What do Nier: Automata, Stellar Blade, Black Myth: Wukong, and Legacy of Hogwarts have in common?
The American mainstream video-game journalist corporate collective did everything they could to make those games fail -- including organized Twitter campaigns of harassment -- and either failed at keeping those games from being successful, or actually provoked the paying customer-base to make those games succeed even harder.
What do Forspoken, Concord, and Dustborn have in common?
It's not that they failed. Lots of other games failed, too.
It's that the American mainstream video-game corporate journalist collective TRIED to make them succeed, and only succeeded in exposing their own weakness. The collective revealed how it has as little power to promote a game it likes as it does to destroy a game it hates.
The collective still has its audience, and that audience coordinates with it to promote or destroy.
But that audience either doesn't actually boycott or buy what they SAY they do... (As with those who protested Genshin Impact's Natlan playable characters not having darker complexions, while still continuing to play the game)
Or else that audience is such a tiny proportion of the paying customer base that nothing it does matters.
Meanwhile, the larger proportion of the paying customer-base leaves those games to starve, while flocking to buy the games that the priesthood tried to destroy.
Exceptions to the rule: Atomic Heart, Baldur's Gate 3, and Gollum
Data-points that prove the rule isn't "the paying customer-base is simply reactionary and contrary to the American mainstream video-game corporate journalist collective".
Paying customers don't choose to support a game that the priesthood hates, and they don't choose to avoid a game that the priesthood supports.
Simply: The customer-base flocks to a game that gamers decide is a good game, regardless of the priesthood's opinions.
Just as the customer base let a number of games fail even when the priesthood had no particular opinion about those games.
All of which proves that the priesthood is COMPLETELY out of touch with the people. Its approval doesn't strongly result in disapproval, and its disapproval cannot be proven to strongly result in approval.
The priesthood does not understand the nature of the people, and so the people largely don't care what the priesthood says.
I have argued in the preceding chapters that our society is constructed around flows: flows of capital, flows of information, flows of technology, flows of organizational interaction, flows of images, sounds, and symbols. Flows are not just one element of the social organization: they are the expression of processes dominating our economic, political, and symbolic life. If such is the case, the material support of the dominant processes in our societies will be the ensemble of elements supporting such flows, and making materially possible their articulation in simultaneous time. Thus, I propose the idea that there is a new spatial form characteristic of social practices that dominate and shape the network society: the space of flows. The space of flows is the material organization of time-sharing social practices that work through flows. By flows I understand purposeful, repetitive, programmable sequences of exchange and interaction between physically disjointed positions held by social actors in the economic, political, and symbolic structures of society. Dominant social practices are those which are embedded in dominant social structures. By dominant structures I understand those arrangements of organizations and institutions whose internal logic plays a strategic role in shaping social practices and social consciousness for society at large.
Life in college is never easy, but the experience that you’ll be getting from it will help you grow and mold you into the person that is prepared to conquer the wonders of reality. It is a phase in your life where you’ll be meeting new people, and have the opportunity to know yourself better.
Be the witness of my growth as a writer. As I write about my experiences, learnings, and personal reflections about my course. Allow me to share some events and activities which I think is helping me grow as a writer, and as a student.
Becoming a Communication student, I am exposed to the wide array of mediums that are used in conveying messages. It could be through television, cellphone, radio, newspaper, and a lot more. Aside from those, we are also taught on how to maximize or use the aforesaid mediums. Writing in New Media is one of my major subjects right now and with this subject, we, students are being taught on how we navigate our way, write and deliver our message with the help of the new media. This course aims to expose the students with the techniques that are used in writing for new media.
What is New Media?
You might be wondering what “new media” is. Let’s cut to the chase and go directly to the point. New media is the digital technology around us that helps us get in touch or connected with one another regardless of the distance between the sender and receiver. It is a diverse medium composed of diverse audience that are being connected with the help of the internet. Therefore, the audiences in the new media doesn’t have to be located within a specific geographical location.
