[acurious-unknowingmind-blog]

We See it All

From all that we’ve explored this semester about the internet and some of the digital communities. And from all I’ve learnt it is clear that many freedoms are provided to us through the internet. As we previously explored, the internet allows for everyday people to be involved in politics, social movements/change, discuss serious topics such as mental health or pop culture such as tv shows, as well as many other avenues are opened to us. So Yea to the internet

But (come on, you knew that was coming) we have also explored how some people go a little crazy with the power the internet provides them with, such as with the bullying trolls, the way social movements justify attacking specific individuals for bigger issues... can you say scapegoat. Basically with great power, yada yada responsibility, absolute power, yada yada, corrupts yada.

But what is really interesting is to explore those places that do not offer the same freedom. Examples of these stricture countries are China, Russia, and of course North Korea, and though we focused on China in class and the ‘great firewall’ the term given to the way the Chinese government has managed to place such strong bans against sites like Facebook and Wikipedia, where the people control the information, the place I would like to focus on is North Korea. For a while now North Korea has been a hot topic with lots of discussion about the incredibly successful way NKorea has managed to keep out the rest of the world is, if not likeable, is impressive in this supposedly ‘connected’ world.

While many argue about the backwards nature of NK’s commitment to isolation, something that intrigues me is the way that NK’s separateness has seemed to increase their existence in our ‘online world’, especially through comedy news programs such as ‘Last Week Tonight with John Oliver’, ‘The Daily Show’ and many of the other shows, as well as the 2014 film staring Seth Rogen and James Franco ‘The Interview’.

This is what I find interesting about the fact that despite not being a part of the digital world, NK is still part of the digital world. this speaks to the way that despite anyones intention the internet may already be beyond the control of anyone, even a country. So, does the fact that North Korea has no intentional presence online?

[beardednegro]

Previously, I’d only seen the first two panels and assumed it was the complete comic.

This version is much better.

[chokkilissa-nahollos]

omg it’s so much better with the conclusion

[acurious-unknowingmind-blog]

[acurious-unknowingmind-blog]

This Game Called Life

In order to present on this topic I had to delve into a world I have little experience of. While I have played the basic individual mobile games such as the infamous Candy Crush and Angry Birds, as well as the general 90s childhood pastime of Mario Kart with friends, which I have never been very good at. I’ve never felt the need to commit much of my time to games, but even so the image of the ‘obsessed, lonely, isolated’ online gamer has always seemed a bit exaggerated to me.

Something I did particularly find interesting from my research, was the dystopia between the creators of a game, intentions for how a came will be played and how the users actually 'play’ the game.

Examples of this are the games 2nd Life and IMVU, both of which are different social games from the other well known, MMORPGs such as World of Warcraft and League of Legends. These two games differ due to their structure of using the avatars the users create not as a means of going on quests in order to gain strength and levels, but rather simply as a way to interact with other users, thats it no other real goals to the game, just creating your ideal avatar and meeting other users. However what brought these two games to my attention was the past media coverage given to the games for how the users had created and underworld sex connection of sorts, with the creators claiming that was not their intended goal. This concept was new to me as a person who’d never been involved in any online games, the idea that I can create a game with rules and goals and intentions but that in the end it’s the users who determine the games destinies.

[acurious-unknowingmind-blog]

Social Gaming - Prezi

http://prezi.com/b_xj-i0ktj-p/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy

[acurious-unknowingmind-blog]

video from TMZ:

http://imgur.com/gallery/Bnqy9Lx

[acurious-unknowingmind-blog]

Public Health Campaigns and Communities

When someone talks to me about how I use the internet in regards to ‘my health’ I often relay my mysteries journey of self diagnosis in my attempts to explain random symptoms, usually the diagnosis given by certain cites such as WebMD comes back as ‘possibly cancer’... usually it’s just a cold, or a bug, or even just a random pain. But this is the thing about the internet, I can ask it any question and receive contradictory answers, this can help in allowing people to not discredit a symptom they may have but it also allows them to blow up the significance of unimportant symptoms. This is a running gag on the internet.

However, communities I have never involved myself with are the health campaign communities, that represent the other use for the internet when it comes to people’s health. There’s been many campaigns, two examples are the semicolon which was started in 2013 and is explained as “A semicolon is used when an author could’ve chosen to end their sentence, but chose not to. The author is you, and the sentence is your life,” by the Project Semicolon’s website. As well as the ‘Ice bucket challenge’ referred to sometimes as the ‘ALS Ice Bucket Challenge’, which blew up online in 2014 especially as celebrities participated, and involves dumping a bucket of ice water on someone's head to promote awareness of the disease amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS aka Lou Gehrig's Disease) and encourage donations to research.

