making money. They started over producing their records, tuning to ridiculously low tunings and mixing their bass guitars out of any song.

Now, we are living in 2012. It is a time where local shows are an endangered species. It’s more profitable to record an album and push it online than it is to go out and play the music that you wrote from your heart. The emotion has been sucked out the local music scene.

Even though the good ole days are gone, I can still be proud to say that I was out there living each day. I can still recall the feeling of walking onstage hundreds of miles away from home. I can still remember meeting hundreds of new people. I can still reminisce on a time where music was full of heart.

As lame as it may sound, I can’t wait to look at the younger generations and tell them my stories. “Back in my day, music was real.”

 

 

Settle The Sky performing Cheyenne in Gibsonburg, Ohio 2008

Tags: , , , , , , , ,

How ‘Dub the Dew’ Went Terribly Awry

Sep 21

Posted by Stephan Reed in News Related | 3 Comments

Social media is great way to communicate with your audience and consumers. However, without careful planning, it can blow up in your face. On the Internet, there are trolls that keep an eye out for chances to mess things up or make someone mad. For example, in August of this year, Mountain Dew introduced a new Granny Smith apple-flavored soft drink. They decided to have a little fun and let their fans name it, or as their slogan stated “Dub the Dew.”

This went horribly awry when members of 4Chan.org, a group of the Internet’s best hackers, most curious individuals and people with too much time, decided to get in on the voting.

The poll was on the Mountain Dew website, so an Anon [Anonymous member of 4Chan] banned people together to vote for some really goofy names. “Gushing Granny,” “Granny Squirts” and “Fap Apple” made their way on to the list. Mountain Dew came out and said they did not have to choose the top name, just one that was on the list. 4Chan accepted this challenge and continued to flood the poll and hack the site.

By the end of the contest, “Hitler Did Nothing Wrong” was at the top of the chart, there was no reasonable name left on the poll and the pranksters hacked the site with Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna’ Give You Up” as an unwarranted pop-up. According to one blog related to this social media fail, hackers went so far as to add “a banner that read “Mtn Dew salutes the Israeli Mossad for demolishing 3 towers on 9/11!”

Mountain Dew gave their public too much freedom. Their intent was good: use social media to interact with their fans and gain their input. However, the Internet trolls took control of the situation and created a social media blunder for the soft drink moguls.

My biggest takeaway point from this experience is that companies need to monitor social media more closely. When a situation starts to arise, they need to extinguish it before it gets out of hand.

They also need to use more tact when dealing with Internet trolls. Mountain Dew’s statement to the trolls could be seen as antagonistic. Had they just let it go, the pranksters would have lost interest, but since they engaged in such a way, the trolls had to have a little fun.

Before a company begins a social media campaign, they need to recognize how it could go wrong and figure out a quick and painless process to fix it. After all, Mountain Dew could have just deleted the poll.

Tags: , , , , ,

Don’t Understimate the Abilities of a Fresh College Grad

Sep 14

Posted by Stephan Reed in News Related | 3 Comments

There I am, my first day on the job as Ford Motor Company’s newest social media correspondent, an organization known for its good social media etiquette. I sit at my desk, performing each task to a t in order to not mess up and disappoint my boss.  Every word is triple checked. Every phrase is carefully thought out and delicately formulated. I know, going into this job, that if I mess up, then I’ll be out of a job, out of a pay check and desperate to find a company that didn’t catch my social media mishap.

This is how I, a typical young, college-educated potential employee thinks. I feel the Digital Entrepreneur list underestimates the mentality of a young employee. I know that many of my friends, and myself, can be quite goofy and immature, but when the time calls for it, we can transform into responsible adults. While hanging out on the weekends, one may be incredibly silly, but when at work, the professional is put guard up and that individual becomes the rational human being that he or she has trained to be. After all, we didn’t work through four years of school just to mess around on the job.

However, I don’t believe a company should hire someone and put them in full control of all the social media accounts right away. They have to learn what the company is about. They have to understand the audience they are appealing to. They have to know there is something to lose. Putting someone who has at least a years’ worth experience with the company would be optimal.

I do like the point the article makes about having a few people know the account information for the business. Suppose the hypothetical social media correspondent gets fired for some reason, changing the password should be done before that employee actually get their notice to insure they don’t “go postal” on your social media accounts.

