This article reminded me a lot of my first blog post, “Facebook, for better or for worse.” First of all, it’s hard to believe that someone was sitting in their college dorm room on their computer, just like me, but came up with the whole system of Facebook. Incredible. Their lives are certainly no longer the same. But then again, none of ours are. We are always in contact with each other… we always know something about someone else’s life even if we weren’t looking for it, because we have our automatic “news feed.” I for one still do not like the news feed. Zuckerberg says he created it because Facebook was primitive before it. I don’t think Facebook and Primitive can be used in the same sentence unless there’s an “is not” thrown between them.

I don’t think I join Parr’s group demanding the news feed to be scrapped, but I definitely participated in the mass panic, aroused by the site of the new news feed. I guess I’m used to it now… I know it’s going to be there, and it’s visual design has improved to make it less cluttered feeling and confusing… but still I don’t find it necessary. If I want people to see something specifically about my page, I’ll let them know. Or if I want to find out what’s going on in someone else’s life, I look them up. I think the news feed adds to what makes Facebook such a good tool for procrastination. You can’t just go on and check if you have a message specifically for you… Instead you are given a page with hundreds of highlights, which drag you to other people’s pages even though you didn’t REALLY go on to do that. Also, as I talked about in my first Facebook blog and the Times article also mentions, is how Facebook can prolong relationships that need to fizzle out. The ex boyfriend. Facebook just allows bad relationships to end worse, because you can continue to play games and flaunt new budding relationships to the people of your past.

It is interesting to think about the point made, that Facebook actually may make us know ourselves better, or at least be more conscious of who we are. We constantly see how we are displayed in our profile and by what other people say about us, and we choose what we want to be shown and what not. But then, are we really becoming aware of who we are? Or just creating that electronic “avatar” of who we WANT to be?

Facebook has gotten to the point where it really does take over many of our lives, not just at the computer screen. When we’re out at parties or on a vacation, so many teens take photography’s strictly with Facebook in mind. They may even

It is scary to think that even if you finally get away from Facebook yourself and delete your account, you are still being defined by others in the Facebook community. They will still be there putting up pictures with you in them, and you won’t be “around” to see what they are.

I caught on to Facebook much faster than I am catching on to twitter. It seems that many people feel that way, and hate twitter at first. I can see though how it would be useful as a tool for finding answers to questions. I’ve already done that when I had a question about our paper project. I figured Professor Mittell was likely to receive a tweet alert on his phone, in his pocket, most all the time… So I tweeted and let him know I emailed with a question. Five minutes later, I had a response from him! But then back to the beginning again… I don’t feel the need to update people on what I’m doing throughout the day, nor do I feel the need to know what other people are doing. I still rarely use my Facebook “status” unless it’s to say something like, “home for break,” something of a longer duration

I thought that video was quite charming…and I’m glad he took the time to break down what would actually happen if he replaced himself with a cute girl.  I had those suspicions myself, even after my relatively limited experiences w/ CR these past few weeks (which have mostly occurred on weekend nights when my friend who discovers/enjoys things like Chat Roulette is around).

I’m not really sure how I feel about Chat Roulette at this point; all I have to go on is a strong feeling in my gut that says “NO”.  This is the instinctual aversion I have to Chat Roulette whenever it is flooding those myriad leering faces into the room for split-seconds at a time.  Perhaps I would feel differently if I saw any practical/productive use for the program.  But I don’t, and so I would hesitate to call it a “media tool”.  The maker of that video makes some cutesy point that Chat Roulette brings us all around the world in a matter of seconds, but it doesn’t, really; it brings us for a brief second into many bland, dimly-let rooms and gives us a momentary glimpse of some blurry face that we will never see again.  So in the end, I think it’s a fun thrill, but I assume it’s going to fade as quickly as it appeared.

If one were to examine my blog/twitter activity over the last, say, 24 hours, one would notice that all of it occured in the last, say, half an hour (except for one tweet of the amazing new OK Go video).  This is partially because I’ve been pretty busy all day and haven’t been near my computer.  But there’s something else going on…I’ve had time to check my email and my facebook and a couple of other sites at least once over the course of the day.  I had to hear about that music video somehow!

