![]() Hello to all blog readers, all five of you. Today marks the end of an era, or a semester more like. If you are reading this then you are reading the last post for this blog. It's been a good ride but all good things must come to an end. For this final post I want to reflect on the time, these past few months that I have spent blogging. This blog began as an assignment in my Interpersonal Media class. When I first received the assignment I wasn't too excited. It seemed like such a big idea to me, how was I gonna be able to keep up with the blogging and have interesting things to talk about? As I thought about it some more I became a little excited at the prospect of having my own blog. I'm not a shy person but I tend to keep to myself especially online. However, I thought through this blog I would be able to provide a different perspective on some interesting topics. As I began to blog I found it pretty fun. It's nice to be able to put your thoughts on an issue into writing and then putting it out there for everyone else to see and see how they respond. While I did begin to like blogging and the topics that I was writing about, I think I would have liked it more if it was my own blog about anything. The assignment did say we could blog about anything, but it was all in the realm of the topics we covered in class. I enjoyed these topics but I think it would have been easier for me to keep up and come up with interesting ideas. We talked a lot in the beginning of class about the benefits of blogging and how some people even use it in a therapeutic sense. Although that's not how I used my blog, blogging did help me see how some people do that. Blogging works in the same kind of way a diary does only with a blog you can get feedback and support from people all over the world. This may or may not be the end of my blogging days. Who knows I might start another blog of my own in the future. But this is the end of this blog. It's been a wild ride and something I will definitely remember. And trust me I know I've been telling you the complete opposite these past few months... ...but I might just be a blogger.
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![]() Relationships are an interesting thing. We, as humans, have so many throughout our lives. Each of them is different and special in their own way. Romantic relationships, friendships, family relationships, acquaintances and role models are just a few. We find so many similarities between them yet we are never truly able to fully understand them and what makes them so special. In class this past week we have been talking about a couple theories about relationships and how they function. One of these theories, which I think is the easiest to understand and apply, is Social Penetration Theory. To explain our professor used an analogy from one of the greatest movies of all time, Shrek. "Ogres are like onions they have layers." This theory says that we each have different sections that make up who we are: work, school, family, sports, politics, etc. Each of these sections have layers. On the outside is stuff you would tell to a stranger and the inside is the most intimate part of yourself that only a fortunate few get to know. The more time we spend with someone and more we interact, the more we peel back the layers and get closer to someone. However, it is a gradual process. You cant peel all the sports layers back before you start to peel back all the other sections as well. You have to peel the onion evenly. This theory makes a lot of sense to me and I can see it at work in almost every relationship in my life. Especially with my best friends. I am super close with them and feel like I can tell them anything, even my deepest darkest secrets. But I definitely didn't feel that way when we first met. It took us a while to reach the point in our relationship that we are at today. It was a gradual process and I got to know them little by little as they peeled off layers from different sections of their identity and vice versa. For some friends the peeling back of layers can take a long time, years before you are able to get to the core. These are your oldest friends that you've known forever. Some others, you both click right away and it doesn't take that long to really get to know the other person. That is true of my friendship with my roommate. We met last year and clicked immediately and in a short amount of time he was one of my best friends. It probably helped that we lived in the same room so we kind of had to get to know each other but still. Relationships are some of the most important things in our lives and they dictate the way we live and what we do. I've had a lot of good relationships and a lot of bad, as most people have. But they all helped define who I am now... ...but I'm not a blogger. This week instead of talking about a topic, I'm going to talk about an experience I had this past week. In my Interpersonal Media class we have been talking about identity and more specifically identity online. We covered a lot of topics but they all eventually led us to our last class. In lieu of meeting in our normal classroom, we all met in the computer lab to play the online game Second Life. This game is exactly what the name says, it is a second life, a place to escape to and be whatever you want to be and do whatever you want to do. One of the big topics we discussed in class about identity is how you portray your physical body online through avatars and characters. In Second Life you can look however you want. And if you prefer something a little less human you can add angel wings, be a mythical creature or even just abstract figures. You can go get a job or and really invest yourself in the role play or just build your own worlds. It is basically a virtual sandbox where the only limitations are your own imagination.
