Chris Nalwasky @chriswasky - Tumblr Blog

Week 14

Censorship is a big "no-no" according to Anonymous and in the Coleman reading, it mentions Operation Payback in which Anonymous conducted a DDoS attack on various websites such as "PayPal, Mastercard, and Amazon" which "[pulled] all support and services from WikiLeaks," (Coleman). We discussed this same issue in my Media and Politics class where we talked about Julian Assange and his leaking of secrets including death totals in Afghanistan. Found in the Wikipedia page for the group of Anonymous, it says their purpose is "anti-cyber censorship". In a picture found online about anonymous, it perfectly describes this notation about anonymous saying that "We will not tolerate censorship" with the mask of anonymous all evil-looking. Anonymous is there for the "Lulz" for themselves like hacking peoples MySpace's for example as we saw in a clip in class, but sometimes, they can also be political and show their stances on situations and show up at protests and aim for free speech and expression and dislike internet censorship.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anonymous_%28group%29

#week 14

Week 13

Anonymity has been more popular in recent years with Formspring years ago, to 4chan and even Tumblr. The digital age has allowed us to enter portals never seen before by remaining faceless and nameless by theory. In other classes, we talked abot Julian Assange and WikiLeaks where they made important US secrets available to the public and even Anonymous attacking and exploiting websites and Operation Payback. The DDos where you have the constant refreshing for Lulz to slow down the site where many people use it at once can be the same as all RU students trying to register on WebReg.

On sites like 4chan or anything similar with the anonymous aspect where you are essentially nameless and faceless, you can hide behind your keyboard and say and do anything as you please without any repercussions.

The picture below is a formspring logo which we all used back in middle school or such where we got to ask questions and post things to friends accounts or pages without them knowing who they are.

#week 13

Analytical Response 2

Chris Nalwasky

11/26/14

Social Media and Participatory Culture

Analytical Response #2

What makes the virtual and digital world so unique is its ability for us to express ourselves and as well as see dangers and discrimination. In this section of the class, we touched on a lot of concepts revolving around women and girls in different aspects, whether it was on YouTube comparing Jenna Marbles to Ryan Higa and the way they attract their audience, or the gaming world exploring the hit game World of Warcraft (WoW) from a female perspective where women are seen as sexual objects. This section deals with a lot with feminism and feminist views where all women should be equal to men. Contrary to belief, a feminist can be either male or female as we saw with celebrity Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s views who want nothing more than gender equality. Feminism can be described as “the advocacy of women’s rights on the grounds of political, social, and economic equality to men, in other words, a “notion of ‘safe space’ – emotionally and/or physically,” (Murray, 2014) or, “the theory of the political, economic, and social equality of the sexes,” says the merriam-webster dictionary.

Why is feminism important? It is simple, everyone should be treated equal, the same, and not be viewed a certain way by society. What is the general notion of women? Sex objects? Jokes about being in the kitchen or cleaning or doing laundry. Girls and women have much more to offer than that.

A social media site we can look at for these concepts on feminism is Twitter. Twitter includes a very powerful “hashtag” feminism which brings people together who have the same views on gender equality and makes it viral or trending and spread the word trying to create that “safe space” as mentioned before. According to Rachel E. Dubrofsky and Megan M. Wood, “Twitter is a useful focus, because it is immensely popular and allows users to communicate directly with other users and with followers.” The hashtag allows for collaboration and conversation among users and the hashtag feminism (#feminism) can be a powerful association. I haven’t really taken the time to read up on feminism but I recently embarked on a journey over to Twitter and did a search with the hashtag. I came across impressed with the amount of conversation, although some immature, and some really interesting tweets that make you think. One tweet that stood out was from the account @ElleCanada from November 8 referencing Keira Knightley who said in a recent interview and a quote was posted on Twitter saying “it’s about getting a place at the table and it’s about equal pay.” I personally haven’t tweeted or spoke my mind about feminism but after reading through these tweets it is a very powerful thing that people are passionate about and hoping to achieve equality.

