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A visual novel by Christina Love

Plot

This story takes the form a of visual novel.  In this novel, you’re playing as John Rook, a literature teacher who is experiencing a midlife crisis.  His class contains 16 year olds students. In this school, every student and teacher is equipped with a tablet computer.  Every student use this to communicate on a service known as AmieConnect. Rook can observe all of the messages that the students send. There will be important moments where the game will ask the user to make a choice which can affect how a character develops. Although you play as Rook, the user should feel in control but he will say and do things the user may not want.

What is privacy?

Privacy can be defined in many ways. Legal scholar Ruth Gavinson describes privacy as, “a measure of the access other have to you through information, attention, and physical proximity”. In the midst of an important event in the game, it is very tempting to look at the students’ conversations to find more information about the students. This clearly breaks every moral there is about privacy as the user seek to have control over a social situation.

What is bullying?

According to Boyd, there are three components comprise of bullying: aggression, repetition, and imbalance. An example of bullying is seen through Taylor. She is considered as the class bully who is always typing homophobic slurs on AmieConnect.

Summary

Throughout the game, every character has some sort of conflict with love. The students will come to Rook for advice. Thus, it is important for the user to understand the character while making those decisions because it does affect how the students will react to it. As if breaking privacy isn’t immoral enough, the game gives the user the option for Rook to succumb to one of the students. Clearly, this game does not shy from any discomfort.

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A visual novel by Christine Love

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Memes - Hate or Love them

What is a meme?

It is an idea or behaviour that spreads quickly through social media from person to person within a culture.

Purpose of a meme?

Most modern memes are photos that are captioned. Memes are often intended to be funny. There are also memes that can be videos and verbal expression. Other memes may have more philosophical content.

According to Davidson, there are three components to the creation of a meme: the manifestation, behaviour, and the ideal. Davidson explains, the manifestation is the meme’s observable and external phenomena. An example of this would be a funny joke. The behaviour of a meme is action taken by individuals in creation of the meme. The ideal is the idea communicated by the meme. These three components work together to create the meme. The ideal leads to the behaviour which in turn creates the manifestation of the meme.

Are memes a form of bullying?

According to Boyd, there are three components that comprises of bullying: aggression, repetition, and imbalance. He describes bullying as, “a practice in which someone of differential physical or social power subjects another person to repeated psychological, physical, or social aggression”. The digital age makes its too easy for photos to be ripped out of context. People can create captions that are cruel, displaying a form of repeated aggression that it imbalance as it circulates on the internet, where there’s no way of stopping it.

Memes beyond entertainment purposes?

Understanding memes can be an important way to keep track on current trends or the appeal of long term trends. It can help tell us about new literacies and how people understand new arising crises.

For example, this meme shows how people keep up with Donald Trump becoming the president of the United States of America

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Do you have a favourite emoji? Are you using it wrong?

It is very uncommon to see a status, text or post without an emoji these days. Emojis tend to supplement or enhance the writing. Meanwhile, emoticons is where everything seemed to start at. It became a good way to convey emotion through facial representations. Although emoticons are cute and creative, it does require a lot of typing by using standardized Unicode library of images.

Do emojis help us express certain meanings that words that can’t?

For the most part, emoji are quite easy to use. If you are feeling happy, you can post a smiling face emoji. If you are feeling sad, you can post a sad face emoji. Sometimes there are moments where we cannot use words to express our feelings.

Can emojis be ambiguous?

There is a potential for miscommunication when using emojis. First of all, it may not look the same on different phones. Each smartphone platform has its own emoji font which can cause the same emoji to look different on another smartphone platform. For instance, the smiling emoji on an android phone is different than the one on an apple phone. Secondly, people can misinterpret the emotion on the same smartphone platform. Also, people can easily misinterpret the meaning of the emoji based on the communication. Furthermore, people may use different words when trying to describe the emoji.

Conclusion?

We can all agree that these adorable Japanese icons allow us to enhance our emotion and humour in our communication.

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“Don’t feed the Troll”

What are trolls? People who attempt to seek and exploit people’s confidence. Trolls typically vary in nature. For example, there are facebook trolls such as Robert Graves and Twitter trolls like Dril and Roosh V. Why do trolls act the way they act? This question is often explained through psychological justifications. For instance, anonymity allows a user to have a sense of protection which will allow them to do things they otherwise wouldn’t. Also, you can simply post a negative comment and escape whenever you want. In addition, people can also misrepresent their true self and reduce their own sense of identity, making them less likely to stick to social norms.

However, anonymity works both ways as well. You can avoid the trolling by not feeding the troll. One can simply avoid responding to the troll or by walking away from the computer. Although trolling is hated by different communities for various reason, swatting and doxxing is very uncalled for. Roosh’s family getting doxxed is an prime example of this. First of all, there is no reason to violate someone’s privacy and autonomy for controlling the troll’s behaviours. Secondly, it is illegal to call the SWAT in for getting the troll to stay off the internet. Thirdly, it’s not worth the consequence of getting caught for swatting someone.

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“Don’t feed the troll”

What are trolls? People who attempt to seek and exploit people’s confidence. Trolls typically vary in nature. For example, there are facebook trolls such as Robert Graves and Twitter trolls like Dril and Roosh V. Why do trolls act the way they act? This question is often explained through psychological justifications. For instance, anonymity allows a user to have a sense of protection which will allow them to do things they otherwise wouldn’t. Also, you can simply post a negative comment and escape whenever you want. In addition, people can also misrepresent their true self and reduce their own sense of identity, making them less likely to stick to social norms.

However, anonymity works both ways as well. You can avoid the trolling by not feeding the troll. One can simply avoid responding to the troll or by walking away from the computer. Although trolling is hated by different communities for various reason, swatting and doxxing is very uncalled for. Roosh’s family getting doxxed is an prime example of this. First of all, there is no reason to violate someone’s privacy and autonomy for controlling the troll’s behaviours. Secondly, it is illegal to call the SWAT in for getting the troll to stay off the internet. Thirdly, it’s not worth the consequence of getting caught for swatting someone