A banana is an elongated, edible fruit

The fact that in Antarctica there are 21 million penguins and in Malta there are 502,653 inhabitants. So if the penguins decide to invade Malta, each Maltese will have to fight 42 penguins.

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Week 10: Social gaming

Games! I really wanna play some right now but I gotta finish up the blogs sigh

There isn't a feeling like playing games all night with your friends only to realize its almost morning. Social gaming has seen a meteoric rise in popularity since the world got reliably connected to the internet and it shows no sign of stopping. Human beings are social creatures. We inherently crave for human interaction, doesn't matter if you're extroverted or introverted. Social gaming is a perfect blend of an entertainment activity and a social needs distributor. Especially during the pandemic. According to an article written by the BBC, 4 of 5 adults in the US reported playing a video game during 2020 lockdowns. Even more interesting is that those that would normally snub games as a medium also picked it up and there's a reason for it.

Normal people are only now figuring out what gamers have known all along about video games. It heavily promotes social aspects and a sense of community. In an era of social isolation, there is no better remedy than social games. Most multiplayer games saw huge increases in population during the pandemic as more and more people got stuck at home with nothing better to do.

Not only did gaming gain an insane traction, it also kept the hype up and about 40% of surveyors stated they'd continue playing social games after the pandemic is over. The chart below showcases how the trends kept going into 2021 as the steam userbase is at an all time high.

So how does social gaming help everyone cope with loneliness and social satisfaction ? Supplementary communities on social media platforms. Gaming communities are very welcoming and are present on every major social media platform. Discord is a great example. A lot of social games are played in conjunction with Discord voice chat and community servers where everyone hangs out and talks about their games or interests. Discord is tied to social gaming as its mostly used by gamers. Is social gaming bad ? no I personally believe that social gaming is critically essential for humans to express their social desires, especially in the current climate we live in.

References

Lufkin, B., 2021. How online gaming has become a social lifeline. [online] Bbc.com. Available at: <https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20201215-how-online-gaming-has-become-a-social-lifeline#:~:text=Gaming%20has%20skyrocketed%20during%20the%20pandemic%2C%20reaching%20people%20who%27d,an%20American%20business-research%20firm.> [Accessed 28 November 2021].

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Week 9 : Fandom

^ GIF unrelated Fandom ? Gundam ? Fandom sounds like a funny word to me, like a weird combination of a Fan and Dominatrix. What can I say about Fandom, besides they're pretty much communities built around a specific interests. There's various kinds of them. Think of a hobby or interest and there's probably a fandom for it. The social media age has made it way easier to discover fandoms and delve into the rabbit holes. Fandom are for most part, ways for fans to express their love for what they are into at a cranked up level. We've all been there before when we thought we're the only ones that like a particular thing, only to find out others are interested in it as well and end up bonding with them over it. Fandoms have their positives, some people are socially awkward and have trouble making friends, through fandoms they can sort of mask that awkwardness with what they are passionate about, which in turns satisfies their social desires. Entire friend groups are made within fandoms. What do Fandoms do ? Well anything related to their field. For example most fandoms express their passion for the topic by creating content around it like fanart or tributes. In music fandoms, fans would buy physical albums and frantically attend concerts. Game fandoms would purchase every new release regardless of it being good or bad. Are fandoms bad ? As all fanatics are bad, so do some fandoms. The KPOP fandom is notoriously known to be heavily toxic towards insane obsessions with their idols. Fans would stalk and spend their live savings on their idols and also rabidly attacking anyone that would speak in a critical manner of their idol. KPOP twitter is heavily memed due to these exact reasons. Does this mean all fandoms are bad ? Ultimately, no. Just like how every religion has extremists that ruin the image for the majority, so do fandoms and the actions of one bad apple does not reflect the rest. References

Haenfler.sites.grinnell.edu. 2021. Fandom and Participatory Culture – Subcultures and Sociology. [online] Available at: <https://haenfler.sites.grinnell.edu/subcultural-theory-and-theorists/fandom-and-participatory-culture/> [Accessed 28 November 2021].

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Week 8: Crowdsourcing with social media

I'm sure everyone's heard of a crowdsourced product at some point, be it a success story or a downright scam. First things first, Lets sort out the wacky terms. "Crowdsourcing vs crowdfunding" What's the difference ?? Well, crowdsourcing as the name implies is essentially just an umbrella term where a project or product is sourced out to the public of for help, crowdfunding is a type of that. While most confuse the both as the same, latter is purely for monetary purposes, crowdsourcing can mean getting the public involved with the development of the project, for example having people with programming knowledge joining the team from the community to help create a game. Humanitarian relief, when the institutions fail, the people have to cover for themselves. Covid-19 hit a lot of people hard and most lost their jobs and way to provide food for their families, this sparked a lot of energy on social media in Malaysia. Communities began crowdsourcing food banks for those in need. The while flag campaign that started out on social media by a few eventually spread and many began to contribute.

The most common type of crowdsourcing is in fact crowdfunding. Common and popular websites for crowdfunding are Kickstarter and Indiegogo. One great example of the use of social media hype and crowdsourcing would be Star Citizen, a space adventure sim that was funded on Kickstarter with a whopping 2 million dollars. The company behind the project used various marketing strategies on social media including getting a ton of YouTubers to cover the game on their channels which drew in people by the masses.