In addition to, women are exploited and put down in video games as well when you think about the category of sexual nature and focus they are put under. Like movies such as Girls Gone Wild, women are seen as sexual objects in games as some will say rather than human beings. Gender and sexuality is expressed in Lina Eklund’s piece regarding female WoW players. During class, we heard stories that when we know or see girls playing video games, we assume they aren’t as good, or in a twisted sense, guys gravitate toward them for a chance to talk to them. “It is much more likely that you will receive help if you are a woman than if you are a man. However, this only applies if the man helping you believes you are a woman offline,” (Eklund, 2011). How is that fair? Is that just guys being creepy and do they just jump at any moment to talk to a girl? In World of Warcraft, you create your own character and define them as male or female. The female characters are often more sexualized than the male characters showing off a lot of skin. This is a gender bias and found that female characters in a game are weaker than the males. Eklund found that some used the game to escape reality by creating an “ugly avatar” after “in real life people often considered her cute, and that this was something she sought to escape while playing WoW.” The game also features character dances where “the female dances are more enticing, sensual and in some instances purely sexual,” says Eklund.

This just shows you that the sexual nature of society and the view of women are the same in real life and in the virtual gaming world. No matter where you go, women are looked at as number two while men are number one. When you look at the sexual connotation nature of the female characters of WoW or Girls Gone Wild, a lot of it is based on appearance. Jenna Marbles, as mentioned before, is a hit celebrity on YouTube where she has countless of viewers and videos regarding gender. Although a lot of her videos are humorous, she gains the viewer’s first through her body by showing it off. She has one video where she is in a bikini. This will certainly attract the male gaze where she is being sexual and eye pleasing.

When you talk about feminism and then you compare it to the gaming world where issues now exist in real and online, it makes for a heated debate. There are many feminists out there who want nothing but equality and more respect for women, yet, these horrible sexual natures are out there sometimes without even noticing or thinking about it. Women are harassed every day and I love the fact that some of them stand up for themselves and don’t just sit there and be treated like some piece of garbage. Social media, including Twitter and the hashtag feminism is a truly potent tool. Sexual violence or harassment exists every day and it is a good sign that girls and women are now telling their stories and posting them digitally on feminist blogs, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, and Tumblr sites on sites such as Hollaback! (Rentschler). Feminists want justice for women and are tired of women being looked at as solely sexual objects or not “having their place at the table” in anything. The hashtags feminism movement “has created a virtual space where victims of inequality can coexist together in a space that acknowledges their pain, narrative, and isolation (Dixon, 2014). I’ve come to realize that these concepts do really exist after not paying attention and being completely oblivious to them in the gaming world. Frankly, it bothers me when women are discriminated against and are put down or taken advantage of or something like that. Just because men are “thirsty” for a chance to talk to a girl in a video game or pay them more attention because of the sexual nature isn’t fair. You see on Twitter there are accounts that just show girls’ butts all day long. They are seen as sexual objects. It is truly disgusting that they are seen this way and I hope that they all stand up for themselves and don’t just take the punches.

Works Cited

Canada, E. [Elle Canada] November 8, 2014. Twitter. https://twitter.com/ElleCanada/status/531082465327083521

Dixon, K. (2014). Feminist Online Identify: Analyzing the Presence of Hashtag Feminism. Journal of Arts and Humanities (JAH), 3, 34-40.

Dubrofsky, R. E., & Wood, M. M. (2014). Posting Racism and Sexism: Authenticity, Agency and Self-Reflexivity in Social Media. Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies,11, 282-287. doi: 10.1080/14791420.2014.926247

"Feminism." Merriam-Webster. Merriam-Webster, n.d. Web. 11 Nov. 2014.

Eklund, L. (2011). Doing gender in cyberspace: The performance of gender by female World of Warcraft players. Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies, 17, 323-342. doi: 10.1177/1354856511406472

Murray, D. (2014) Lecture Notes, Rutgers University, 10/17/14

Rentschler, C. A. (2014). Rape Culture and the Feminist Politics of Social Media. Girlhood Studies, 7, 65-82. doi: 10.3167/ghs.2014.070106

#analytical response 2

Week 12 - Social Media Movement

Media outlets has allowed people to form and create new organizations, networks, and revolutions. As talked in previous classes, for example, the Twitter hashtag, can be a powerful tool to make something trending so people can see no matter where they are. This is important when you are trying to speak your mind about something and have others join you in the revolution. Wael Ghonim created the Facebook page "We are all Khalid Said" to form protests and to send out word and pictures and videos of the brutality of Egyptian law enforcement. He was sent to jail.

