#author:whitneyej

[fans-users-gamers-blog]

The Realness of your Reality

       The ‘realness’ of something as intangible as an idea is often defined by those who involve themselves in the culture that surrounds it. Despite often enjoying the freedom from mainstream rules and regulations of ‘normalized’ society, this especially happens within the periphery communities and cultures that make create fandoms of gaming, literary works, or science fiction, etc. Whether it’s defining what makes a ‘true’ fan or a ‘true participant’ of their particular sub-culture. Those who contribute to these fandoms, despite being on the edges of mainstream culture themselves, are the police of their online worlds.

       One of the biggest examples of this ‘self-policing’ within a fandom is the huge controversy that was the main-stream publication and shifting of the Fifty Shades of Grey novels. After starting her foray into writing as fan-fiction author on the genre of the famous Twilight series, she progressed the characters into an entirely, separate world and bounced off of the popularity that the series had attained into the online community, propelling herself into the mainstream via her fandom - then completely disregarding them. This created a fervor of ill-will and discrimination amongst many of those who once belonged to her fandom; she had betrayed them and in essence, had created something that was no longer part of that world.  But to many there was a bigger problem with her writing than the betrayal of her fandom; she was creating a fan fiction world that portrayed women as nothing more than needy, sexual objects and above that it was a poorly written and structured fan fiction. It -  to them - not only perpetuated stereotypes, it was just plain bad. From Fanlore:

“Many fans feel it’s bad fan fiction, is used to ridicule women while making millions off women readers and viewers, encourages lazy journalism and mainstream interest, simplifies female sexuality, perpetrates damaging stereotypes, is an example of a fan throwing other fans under the bus, and more. “

       On the other end, Braithwaite’s piece focuses on the gender politics within the game WOW, specifically the controversy around the Ji Firepaw character, and the fall out of the female gamers and those in the community (who complained against the gendered speech that the character in your avatars introduction to him) as nothing more than ‘feminist killjoys’. The opposing players focused on the fact that the character processed your given avatar’s gender.

“Players who speak out against Ji Firepaw’s original quest text are diagnosed as the cause of negative feelings – their ‘failure to be happy is read as sabotaging the happiness of others’ (Ahmed, 2010b: 582). Pinpointing feminists as the problem makes one solution readily apparent: remove them from the discussion – and the community – altogether. Many angry posters claim to ‘have reported your post to be taken down for offensive material’ (Fogrum, Ji of the Huojin, 2012: 279).”

       Due to these many complaints, Blizzard ended up changing the characters speech, fully enraging those who did not find fault with the context of speech:

“Blizzard’s changes to Ji Firepaw’s dialogue are attributed to posters like Aislinana–‘shameful’, ‘disgusting’, ‘toxic’ players, whose ‘hate ruins perfectly acceptable thing (like silly flirtatious cartoon characters) for everyone else’ (thundercles, They Changed Ji Firepaw, 2012: 147)”

    In the end, when I first was processing and comparing these problems and the articles and controversies around them, I saw them as two distinctly different events. But the more I studied and compared them, I found that they are two halves of the same whole - sexism, misogyny, and the way that online and fandom communities react against those who disagree with them within their particular sphere. Those who take things for what they are and those who believe it perpetuates and irritates an even bigger issues of problems with gendering ideals. Personally, I can see both sides of it - I think some people overreact to issues with gendering. Some things/people are ridiculous and silly (people are like this in real life, so why not in games?) and need to be treated as such - with an eyeroll, a laugh, and the assumption that it truly means no harm; but also, there are those who use these events to perpetuate their own awful ideals of how the world does and should work. In the end, I feel as though people need to learn to be more proactive and less reactive. 

Braithwaite, Andrea. 2014. “‘Seriously, Get Out’: Feminists on the Forums and the War(craft) on Women.” New Media & Society 16 (5): 703–18. doi:10.1177/1461444813489503.

Fanlore. 2015. “Fifty Shades of Grey.” http://fanlore.org/wiki/Fifty_Shades_of_Grey.

[fans-users-gamers-blog]

To Pink or Not to Pink

         Our gender stereotype start when before we are born, especially for girls. Your mother is given piles of pink clothing at her shower for your, anticipating your birth. There are ribbons and ponies and princesses surrounding you before you can even see properly. Your decision is made, for you – but by who? Who tells everyone that these are what you need and what you want, and anything else is wrong?

