Items
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discord
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2021-02-06
Model UN in the time of a Pandemic
I uploaded a screenshot of my Model UN conference that had to be conducted over Zoom during the COVID-19 pandemic. In a normal year, a Model UN conference would take place at a large event space, usually a university or a hotel. Model UN teams from high schools across the globe participate in the conferences that my school attends. Unfortunately, I did not get to have this unique experience during the pandemic year. Instead, my school took part in an online form of the conference via zoom and discord, through Boston University. Although it was not the same, I was fortunate to have the opportunity to meet plenty of interesting people from all over the world! This screenshot shows the "bloc" (or alliance) that I had formed with students representing countries such as Mexico, Nigeria, and Russia. I can be seen in the middle box on the right, representing the nation of Afghanistan! -
2021-05-10
Discord Friends
I became very close to my friends at the time of second wave of covid in India. I was studying in Chicago at the time and keeping in touch with my Indian friends was difficult until covid hit. It seemed like the whole world was online, and I could not see anyone in person. I started going on discord a lot more. I and my friends played GTA 5alot and I remember distinctly recognizing that Covid had helped me get closer to them in a weird way. -
09/30/2020
Joseph Spataro Oral History, 2020/09/30
This interview consists of a perspective of a white male from Vermont living in Florida for the school year, whom has experienced COVID from the rural suburbs of Vermont, to the maskless warzone that is Florida. His perspective is one from a gamer, only knowing the interviewer though playing videogames together. -
2021-01-29
Four Wensdays in January
This is a meme my friend shared in our discord, it recounts the absolute insanity that was January of 2021. The first image is of the failed coup attempt by enraged Trump supporters, white supremacists and fascists; who all stormed the capitol building with little to no resistance. While inside, they defaced the building, broke into offices and hunted for Vice President Mike Pence to hang for ‘betraying’ Donald Trump. The second photo came in response, depicting speaker of the house Nancy Pelosi holding the article of impeachment for Donald Trump. While it was argued that this was a pointless endeavor as Trump was virtually leaving office in a week, the main goal for impeachment was to prohibit Donald Trump from holding office ever again. The third image is the inauguration of Joe Biden as the 46th president of the United States, this event was made possible by the presence of the national guard, where 21,000 soldiers were deployed to make sure nothing as similar as January 6th could occur. The streets were empty as roadblocks and military utility trucks cordoned off the area, massive fences were erected surrounding the structure and soldiers patrolled the area. Largely, it was believed there was going to be nationwide attacks on several capitol structures throughout the nation in response – yet nothing of substance happened. The final image, and my favorite, would be the assault on Wall Street. This is an insane story, so I’m going to be a little less formal but this is an incredibly significant event, it is an instance of effective class-warfare. I’m not going to explain stocks, but essentially what happened is hedge fund investors made a bet that GameStop would fail, they took several ‘shorts’ out on this company to profit from this bet – however, redditors on r/wallstreetbets caught wind of this and thought “what would happen if their bet was wrong,” they began investing heavily into the company, raising its value, and as a result, costing the hedge fund billionaires thousands. These thousands in losses became millions, then billions, as more and more working class and middle class people threw themselves onto the market, to eat the rich. It wasn’t about profit, about making a return, it was a message. Eventually, this fiasco showed Americans that there essentially is no such thing as the ‘free-market,’ as these large hedge funds began blocking people from purchasing stock, forcibly selling peoples stock, using their own funds to facilitate an artificial ‘scare.’ People lost so much after the initial manipulation, but it proved that the market was only free for the rich, that once anyone else began to emulate the fraudulent strategies of the wealthy elite, they would be struck down. This is currently on going, but I cannot stress enough – it is not about money, it’s about sending a message that people are done. It’d be funny if the federal government intervened on behalf of wall-street by bailing them out, before sending out those measly 2k stimulus cheques. For the archive, this photo represents the pace in which everything moved in 2021, and the absolute absurdity of where we are today. To think, when this began we were planning on a few weeks at home, we’d make sour dough bread, then we began missing our friends and family’s – then we were in the streets marching for civil rights, and the ability for people not to be murdered by police because of the colour of their skin, fascists stormed the government, the ex-president is being impeached, again, now we’re trying to destroy Wall Street, this pandemic is absolutely wild. -
2020-11-14
What if the worms dated?
Me and my friend Sebastian have been watching films over Discord video share to ease our tension surrounding the pandemic. We have watched classics such as Tremors and Return of the Living Dead as well as obscure, terrible movies like Uninvited and Love on a Leash. One day while I was talking about the atrocity that is the author of Ready Player One after watching Tremors, I mentioned how it'd be funny if the worm from Dune was gay and kissed the worm from Betelgeuse and the only way to do it would be in the sequel of Ready Player One, Ready Player Two. So my friend, naturally, had to draw gay worms.