References Livescault, J., 2021. What is Crowdsourcing? (in 2021) - Braineet. [online] Braineet.com. Available at: <https://www.braineet.com/blog/crowdsourcing> [Accessed 27 November 2021].

RODZI, N., 2021. Malaysians launch white flag campaign to signal distress without begging. [online] The Straits Times. Available at: <https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/se-asia/malaysians-launch-white-flag-campaign-to-signal-distress-without-begging> [Accessed 27 November 2021].

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Week 7: How social media Affected the Spread of Covid-19 Information

Covid-19, What a disaster! Who knew a pandemic was brewing ? well we did and we sorta chose to ignore it. Late 2019 in December was the first ever reported case of Covid-19 in the Chinese state of Wuhan . By late march 2020 most of the world had been infected and lockdowns and prevention methods had started to occur.

There was one place in particular that didn't head this warning, The god damn United States of America. big oof.

The US's own government was contradicting itself with whether the virus was real and this carried on for a long time including the President spreading false information to his followers on social media. This eventually spiraled into a cluster of false information. The first being that he virus was not real and just propaganda to control the masses, millions fought against lockdown laws and movement control orders. Many states outright didn't lockdown which led the virus to spread like wildfire. In about a span of a month the US had a staggering amount of Covid-19 cases. Not only did 2020 have a pandemic, Conick and his colleagues suggest that we also suffered an infodemic. 2020 saw an insane rise of false information spread across various social media platforms. While the rest of the world took on wearing masks a the new norm, The anti-mask movement gained an insane amount of traction in the US, again mainly fueled by misinformation spread on social media. It did not help that 2020 also happened to be an election year which caused increased tensions between the people. Everything was turned into a political instrument, be it mask mandates, social distancing and lockdowns. All these thing that were nessaccary and and essential to keep the spread of the virus in check were actively being fought against. Personally I think that the spread was mainly in due part of the huge dissonance of information on social media that caused a lot the spread in the US, but other factors also played in for example political season which weaponized information. Had it been a normal year I believe the containment issues would not have been this bad. References Who.int. 2021. Archived: WHO Timeline - COVID-19. [online] Available at: <https://www.who.int/news/item/27-04-2020-who-timeline---covid-19> [Accessed 27 November 2021]. De Coninck, D., Frissen, T., Matthijs, K., d’Haenens, L., Lits, G., Champagne-Poirier, O., Carignan, M.E., David, M.D., Pignard-Cheynel, N., Salerno, S. and Généreux, M., 2021. Beliefs in conspiracy theories and misinformation about COVID-19: Comparative perspectives on the role of anxiety, depression and exposure to and trust in information sources. Frontiers in psychology, 12.

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Week 6: Activism Through Social Media

If you told people from the 1900s that you could spark protests with a click of a button, they'd call you mental. That is now reality here in the 21st century. Social media with its incredible outreach has an proved to be an extremely important tool for freedom of expression. Activism has seen a popularity surge coupled with the rise of politics. Social media has intertwined news into our lives and more people are getting aware of atrocities or world events that spark outcry from the masses. What is activism ?

the doctrine or practice of vigorous action or involvement as a means of achieving political or other goals, sometimes by demonstrations, protests, etc. - Dictionary.com

Activism in the past rarely happened as information took forever to get around, movements were unorganized, difficult to control and set up. One quite historic protests were the MLK anti segregation protests in the United States. Movements like those took forever to hold and only because it was so prevalent and the oppression was unbearable that it sparked this movement.

Modern day activism not happens physically but also on the social media platforms. A new frontier, users on social media collectively get behind something. Various methods take place for example during the George Floyd protests, not only did people organize physical protests through social media they held virtual ones as well as millions changed their profile pictures to a black image to stand in solidarity, which many now remember as the Black Lives Matter movement. The BLM movement was so strong, it forced the dormant mainstream brands to also take a stance, as they have to hold a good image amongst the public. I remember seeing my entire timeline on social media roaring in support for BLM, be it influencers, athletes, brands and politicians.

I personally believe a movement like BLM would have not been able to succeed without its online presence. The global impact was largely in due to the fact that whole world saw it unfold in real time, videos were shared and spread like wildfire about police brutality and the whole world for a while rallied behind the cause.

References Miller, Z., 2021. Why Martin Luther King Jr.'s Lessons About Peaceful Protests Are Still Relevant. [online] Time. Available at: <https://time.com/5101740/martin-luther-king-peaceful-protests-lessons/> [Accessed 27 November 2021]. SILVERSTEIN, J., 2021. The global impact of George Floyd: How Black Lives Matter protests shaped movements around the world. [online] Cbsnews.com. Available at: <https://www.cbsnews.com/news/george-floyd-black-lives-matter-impact/> [Accessed 27 November 2021].