With the help of new media, it became easier for us to connect and continue with our work and academics during this pandemic. The new media made it possible for us to have our classes at the comfort of our own home. Aside from that, it gave businesses a chance to continue their works or even market their products or services with the help of the online platform. Based on an article by the Carrier Clinic (2019), there are three positive sides when it comes to our exposure to the new media: (1) anonymity, (2) 24/7 availability, and (3) No geographical limitations.
With the help of anonymity, people are able to share their personal problems and vent it to the public. I, myself, can relate to this and I, to be honest, find it therapeutic. Back in 2016, Tumblr became my diary. It is the platform that I use to vent or even rant about whatever that have happened to me. It is also the first thing that I update whenever there’s something good that happened to me. It was a phase where almost everyone was using Tumblr to share their personal dramas and curate a ‘blog’ that has a playlist on it. It was a time where people can confess their deep darkest secrets without getting canceled.
Knowing that people are 24/7 available, is both a blessing and a curse that we’ve been living by since this pandemic started. When the idea of having online classes and work-from-home set-up came, a lot of people forgot to set boundaries. They forgot to have their own personal space. All of a sudden, it was a chaos of events. You no longer have a sleeping pattern, you tend to focus more on your socials non-stop, you began sending emails or even work-related messages in the middle of the night. All of the happened because we thought that the availability of a person is now 24/7 since he/she is just at home.
I actually admire how times have changed and allowed us to communicate with no geographical limitations. As a daughter of someone who is always away from his family, having this limitless access is making it easier for me to connect with my father who is working abroad. Sending a life update or a simple how my day went allows him to witness and feel that he’s with us while we’re growing. We may not see each other physically, but the internet is making it possible for us to connect with each other. Having all these being said, we can say that the internet is making it possible for us to have a network society.
What is Network Society?
In simple terms, it is the process of sharing information within a social network that is made possible with the help of the internet and/or mobile devices. According to Castell, these social networks are efficient for us, humans, because it allows us to be complex, dynamic, and innovative. The evolution of this Network society allowed us to change social dynamics.
An example that I could think of where network society allowed us to change the dynamics of our society is the #BlackLivesMatter movement. This movement wasn’t just a street movement or rally that are composed of African Americans. It was a movement which first started on Twitter due to the death of George Floyd. It was known as a movement which first started as a worldwide trending hashtag. The death of Floyd was then followed by a series of racist acts among these law enforcers which therefore, triggered the majority to rally and use their voices to fight for the rights and lives of the black Americans.
Source: Teen Vogue
The opportunity that the network society have opened for us shall be used meaningfully. At the end of the day, our simple words, posts, or even hashtags could save or even change the lives of other people. As they say, use your platform to serve as a voice to those who are unheard.
For now, this would be the end of my first blog post. I am hoping that these basics will make it easier for you guys to understand my future writescapades. Get to know more about writing for new media and, of course, myself as I unravel more of my learnings, insights, and personal experiences with my next blog posts. Ciao!
Sources:
BBC News. (2020, November 30). Black Lives Matter founders: We fought to change history and we won. Retrieved September 7, 2021, from BBC News website: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-55106268
Black Lives Matter: From Hashtag to Movement. (2020). Retrieved September 7, 2021, from Anti-Defamation League website: https://www.adl.org/education/educator-resources/lesson-plans/black-lives-matter-from-hashtag-to-movement
The Good, Bad, and In-between of Social Media - Carrier Clinic. (2019, August 8). Retrieved September 7, 2021, from Carrier Clinic website: https://carrierclinic.org/2019/08/08/the-good-bad-and-in-between-of-social-media/
Introduction to Sociology. (2016). Castells and the Network Society [YouTube Video]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tLF5J8Y5zyg
BBC News. (2020, November 30). Black Lives Matter founders: We fought to change history and we won. Retrieved September 7, 2021, from BBC News website: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-55106268
Imperialism: The Perversion of Networked Human Ingenuity
Anyone who argues that one culture conquering and exploiting another is a good thing is clearly misguided at best, on the simple logic that they almost certainly would not want their own culture conquered and exploited by another. If someone clearly doesn’t believe what they’re saying, neither should you.