Unfortunately for me, such as many other movements that happen online, once a person ‘posted’ their involvement that was the end of their involvement. This was especially true of the ‘Ice bucket challenge’ where people would post their turn then nominate someone else and so on it went. Though starting with good intentions the tendency for people to get swept up in the ‘challenge’ and not the cause is sadly high. One person who commented on this was...

Though personally I am not the biggest fan of Sheen and his antics, this to me was an excellent response to the ‘challenge’ nomination. Sheen manages to come of as both right but pompous, by illustrating the ‘look at me’ culture of the challenge and rather than immersing himself in it, differentiates himself by dunking himself in money instead. 

There are pros and cons to almost everything, in this we see how the internet allows for awareness to be spread easily and quickly (as long as it becomes a trending topic), but on the other hand we see that the separation of cause and campaign created by the internet can create a movement for ‘attention’ rather than ‘change’.

Links: http://www.projectsemicolon.org

[acurious-unknowingmind-blog]

Crowd sourcing in times of crisis

We’re more and more connected everyday, it’s not really up for debate whether we are or not... that’s pretty much been decided. But mediums such as twitter has allowed everyday people to do something more than just communicate but also, comment on the world around us.

Nowadays most live programs on television allow twitter posts to pop on the screen, live debates especially use this for example the ABC show Q&A, as well as the big political debates as a way to have the public ask questions directly to the politicians. 

But this is merely the surface of the power of using crowd sourcing.

In times of crisis before mediums such as twitter, the information reported about the situations during and after were dependent on trusting the, often at times 2nd 3rd or even 4th hand, information provided solely by the news. this distanced how the ‘unaffected’ people viewed the crisis but also prevented many people learning about the fates of their loved ones until much later.

During the Paris Friday night attacks earlier this year, many of those who were in the city at the time were able to message family and friends to make sure they were ok, Facebook made this even easier by allowing those to “check in as safe” as a status update which allowed people, who were traveling as well as residents, to quickly inform others of their locations and safety, some messages were even sent out during the attacks.

However the events of that night also illustrated one major issue of crowd sourcing during a crisis... misinformation. 

In an article linked at the bottom KATIE ROGERS discusses this very issue, pointing out the occurrences of misleading information, such as the subsequent sharing of an image of a “man in a suicide vest”,  and a photo of the Eiffel tower “claiming it was the first time the monument had gone dark since 1889″ neither of which were true. The desire to ‘share’ information was so strong that people were sharing completely falsified information. A possible explanation for this is the idea of the ‘like’ and the more likes a comment or photo has the higher the possibility for an individual to be the source and/or part of the social movement. Unfortunately this continues to be a problem and is likely to be so as long as people are more interested in being part of a phenomenon than helping.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/17/world/europe/paris-attacks-give-rise-to-fakes-and-misinformation.html?_r=0

[acurious-unknowingmind-blog]

The Life and Times of an Online Troll

CAUTION: OFFENSIVE LANGUAGE 

Today when so many of societies moral movements and campaigns that focus on causing social changes, happen online, why is there this breed of creature known as a ‘troll’?

Similar in breed to the gremlin

they can start in an innocent vein, asking or stating some strong statement that divides other readers, when left alone are pretty harmless, though possibly offensive. However many people can’t help but engage the troll,

and the more attention given, a change can come over the troll, turning it into a ugly, vicious, hungry destructive force, thats sole aim is to be offensive and ‘loud’

That’s why people often say ‘don’t feed the troll’, which basically means ‘do not correct’ ‘do not reason with’ ‘do not debate with’, in fact to safely navigate the comments section of any page some recommend to avoid engaging in any way. This is because some ‘trolls’ are the for no reason other than to frustrate people, and purposeful use offensive messages to do so.

Some are shockingly offensive;

While others are just stupidly offensive;

Alternatively there are also the more benign trolls

Unfortunately the prevalence of quite vicious and cruel, personal attacks are what are often seen, especially on youtube where trolls threaten/attack the person on the videos

This is such a topical issue that Buzzfeed did a article ‘Who Has The Worst Commenters On The Internet? An Investigation’ which looks and compares which forums have the ‘worst’ trolls.

Though some argue that the anonymity on the internet is what allows people to feel comfortable posting such comments, but I believe that that argument doesn’t hold water, as a lot of the time the people post under accounts connected to their Facebook pages where their personal information is listed. So there seems to be some other reason why so many feel ‘safe’ behind their keyboards.