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Me writing throughout the night because I enjoy chaos

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Week 5: Social Media and Politics

Politics oh boy! Social media has always been a place for discussion and recently ever since the start of 2016, politics has gotten more mainstream. Personally I'd attribute this in some sort of way to more diva-like world like Donald J. Trump and Boris Johnson. Donald's tweets had an insane outreach and the man was relatively unfiltered compared to the PR teams running most world leader accounts. I'd be lying if If didn't enjoy his presence on twitter as there were so many things you could pull out and meme.

Trump has long since been banned off most social media platforms. The general consensus is that social media is increasingly becoming more political. For example when I was growing up in the early days of social media and the internet, one's political stance didn't matter and I felt that there was no sense of a barrier of them vs us. Now its impossible to steer away from political conversation. It's not all bad, as this just means that more people are becoming educated about politics and are increasingly more aware of world events and how it impacts them indirectly. Personally, I consume an unhealthy amount of politics both international and domestic politics here in Malaysia (can't even compare a to a circus as it'll be an insult to them) . I'd say I cannot avoid it as I primarily use Reddit for almost everything be it interacting with communities that I am involved in or just catching up with news. Reddit just happens to be the most sane platform when it comes to discussing politics. From my experience, the conversations carried on the platform are more civil and both sides are played out. Twitter is a night and day change in this, which is why I avoid that platform . Just look at Malaysian political twitter and you'll know what I'm talking about. I mainly get my dose of politics from r/worldnews or r/politics which are large subreddits that focus a lot on current world events. For local politics, I lurk on r/Malaysia where pretty much everyone collectively shits on the underqualified, overpaid and highly low in IQ politicians of Malaysia.

What roles does social media play in Politics ?

Well, quite a few actually. The human system of politics is honestly an over-glorified popularity contest, and you need people to win said contest. See where I'm getting here ? Yeap. Outreach. Social media has an insane amount of users and with how online everyone is getting each generation, it's a no brainer that even the dinosaur politicians are realizing the need to utilize it. A great example of this is yet again Donald Trump, who used his platform to gain a large cult like following. As controversial as he is, the man is definitely charismatic and he knew exactly the right people to target as well. Another example I'd like to note is the fact that news is almost instantaneous thanks to social media. Events unfold almost felt like live broadcasts on the platforms. This in turn gets more people participating personally as they see these events happen live. I can attest to this, as I feel a sense of involvement when I see news of great magnitude on social media, like election days. I could go on a lot more but alas my procrastination monster has broken free and is telling me to watch cat videos. It's an abusive relationship References Satterfield, H., 2021. How Social Media Affects Politics. [online] Meltwater. Available at: <https://www.meltwater.com/en/blog/social-media-affects-politics> [Accessed 27 November 2021].

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Week 4: Is blogging still relevant in the age of TikToks and Instagram?

hahaha no who the hell actually blogs in 2021 Before we begin, let’s ask what even are blogs ? why ask this question ? well I don’t know and I want to fill up the blogpost with more text so it doesn't look empty, deal with it . According to the OG WordPress (2021) website, they define a blog as a and abbreviation of web log with a diary-like content scheme and topics that would vary immensely. I've only seen the blogs of my friends in high school and it was mostly gossip and girl drama.

Personally I’ve always found the blogpost sector of the internet a bit weird and unrelatable, even back in its hay day where every teen girl had a blog and swore that they were unique lol . I’ve always had a terrible procrastination monster so such endeavors like blogging felt nigh unapproachable which is why I’m doing all these weekly posts in one night hahaaha. 

In today’s instant gratification and short attention span fueled teenagers and adults simply don’t care and don't actively look out for blogs for either entertainment purposes of information. I’d flat out say that no, blogging is not relevant, but then I did some research and found out the opposite is true.

So after doing research I've found out that not only is blogging not dead but it's still thriving. I read a blog, yes I know wow very meta and relevant to the topic at hand, which compiled an insane amount statistical data about blogging. Todorov (2021) provided the data in a presentable manner, even though it still gave me an aneurysm trying read it. According to Todorov, there are over 30 million bloggers in the United states alone which is insane. I'm a simple monkey, I see huge numbers and I'm impressed, just like any corporate environment where profit only matters. Firstly seeing all the data compiled on the website showed how little I knew about blogging in general.

I didn't know that a lot websites you read on the internet for example like articles about tech or media most of the time end up being a type of blog. I've had a shrewd view of what blogging even was. You'd think that platforms like TikTok or Instagram would have completely phased out blogging but the data shows otherwise. Another thing I didn't know was that vlogging is essentially another form of a blog, and that format is literally everywhere. So I guess blogging is not dead!! yay :D

References Todorov, G., 2021. 81 of the Most Up-to-Date Blogging Statistics in 2021. [online] Semrush Blog. Available at: <https://www.semrush.com/blog/blogging-stats/> [Accessed 27 November 2021]. WordPress.org Forums. 2021. Introduction to Blogging. [online] Available at: <https://wordpress.org/support/article/introduction-to-blogging/> [Accessed 27 November 2021].

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Hullabaloo and howdy-do, musty prawns and Timbuktu, yeltsy-bye and hibberty poo, kick em in the dishpan, hoo hoo hoo

Courage the Cowardly dog

An Exorcism chant.