My experience playing the game was filled with confusion on how to control my character, what to do and how to navigate the game. This is definitely not a game for someone new to gaming or even the casual gamer. It's like an entire ecosystem and it can be hard to navigate your way through. Granted I only had an hour to play and half the time my computer was lagging or the game would crash. Given more time and better hardware I'd probably be able to figure out the game at least at a basic level. Even so, this game isn't exactly my cup of tea. I like games that have an objective, story line or at least something to work toward. And there is so much going on in this game it's hard to pick one thing. The game does provide a place for people to be whoever they want to be. In class we talked about the idea of identity tourism, adopting another identity as your own. We discussed how this could be both good or bad but in this case I don't believe it's really an issue because of the fact you can be a mythical creature, it creates an environment where almost everyone isn't who they actually are and I think that is what the game was trying to do. The coolest part of the class though was the virtual reality headsets that we got to play with. I didn't actually use them but I sat and watched as one by one all my classmates walked up and came back amazed of what they had just experienced. I didn't use them because I actually have one of the Samsung VR headsets that my brother got for me last Christmas. They are amazing and I spent like 5 days straight using mine. I think virtual reality and augmented reality more specifically are the future of entertainment. There are endless possibilities, kind of like Second Life... ...but I'm not a blogger. ![]() Growing up you probably became familiar with the concept of table manners. However, table manners aren't always the same. Sometimes it is acceptable to let them slip a little. If you're four guys in a college dorm room around a pizza box, all those proper table manners your mom taught you, like chew with your mouth closed, tend to go by the wayside. But when you're out at a nice dinner for the first time with your significant other and their parents, suddenly you start listening to mom again. This kind of behavior is parallel to our identities and how we show them. We all have multiple identities and we can pull them out whenever we need to. Before you're quick to scoff at the idea that you have multiple identities, let me explain. When i say multiple identities I don't mean like the actual condition. We all have one identity but, we are very careful about showing all of our identity. We might not be proud or embarrassed about certain parts of who we are. Each of us live complex lives and that makes it almost impossible for any other person to know our full identity, it's not practical. So we pick and choose which version of ourselves to put on display in different situations. For example when I'm hanging out with my friends I don't use perfect English and I'm not as worried about how I look. When I'm in a job interview though my vocabulary becomes a little better and I make sure I look professional. When I'm in class most people see me as a student or a student-athlete and that is my identity. But when I'm with my niece playing at a park I'm just an uncle. We change our identities multiple times a day most of the time. This is even more evident through social media. Take a look at all your social media profiles. Are you the same person throughout all platforms? What about one of you friends or family members? What about a celebrity? We change our identities on different social just like we do in real life. It seems, for my generation at least, Facebook is that site no one really uses anymore but still have a profile for family members and to get in touch with people. Twitter and Instagram are the two big ones. People either speak their mind or just sit back and mind their business on Twitter. An Instagram is just a personal highlight reel of your best moments (aka the pictures you look the best in). Snapchat is the most personal. Your Snapchat self is probably the closest to your true self because you have complete control over who can see your stories and who you choose to send pictures to. Identities are complicated and complex. It takes us years just to figure who we are and others only get a glimpse here and there of different parts of our identity. My identity includes a lot of things... ...but I'm not a blogger. One thing that's crazy about technology now is, you can go on the internet and be whoever you want to be. Whether you are a character in a video game or a profile on a social networking site, you can be anything. And whoever you are doesn't have to be rooted in your actual physical body. If you're a small shy guy in real life you could be a tall confident guy on the internet or anything else you want to be. That can be both a good and a bad thing. On the positive side it can allow you to be immersed in a world you've never been a part of however, I feel like that applies mostly to video games. On the negative side it allows for people to take advantage of anonymity to say hurtful things and deceive people. This happens mostly on social networking sites. People are able to hide behind fake profiles and accounts and engage in sexist, racist harassment and discrimination against other people and it happens more often than it should. It is a problem and it is a hard one to fix because there are so many fake profiles and bots that it is hard to stop them all.
