#smc15

[palomahgomez]

Week 14: Anonymous/what works and what doesn't

At first, I didn't know how exactly anonymous operated, and how they were successful as a protest group. It was difficult to grasp over the lulz, long cat and other in-group jargon. But even when I got to understand what it all meant, I still didn't see how humor made light of the protest. Was it just for the sake of laughs(an in-group thing)? Or was it mocking higher power, as I'm "Haha you guys don't understand and so we're laughing at you". Either way, it certainly proves inquiry and this is how the revolution starts. I argue that humor isn't a good fit, especially if they are debating a serious issue. What does work, I believe, are things such as the masks in supporting their name and identity: anonymous, their techy invasions for action: DDOD attacks/actions, and their cohesive environment.

[fruitlupos-blog-blog]

Week 14- Anonymous Communist

This week in class we discussed the Internet organization “Anonymous” which is a group that conducts shenanigans on the Internet for various reasons. These reasons include anything from doing it for a laugh to actually changing a social issue.  In anonymous, there isn’t a person with a position of power. Everybody has an equal say so nobody abuses power. This way, they accomplish what they set out to do as a group effort.          

        There was another group in history that attempted to divide power equally. They were known as “Communist” but unlike anonymous, they didn’t work out. In Communism, certain people rose to positions of power despite the fact that power was supposed to be divided among the masses. People were able to do this because there wasn’t a sense of anonymity. Because people could be well known, certain people were able to rise up to be a harsh leader. They kept this position of power because they were recognizable. People feared them. In anonymous, however, leaders are not easy to rise up because when one tries to rise up, everyone counters it very quickly.   The people are able to rise up because there is minimum consequence for doing such a thing online, which makes them more inclined to act. The people who were oppressed by a communist leader, however, had a much higher risk of failure that even could have resulted in death. The person in power already had an established name, and was able to get away with punishing the people revolting.   The fact of not knowing who people are makes people more inclined to fight injustice.

[fruitlupos-blog-blog]

Week 11- Star Wars, Governments, and Other Things

Collaboration is an essential part of the creative process. Whether it is with media, school projects, or software engineering, having one person in charge of something without anybody to consult him or her never seems to go over well.  A huge example of this in pop culture is the prequel Star Wars Trilogy. George Lucas had complete creative control of the franchise, and therefore, nobody told him that Jar Jar Binks was a bad idea. Who was going to question George Lucas, the creator of one of the most successful movie franchises of all time?  This dawned on me as I read “Open Sourcing Horror The Slenderman, Marble Hornets, and Genre Negotiations.”

The article discussed open sourcing, a form of software collaboration in which many people are allowed to work on something, and how it applies to internet mythos, such as the Slenderman. This also reminds me of the Star Wars expanded Universe, which is a term for Star Wars Media made outside of the movies. Unlike the movies, anybody was allowed to make content for it, and therefore, the legends of Star Wars continued to expand, until Disney made the expanded universe non cannon. Many other franchises are expanded this way. Sometimes the big entertainment corporations hire people to collaborate with them in order to produce more content.  I believe that it is better this way, because fans write many of these stories, and fans are what keep the spirit of a franchise alive.

Collaboration is even effective on a much larger scale. There is a word for somebody that has complete control of a country. This word is “dictator,” and dictators tend to not be good for the well being of a country’s inhabitants.  Countries that are run by collaboration tend to flow more smoothly.

No matter how big or small the concept is, working together will always make things better. I believe that hearing a second opinion will always have better results whenever new ideas are being thought of.

