Author: Corbin (Page 1 of 2)

The idea of a filter bubble is certainly not a foreign one to me, and I am definitely aware of the bubble that I am in although it takes a different form in my case. My primary source of news is reddit. It’s also my general source of entertainment for when I need it and it’s also a place where I argue about politics a lot. My feed is largely filled with left leaning and democratic political subreddits, and that’s by my own design. I’ve chosen to subscribe to those feeds and not other feeds, and as a result I rarely will see something from the other side. Rather than a bubble being formed involuntarily by an algorithm filtering based on my interests, it’s me directly choosing what I want to see and creating this bubble around myself.

This situation is very common on reddit, and it’s not limited to individual users either. Subreddits are controlled by moderators who enforce rules specific to each subreddit, and as a result these subs often become bubbles of their own wherein the idea of the moderators are enforced. 

The key difference between filter bubbles and the bubble which I have chosen to create for myself, the most harmful difference, is that people within filter bubbles are often not aware of it. I am aware that I’ve created this bubble for myself, and as such I can acknowledge that the bubble is harmful and go out of my way to find ideas that clash with my own and understand them. For people within bubbles without their own knowledge, many will not have that insight into the situation. For them, their source of information has simply grown more pertinent to themselves, and they grow more trapped within the bubble with no real reason to leave it because what they find inside the bubble is what they want to see.

Life is change and I’m simply unprepared. Schedules are what my life’s been. 8 Classes a day, 5 days a week, 25 weeks a year. 12 years were planned, that was curtailed at 10.

Abrupt and sudden change. My ma is an administrative assistant at a medical center. I remember they were already taking measures against it. Even as an admin, she returned every day wearing full scrubs. She isn’t even a nurse.

My classmates attended classes, as if everything was like usual. I left early. The risk was much greater, especially because I have asthma. That judgment was quickly validated, because a few days later teachers had it, then students had it. The city is a small place, and with students traveling everywhere in the city every day, it was inevitable.

2 years later and it’s the new schedule, the new regularity. Life isn’t changing. But that never lasts.

My regular routine varies depending on what day it is. On Mondays and Wednesdays, I have in person classes lasting all day, and as such I wake up before 7 am and leave early in case of any train delays. Train rides are never consistent. Sometimes they take an hour, sometimes they take thirty minutes. I typically leave at 8:30 am, leaving me an hour thirty before my first class. I’ve got 20 stops to go before I get off at Jay Street Station, so I just sit down, put on some headphones, and wait.

For other days however, my schedule isn’t something that I have set in stone. Most often I wake up after 10 am, a hard habit to break after a semester of online classes all beginning after 10. My first meal tends to be lunch after 1 pm. I typically skip breakfast, I’ve done so for years, and I’m not very hungry when I wake up anyways. After lunch is when I finally begin to get anything substantial done. I turn on my computer, and check my classes for any assignments I need to handle.