Language and New Media

Thoughts on New Media topics and theories...

[lucawetherbym-blog]

Parents and teachers think they’re the spawn of Satan, teenagers and kids are addicted to oblivion. But, say what you want about video games, it’s undeniable that they hold a strong presence in society.

James Paul Gee, a linguistics researcher, says that video games make for good learning tools. This completely contradicts the cases written about in the articles above, and the popular idea held by people. Perhaps more interestingly, Gee also says that video games are experiential, meaning that you experience the gameplay as if it’s real life, leading to an ‘embodied experience’.

The creation of an ‘embodied experience’ is obviously key for any video games’ success, creating an immersive and believable environment in-game ensures that players come back and not only play more but buy more. And, although I’m all for video games and personally don’t think the effects are as incredibly negative as society suggests, I can’t help but ask, is it all rainbows and sunshine?

Playing a game which mimics your experiences as if they’re real life is dangerous territory. Everything is seemingly easier when playing video games, language and communication skills, physical strength, agility…the list goes on. So, when a player returns to real-life, their skills may not transfer as successfully. If a player is highly immersed in a game’s storyline which they prefer to their real-life storyline, they’re going to prioritise the game over their own life. This relates to The Funnel of Commitment theory, suggesting that the deeper you go into an interaction, the harder it is to get back out. Once a player has committed to a character and the storyline, it is hard to then remove yourself from the situation and back to the real world.

This begs the question, do video games really help as learning tools, or are they only applicable in-game?

[lucawetherbym-blog]

The Lean Green Meme Machine

I’m not going to lie, I’m an absolute sucker for a good meme. I must follow about 15 meme based Twitter / Instagram accounts which flood my feeds with the most random and oddly hilarious images every day. I have a folder in my photo album containing 440 memes (Please do not judge me I am still human, we all have our weaknesses). But more importantly, I also have an album of over 170 pictures consisting solely of rare Pepe the Frog memes. I discovered Pepe during A-Levels, a period of self-doubt and sadness, and needless to say, he saved me.

All joking aside, Pepe was a huge phenomenon which started in 2005 and became viral on a huge proportion around 2015. So huge in fact, that this happened:

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/05/26/how-pepe-the-frog-became-a-nazi-trump-supporter-and-alt-right-symbol.html

When I saw the headline to this article, my world shattered to pieces. How was it that an image which was the source of such humour and hilarity had become a symbol for hate and Nazism? It reminded me of the famous Batman quote, ‘with great power comes great responsibility’. Pepe has become so powerful that no one could be held responsible for it. That’s the thing about virality, once an image has gone viral, there is no limit to how it can be interpreted and re-created. Once it’s out there free on the internet, it can spread like untameable wildfire, unable to be controlled. This is obviously sometimes a good thing. When everyone has access to something, they have infinite creative freedom to do what they want, which is always desirable. But in this case, not so much. Now, understandably, I seldom use a Pepe meme in fear of being thought of as a Nazi/Trump supporter.

If you ever forget how powerful the internet is, this article is a perfect reminder. Images, posts, videos and all the like can spread to millions of people in a mere matter of hours. Anything that gets put online, becomes the potential property of everyone who comes across it.

[lucawetherbym-blog]

Fakebook

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/facebook-friends-are-almost-entirely-fake-study-finds-a6826721.html

Facebook, in my opinion, is the trickiest social media to master. I currently have 634 Facebook friends, which is realistically quite high, even though I know plenty of people who have over a thousand. This number was reached after a long vetting session, removing people who I had no actual idea who they were, so I felt quite confident that my network was fairly secure.

However, after hearing that the average number of friends per person was 130, I started to re-think the amalgamation of loosely-connected people I called my friends. Dunbar’s number suggests that the highest amount of people a human brain can keep track of is 150, around a quarter of my number of friends.

This got me thinking, maybe the reason I hadn’t posted a status in about 5 years was because there would just be too many people to try and cater to and be aware of. For example, I have my Mum, my cousins, some teachers from my old school, close friends, and people I just know. This means I’d have to be incredibly meticulous about what I write, making sure not to offend or shock my family or teachers, and not be too boring for my close friends.

Even more so, the article linked in this post really made me wonder how many of my Facebook friends would be happy for my successes or sad if something went wrong. I know for sure I’m going to do some extreme filtering of my friends list, and only keep the people who I have a genuine interest in.

[lucawetherbym-blog]

When will my social media show who I am inside ?¿

I remember when I first started using the house computer for games and bizarre virtual worlds like Habbo, the number one rule was always ‘don’t trust people on the internet’. The fear of befriending someone who was secretly an 80-year-old man in his basement was a daily threat which, as far as I’m aware, I managed to avoid.

