raw label

The New York Times, BBC, Al Jazeera…Facebook?

Are you on Facebook?

Probably – roughly two-thirds (64%) of US adults are[1]. But, do you get your news from Facebook? If you said yes, you’re in good company. “According to the Pew Research Center, approximately 30% of US adults get their news via Facebook. Additionally, 10% get their news on YouTube, and 8% from Twitter.”

What does this tell us about the spread of news in our technological and interconnected world? It is dynamic and it spreads quickly, resulting in a population that is informed – but are we well informed?

That is the question.

 

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Photo by: Stuart Miles. Freedigitalphotos.net

How did you find out Osama Bin Laden had been killed?

I found out on Facebook. This is my first memory of learning of a major news story from social media, and maybe you had a similar experience. Is this trend a good thing or a bad thing? We don’t know. What we do know, however, is that the trend is increasing, and it therefore merits our attention.

Information now comes at a very large quantity – but is it quality?

Take the current Ebola crisis, for example. Amidst fear of the virus’s spread in the US, news coverage took off. Ebola was trending on twitter, it overtook the Facebook news feed, and it dominated television news. Of course, not all of this coverage is going to be useful. Misinformation began to circulate rampantly; rumors that the virus had mutated to become airborne being the most prominent example. CNN, one of the biggest culprits of this over-excessive coverage, published this article.

Yep, we get the irony. An epidemic of fear, termed ‘fearbola’, took root across the U.S. At the same time, the hashtag #factsnotfear became popular on twitter, aiming to spread the true facts, not just speculation and fear.

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Photo by: Master isolated images. Freedigitalphtos.net

 

How can you navigate this slew of information?

What is quality, and what is propaganda?

Social media seems like it’s here to stay, so we must learn to discern what is factual and what is not. Social media is a tool; your Facebook profile, your twitter feed, these are just additional outlets for conversation. So, use them! You can get your news and talk about it within the same platform, and that is pretty cool. The example of the Ebola epidemic shows how both positive and negative information can be spread via social media, so it is important to be an astute consumer of this information onslaught.

We encourage you to talk about the information you read, in order to decode it and form your own opinions. Whether this is online or in person (with your friends, your coworkers, etc), the power of conversation is one of the most powerful tools we as human beings possess, and at Raw Label our goal is to encourage and inspire conversations that matter!

 

What are your thoughts? Let us know in the comments section!

 

[1] http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/09/24/how-social-media-is-reshaping-news/

To Speak the Truth

By: Casey Malone

Photo by: Instant Vintage

Photo by: Instant Vintage

What did you talk about today?

Think about it. My guess is the norm—yesterday’s mishap, today’s stress and tomorrow’s uncertainty. If you think even harder, I bet you’ve had these conversations, or ones like it, before. And that’s fine. We need to talk about that stuff. It’s healthy! But it rarely gets us to think beyond ourselves and those we’re talking to. It places us within a bubble, afraid to branch out. Our issues matter, but there are bigger ones to discuss.

We’ve deemed them “the untouchables”—the subjects no one really wants to bring up. Issues like politics, race, class, our general existence, are deep. They bring about some pretty heated opinions. But, daunting as they are, they’re important. They drive the world and fuel ongoing concerns.

In August, the shooting of a young black man, Michael Brown, sparked protests and unrest in the town of Ferguson, Missouri. Since then the news media has been abuzz, discussing the ever-present racism in America. Summer also brought the ALS Ice Bucket challenge, a campaign to raise money and awareness for Lou Gehrig’s Disease by asking nominees to dump buckets of ice water on their heads. But this in turn raised concerns about water waste.

These issues matter, and they should to everyone. And that’s just two of millions. But did you talk about them? Conversations like race and water waste remain in the news.

But how about in you?

Photo by: fMoya

By: fMoya

It’s time to start talking.

Here at Raw Label Wear we strive to bring attention to relevant topics. We present the facts, you bring the conversation. It’s wear with meaning, a springboard to share your thoughts and opinions about how the world works. We encourage you to be open. Don’t shy away from what you, or society, deem too sensitive. We want to hear what you have to say and we think others should too. We know it’s comfortable to stick to the norm, but comfort rarely brings change.

Let’s be brave. Change the topic. Make it “touchy;” be raw, and get people talking. Discussions fuel ideas, and ideas present outlets for progressive change.

So, start talking. Let’s see where it can take us.

Reinvent Your Conversations

“Fashion is a language that creates itself in clothes to interpret reality”.

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Photo by: SplitShire

Clothing is ubiquitous.

Society dictates that we must wear it. Our independence, then, comes from what clothing we choose to wear. The landscape of today’s apparel most often consists of clothing with pretty designs and/or commercial branding. While such designs may be entertaining and fun, they provide little substance.

Here at Raw Label we aim to do something different. Our company strives to inspire intellectual conversation about the things that matter, and we hope that others will join us in this act of sharing and discussing.

With the emergence of the information age, average citizens gained the ability to become revolutionary. In 2011, a single mans self-immolation in Tunisia set off a wave of revolutions around the Middle East, a phenomenon we now know by the name Arab Spring. The effects of this movement are still readily apparent to this day, with continuing unrest in nations such Tunisia and Yemen and the ever-raging civil war in Syria.

So, what does this have to do with a T-shirt, you ask? At Raw Label we believe in intellectual conversation about difficult topics, particularly those most often deemed “untouchable”. The space on your body that your clothes occupy is valuable yet, as we said, so often underutilized.

This is where Raw Label comes in.

We aim to reinvent the real estate of clothing, to make it more meaningful and to give it a purpose. Our designs inspire you to talk about the world with those around you – your friends, your family, or perhaps even a fellow passenger on the bus.

David Marcu

Photo by: David Marcu

Be curious. Be informed. Talk about the difficult things. We hope that our designs remind you just how important conversation is to our global and interconnected world. As we move forward as a company, we aim to organically market ourselves and hope you are persuaded to join this movement with us.

This blog will follow along in our journey. It will keep up with and follow not only the progress of our company but current events as well, and will provide a comfortable environment for debate.

Raw Label: It Starts Here.