[mg862-blog-blog]

Week 11

Many media figures have used social media platforms like Twitter or Facebook to build relationships with fans online. Justin Bieber and Miley Cyrus are just a few that come to mind that have used social media to create this imaginary relationship with fans. Bieber and Cyrus’s fans feel close to the superstars by reading their posts online and responding. If the fans are lucky they might sometimes get a re tweet or a favorite on Twitter from these celebrities and this only enhances this imaginary relationship. In the reading Making Monsters: Lady Gaga, Fan Identification, and Social Media the author discusses how fans build imaginary relationships with celebrity figures through social media. “Of the kinds of imaginary relationships with media figures that Caughey describes, he highlights one particular type that he finds to be “more common and significant” (53), in which fans display “intense admiration” for a media figure.” (Caughey 4). Over the past couple years this admiration has only grown stronger for Bieber, Gaga and Cyrus. So much so, that social media has given these fans nicknames like, Beliebers or Monsters as the article refers too. Social Media encourages these imaginary relationships with media figures to grow and it is not going to stop anytime soon.

[fruitlupos-blog-blog]

Week 10- Playing Games

The reading “The Labor of Fun,” describes how to some people, video games have become like a second job.  To some people, video games are more of a burden than a tool for enjoyment.   They feel they have an obligation to do certain things in the game, like level up, and buy items. This has especially been prominent in “freemium games,” which are games that are initially free but have the potential to make the user pay hundreds of dollars over time.  These games are especially prone to make people devote a certain amount of time to them, because most of these games only allow a limited amount of actions each day. But sometimes, people devote too much time to these games, and horrible things happen. In 2010, a lady in Jackson, Florida shook her 3-month-old baby to death for interrupting her Farmville session by crying.  

 The lady was so engulfed by the Farmville game that she lost touch of reality.  And 3 months prior to that, a South Korean Couple spent so much time nurturing a child in an online game that they forgot to nurture their real life child, causing him to starve to death. Video games were so urgent in the lives of the people in both of these cases, that their real life obligations no longer took priority. It is evident that in modern times, video games are much more serious than one comes to expect. While most people who play video games don’t end up committing murder, a lot of other people waste the time they could have been using to accomplish something else.  

[sen39]

week ten

in my house, video games were never allowed. i remember being maybe 11 or 12 and saving up for a nintendo DS before my mom gave me a stern “no,” forcing me back to my room to read a book. in the long term, i thank her, because now i’m a great reader, writer, and it kind of makes sense to me as to why she didn’t let me ever have a video game system. when i was in 8th grade, my mom bought my sister and i a Wii, seeing it was okay because it was a form of activity and had more of a thinking process than sitting in front of an xbox and shooting people or staring at steam waiting for a friend to log on. i was drawn to the article by millington about the wii not being a modern video game, just because this is pretty much the reason i had the game. reading about it’s flaws, such as not being able to detect body fluxes and other type of physical sensitivity to humans, made me realize i still have no idea why my mom bought me this. there’s nothing sophisticated about this - it’s just another $100+ console that distracts you in, how i was raised to believe, an uneducated way. I never found video games appealing, even after playing a bunch and giving them all tries, but to me, they’re honestly all boring and don’t really give me much of a reason to play them. 

[fruitlupos-blog-blog]

Week 9- the Darknet

During class this week, and in the article “Pornographies of Violence? Internet Spectatorship on Body Horror,” the topic of porn was discussed. Rather than porn being a term that connotes sexual experiences on film, it more so is a term that describes something that is excessive, and that is viewed outside of the mainstream’s approval.. Some people like to watch  people being killed, or “death porn.” The reasons why websites like liveleak.com exist is because people get a strange arousal from viewing death and gore, and it is considered excessive because it is too much at times. This is also the reason why television often portrays death. Although some people view it because they want to see the truth, many other people get adrenaline-ridden feelings from it. But for some people, that is not enough, and they need to explore an even sketchier place. On the Internet, there is a section not accessible from a standard browser. It is called the darknet, and it is a hub for criminals and illegal activities. There, people sell drugs and weapons, and offer illegal services, as well as post disturbing videos that far exceeds the stuff found on liveleak. Most people who access this do so from an application that makes their location anonymous. But why do people access this? Some people are simply curious that something like that exist, and use the defense that they aren’t doing anything immoral. Other people, however, get aroused by the thought of looking at such shocking material (and other people that go on in are actually criminals). The fact that they are anonymous and they are witnessing truly disturbing things is arousing to them.