how I feel about writing

writ·ing

ˈrīdiNG/

noun

1. 1.

   the activity or skill of marking coherent words on paper and composing text.

   "parents want schools to concentrate on reading, writing, and arithmetic"

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Hello everyone! (like anyone would read this anyway!). It has been a long time since I posted anything here. Man, I even forgot the URL for this! haha!. I think my writing skills also dropped a few levels.

You see, I've been observing what has been happening all around me for the past two years. I even took a peek at some foreign issues ( I was only focusing on the Middle East back then, I now look at some things in Europe and US too).

I peeked at some writings that are floating around the internet and printed materials (for my research on global issues), and found something interesting: Most of them are basing their sources on a rather unreliable source: blogs and opinion articles!

So I did some research on the matter (obviously). What I found was even shocking: the foundation that they are working on are terribly weak. But as it is being cited over-and-over again, it is then becomes really hard to find the source of the information, and eventually put itself as the accepted theory in public. This is bad!

Prejudice is also getting out of hand. I remember researching for Turkey (the nation, not the animal) and found two interesting articles: one was talking about stuffs that really happened in Turkey, the sources can be traced to news reports, news articles, and interviews. The other article? It was about how great Turkey is under the great Caliph Erd****, the sources are rather absurd, as in no sources! So, no proof to back the claims. The sad part was: the article then gained popularity in Indonesia and being used as a source for other articles, thus making everybody to believe that is the truth. What a tragedy!

It is interesting to observe how a simple article can be so powerful. Especially to those who already have bias towards it. A simple facebook post can make a mob attack temples even though the source weren't that credible.

I am an advocate of freedom. I encourage people to write what they want to write. But I also feel that writing has its own responsibilities. Writing hate articles is not freedom, it is jeopardizing it. The government then will be forced to control what people write because of it. I wouldn't like that. Reading responsibly is also important, it is better to check the validity of an article, because it will shape your perception to things around you.

So, write and read freely and responsibly guys!