What’s going on here is that my time spent filling our online requirements for this class is still just that…time explicitly set aside for doing what I feel I should rightfully do to feel like I’m adequately participating in this class.  It’s set apart from other activities just like reading an article or writing a short essay is–and I don’t think is how this aspect of our class should work.  I was hoping that tweeting, blogging, and commenting would become part of my daily rhythm, and especially that my ideas for blog posts would flow rapidly and possess an casual air that my current attitude in writing this post certainly lacks.

But I don’t think this is completely my fault, nor can it be blamed on any individual in the class.  I think the…blooming, if you will, of our blog community into somewhere that we flock to and check up on regularly would be an organic process that’s a bit hard to explain.  Shirky discusses, early in his book, the widely-acknowledged phenomenon that group behaviors are complex and cannot be explained as the sum of the behaviors of many individuals.  And I’m trying to find some explanation in Shirky why blogging still feels (to all nine of us, I think it’s safe to assume) like an obligation (blogligation?).  I mean, it is an obligation.  But still.  I have this vision of a class blog filled with all sorts of impassioned conversation; I think I remember Jason mentioning that the Wire class’ blog came the closest to this, because the Wire is so %&*~@($ing good that it inspires that kind of passion.  In our little blogborhood (ugh…though maybe a better term for our little community), I’ve been trying to comment on people’s posts, but it feels like a bit of a fruitless task, and I feel like I’ve been dragging my feet every time because: 1. there is little chance of that comment inspiring further discussion, and 2. my posts have been commented on twice, both times by prof. Mittell.

I think Shirky’s “Personal Motivation Meets Collaborative Production” chapter–which mostly focuses on Wikipedia and how it functions quite differently from a traditional, capitalist and/or hierarchical organization–holds maybe the closest thing to an answer.  And I think it has something to do with the way people contributing to any given website are a small percentage of those even visiting that site, and that group is in turn a tiny fraction of all web traffic, and they go where they go on the web because those are places catering to their very specific interests.  Shirky mentions the fact that in order to voluntarily make time for a new activity, one must find that new activity more interesting or fulfilling than something else that already occupies a portion of their waking hours.  And media studies interests me quite a bit, so I’ve tried to absorb information on the topic in the past, but I didn’t, say, visit any blogs focused explicitly on media criticism.  So perhaps, as a group, we simply all haven’t made that shift in priorities that would allow our blogmunity (blogdom? blogitory?) to truly flourish.  It’s not something you can force……but I think we’re getting incrementally better at it.

So, I guess the best way to close (if you’ve read this whole thing, or at least skipped to the last paragraph) would be to say, please comment!  Let’s have our first real online conversation right here!  Tell me if you think I’m talking out of my ass, if you think you’ve thought of a better tie to Shirky than I have, or if you have an idea for some way to more thoroughly blend, right here in our blogship (these get worse and worse…), the personal/fun with the academic.

So as of late, I’ve been following my twitter account pretty seriously.  I have about 30 or so people that I follow, including various celebrities and people that I know.  One of the people that I have been following is Roger Ebert.  I am a big film fan and I thought that his thoughts on current films would be interesting.  As it turns out Roger tweets about everything; films, politics, pop culture, daily activities, everything.  To be honest I was a little bit upset because my twitter wall was very much dominated by Ebert.  He posts five or six posts at a time and does it several times a day.  I was getting sick of Ebert.

Then I watched Oprah today… Roger Ebert was the guest, and he was talking about his battle with cancer which has left him without a throat, jaw, and the ability to speak.  I was blown away because I had no idea.  Apparently this has been something he has been dealing with for a few years now, but I had not heard.  Suddenly I was fascinated by the fact that he is on twitter so much.  After losing the ability to speak, he has found a new way to communicate with the world, which is through is blogs and through twitter.  I thought that this was such an interesting example of people using new technological media.  Not only is Roger writing in blog form, but on Oprah’s show they showed clips of him working with computer programmers to create a program that allows him to type into his computer and in turn the computer will use the thousands of hours of Roger’s recorded voice from over the years, to convert the text into speech using Roger’s own voice.

