Blog Post 5

My groups purpose for this project is to inform an audience of a major issue of public concern (one that is in fact taking the lives of some children) and is majorly impacting parents, children, and the company of Tide as a whole. However, what we need to come up with is a solution better than parents simply telling their children to stay away from Tide pods. My group needs to do some brainstorming together, but as of now I think a major beneficial change that Tide could use is to make the pods look less “appealing.” (it still blows me away that this is such an issue) but perhaps the company could not use such bright, vibrant colors in the packaging. Additionally, maybe Tide could make them to where they don’t pop open, because I think that is a factor that children like as well. I know that Tide makes the pods look this way so we will buy them, but if that has backfired to a point of a loss in sales they may want to reconsider their packaging. In all honesty, Tide could change the appearance of the pods, but I think this topic is a good leeway into a bigger issue here, which is what youth is doing in today’s society to be considered “cool.” It seems each year the trends are becoming more and more dangerous. For example, the cinnamon challenge, and salt and ice challenge that preceded the Tide pod challenge. I am not sure if it is an influence of society as a whole that is causing this shift towards danger, or an actual change in the minds of the youth. Regardless I think this would be an interesting idea to research deeper into.

Blog Post 4

The feedback I received for my paper had several helpful tips. Some examples are some cosmetic issues, such as for some reason my page numbers were messed up and a few lines down into the text. I additionally had a couple spelling errors that I will have to fix. Some other tips I received were to maybe include other people who were affected by the Tide pod challenge, and to include a little more history into why and how this challenge surfaced. (I will probably link it to the popular “cinnamon challenge) that surfaced a couple years ago and follow the evolution of what is considered “cool” in the youth population to what is now extremely harming, and even killing children. It also came to my attention that I may need to clarify some aspects of my paper and I may be using too many “filler” words in some areas. Also, this is a personal critique, but I think I should strengthen my thesis and conclusion, and maybe have one more source to cite at the end of my essay. Another critique I had was to specifically unpack where logos and pathos are employed in the section of my essay where I write about how Tide is targeting the youth by using a “cool” person to relay the information. Ultimately, before I submit my final draft I will fix all of these issues and expand on several topics (such as the logos and pathos detail previously mentioned) as well as fix the cosmetic issues (which printed out weird for some reason.)