This week my mind has been on my family and friends in North Carolina with Hurricane Florence headed its way. Hurricane Florence was a category 4 hurricane and was project to only strength while getting closer to land before dying off and North Carolina has not been hit with a Category 4 hurricane since the 1950's. Many of my close relatives had to evacuate their homes and move inland. This week I have watched countless news clips, read weather updates and projections.
However, social media seemed overwhelmed with memes and Facebook events making light of the supposedly catastrophic storm instead of actual news updates. This memes made me laugh, yes, but it also made it so I was not as worried about the damage of the storm. I'm not sure if downplaying the storm is necessarily positive but it has helped me deal with the stress of the storm. The memes also seemed to have the same effect for my peers living in North Carolina, many attending a large costal university. For them, downplaying the storm was very dangerous and many were reluctant to leave because they didn't think a category 4 hurricane could be that different than the hurricanes they had already experienced. DESPITE, what the news was saying!! So, for me the meme's did not have a bad effect, however, they did seem to have a bad effect on those living within the path of the storm because it made people believe they weren't in that much danger.
As the storm hits, today and the weekend I will continue to look for updates from new outlet. I am very thankful for the technology we have today so I can get realtime updates of natural disasters that are effecting people I care about.
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