Zing of Authenticity

When it comes to knowing news, I LOVE to be the first one to know about happenings in the world. For example; in my apartment, no one knew about the Bunkerville situation with the Bundy's farms and everything happening down there. I walked in from my class and sat down next to my roommate who was on the couch looking at Facebook. He was scrolling through his news feed and he saw something that said something about the shooter who was positioned on the highway facing the police.









It was this photo made into a meme. It said something about the police and how shooters have the right to shoot, blah, blah "insert something funny." He was confused when I mentioned to him how crazy the situation was getting. This was on a Wednesday by the way. He looked and me and asked what I was talking about and I replied, "you haven't heard about this?" I felt awesome. I felt the "zing" Brooke Gladstone was talking about. In that small moment I knew exactly what I was going to say in this article.

I felt awesome knowing something that my buddy didn't know. He felt cool learning about it from a trusted source. I jumped on the twitter bandwagon and kept learning about the whole situation happening in Bunkerville.

When doing research for this assignment, I typed in on googlesearch, "breakingnews twitter" and looked at what came up. The zing of authenticity came to me immediately again. There is a twitter page specifically for breaking news. I felt awesome knowing that I can get news faster than anyone else on this planet, besides everyone who looks at this twitter feed.


I am framed by this context unfortunately. I immediately believe what I read and if I delve deeper into the subject, I tend to not believe what I read if it disagrees with what I read first and foremost. I have the problem that I believe what I hear or read first and don't stray from the point I got first. It is a problem of mine, but with today's twitter friendly world, every one is on a mobile device and reports news immediately, not always true, but the immediacy of the news gets me.


Frank Viola of "Beyond Evangelical" writes this on his blog "Rule of thumb: If you read something negative about another person, especially a fellow Christian, take it with a grain of salt. Tilt toward not believing it. Just as you would want others to do if it were you being smeared (Matthew 7:12)." I see this as how we all should look at the news we read first. Even though if feels awesome to know you are the first people to learn about the news, you need to read it with a "grain of salt." The fact people believe anything from the first news source they read it from is a human fault that can't be changed without much research and without being lazy. 

People believe the first things they read and hear about because they are FREAKING lazy.  I am on this bandwagon unfortunately. I see something and most of the time, I am just somewhat lazy and don't want to research the fact I heard about and take it at face value.

When it comes to personal reporting of news, I love to read up-to-date updates on mainly sports.  I follow sports pages that report news about a certain team immediately as it happens.  ESPN's app "sportscenter" is one of the most widely downloaded sports apps on apple's app market.  With over 200,000 ratings, this has many more than other sports reporting news apps. According to stateofmedia.org "the most common way that people get news is by going directly to a news organization’s website or app. About a third of desktop/laptop news consumers and smartphone news consumers get news this way “very often.” Even more tablet news users, 38%, follow this path." This doesn't have to immediately do with sports but I imagine the numbers relate to sports as well.

With these numbers in play, the "zing" is there.  I can say I sit in class and, at least once a class period, check to see how the scores of games are going and how the sports teams I follow are doing.  I love knowing immediately how my team is doing.  I can't speak for everyone, but I sit in class in the back, usually the athletes, are sitting on sports apps and are looking at how their team is doing in certain events.  I know I see the "zing" by just watching people that are keeping up-to-date with the teams they follow.  For example, I was sitting in the back of one of my classes and there was a football player keeping up with the March Madness.  There was a game being played at the same time as class, and in actuality, we stopped class and started to talk about the game.  We all felt the "zing" because we were first to know on the entire campus, excluding the people who were watching it on TV in the cafe.

In conclusion, the "zing" just feels good.  It feels good to know about something that is happening in another part of the world the moment it happens.  My father always wants to know how a sports game is going if he is at work, and it somewhat gets annoying.  I would be sitting in class and he texts me saying "whats the score?" He feels the zing through me which, in reality, signifies how everyone wants to feel it no matter where they are.

These are all in my opinion of course.