Chapter 4 - Norma's Homemade Banana Blog

Entry #5 of the April 2023 Contest

W/C 435 Rated “E”

P26. Do you trust what's on "social media?”

Let’s define “social media”. From Merriam Webster online dictionary - which I guess you could consider, by their definition, social media. So: forms of electronic communication (such as websites for social networking and microblogging) through which users create online communities to share information, ideas, personal messages, and other content (such as videos).

Could I trust what someone says is true? Could I trust what you tell me is the honest to goodness truth, swear on the Bible truth? Would I? Should I?

Everyone has an agenda. We are all pushing our ideas on others. We want everyone to like us, admit that. We all want admiration, we all want recognition.

Blogging is no more than getting our life out in the online universe. “See what I’m doing, not doing. See how great I am, how horrible you are.” And then “Rally around this cause, don’t support that cause.”

News outlets are biased. Remember ‘yellow journalism’? C’mon everyone. History lesson. Pulitzer versus Hearst. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism

It all came down to who had the most readers - East coast versus West coast. Then the Spanish-American war got all tangled up in this mess.

So, we haven’t strayed too far from this debacle back in the 19th century, now have we!?

Back to here and now. Yesterday I met with a gentleman that is integral to getting our museum on the Montana Dinosaur Trail. This informal gathering of museums helps tourism. The museums focus on dinosaur fossil exhibits. We in Roundup want our museum added to the group.

So myself and a paleontologist that came here about a year ago, met with this gentleman while he did a site visit. A man from Roundup, talked up his local work, and then I did the museum tour.

Seems we’re actually too late for this year, as all the literature and such are already printed, but we may have a case for being added in 2024. Now we’re headed to Chinook, about 3 1/2 hours north of here, in 2 weeks to do a presentation to the Dino Trail group.

We have to influence a group of 30 or so people. We have to convince strangers that we have the ability to be a wonderful resource for tourists and the state of Montana for bringing in tourism dollars for Roundup and the SE Montana region. We have to be good influencers.

I have a presentation I’ve been working on. It’s on the computer, a powerpoint presentation. The palenontologist can talk and talk.
But we only have 20 minutes to make our case. I think I’ll go first.

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