A Noobs venture into Virtual Discussions

It’s funny because I have been exploring the internet in and out for about 13 years now and it all started in 1996 when I was asked by my 4th grade teacher to do an assignment on the presidential election. I had to go home and stare at the computer for nearly 3 hours after dinner that night but ill never forget my father standing over me watching to make sure I didn’t go into any chat rooms. Fast forward 13 years and here I am writing about my experience inside a discussion board.
I have always read discussion posts on various websites but I have never discussed anything myself. So this assignment was a new experience to me. We were asked to find something that we liked and like I said my main criteria for selecting my virtual community was how interested I was in the material. I joined 2 communities and consistently posted something new every day at least twice. The first site I joined was comingsoon.net; this website is devoted to movie news, reviews, and several different rumors. It’s like Variety magazine without the subscription. I looked for pieces of news that stood out and things I was interested in, then I found it. I had recently seen the new Harry Potter movie and wanted to speak my mind about it and what I thought and I voiced my honest opinion, then I went to bed. The next morning I woke to a mixed bag of both ridicule and camaraderie. I got comments telling me that I am a “Michael Bay loving tool who just wants action and no emotion” and I got comments that said “good point, they definitely could have done more”. After reading the comments after my post I realized that I was more liked than disliked because the positives outweighed the negatives but I also noticed that the negative comments were much more thought out than the positive. I posted more discussion topics like news on Iron Man 2 and what to expect at Comic- Con this week and most of those were really positive, the only negative ones were from other people’s honest postings. It seemed here that disagreements were handled very childishly, with plenty of potty humor to make South Park blush.
I then joined a video game site G4.com, I played it safe here I joined their Playstation forum and as a fan of the video game system I rarely had negative things to say, however anyone can join a virtual community and every once and a while the page would get posts from people who hate Playstation and these comments would just belittle whoever they were aimed at. It was funny to read some of them but the funny thing was that when these comments would go up the posters would get banned and we never heard another thing from them. I didn’t spend too much time here because not a lot of excitement was going on in the gaming world as there was in the film world.
In the Wood and Smith reading this week my eye was constantly on the section about “Netiquette” and the 10 rules to follow in an internet community and when I was posting I could definitely tell who was following these rules and who wasn’t. I really liked the idea of “Lurk before you leap” and being aware of what has been said in the community. Remember the Human also seemed to hit home a bit, I had a few negative comments over the last few weeks and some of them were pretty harsh but they really didn’t phase me, but I was surprised at the backing I got from other members who replied to the negative posts with some very positive things about my posts and I noticed on a few occasions that the same people were doing it. I wanted to get to know the people who were sticking up for me when I didn’t want to start an online war but I looked at repect other peoples privacy and decided that I didn’t want to get too involved.
So what did I learn in this experiment of virtual communities, well its important to remember that what is said shouldn’t be taken literally, your feelings when online should be completely different than the ones in the real world, people are tougher on the internet because they cant get confronted about what they say, freedom of speech is a powerful tool and all over the internet people exploit it.

Letters: The Lost Art

So this weeks reading in Postman had to deal with information and the Wood and Smith reading was about internet addiction, these subjects fit very well in what the assignment for the week was. I decided to send a letter to my grandpa, and sent an email to my mom. My reasoning for sending what I sent was in the case of the letter there was some valuable information inside the letter like my email address and cell phone number, as well as where I work, in my moms email it was mostly just a tear jerking letter sent via email. I chose to send the letter to my grandpa because he doesn’t like to use the computer other than to play poker and blackjack and that’s the only thing he knows how to do. At the age of 74 my grandpa is an inspiration to me and the person who helped mold the roots of my work ethic so I wrote that to him and many other things. I also gave him my new cell number. His response took about a week because they live in Tampa so I knew it would take a while but once my grandpa got the letter he called me and told me what he thought of the letter and that it was a nice gesture. He then asked why I sent him a letter rather than call and I told him it was for an assignment.
I wrote a letter in an email to my mom about the same length, I sent it to her early in the afternoon while she was working, I knew shed be busy and wouldn’t get to see it till later, I was wrong, within about 10 minutes I got a reply from her telling me she printed it out and showed it to her boss who is a close friend, she then showed it to her co workers and wrote me back telling me how she cried at work, she then called me to see if I got her email, my mom is funny like that.
I go back to the reading and the importance of information. I put the important information in the letter because I trust the postal system and feel that my mail wont be tampered with, and I know I hear the horror stories about how birthday money, or several other items are stolen but I’ve never had a problem and still continue not too. While my moms letter didn’t contain anything other than my email address. The internet is a very powerful and dangerous tool and when in the wrong hands can do some serious damage. Especially now with identity theft roaming around I make it a point to not put so much valuable information on the internet because you never know who is looking for it. This also goes to the Wood and Smith reading about internet addiction. It shocked me how quick my mom responded to my email, and while I was writing it I couldn’t seem to help but send other emails and check things like facebook and espn for sports scores. I began to question whether or not I was addicted to the internet and came up with the conclusion that I just take it for granted, then again the first step is admitting you have a problem and I’m not ready to say it.