Buzzfeed link;

https://www.buzzfeed.com/jwherrman/who-has-the-worst-commenters-on-the-internet-an-i?utm_term=.btNbWqB5M#.ngKRrwVb7

[acurious-unknowingmind-blog]

[mentalillnessriskfactors]

(via GIPHY) One of the many stigmas associated with mental illness. Mental illness unfortunately usually doesn’t appear in the media unless it involves some negative event like a shooting.

[acurious-unknowingmind-blog]

Yes! Why is mental health used by so many to explain people's violent behaviour, though those same people don't want to provide the mental health community with extra help or funding.

[acurious-unknowingmind-blog]

Woman Reading A Book At A Trump Rally Should Inspire A Movement

http://www.huffingtonpost.com.au/entry/trump-rally-woman-reading_us_56436212e4b060377347248d?section=australia

[acurious-unknowingmind-blog]

[acurious-unknowingmind-blog]

Politics and the Online world

As the world watches on in horror, the US continues on one of the most talked about political races ever. This is largely due to the ‘spectacle’ that is Donald Trump. Where other politicians have had to pull back when they are caught doing something too controversial, Trump has managed to be emboldened by the backlash.

Whether it be using the attacks on Paris to comment on gun-control, and needing to be schooled by the French Ambassador, Gerard Araud.

Or belittling 9/11...

Commenting on the relationship of celebrities...

Insulting people’s attractiveness...

And Just being an absolute idiot...

As Trump continues his rage of terror on order and logic, he seems unstoppable as no level of criticism has curbed his tendency to comment on issues he has little to no understanding of.

However whereas Trump misuses twitter, other politician use it to respond to publics concerns and talking points that they know hold favour with their constituents. An example of this is Hillary Clinton.

Though her comments are also not always well received...

And she too falls into the trap of the ‘spectacle’ to draw attention from the online world, such as her pic with the West’s.

But through her use of twitter we see a stark contrasts to Trumps use. Though both are using it as a space for public messages, Clinton seems to desire a more professional online persona and strives towards that goal, whereas Trumps seems to want to just be ‘talked about’ with little to no care what he actually says.

Comparing these two heavy weights in the election gives us only a glimpse of the incorporation of the online world and politics. There are many more uses of it, such as its ability to help create movements, using hashtags and quick clips that can have international audience. As with the anything these too can be misused, such as a frozen companies use of a hashtag about domestic violence for the trending tag, but then saying they had not known the story behind the hashtag before posting it...

Despite this both politics and political movements are greatly impacted by the online world, though societies reactions to its use does vary.

[acurious-unknowingmind-blog]

To Blog or to Socialise that is the question

In this day and age where one finds themselves unable to disconnect from the online world for too long without risking having people worry for your safety, a person like me who is a reluctant and rare user often finds herself joining the party ‘too late’ and despite having accounts on social sites such as Facebook, twitter, Snapchat, Pinterest, myspace as well as Tumblr, it was often as a result of having a friend set up an account for me. Largely due to this lack of interaction between myself and the online social world, the question proposed of whether Tumblr is a ‘social networking site or a blog’ is one I found myself surprised to already have an opinion on.

Unlike many other online sites, one with which I do find myself often on is Pinterest, where each image can lead you down further and further into the maze and more often than not far away from your initial search. In fact it was through Pinterest that I even learnt anything about Tumblr, as Pinterest is made up of images from websites as well as photos and screenshots sometimes from Tumblr posts where people will have had a whole discussion about their favourite show even when it has nothing to do with the original point.

There’s the running gag that the Supernatural fandom has a pic for everything and invades all of Tumblr.

Here we can see that this is such a wide spread issue among fandoms that its been discussed in magazines, extending beyond the online community.

And here, we see how there appears to be this recognised divide within the Tumblr world, that begs the question of the validity of trying to categorise Tumblr as either a social network or a blog.

My introduction to Tumblr was through the world of fandoms, and so when thinking “what is Tumblr” I was much better at recognising the social aspect of it. How it allows, unlike other sites, the communities to interact and share their joy in their fandom with in-jokes and shared pain (also a feature in most of the fandoms) using gifs and pics and quotes, more than just text without need to use a link like, twitter, or limited text like twitter and Pinterest. Tumblr has unintentionally found the perfect users , that they are likely able to tap into for a very long time possibly ensuring its longevity beyond those of basic blog sites.

Because at its beginning Tumblr did start as the ‘easy to use’, blog site. With all the usual ability to customise one’s page to suites ones personality. Colour theme options, profile pictures, background images etc. However Tumblr has also kept its blog abilities unto date with its full incorporation of the wonderful world of gifs

Which I personally love.

Though these features do enhance the blog experience, they also support the social network side. 

Ultimately rather than say either/or, Tumblr is the perfect combination or blog and social network and it will be interesting to watch how it continues or even if it does continue to evolve beyond even those strictures.