No matter what you are trying to speak about and get across, social media can be important. In my town, there was a child who got cancer and unfortunately passed away after a long battle. The whole community got behind him and his mom (parents) created a Facebook Page to try and built donations and have support from the town and everyone and anyone else. A hashtag on twitter was used and even myself was in support of the child as kids have been a part of my life having worked with them for about five years. Mathew Heck stated in the article below Social Movements and Social Media: Spark a Movement, Change The World that "social media has fundamentally changed the way that governments, nonprofits, companies, universities, and individuals interact with each other and with their communities."

http://techchange.org/2013/07/02/social-movements-and-social-media-spark-a-movement-change-the-world/

#week 12

Week 11 - Fans & Amateurs

On Tuesday, we touched on the subject of Crisis memes. Sean Rintel, author of Crisis Memes: The Importance of Templatability to Internet Culture and Freedom of Expression describes crisis memes as, "Crisis memes are the ghoulish and satirical posts that spread through social media concurrently with serious journalistic reportage. They are folk productions that respond to challenging events based on thematic and structural templates of popular online image macros." These memes can target recent crises to natural disasters per the article. One meme found on memecenter.com, we see a meeting of what looks like co-workers discussiing something important about their company. The crisis meme says "On a Scale of 1-Greece, how broke are we?" Although it is funny because we do not live in Greece, it references and signifies the economic problems Greece is having. The what looks to be the President of the company or leader just looks worried as if he had just sat down, took a deep breath, sighed, and said "on a scale of 1 to Greece, how broke are we?" Rintel says that "Crisis memes thus draw their power, as do all memes, from a combination of timeliness, timelessness, and seriality." Meme combinations can be powerful as they can connect to each like Advice Animal meme changed to Barack Obama with economist Paul Krugman and Batman that shows up in Rintel's work. If you want to think about the Greece crisis meme, can we make the same one for the United State and it's extremely large debt.

#week 11 #crisis meme

Week 10 - Gaming

In class today, we talked about the Wii Fit and described by Brad Millington in one of our readings as an "active" video game. The Wii Fit seemed like a fun, new, virtual adventure that we all hoped for in video games growing up. We always wanted to be moving in a virtual setting and feel like we are there in the video game. With the Wii Fit, you get a rectangular step pad which acts as your floor as you do various movements along with a controller in your hand. A spokesperson from Nintendo says the controller is a part of you not the console. I as well as other disagree with that statement because without a human picking it up and using it, the controller is useless. We can go out and do other things with unlimited capabilities without this controller or machine of a game. Video games are machines that tell us what to do and how to move. With the Wii fit, we are put into categories and it measure BMI. This can be inaccurate because we are all different. In the link below, it lists some pros and cons of the Wii Fit. As a con, it says, "4. BMI measurements – BMI can be very misleading. No computer can accurately assess BMI because it doesn’t consider the way your body is built. Muscle weighs more than fat, and some individuals may be inaccurately judged as overweight by the Wii Fit Plus scale." Interestingly, this came up in discussion.

Instead of listening to the video game or machine telling you what to do that acts like some type of prison guard, listen to your body, stopping when you feel the need to stop, not when the game tells you to. We aren't data or a number. We are humans and we should be degraded in that way

http://www.healthy-journey.com/wii-fit-plus-pros-and-cons-of-getting-fit-with-video-games/

Week 10

11/4/14

#week 10 #gaming #wii fit

Week 9

This week, we got back in to gender by ways of extremes and comparisons looking at Jenna Marbles and Ryan Higa YouTube videos along with the reading "Performing Gender on YouTube" by Lindsey Wotanis & Laurie McMillan. Jenna Mourey aka Jenna Marbles, is a YouTube sensation where we looked at some of her videos including gender extremes critiquing men and women and comparing them in certain situations (like packing a suitcase). Unlike Higa, Marbles might get more viewers or "one billion clicks" based on not just humor, but her body and looks as well as she shows it off. You can compare to our previous discussion of teen vloggers asking "Am I Ugly?". Jenna puts it out there she thinks she is ugly or steps into the shoes of "ugly" people and says you can cover it up and appear pretty referencing her most popular video "How to trick people into thinking you're good looking". The teen vloggers are insecure while Marbles seems confident and essentially not caring. Comparing Marbles and Higa, Wotanis and McMillan say, "Mourey’s use of gender performance and parody works to her advantage, especially when she executes such performance explicitly; doing so renders her akin to a character. Her on-screen behaviors, mode of dress, style and cadence of speech, and video content have become patterned over time and therefore expected by viewers in much the same way that audiences expect well-developed characters in other popular media to act in each new performance." Marbles targets the gender norms and "appeals to viewers by presenting herself in a very feminine, often objectified, manner even in the instances where she is rebuking the norm with her paradies." With the male gaze and just to watch because of her showing off her body in a bikini in her Cancun video, Motanis and McMillan suggest that, "The fact that her videos receive more sexually-explicit comments than those of Higa suggests that many viewers watch her videos simply to gaze. This suggests that women on YouTube are treated in much the same way as women in other media platforms...".\