Facebook: A Guide to not getting Stalked

So this weeks post is suppose to be me taking a look at what information I hide and share via the wonderful site of Facebook. But first I should give you a little background with my relationships with social networking sites. When I was 18 years old I was introduced to the now Infamous Myspace.com. I created a profile and soon had more friends than I knew what to do with. I wasn’t addicted to it like many of my classmates at the time, my profile had no music and wasn’t too fancy. I had maybe 12 or 13 pictures on it and maybe 1 was of me. Then I went to college and joined facebook which at the time was exclusive to people in college because you had to have a college email address. I immediately enjoyed facebook more than myspace because I no longer had to deal with the stupid High School drama that I had left behind when I went to college. Then things changed. My regular email began to get flooded with emails of Myspace friend requests from men and women I didn’t know who were posing in “exotic” ways. I began to get frustrated and finally deleted my account, sorry Tom. Hopefully things would stay cool with facebook. Nope, facebook became the new myspace with status updates and the ever famous feed and mini feed portions which allow you to see what your friends have done recently. Sometimes this feature is cool and other times it gets a little annoying. I still have my facebook because I don’t have a problem with the “exotic” friend requests.

Now what sort of information to I give on my facebook page well I looked at my profile and it is very basic. I have my name Birthday and which city and state I live in. my political view is no ones business that is why I say moderate and I don’t like confrontation, I also don’t have my religion up there because that’s what I believe and its my business. My Relationship status is also blank, that’s a personal choice, ill never forget when I took it off all hell broke loose, friends and family calling and asking why they hadn’t met this mysterious girl when there was none. Next comes the personal information which is the favorites. I mainly like this section for the quotes so that I can either inspire or crack smiles to my friends. Other than that there is nothing important there. As I scroll down my profile I leave out my home address, phone number, and zip code because the last thing I need is someone stalking me or taking my identity and I recommend to everyone that they do the same thing, however I do put my email on there, its not really a big deal for me to let people know my email especially when my email provider allows me to see the name of the person sending the message and if I don’t recognize it, delete. So take my advice if you don’t want to get stalked on facebook avoid being as personal as possible, facebook is a good way to keep in touch with people but should not be used as an address or phone book.

Sterotypes and Music Videos

In the fist few lines of Technopoly Neil Postman quotes Karl Marx as saying “as individuals express their life, so they are”, HA yeah right, you wonder if Marx would say the same thing if he ever got to use the internet. For this assignment I watched the Music Video for “So much cooler Online” though I found this video very entertaining especially with the cameos by such famous classic film and TV stars. But it also pointed out a very good point when it comes to meeting people online and how we portray ourselves from what we are to what we want to be.
What can I say about the lead character; well he is the stereotypical nerd. You know the one I’m talking about, the Dungeons and Dragons fan who lives in his parents basement and drinks Mountain Dew all day, that is exactly who the main character is, but he puts this persona of himself on the internet where he is highly successful and handsome. He yearns for the girl next door who was played by Marcia Brady which I though was funny cause my dad can remember having the biggest crush on her when he was younger. But there is a scene in the video that really caught my attention and that’s the scene referring to the three way chat where the main character is chatting with two beautiful women and then they change into who they really are much like the camera maneuver where Jason Alexander changed into Brad Paisley. I also enjoyed how is dad used the computer for the same thing explaining to his wife that he was “making new friends” allowing his wife to retort “why are all your friends so chesty”
There are many conclusions that we can draw from this music video to how the internet is used in everyday life. First the obvious is that not everyone is who they say they are on the internet, especially now when it’s so easy to have as little contact with another human being. Though I don’t say every person on the internet changes who they are many do and it makes us wonder why people can’t be themselves. My second conclusion is that Hollywood is very good at stereotyping especially when it comes to the nerd but I wish the video would have done a little research as to what nerds actually do many of them don’t sit in the basement and swing a sword around. Overall the video is a good glimpse at what our society does to exploit the mystery of the internet, whichi is why people are so suspicious now.