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I liked the movie. And I disagree with Aries. All black people are not going to hang out with people in the hood and be "down." There are some black people I would not like to hang out with. 1). Hood people who are ignorant and have no hope. 2). Boogie black people who are not real with themselves and think they are above all other black people. I came from a rough city. There are those who referred to themselves as "niggas" and stayed where they were. And there are those who fought their way out through education and work, who would have nothing in common with the people who chose to stay "down" and to stay "niggas." Aries makes it as though all black people naturally gravitate to a rough crowd, and those in the rough crowd are the more authentic black people. I beg to differ.

In the first 27 days of not using social media at all. My traffic from social media has actually gone up when compared to the prior 27 days. It is also higher than the traffic from the same 27 days in 2016. After about 6 months or so I'll write about the impact of not using social media on my business. My initial conclusion is the increase this just reflects how the impact of my personal activity on social media has been on my websites traffic. I have to admit I have sometimes I found it hard to ignore the desire to share something on social media that I just posted on this site. I feel like people will not learn about the interesting book or author I just posted. Intellectually, know this is just the result of 10 years of conditioning to use social media. I know of course over time this urge will diminish. From an online social perspective, I have y'all :-) From my family and friends perspective, most are not active on social and those that are, are the ones sharing the minutia from their daily lives--either way I don't feel like I'm missing anything, From news and information perspective, I know I'm better off ignoring social media. It has been interesting to see traditional news outlets start to sell themselves on the virtues of providing true journalism and not the fake news you find on social media. The subscriber base for the NY Times has increased. It appears the pendulum may be swinging the other way. Last night (March 26th), 60 Minutes aired a segment which spoke about Fake News. They demonstrated how websites can buy fake likes and shares, which not only gives people the false impression that articles are important but "tricks" social media into sharing these articles as trending--which greatly increases the organic reach of the entity buying the fake likes. I put "tricks" in quotes, because I know social media sites can identify the artificially amped up articles, but they have little incentive to remove this fake engagement because it helps the social media platforms too. I watch and enjoy the Showtime program Homeland. One of the threads in the season's series deals with social media and how is used to influence public opinion. This is straight out of the article @Mel Hopkins shared about how social media was used to influence the trump campaign. This is actually not the first time I stopped using Facebook. About 2.5 years ago I stopped as part of a much larger campaign called, 99 Days without Facebook, which asked the question would you be happier with Facebook. I hoped to use the campaign to encourage others to join the effort. I don't think I convinced a single to leave Facebook. I boycotted Facebook for 37 days. This boycott is different. I don't care if any joins me. I'm not even trying to convince anyone to. I'm relating my experience here for my own benefit as much as anyone else's

@CDBurns thanks for popping in. I'm predicting Twitter is on the way out. They have never made a penny in profit even Trump's tweets isn't making them profitable. Every semester I poll my students, asking them to name their favorite websites. This semester I asked them to give me two social media websites. Our out of 53 students only 1, named Twitter This is a dramatic decrease from previous semesters. The students did say they used Twitter for breaking news, mainly for the memes. Snapchat and Instagram are far more popular with my group of college juniors and seniors. Good to read your website traffic is up!

There are no black women or men willing to stand out like those Civil Rights leaders of old. We have Colin Kapernick who put his money and livelihood on the line by not pledging alliegience to America, and subsequently being blackballed by the NFL.

I still check in to Facebook because people continue to write me there as opposed to my websites, but my time on Facebook has dwindled. My time on Twitter has increased, but I've been able to connect to some heavy hitters and get a lot of information that helps shape my site. Twitter has become much more effective tool, and so has Linkedin. But I'm not writing much there either. I'm primarily using the sites as tools for growth. My website traffic is growing tremendously now that I focus on the site and creating information for the site. My search has improved and my return visits are up. I'm working on doing something similar for CBP but it's hard to find source content that I'm just as engaged with as I am with sneakers. Anyway, I figured I'd drop in stop lurking, lol. My lurking is a symptom of being dedicated to the website growth, so I know you understand. Keep fighting!