Younger employees should not be treated as incompetent. They can learn the niche audiences of the business and ways of communicating to them within a decent amount of time, especially if that was their educated specialty. I don’t believe you should give a young employee or new hire complete control of the accounts, but don’t be afraid to let them do a job they have trained years for.

Tags: , , , , , ,

What does a deleted post really say?

Sep 6

Posted by Stephan Reed in Uncategorized | 4 Comments

It’s late. You had a bit too much to drink or maybe you’re just irritable because of fatigue, but you decide to log into Facebook and respond to your ex’s post about her new relationship or you really let your boss have it for making you stay late. You let your true colors show — and they are not beautiful.

You wake up in the morning and your phone is blowing up from notifications about your post. You promptly delete your post, pretend it didn’t happen and continue on with your day.

That post was deleted and never happened … right?

Wrong. Even if you delete a Tweet or remove a Facebook post, it was still read and has been archived.

When a user posts on another’s wall, the receiving user gets an email with the text of that post. This is proof or evidence. If you tweeted an ill-tempered tweet — or any tweet actually — it has been archived by the Library of Congress. If someone follows you to his or her phone, your angry tweet is saved as a SMS text. 

Suppose what you said online could be considered threatening; if someone was truly offended and wanted to report you, saving the evidence is as easy as a quick keyboard command to screenshot your post.

I know this latter archive technique because I used it once. Someone I knew threw water balloons at my car and put a Frosty on my windshield. I was unhappy, so I browsed Facebook and found the culprit because they didn’t think before they posted. I “screenshotted” what she said before she deleted it and made her clean up my car or else I would get police involved.

Suppose an organization begins to delete negative posts on their page, there will be some backlash. (Unnecessarily vulgar and explicit posts are fair game for deleting, especially if stated in the About section of the page.) These posters will ban together, spam the page and continue to do so until the organization addresses the problem and fixes it. People don’t like it when you ignore their criticisms, let alone delete them.

Deleting posts show weakness either way. If you said something dumb, take responsibility for it. If someone posts a negative critique on your page, respond to it in a mature way.

 

Tags: , , ,

Stalking, creeping and ethical business tactics

Aug 29

Posted by Stephan Reed in News Related | No Comments

Imagine a situation in which a crazy ex-partner is logging into your Facebook or Twitter account and proceeds to read through all of your personal messages and rifles through pages and pages of comments and pictures just to find something incriminating. In this case, you would never give this person your password and email. However, as times begin to change and social media becomes more prevalent, employers are taking the role of the hypothetical ex-partner and asking to gain access to social media profiles of their potential employees.

How ethical is this form of surveillance? It depends on the circumstance. If a job requires strict privacy, then you shouldn’t have many social media profiles to begin with. In fact, the members of the Ohio State football team were asked to ditched their Twitter accounts for the betterment of their team and to privatize any sort of conflicts that may arise. Suppose someone was beginning their career as a CIA agent, it probably wouldn’t be the best idea to tweet and have his or her location published online for all to see. However, if someone is applying to be a waitress at Bob Evan’s, they really should not have to give up their social media rights.

Personally, I have ran into a few problems with social media in the workplace. On one occasion, I tweeted a frustrated tweet during my on-the-clock hours and I was scolded for it. Even though I did not directly cite my job as the reason for my rage, I still was told not to put anything on a site that could reflect poorly on the organization. Of course I thought this was excessive because I was on the receiving end of punishment, but as I watch others fall into the same trouble, I continue to see this as an irrational form of restriction. When I tweeted my controversially tweet, I received no feedback on it. No retweets. No texts. No replies. It was just me voicing my anger in the moment.

I believe organizations are too sensitive when it comes to social media, but that doesn’t mean I endorse someone slandering their own company. I am all for a quick scan through of a potential employee’s profile. If a complete stranger can find out certain information, there is no harm in having your future employer check you out before an interview. When an employer asks for a password, that is a breach of privacy and trust. If this becomes the norm, then how far could this progress? Could an employer potentially ask for you to hand over your phone for review? At what point are we supposed to draw the line?

A quick skim through won’t hurt. Filtering your opinions about your job and ridiculous party antics should be normal, but invasion of privacy should not be.

Tags: , , , , , , ,

Skip to toolbar