This is how we use our physical bodies in an online form. But we also use online, to help our physical body. Someone who uses the internet to get healthy and work out is looking to improve their physical body. Or someone who goes on a site like WebMD to figure out what is wrong with their body. You're online self can sometimes help your offline self... ...but I'm not a blogger. ![]() It's that time of the year. That magical part of the school year. Midterm time. I've already had two this week and I'm going to finish out the week with my third on Friday in my interpersonal media class, the reason I started this blog in the first place. So my mind and my time has been occupied with tests all week. So instead of a compelling topic about media and society, I'm going to talk about studying because well, I've been doing a lot these past few days. There are two ways to study, one is to review the material you are learning in class little by little each day and then look it all over again right before the test. There other way is to cram the night and morning before the test and scramble to memorize key terms and overarching concepts. I tend to do the latter more often when I study. Part of that is because I'm a student athlete, I simply don't have the time on a day to day basis to study for all my classes. I feel I definitely feel I learn material better when I start studying well before the test. However, I also learn pretty well cramming, probably because I've done it so much over my life. I'm able to learn the information and remember it so I can do well on the test. Except of course I've been studying for this interpersonal media test for weeks, of course I'm not just going to cram (In case Daena is reading haha). This brings me to a question that we talked about in class a few weeks ago. What is the better way to study, using a computer or pen and paper. It really depends on the person, there are benefits for both but for me, it's pen and paper. Re-writing my notes or writing out answers to questions on a study guide really help me learn the material. Something about me physically writing out topics on a paper helps cement it in my mind and remember it. I don't get that same benefit from typing notes on my laptop. It's unfortunate because using a computer is a great and easy way to take and organize your notes. I wish I could take more notes on my laptop, and I'm going to start trying to, but I don't learn the information well enough using a laptop. Well wish my luck this Friday, it's been a long week already but we're almost to the end. I'll be back next week with another interesting topic hopefully... ...but I'm not a blogger. ![]() Video games have been one of the fastest growing industries in the past five to ten years. Video games are no longer just for children and nerdy thirty year-olds in their parent's basement. Now they are something for all ages, races, genders and most socio-economic classes. You don't need a fancy, thousand dollar gaming PC or even an expensive gaming console anymore. We are all gaming on our cell phones now. From Candy Crush to words Words with Friends to more classic "games" like Infinity Blade, we are all playing games. Along with the expansion of the mobile gaming platform, the console gaming platform has blown up as well. When I was a kid, we all went over to the house of whoever had a gaming console, they were the cool kids (or just had rich parents). But as the technology advanced to make games better and appeal to a wider audience, more and more people bought a console. Now most houses have some sort of console. The industry is dominated by Sony and Microsoft with the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, respectively. With this huge increase in gaming, we have to revisit an old question and stigma. Are video games bad for you? I'm consider myself a gamer and a pretty heavy gamer at that. I'm a student athlete so after I finish school and basketball, I spend a lot of my free time playing video games. I play a variety of games and I'm pretty interested in the industry as a whole. In my opinion, video games aren't bad at all. I think all the negative connotations behind video games are over exaggerated. In my interpersonal media class the past week we have been talking about community and if you can form a true community online and have the same effects as offline. Personally, I think gaming is one of the best ways to do that online. I'm a big NBA 2K player, and the 2K community is huge. We all have similar interests and band together and go through the same struggles as each other (glitches in the game). I think this can help create a sense of community for people who don't have that in their physical community. There have been numerous studies done in the past five years that show the positive effects of video games and why they are good for you. I read one article from Huffington Post, which I will link below, that highlighted nine different ways video games are good for you. The article talks about video games as actual pain relievers, how they can help slow mental deterioration and may even be able to improve eyesight. Video games may not be the absolute best way to spend your free time but, they certainly are not a bad way to spend your free time. I think it's time we change the rhetoric around video games from negative and harmful to entertainment and even positive effects... ...but I'm not a blogger. www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/07/video-games-good-for-us_n_4164723.html ![]() Community is defined as "a group of people living in the same place or having a particular characteristic in common." Another definition is "a feeling of fellowship with others, as a result of sharing common attitudes, interests, and goals. " What do you think of when you think of community? What types of things or places come to mind when you hear the word? Maybe it's the place where you live, your hometown. Maybe it's your school or work or church. It could even be your sports team. As humans we seek out community, we like to surround ourselves with others that think like we do or at least that are going through the same things we are. Communities give us a way to share ideas, learn together and support each other. Communities are physical places based on location. Or are they? Can a community be a bunch a people from around the world sitting at their computer? Yes it can. The internet is an amazing tool. You can meet all types of people. Through social networking sites, fan pages, chat rooms, online video games you can create a true sense of community. These satisfy the second definition of community I mentioned earlier. There is no reason why you have to be in the same locale to feel fellowship with others. I think one of the biggest things that creates that feeling of fellowship and sense of community is knowing that there are other people going through the same struggles and experiencing the same triumphs as you. That's why there is such a strong sense of community on sports teams and in schools. When you are online that same feeling of community