But they have an insidious argument that needs to be dissected, because it contains a kernel of truth that their most vocal opponents completely deny and therefore cannot counter.
(I mean, other than the fact that the most passionate and vocal opponents of colonialism focus solely on European and American imperialism and completely ignore the Egyptian, Mesopotamian, Babylonian, Syrian, Chinese, Japanese, Aztec, Mongolian, Turkish, and Ottoman empires. Even the Jews’ own holy scriptures contain records of an Israeli empire over their neighboring countries in their heyday.)
No, I mean the argument that the strongest African nations today are the ones who were conquered by European powers, and the weakest nations in the world today are the isolated bush peoples who have only been most recently found by the First World nations.
Again, let me reiterate that I think one culture conquering and subjugating and exploiting another culture is bad. It is the worst way for two cultures to interact. There is no excuse for it.
But that doesn’t change the fact that the two cultures are at least interacting on some level, even if it is in the worst way possible.
Whenever any two cultures interact, there is an exchange of ideas. Even when conquered, a people learns from their conquerors, observing their technology and adopting what they want. The conquered culture may even come into contact with the ideas of third-party cultures through their conquerors, whether those be other conquered cultures or rival empires and their conquered cultures.
This is a sick and twisted perversion of a global trade and communications network, but it is still a network. It would be far better for everyone if the exchange of technologies, ideas, and resources was entirely voluntarily.
The Native Americans recognized the value of European horses and especially European firearms, and refused to trade with any European who would not offer them firearms in exchange, because they knew that trader preferred to leave them relatively helpless. Had they not adopted horses and guns, they certainly would have suffered worse and faster defeats against Western expansion.
But would they have ever discovered firearms if not for the Europeans?
Hell, the Europeans only discovered firearms because of cultural exchange with the Chinese empire, which had discovered the ancestor of gunpowder.
The wholesome truth hidden under the perversion of imperialism is this:
Cultures best grow when exchanging with other cultures, and the more radically different those cultures are, the more likely that each of them has something to teach the other.
Humans network our intelligence. Increase the size of the network (and increase the freedom of flow through voluntary exchange rather than imperial theft and dominance), and you increase our racial intelligence.
It’s not about a thousand monkeys hammering on a thousand typewriters trying to randomly recreate the works of Shakespeare.
It’s about a thousand people writing Shakespeare fanfiction, and then getting together to read each other’s work, to critically examine what does and doesn’t make for a satisfying story, so that the whole community informs each member and each member can apply the lessons learned. And then they do it again, and again, and again, improving the body of common knowledge each time.
If you do not care about networks, the networks will care about you, anyway. For as long as you want to live in society, at this time and in this place, you will have to deal with the network society. Because we live in the Internet Galaxy.
The spatial articulation of dominant functions does take place in our societies in the network of interactions made possible by information technology devices. In this network, no place exists by itself, since the positions are defined by the exchanges of flows in the network. Thus, the network of communication is the fundamental spatial configuration: places do not disappear, but their logic and their meaning become absorbed in the network. The technological infrastructure that builds up the network defines the new space, very much like railways defined "economic regions" and "national markets" in the industrial economy; or the boundary-specific, institutional rules of citizenry (and their technologically advanced armies) defined "cities" in the merchant origins of capitalism and democracy. This technological infrastructure is itself the expression of the network of flows whose architecture and content is determined by the powers that be in our world.
Language has a strange way of defining boundaries. A proper phrasing leads to agreement; A misunderstanding sows discord.
Agreement on meaning sits at its core. Take the word “internet.”
Use the word internet and it immediately opens up a myriad of meanings. The internet is both terrible and amazing at the same. But what is it?
The internet is… an idea
Look for a physical thing called “the…
