'Royals' by Lorde is not racist

Um what?

For those of you who are a little bit behind (like me), you may not yet have heard about a blog post which is causing a stir around the world. Entitled 'Wow, that Lorde song Royals is racist' and published by Veronica Bayetti Flores on her blog 'Feministing', it's not hard to understand the main concept of this post.

For those of you who haven't heard the lyrics to Royals, it's basically about consumerism. Over-exaggerated, overblown consumerism.

However Ms Flores does not take it that way. No, she believes that it's extremely racist.

I Hate Ticket Scalpers

Thank you Macklemore and Ryan Lewis. Thank you for proving, once again, that you do care. You care about recycling old clothes, you care about gay marriage...and now, you're taking a stand on ticket scalping.

Because this annoys me.

How is it fair for companies to go onto the websites and nabs scores of tickets, with the sole purpose of selling them at an exorbitantly higher face value than what they were originally worth? The short answer: It's not.

Ticket Scalping is ILLEGAL. In Australia, the states and territories have laws to prevent illegal acquisition and resale of tickets for the sole purposes of making money. This is definitely fair.

If you've sat on the Ticketek website hitting refresh for the twenty minutes leading up to a ticket release, you know how it feels. You know how much is at stake; how much depends upon how fast you can click buttons and enter your credit card details. However there are those that don't pay by the rules. Instead of buying tickets for their own enjoyment, they buy them to make a profit.

In Australia, these tickets often end up on sites like ViaGoGo or EBay or Gumtree. For example, Imagine Dragons are playing in a few states in October. Sold out Australia wide, tickets are available for up to $160 per ticket. And do you know how much they were originally? $66 (correct price from OzTix for the Brisbane Show).

$66. That's basically $100 profit.

So for all of those kids who are relying on their parents' credit cards, or waiting patiently for their parents to get home from work so that they can buy tickets, they often can't because of ticket scalpers and their greed for profit.

In 2011, One Direction played a limited number of shows in Australia. From my memory, because they were just gathering momentum, tickets were about $60. One was being sold on EBay for $4000.

Four. Thousand. Dollars. For one ticket. It's crazy.

So whatever you do, don't let the ticket scalpers win. Just wait for the band to come back to Australia, try to win tickets or buy them from a reputable source.

And to all those ticket scalpers:

Find a real profession. You'll only get caught.

Social Media is Ruining My Life!

We're stuck in that era. Where technology is the only way to keep up with the new trends that only seem to originate on social media. Do we like it? Do we not?

So here's what happened today.

So I finally did it. I took the leap today and spent my time signing up for both Pinterest AND Tumblr. It's sad, right?

I know I swore that I'd never get Tumblr, but please don't judge me. We must work through this together. It will require effort on both out parts to help me out of this 'social media crisis'.

But maybe I don't want help?

In my opinion, in the few hours I've spent on both of them so far...they're actually fun. I stand corrected. However, signing up for Tumblr did make me somewhat embarrassed. I now feel like a tween. I don't want to be one of those twelve year old girls who posts about One Direction and Justin Bieber. No, I refuse to do that. Instead, and I believe somewhat better, I will post inspiring pictures and cute quotes.

I think that's better?

On the other hand, Pinterest is actually really engaging! I plan to use it to find good recipes, places to travel to and other amazing fashion things. In a way, it feels like the Tumblr for adults.

So we will see how these social media sites go. I figured that since I want to be a journalist, I should maybe try out all of them just for a while so that I can at least say I know how to use them. However, I said that same thing about Twitter and over 600 tweets later I'm still using it.

Social media is the present and it's here to stay. Whether we like it or not, it's only going to get more prominent in our lives. We can either embrace it or shun it, but whatever we choose to do, we at least need to keep track of it. It's the conversation topic of the twenty-first century.

What do you think?