It was far easier to hide your identity online ten years ago than it is now. Before, you could easily keep all of your social networks at a distance from each other. This meant that a person could create multiple versions of themselves without any remnants of their other online identities leaking through. Even more so, because these online communities were so distanced from each other, you would be able to create an online persona which was completely different to your real-life one.

Nowadays, all of our social medias can be linked together so seamlessly. For one, it is incredibly easy to find people’s alternative social medias through one you’ve already found, like finding their Instagram through their Twitter, for example. Secondly, in an age where social media is the crux of modern communication, it is impossible to create different identities across apps as the information is so readily available for any members of the public to search through and analyse.

So, if you were to display yourself as extremely outgoing and kooky on Instagram, but then you were deathly quiet and uninterested in real life, people would pick up on it in a millisecond and think ‘hang on, I could’ve sworn this guy was really funny when I looked through his page’.

It makes you think, is the internet a way for me to show my real identity without judgement, or is it a way for me to perform as the person I wish I was?

[lucawetherbym-blog]

So, a word which isn’t actually a word but holds meaning like a word was Word of the Year……word.

A good few years ago, hearing that the Oxford Dictionary had made a little yellow face their word of the year would have caused mass confusion, outrage and possibly disgust. But fast forward to now and the idea isn’t quite as daunting. Emojis have become fairly essential in any texting relationship. They allow us to express ourselves in ways that aren’t as long-winded as sentences. For example, instead of saying ‘not feeling good, just threw up all over my room, I feel like I’m dying inside and I can finally see the lights of heaven’, you can say ‘not feeling good 😖🤢😷💀’. Easy peasy.

Emoji’s are important in creating context too. They act as contextualisation cues, framing the message in the right way so the right meaning is conveyed. For example, when you text your boyfriend asking him to pick up cookies at 11pm and he says no, texting back ‘I hate you so much, you’re the worst’ might pack too much of a punch. But, by adding a crying with laughter emoji like ‘😭’ the relationship is saved, and the message is transformed into an inside joke, expressing solidarity and a close relationship. 

👋🔚

[lucawetherbym-blog]

This Woman Writes SHOCKING Blog On The Truths Of “Clickbait”?! You WON’T Believe What She Says!!

That was a cheap tactic, I know, I’m sorry.

Clickbait is fast becoming the most popular online journalistic strategy. Even articles on more reputable websites use this manipulative technique to pump up views and clicks. Clickbait appeals to even the deepest corners of our curiosity, as soon as we see hyperboles and over exaggerations like ‘YOU WON’T BELIEVE WHAT HAPPENS NEXT’ or ‘DERMATOLOGISTS HATE HER, FIND OUT WHY’ or something equally as intriguing, the cogs in our brain start whirring and we find it almost irresistible to click on the link.

Despite how annoying clickbait is, it is the simplest way to gain attention and website traffic, preying on the bored and easily impressed. But what effect does it have on us? I believe that clickbait has made us lazier information consumers. Articles about serious matters going on in the world rarely use such attention-grabbing headlines, causing most of us to just scroll past, missing out on information that is most likely more beneficial than the 16 Pictures Of Turtles In Socks That Will Restore Your Faith In Humanity.

If you want to read a bit more into the psychology of clickbait, check out this MIND-BLOWING article: https://www.wired.com/2015/12/psychology-of-clickbait/ !!

[lucawetherbym-blog]

We See All

I’ve always thought one of the most alarming aspects of the internet is that nothing is private and nothing can really be removed from the web. I don’t mean this in a sinister, there are videos of you passed out at a party all over social media, kind of way, but in a more mysterious way that delves deeper into your internet use.

The first time I came across this weird technology was when I was scrolling down my Facebook feed and all of a sudden an advert for Asos was in the middle, showing me the last 5 things I’d looked at on their website. My first thought was of panic, how on earth had Facebook managed to see what I was browsing on a completely different website? The answer was, of course, cookies. As you’re most likely aware, cookies (it’s 2017, I think by now I don’t need to make a pun about the sugary kind) are pieces of information which have the ability to tap into even the deepest parts of your browsing habits and track your movements, sending the activity to other websites in order to ‘personalise’ your browsing experience. This sounds lovely and caring, until you realise that pretty much every website you visit is doing this in one way or another.

It makes you think perhaps we should be more wary of what we type in search bars, as there’s always going to be a record of it. What you searched for, what you clicked on, and how long you looked at it for is no longer information for your eyes only. Now, simply deleting your history is not enough. The element of permanence on the internet stretches further than just posting an embarrassing picture on Instagram which gets screenshotted by three of your friends. The information we unknowingly give out is used to build up an ever-growing portfolio of who we are, planting itself and growing unmovable roots across all the websites we visit.