The picture posted below ties in the Jenna Marbles videos of gender extemies and "what guys do" vs "what girls do" and just shows the difference in the brain for pink for girls and blue for guys.

http://www.youtube.com/user/JennaMarbles

http://www.youtube.com/user/nigahiga

#week 9 #jenna marbles #ryan higa

Week 8

This Friday, we talked about four types of labor in today's society where communication is key and it has moved from factories, to the office, to perhaps digitally.

We touched on user generated content where users were creating products such as Huffington posts bloggers in which I talked about in another class and discussed, to making own t-shirts on a customizable website. I have actually created a custom pillow and keychain at café press. There, it was awesome to create an image you want and giving it to somebody. In the Huffington post bloggers case, they went on strike to get paid rather than just writer for the prestige any longer. As Larry Lessig from TED says we "produce for the love what they're doing not for the money" and it seems those times are changing.

http://www.cafepress.com/

#Week 8 #social media and participatory culture #smcf14

Analytical Response 1 - 10/21/14

Chris Nalwasky

10/21/14

Social Media & Participatory Culture

Analytical Response 1

In my interesting Social Media & Participatory Culture class at Rutgers University, we have learned a variety and a set of interesting topics thus far. Included in the concepts are “liking” on Facebook, the dangers of the internet, your experiences of online friendship, online intimacy and passion, love as technology, and self-interest in the attention economy. As you can see, these are a wide assortment of terms. In watching videos and reading the selections provided for class and based on my own personal experiences using the social media platform Facebook, I will be discussing the dangers of the internet and online friendships. These concepts are somewhat alike and based on my experiences, I can back them up.

The dangers of the Internet are a really controversial topic not so much up for debate, but for the amount of danger and conflict that is possible all over the web. You were always told to watch what you put on the internet whether its credit card information, other banking, social security numbers, watching out for scams, and to watch what websites you are going on and looking at and photos and such you are posting. You never know who will find your profile and want to do harm to you. In addition, employers will search for you and scout your profile.

Inn Danah Boyd’s article Social Network Sites as Network Publics: Affordances, Dynamics, and Implications “Social network sites have gained tremendous traction recently as popular online hangout spaces for both youth and adults. People flock to them to socialize with their friends and acquaintances, to share information with interested others, and to see and be seen. In addition, “there are those who use these sites to flirt with friends-of-friends, make business acquaintances and occasionally even rally others for a political cause,” (Boyd, 2010). With all of this commotion, comes time of disaster. In a way, spending too much time online and on Facebook is a danger. You become so focused on your phone or your computer and you don’t take the time to appreciate the world around you. I see people all the time with their heads down when they walk or on the busses here at school. In a way, are we “alone, together,” (Murray & Manivannan, 2014)? Put your phone down and take a look at a beautiful city skyline or even the cute dog walking next to you instead of writing on someone’s wall.

In the Frontline Film Growing Up Online, there are a few stories mentioned in the film about kids or teens making bad choices. This one incident was where a group of high school friends snuck into a concert and acted crazy and drank even though they were underage and it was a mess (Van Petten, n.d.). These pictures and videos ended up on the internet for the world to see. One thing my mom did when I was a kid growing up was having the computer on our main floor next to the kitchen so it wasn’t in any private room. In addition, my brother-in-law is a computer wizard and works with computers so he showed my mom ways to monitor, not that I was a bad kid online. Something that was stressed in another class at Rutgers was to check what you put on your Facebook as future employers search for you and look at what you have on. There was an emphasis to not post that picture from the party from Friday night. However, having the ability to share with friends and post pictures and connect with others is awesome and why Facebook is on my agenda at least once every day to check up.

On Facebook, you can change your privacy settings but if it is public, anybody can look at your information you have posted and even try to contact you and talk to you. This is a spot for online sexual predators. Also, Facebook and online is a place for cyberbullying and it can ruin a child’s life or even take it as it highlights in the Frontline film (Van Petten, n.d.). Thankfully, I have no experience with either of these but just to show you that they exist.