can be felt. For example, there is a community surrounding online video games that stretches from the game itself to social media and beyond. It is a culture and players bond together through the game. They have common attitudes, interests, goals and have a particular characteristic in common. This satisfies every part of the definition of community except being in the same location. Online communities aren't the same as physical communities and they could never fully replace them. There is something special about a physical community because it is people you actually see and interact with. There is more diversity in physical communities as well. You really can't choose who is allowed in a physical community because they are mostly based on location. The diversity can be good and is something that is harder to achieve in an online community. However, they add to the human experience by making more communities available to people. Community is no longer just the people you live by, work with or go to school with. Communities form online to help people, educate people, entertain people and much more. I think online communities will be essential in helping people connect with each other and support each other in the future... ...but I'm not a blogger. ![]() These days it seems there are two viewpoints surrounding technology use, either it's ruining our lives or it's a new way to express ourselves and connect with other communities. In my last blog post I talked about the digital divide and how some people, like parents most times, have a negative view of technology. But others, like many "social media stars" today, have used technology to their advantage. So who's right? Are our cellphones making us depressed and ruining our social skills or are we simply using those social skills in a different environment? The answer is I don't know. I haven't done any research on these questions so I'm really not qualified to say. But from my personal experiences and the experiences of people I've talked to and seen, there's a little bit of truth to both sides. There's no disputing that from the rising popularity and availability of smartphones, people, and kids especially, are spending more time inside looking at a screen. That's a fact that everyone agrees with but, is it necessarily a bad thing? It depends on how that screen time is spent. Social media is how most of that screen time is being spent. Social media is a very broad term. It can be the classic Twitter or Facebook, but platforms like YouTube are other forms of social media. Even video games are a form of social media, if you are playing online which most people do today. The internet by it's nature is a social platform. And when we engage in activity through one of these forms of social media, nine times out of ten we have some kind of profile that lets the rest of the world know who we are. The social media stars I mentioned before gain their notoriety and success from their "profile". This is something that Julio Appling, a guest speaker we had in our class this week, calls your personal brand. Basically what is boils down to is what do you find when you google yourself. Who are you on the internet? All your "profiles" combine to create your brand and this is one of the positives of all this social media use. You can use your brand to gain all sorts of opportunities. Technology has it's drawbacks, that's for sure, but it also has so many positive opportunities. Social media provides you a platform where you can feel comfortable being yourself and connecting with people who are like minded. Your brand is who you are on the internet and you can use it for many different things. I think that smartphones are doing a lot to improve our society despite the challenges they cause... ...but I'm not a blogger. ![]() "Put your phone away." "All you do is look at that phone." "In my day we actually went outside to have fun." If you are under the age of 25 you've probably heard something close to those from your parents at some point in your life. And if you're like a lot of people I know you think your parents just don't get it. They're just too old and they don't get it and they never will. Is that true? Something we've been talking about in my interpersonal media class this week is the digital divide. There's no doubt there is a divide between the older generation and the younger generation when in comes to digital savvy. We read an essay by Marc Prensky titled Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants. In the essay, which was met by lots of critics, he broke the divide down into two groups. The younger generation, Digital Natives, and the older generation, Digital Immigrants. The Digital Natives grew up with technology and the internet and thus navigating the digital landscape is second nature, they are born with it. On the other hand, Digital Immigrants didn't grow up with the internet and they are rushing to catch up with the times. Prensky made a lot of assumptions about people in different generations which brought about the criticism. But the core of what he was saying was right. The question is will we as a society ever be able to close that divide? It would seem that as technology has advanced further the divide has only grown larger. The more gadgets and social media sites that pop up the more the younger generation jumps on it while the older generation is still struggling to figure out Facebook. Now of course there are plenty of "old people" who are extremely digitally savvy and plenty of kids who can barely use the internet but, generally this isn't the case. Unfortunately, I don't think this divide will ever go away for the simple fact that this divide has always existed. The divide hasn't always been digital, but it's been there. When rock n' roll first started, there was a divide. The older generation thought it was the worst thing ever and it was going to ruin the youth. The same thing happened when rap started to become popular and is still happening. It's a cycle that you can see happen over and over with all kinds of topics. The reason for this is because we have a tendency to stick to what we know and what we learned in the first place. It is hard to change and adopt new habits when you get older. For example, if you've been calling people on the phone to talk to them for 20 years and all of a sudden someone hands you an iPhone and says don't call me just text me, it's hard to make that switch. In 25 years from now when we are the "older generation", I'm sure we'll be the same way. We might even have some sayings of our own like "In my day we actually had to type out our text messages with our fingers." Who knows where technology will take us next? Wherever it is, there will be a group who picks it up right away and runs with it and another who struggles to keep up, that's the nature of the digital divide. That's just my two cents... ...but I'm not a blogger. Marc Prensky Essay www.marcprensky.com/writing/Prensky%20-%20Digital%20Natives,%20Digital%20Immigrants%20-%20Part1.pdf |
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