         Your mother and her mother were told what was right for girls. Pink clothing, and playing house, and tiaras are what is “for girls”. These ideas are reinforced when brothers and cousins tell you that you can't join in on games that are “for boys” because, because... it's not for girls. But who told them this? Why? Generations ago, someone has decided what was proper for each gender to wear and to play with, but in this modern day and age – when gender binary is become less frequent in households. Who is still perpetuating these ideas? The answer is simple, from Barton: marketing.

“I love a form-fitting, logo-emblazoned throwback blazer as much as the next gal. And it’s understandable that the NFL tries to boil female interest down to clichés—marketing, after all, is marketing.”

        Everyday, like we see in the articles by Lien and Barton. Someone else is deciding what we should fit into and what we, as females, should enjoy. Stereotypes once developed have been perpetuated by the advances advertising, allowing companies to niche out their sales. For Lien's article, she gives the quote from Roeser on this:

"People like me get paid a lot of money to understand customer and consumer behavior," Roeser says. A lot of that money goes into research and finding the best way to send messages to consumers. He says that, whether we like it or not, we're conditioned from an early age to pay attention to these messages."

         Essentially what both of these articles are saying is that it’s all a circle, until recently no one has fought against it and so the cycle of inequality between the genders has been force fed to our society by the marketing world. But hopefully, now that it’s becoming a more hot topic and women are fighting back we won’t be informed as to what is “right” and what is “wrong” for our gender.

[fans-users-gamers-blog]

the privacy of students

     Social media privacy has become a major topic in the last five years. People are posting their daily adventures online en masse – and though a majority want their friends and relatives to have access to these postings, that doesn't necessarily mean they want anyone and everyone to be able to view and monitor their lives, especially those who might use the information against them or by those who are in a position of authority.

       In Young and Quan-Haase's study, using surveys and in-depth interviews they identify the various ways that college students avoid being identified, available, and monitored on social media – specifically Facebook. In YQH's study they found that students manage their online profiles (despite being heavy users of the medium) by removing comments/unflattering photos, sending private messages instead of posting public comments, setting their profiles to the maximum limits of privacy.

“To further understand participants’ motivations for altering the visibility of their profile and of their information, we conducted four correlations, which examined the relationships between general concern for Internet privacy, unwanted audiences, profile visibility, and information visibility. These analyses revealed that concern about unwanted audiences was negatively associated with information visibility; the greater the participants’ concern about unwanted audiences, the less visible they made their profile information, r(48) ¼ 20.307, p , 0.05.”

     In essence, those who preferred the less available profile generally used the limited profile, screened their acceptances of friends, or attempted to control what comments or pictures could negatively impacts their public profile. Young and Quan-Hasse’s relates to the topic of Quinton's essay. In this she examines how students are currently being monitored by GSU officials – in both their online and offline activities. Universities like GSU and others are monitoring their students via social media analytics and ID card swipes to identify those whose are in (their opinion) danger of failing out, progressing badly, or having emotional issues.

“Colleges are analyzing all kinds of student data to figure out who needs extra support and when advisers and faculty should intervene. But as technology advances, and students' offline and online lives become more intertwined, data analytics—particularly, predictive analytics—may raise more ethical questions. Georgia State started using predictive analytics in 2012. It worked with the Education Advisory Board, a for-profit consulting company, to analyze millions of past course grades and create algorithms that identify signs of academic struggle—from the obvious, like failing a class, to the not-so-obvious, such as barely passing a core class required for a major. The system is designed to predict students' likelihood of success in any major. “

      Aside from the fact that this could be construed as an invasion of privacy by it's students, the question is could students use these tactics described by Young\Quan-Hasse to help those in Quinton's essay to avoid being monitored by their universities? The answer, in my opinion, is – possibly.

     This is because while they both deal with similar topics, it would probably be in the best interest of students to limit all visibility of all of their social profiles using a combination of the methods described in YQH's paper. However,  fact that the universities are using student ID related analytics to help them create this profiles of their students, which is both legal and barely unavoidable by the students – creates a different obstacles for them to avoid. Obstacles that, for now, they may have no option but to endure. So, while I think that the information given by Young & Quan-Hasse's essay would be useful – in this specific example where students are also being monitored via their identification cards – it may not be a perfect solution for limiting their total privacy levels.

       Young, Alyson Leigh, and Anabel Quan-Haase. 2013. “Privacy Protection Strategies on Facebook.” Information, Communication & Society 16 (4): 479–500. doi:10.1080/1369118X.2013.77775. Accessed 27 February 2016.

      Quinton, Sophie. 2015. “Are Colleges Invading Their Students’ Privacy?” The Atlantic, April 6. http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2015/04/is-big-brothers-eye-on-campus/389643/. Accessed 27 February 2016.