Online Facebook friends are something that can be looked at in a couple ways. Some people add everybody and anybody, while others just add their real friends. Well, what are real friends? Friendship is the state of being friends and a state of mutual trust and support between two or more individuals (Murray & Manivannan, 2014). I personally have added people I “know” from work, or school, or something along those lines. In addition, I add people who I really talk to. I currently have 1,261 friends on Facebook. Do I “know” them each on a personal level, of course not? I have added people who are of interest including friends and family but also other acquaintances and others from school that I have seen and know of. In a video from class, our brains can keep track of 150 meaningful friendships, and no more (howstuffworks.com). In a Chris Bloor piece, “if we have too many friends, the beneficial effects of the network become fragmented. Maintaining a large group of friends takes our focus away from getting to know the characters of a few trusted individuals,” (Bloor, 2010). I would say I have five really close friends and categorizing them as two best friends, two “bros”, and of course, my girlfriend.

With Facebook, you are able to connect with your best friends you have now, or reconnect with family and even an old childhood friend who you haven’t seen in ten years like me which is absolutely amazing and why I like Facebook. I searched him up on Facebook one day after remembering his last name and I was able to add him as a friend and message him and reminisce of playing soccer in his backyard. Now, would I have a deep conversation with someone on Facebook? I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t even have one with my girlfriend. I’ll save that for a phone call or in person. However, these friendships and even those people you meet online can be authentic and I think Facebook is great (no, I am not a Facebook junkie). In this “Web 2.0”, this new age “replaces the one-to-many model of service provision with utilization of users through the any-to-many potential of the internet” (Scholz, 2007). In a study done in the UK in 2005, Lewis and West’s article Friending: London-based undergrads’ experiences of Facebook, found that Facebook as a low commitment friendship acting as a “security blanket” where you are included in people’s lives, but not in depth (Lewis & Clark, 2005).

In the age of the Internet and Facebook, there are many dangers on the Web and we all no matter how old or young we are must think twice about what we are posting. In addition, we must all be careful of what information we are giving out and keep things private as you never know who is watching and who wants to get you. In addition, no matter how many hundreds or thousands Facebook friends you have, you really only have a select few best friends. All the other people just become noise. I personally have always watched what I put on my Facebook including all videos, sharing other status updates or links, pictures, anything. I mostly only have photos of myself, my family, and my girlfriend on uploaded. I don’t have any “bad” or “harming” photos and frankly, don’t do any crazy things anyway. Facebook is great for reconnecting with old friends, but we really have a select few friends that we can trust no matter what, and there is nothing richer than getting to spend time with them and enjoying the world with our phones turned off so there is nothing to post online.

Works Cited

Bloor, C. (2010). What are friends for. Facebook and Philosophy. (pp. 147-157).

Van Petten, V. (n.d.) Summary: Frontline’s Growing Up Online. Radicalparenting.com. http://www.radicalparenting.com/2008/02/01/summary-frontlines-growing-up-online/

(n.d.) Fw:Thinking [video file]. Retrieved from http://shows.howstuffworks.com/fwthinking show/future-of-social-media-video.htm

Murray, D., & Manivannan, V. (2014) Lecture Notes, Rutgers University, 09/23/14-09/26/14

Boyd, D. (2010). Social Network Sites as Network Publics Affordances, Dynamics, and Implications. Networked Self: Identity, Community, and Culture on Social Network Sites. (pp. 39-57).

Lewis, J., & West, A. (2009) Friending: Long-based undergraduates’ experience of Facebook. New Media & Society, 11, 1209-1229. doi: 10.1177/1461444809342058

Scholz, Trebor. "A History of the Social Web (draft)." Collectivate.net. 26 Sep 2007. 1 Oct 2007 <http://www.collectivate.net/journalisms/2007/9/26/a-history-of-the-socialweb. html>.

**The indents got messed up when I pasted here

#smcf14 #analytical reponse 1

Week 7

On Tuesday, we focused on the phenomenon of 'Blacktags' on Twitter. “A particular type of hashtag associated with Black Twitter users (mainly African-Americans), because the tag itself and/or its associated content appears to connote ‘Black’ vernacular expression in the form of humor and social commentary” (p. 51). These hashtags were mainly humorous like #onlyintheghetto your idea of a fancy restaurant is KFC. It's funny. And what makes them more prominent is the Twitter's trending feature. "What is seemingly remarkable is that Blacktags on occasions become trending topics on Twitter, which appears to belie their vernacular expression and racialized specificity. This phenomenon has garnered both negative and positive attention across online media." In an article I found, Bentley Lumumba say's "'Blacktags' on Twitter [have] to go."

