I’m turning 27 in a few months. I know, that’s not old. Yet, for the first time, I feel that I’ve reached a tipping point in my life.

I am not young anymore.

Think of it this way. I started this blog when I was 18. I was in the summer semester of my freshman year in college. We had just moved to Jordan. I had bought a car a few months earlier, and I was excited to explore the world I knew nothing about.

Today, almost 10 years later, I am a different person. The world isn’t the mystery it used to be. I did a little traveling. I’ve been pulling 9-to-6 shifts for five years, working with people who have almost put a dent in the universe. I’ve been through death, divorce, and dire situations. My friends have thinning hair, children, and loans.

In the past 10 years, my life changed, and not just because of age and experience. Today, there’s Facebook, Twitter, and 3G smartphones.  The Arab Spring has changed my part of the world, and everyone’s outlook on life. The Internet is maturing, and with its maturity, the world continues to experience new things.

You know when the feeling of age settles in? When I Google pop culture icons from my youth. Long gone are the carefree, youthful rebels. They simply look like they’re out of place. Remnants of a bygone era. Britney. Green Day. Joey. Madonna. Leo.

You know what’s worse though? Going through my own life and the lives of my friends, as told by Facebook. Facebook does, after all, conveniently display pictures in chronological order: your life, passing by, as quickly as the pictures load. Sagging smiles, thinning hair, eyes whose brightness has dimmed. Faces with no more baby fat, noses that have grown larger with the years. Friendships lost, friendships gained. Experiences dead and buried.

Life is so short. And we’re growing old.

Over 112 Jordanian women were brutally murdered by their own families for “honor” in the past 10 years.

It’s disgusting. It’s deplorable. It’s horrifying.

As Jordanians, we need to keep actively speaking up against the lax rules when it comes to honor crime penalties.

Please add your name to this petition, which aims to collect over half a million Jordanian signatures in protest. Please share this petition with as many people as you can; share it on your Facebook and Twitter accounts, email it to everyone you know, and tell everyone about it.

It is 2012, and we are an educated country. We can’t keep quite about such disgrace and inhumanity.

SIGN PETITION HERE

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Her name was Farah, she was 26. She was a bride. Her white dress would have remained white, and the happiness would have been completed if there wasn’t a plan to ensure otherwise.

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Her name was Aisha. She was 16. She was a student. If her father, who had sexually harassed her, did not murder her by shooting seven bullets, she would have been 17, and a studying to be a pharmacist. Aisha dreamt of being a pharmacist.

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Her name was Madina, and she was 37. She was pregnant. Her husband killed her and then tried to burn her, dumping her body on Airport road. She would have been 38 today, experiencing motherhood for the first time. Her unborn child would have been 11 months old.

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Her name was Ayat. She was 20. She was a dreamer. If her brother did not drown her in the Dead Sea, Ayat would have been 23. She used to dream of becoming a pilot. She would have remembered a picture of her and her brother laughing and playing on the shores of the Dead Sea.

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Her name was Rima. She was 35. She was a teacher who had won Queen Rania’s Award for Excellence. She would have been alive today if her husband did not torture her and shoot her. She would have been 36. She would have still been teaching new generations of Jordanians.

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Photoessay translated from a “La Sharafa Fil Jareemah” initiative.
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Oh, the horror.
SIGN PETITION HERE

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Related:
Her Name was Madinah
Pain: To Know Reema
Dis-Honor Murder By Bicycle Tire
Women’s March in Tahrir: Free Women, Free the World
As a Woman, I’m a Second Class Citizen in Jordan
Disgrace: I’m Jordanian, Why Can’t My Children be Jordanian?

Dear Social-Media-Bandwagon Jumpers,

Your restaurant, printing house, or engineering firm account on Twitter is stupid. Plus, most people I surveyed who actually know how to use Twitter generally think that your account is stupid too. Unless, of course, this person who knows how to use Twitter is a self-professed “social media specialist” who makes money off of your account’s stupidity.

Let me list some of the reasons as to why it’s stupid:

1. No one cares what the orange juice they drink has to say. A person who claims they care has no idea how to use the Internet.

2. It is really creepy when a restaurant tells you to “drive safely”.

3. Twitter is timely. Tweets are displayed on timelines the instant they are published, and then they disappear forever, unless someone checks your Twitter page on purpose. Thus, sharing offers, deals, etc. is counter intuitive (read: stupid) because it would make so much more sense to post these on a website that is designed to display offers, or on Facebook, which has an advanced algorithm that ensures that users actually see your offers.

4. Twitter is about conversations. It is not a one-way-stream of push media for your advertising purposes. If you want to advertise, Al-Waseet is probably a better medium.

5. Having a Twitter corporate account that is run by a social media company is really freakin’ lazy, and completely irrelevant to the idea of Twitter. Again, I repeat, Twitter is about conversations.

Now that you know why it’s stupid, let me give you a few ideas on how your business can make use of Twitter:

1. Get a Twitter account, but for heaven’s sake, tie it to a person: it could be the CEO of your company, the social media manager, the hot guy at the reception. I don’t care. But as Internet users, we want to talk to people, and we want to know their names, or at least, their nicknames.

And I’m not just pulling rules out of my ass. If you look at this list of best corporate Twitter accounts from Mashable, you will notice that many of them use real names:

Come on, it’s commonly accepted wisdom that we as humans like to talk to a person, and not an anonymous collective. “Hello, my name is Roba.”

2. I can think of a few exceptions to the above rule:

• Your company or service provides constant, timely, and objective updates, like a news site or a newspaper. Then, you can just plug in your RSS feed.
• Your Twitter account is actually maintained by several people who REALLY WORK WITH YOU, and then you can just use add the word “team” somewhere, but the account must be obviously your own, and not run by a third-party that has no knowledge of what you do.

I’m sure there are some other exceptions, but you know what they need? Lack of laziness from your part.

3. Once you tie your account to a real person, you must engage in conversations. Read what other people are saying. Say what’s on your mind. Make sure your “advertising” is relevant to people’s needs. Be human.

4. Don’t be cliché. Most corporate Twitter accounts post the same updates. I’m guessing they come from a masterlist of “fill in the blanks with company name”.

• “Good morning, #CityName!”
• “Come to ___________ today to do ___________.”
• “Drive safely, ___________!”
• “Beautiful weather in ___________ today!”
• “Have you visited our ___________ this week? We have a new offer!”
• “What is your favorite ___________ at our store/restaurant/etc.?”
• “We are so proud of our country ___________!”

Urgh.

So, in a nut shell, if you’re going to:

a) be lazy (i.e. outsource your social media activity, post nothing but offers)

b) have nothing to say (i.e. beautiful weather!)

c) outsource your activity to a random social media company that has nothing to do with your office culture

d) have no time to tweet with meaning

Then for frack’s sake, just don’t get a Twitter account.

Thanks,
A Concerned Twitter User Who Does Not Classify Herself as a Social-Media-Specialist

Weather control, anyone?