Opinions!

This is me, coming home on a Sunday realizing that I had forgotten to do my blog post. (This is also me during the Chargers game, but we don't talk about it). Actually I feel like this is me every time before I have to do something productive lol

Anyways, JSTOR articles. To be honest, I have never read a JSTOR Daily article. I haven't even heard of it before. But I am familiar with these type of sites because I read articles like these regularly. They're pretty interesting, and I feel like they keep me at least somewhat updated on major local and national news.  They’re cited, making them more credible than any average article or blog, and they have loads of fact based information that help support whatever argument they have. They contain a lot of logos appeals, but also a couple pathos. They feel a lot more formal and scholarly, almost like how writing a five paragraph essay feels like, but it leaves more room for using arguments based on your opinion.

Op-Ed articles on the other hand are pretty similar, but they do have many key differences. They contain a lot of hyperlinks that show where they got their information from, videos, and they also insert a lot of redirects to other similar articles. They are informative, and have many types of factual information, but they can also be written extremely opinionated, more so than JSTOR articles I feel like.  You also get to see other people’s comments, which I think is kind of important. Though they do incorporate many facts and credible information, they also like to use a lot of loaded language. For example, in “Trump’s history of corruption is mind-boggling. So why is Clinton supposedly the corrupt one?” , the author used many words like  “crazy”, “bigoted”, “corrupt”, and fraud”. All of these words are negative, and they appeal to the readers in a way that makes them associate the words with specific people and ideas.

Sometimes I come across certain articles that get me pretty heated. Some articles and their opinions got me feelin' some type of way like, yes, that is exactly how I feel. Thank you for putting my thoughts into coherent words and sentences. 

And there are others where I just feel like, nope, abort, I did not need to hear this today. Please remove this from my presence because it disgusts me.

But that’s what these are about. Different people voicing their opinions so that other people could read them and hopefully, respond to them. I like these types of articles because they always show a multitude of sides to an argument, even if I don’t agree with them.  These types of articles help shed light on current events or issues that I feel behind on and show me different view points I wouldn’t have thought of. They may be opinion based, but they also make sure to cite their sources and facts, that way they aren’t just throwing out a bunch of different statistics or false claims.

One thing I always do when I’m reading these type of articles is look at the comments. I like to see how people react to what is said and how people feel about the opinions said. Sometime they are good, and other times they really aren’t. I was reading the article “Criminal rape cases should not be on a ticking clock”, and the author was arguing that the statue of limitations on rape should be removed. According to the article, if stealing public funds is always prosecutable, then acts of sexual violence against women or children should be as well. And in my mind, this made sense. Though the authors idea did have its downsides and they didn’t tackle every aspect of the issue, I felt like it was a compelling argument.  But then I went down to the comments.  I read a post that said “If I am legitimately the victim of a crime, I am going to report it reasonably quickly. Rape victims think the world owes them the world. They are misguided.” 

My immediate reaction was

and after I read it again my reaction was

(ok not really but this is how I felt on the inside)

The comment was, in my opinion, extremely insensitive and the person who posted it was acting as if they knew what rape victims had been through. It was like he was invalidating how victims may feel and that rape victims should just deal with it. He didn’t even respond to the main idea of the article, which was the law about the statute of limitations, he just implied that the argument was irrelevant.

 But then again, that is their opinion, and this is mine.