http://www.myafricanviews.com/why-%e2%80%98blacktags%e2%80%99-on-twitter-has-to-go/

#week 7

Week 6 - Gender & Sexuality

Former model Cameron Russll gave a TED talk on "looks aren't everything". We also saw an "Am I Ugly?" video clip. When Russell talked about all her pictures and photo shoots being awkward and all of her images were superficial and touched up. She showed pictures of herself the day before looking nothing like the "fake" woman she was in the model photos. "That's not me." The Am I Ugly clip focuses on the external without thinking about the internal. People get so caught up in their appearance that they need other people to tell them are pretty. Even if they say they are pretty, they will never be fully satisfied because when they look at themselves in the mirror they don't see perfection. Both the girls in the video and models are insecure.

Years back, I want to say late middle school, we are talking the days of Myspace where girl I knew (somewhat of a friend) was talking down about herself one day saying she is ugly. I was nice enough to quickly dispute that and go on to say she is beautiful because everybody is beautiful in their own way and went on to say what's on the inside that matters. Not everything is external etc.

For some reason this always stuck with me and how thankful and happy she got after that. (probably unrelated but we dated a bit in high school). Just know that no matter what, "looks aren't everything"

Here's the song "Beautiful" by Eminem

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgT1AidzRWM

#week 6

Week 5 - Intimacy

A question that was brought up during the webcast today was whether loving an avatar diminishes us or not. In a way and in my response and others mostly said yes, it diminishes us. It's real versus fake. Which one would you want. Would you want to love a fake virtual avatar through a computer screen, or love, hug, and kiss, a real human beautiful girl? You won't get the full emotional attachment and with that you are losing and could be losing yourself as some of us has mentioned.

#week 5 #intimacy

Week 4

This week, we had the topic of friends and friendships and online communication.

From a previous week, the film Growing Up Online talked about strangers and posting bad pictures online and parents acting as somewhat of a security guard. I know my mom growing up most of the time tried to keep some tabs on what I was doing.

This week, Sherry Turkle gave a talk at TED and mentioned her daughter and her friend hanging out but they were all texting somebody and not interacting with each other. Our discussion group in class all stated that we dislike friends or girlfriends/boyfriends who text or are on their phone when they are out having dinner or anything. I personally can't stand that and call my girlfriend or friends out. We are supposed to hold conversation with each other and explore the world around us. When we do that and listen to each other vulnerabilities we can then connect and help each other out.

#week 4 #friends

Week 3

In Sarachan's article, he mentioned French Philosopher Roland Barthes terms sudium and puntum. With these two terms and ideas, you can essentially craft the perfect profile picture for yourself on Facebook for example. In Catfish the movie, an individual was "psycho" according to Nev and the individual created persona's of many people creating different profile pictures, lives, everything. For every different person she pretended to be, she created a new image giving each meaning and she mainly focused on the puntum, of what you see.

Every profile picture is fun to create for your Facebook profile. My profile picture is an image that is perfect. It represents me as a huge baseball/Yankee fan and my two favorite players Gardner and Jeter standing next to my girlfriend and just looking and absorbing the atmosphere. It is a little bit of who I am.

In addition, celebrities are becoming a big thing on social media with fans trying to interact. I'm not sure if it counts as a celebrity, but I had tweeted about watching my favorite professional basketball team the Phoenix Suns on TV and being that they play in Phoenix, I only see them maybe three times a season. The suns had retweeted and commented back to my tweet and I was elated. I felt important and special that somehow I connected with my favorite basketball team showing support that I am watching in NJ.

#week 3

Week #2 - First post

In the reading "A History of the Social Web", it essentially gives a timeline of internet related inventions and creations. ARPANET, which was mostly used for email, was closed down by 1990. A quote from Vint Cerf says, "It was the first, and being the first, as best, but now we lay it down to ever rest," possibly signifying an advancement and a better communicative and social web. We eventually got better email and internet and social networking sites for example MySpace and Facebook which was mentioned in the screening "Growing Up Online". "Spectacle 2.0" mentions that Facebook and other online communities are "owned and controlled by commercial businesses." This could be a big brother is watching you kind of thing. Social media could be a bad thing as the movie "Growing Up Online" states. As a segment in the movie, the kid was spending hours on hours on the computer backing up that media can be addictive as the link below states.

http://hightalk.net/2009/04/15/4-bad-things-about-social-media/

#week2 #first post

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