{"id":12366,"date":"2014-10-29T02:14:35","date_gmt":"2014-10-29T02:14:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/challengedetroit.org\/blog\/jessicawang\/?p=43"},"modified":"2014-10-29T02:14:35","modified_gmt":"2014-10-29T02:14:35","slug":"saying-nice-things-about-detroit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/challengedetroit.builtrare.com\/blog\/saying-nice-things-about-detroit\/","title":{"rendered":"Say(ing) Nice Things About Detroit"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve\u00a0probably been more active on social media in the past month than I have been in the past year. Specifically, I’ve been posting about my new life in Detroit.<\/p>\n

At first, I wasn’t sure how I felt about our Challenge Detroit program expectation\u00a0to post positively\u00a0about Detroit. As someone with a relatively limited presence on social media (I rarely posted statuses on Facebook, I created a Twitter account once upon a time but never tweeted, and I deleted my Instagram after my first post), I feared that my new activity may be inauthentic and contrived.<\/p>\n

Despite (or perhaps in light of) the fact that I spent (wasted) a ton of time in college procrastinating on Facebook, I’ve had mixed feelings about social media for quite some time. While I recognize the role it\u00a0may play in connecting people across contexts and across countries, I feel that\u00a0in our society, time spent on social media often ends up making people feel isolated and alone. Several studies suggest this to be true, too. However, in my first month in Detroit, I began\u00a0to realize the value of sharing my experiences here with my social network – both friends and acquaintances.<\/p>\n

Detroit gets such a bad rap in the media – the overwhelming\u00a0majority of news coverage of Detroit is sensationalist, capitalizing on our crime, blight and bankruptcy to sell papers (or perhaps ads, in this day and age). People like scandal. They are drawn to images of decay. They indulge in ruin porn. Given the media’s skewed portrayal of Detroit, it’s not hard to see why people think so negatively and fearfully of the D. People don’t say nice things about Detroit.<\/p>\n

What you don’t see on the news are Detroit’s dreamers and doers, its artists and creatives, its activists and entrepreneurs. What’s missing from the story\u00a0is its strength, resilience and hope.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

In the 1970s, a small business owner by the name of Emily Gail was facing a Detroit not unfamiliar to us today: crime rates w\"\"ere among the highest in the nation, local businesses were closing, and people were fleeing the city in droves. To combat the negativity taking over the city, Emily launched a word-of-mouth campaign with the slogan “Say Nice Things About Detroit”. She slapped the slogan onto T-shirts and\u00a0retail goods, scooped ice cream and sold hot dogs, and organized fun runs\u00a0that brought together thousands of Detroiters.<\/p>\n

Much like Ms. Gail did in the 1970s, I believe that we as Challenge Detroit fellows can help play a role in spreading Detroit positivity to people in the metro Detroit area and beyond. The importance of saying nice things, while seemingly trivial, can go a long way to broadening people’s perspectives and changing\u00a0their\u00a0perceptions. Detroit is not a place to be feared.\u00a0<\/strong>Saying nice things about it might just let its\u00a0true light shine through the shroud of pessimism.<\/p>\n

And so, it is with purpose and positivity that I will continue to say nice things (on social media and beyond!) about\u00a0the city I\u00a0am proud to live in: Detroit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve\u00a0probably been more active on social media in the past month than I have been in the past year. Specifically, I’ve been posting about my new life in Detroit. At first, I wasn’t sure how I felt about our Challenge Detroit program expectation\u00a0to post positively\u00a0about Detroit. As someone with a relatively limited presence on social […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":185,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12366","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/challengedetroit.builtrare.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12366","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/challengedetroit.builtrare.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/challengedetroit.builtrare.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/challengedetroit.builtrare.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/185"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/challengedetroit.builtrare.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12366"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/challengedetroit.builtrare.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12366\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/challengedetroit.builtrare.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12366"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/challengedetroit.builtrare.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12366"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/challengedetroit.builtrare.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12366"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}