Opinion

CHANG | Sunny Memes

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Seeing Sun memes and Facebook comment threads about the work I and other columnists have produced is my guilty pleasure. I love setting the sort method to “All Comments” and methodically plugging through all the replies: Good discourse, illogical arguments and trolls’ messages all the same. The comments typically come from all sides of the political spectrum, alumni, current students and even members of the public who find it a good use of their time to crawl the Facebook page of a college newspaper. But what are our responsibilities as Cornellians and Sun readers to promote dialogue on this campus? And, how can Sunnies improve our work by responding to these comments — vitriolic or otherwise?

Columns

STELLA | No One Wants to Hear About Your Summer in Ithaca

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Summer vacation has been a sacred entity of time worshipped by students since Kindergarten. Homework, early mornings and cold lunches were replaced with swimming, video games and day-long play-dates. Summer was always a time to relax with zero responsibility. In college (and sometimes high school), this dreamy utopia drifts away, instead replaced with nepotistic internships and counting down the days until the weekend. Of course, you still get to spend time with your high school friends, if you’re lucky enough to be home for the summer.

Columns

CHANG | I’m Exhausted by Politics

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Maybe Jean Baudrillard was right, and the system is accelerating toward implosion. Information in the 21st century is easily dispersed and produced, but at what cost? I’m a long-time politics junkie, binging political information like new episodes of a TV show. But I kept this spring break relatively information-free, and it has done wonders for my stress levels and mental health. Instead of keeping up with hour-by-hour updates, I limited myself to skimming the occasional article and glancing at news notifications.

cell phone

LAM | Stop Eating With Your Phones!

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Unpopular opinion: I adore the food at Cornell Dining and still retain a meal plan with them as a senior. As a result, I’ve spent quite a bit of time at the various dining halls across campus and I’m noticing the increasing plethora of people on their phones while eating, usually alone. It seems to be a wider phenomenon. Even my dad does it too now at home — and recently I called him out for it.  “You’re using a phone after I took a five hour-long bus trip to see you?

Columns

PINERO | Instagram’s Commodification of the Self

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Raise your hand if you used social media today. If you’ve posted in the past month. If any part of that post — photo, editing, caption, geotag — was vetted by someone else before publication. Wave it around if you’ve ever done something or gone somewhere specifically “for the ’gram.”

It’s true that this behavior has become normalized, and that I myself participate. Neither negates the fact that it’s totally bananas.