This experience has given me yet another perspective on the use of media in our culture today, and a new found respect/interest in all of Roger Ebert’s tweets that fill my wall every day.

Here is Mark and Liya’s paper project…

Check out the Mark and Liya’s paper project…

Click “more” to see larger size…

Okay. It’s time to admit that… for a long time I didn’t know that anyone could edit Wikipedia pages. AKA – I really had no idea what Wikipedia was all about, or why professors wouldn’t accept it as a citable source. Obviously I never paid attention to the tag line under the logo, “the free encyclopedia, THAT ANYONE CAN EDIT.” I’m realizing through this class that there is a lot about the Internet that I don’t know, even though I use it more frequently than any other technology. I may be using the internet at a very basic level, mistaking my vast amount of time spent on it, for my real understanding of it.

Now I am officially an editor of Wikipedia. I searched for “Lacrosse” and found a Wiki page full of information about lacrosse history, the differences between the men’s’ and women’s’ game, youth lacrosse, college and international lacrosse, and more. I decided to read the section about women’s lacrosse, since that’s what I know most about, and found an area I could add to. When I first read the page, it talked about differences from men and women’s lacrosse, mainly being about the physical contact of the sport – women can’t hit check each other’s bodies – only sticks – whereas men can slash each other’s bodies with their sticks. I added a tidbit about the fact that the fields are also lined differently for men’s and women’s lacrosse.

When we talked last week about editing a Wiki page I was not keen on the idea. For whatever reason I don’t feel confident posting my own knowledge on the web, knowing that other people might look it up and take it as fact. Even though I know what I said is a fact and would verbally tell anyone who asked about lacrosse, it made me question myself when I typed it and had to click “save page.” I think it was like Shirky said, that somehow the act of writing something down makes that something become a FACT in other people’s eyes. I’m talking in circles now, because I just said that what I wrote WAS a fact… hmm. I think another piece of it is that once I’ve become a part of something like this, COOPERATING with the online community of Wikipedia, some element of what goes on “behind the scenes” is taken away, and it no longer seems as true and real. It’s kind of like, when you hear about cast parties with Hollywood stars – then you go to one, and realize it’s actually not all that fantastic. It’s kind of just like a college party but with grown-ups and wanna be’s, and the drinks are in nicer glassware, (okay, yeah. It’s pretty cool too). Anyway, I hope my point maybe makes a little sense. Maybe not? I didn’t add that much to the page… really just a couple of sentences. So my edits probably aren’t that important to the larger project as of now. HOWEVER. Maybe my tidbit will encourage someone else to expand on the point I’ve raised. Maybe I’ll go back to Wikipedia and add some more details about the women’s lacrosse playing field, or maybe I’ll mention it on the discussion page and hope someone else can do the writing after I’ve provided the idea… then maybe I’ll Wikipedia how to put an image on a Wikipedia page. Ah, the never ending cycles of the internet…

Boyd’s article “Why Youth ♥Social Network Sites” brings up a good point when saying that who we are online is not really who we are in real life. Specifically Boyd means that our online personas are much more carefully constructed, exaggerated, and sometimes even fabricated.

While we have pretty much moved on from Myspace to Facebook I can still recall the days of Myspace. Back then the “Myspace picture” was pretty much the quintessential example of how one’s online persona is a false representation of the real thing. It was a widely recognized concept that one’s Myspace picture was not a clear representation of how you really looked. With Myspace you controlled all of the images that appeared on your site and people saw you how you wanted them to see you. This is great in terms of the online community but I think that it is easy to get caught up in the exaggeration. Sometimes people forget that while we have a life online, we live in reality and at the end of the day you still look the way you do and act the way you act.

I think that Facebook is a progressive step towards getting closer to the truth. Friends are able to tag unflattering pictures of you, and follow your comments on the news feed to get a better understanding of who you really are. I guess I understand the appeal of having complete control over your image and persona, but we should also be aware of how easy it is to create an entirely different identity altogether.

So I found this story/video-blog on FirstShowing.net about a viral campaign for the new Tron movie Tron Legacy.  Watch the video to hear the story of the campaign.  Basically what happened was in an attempt to get people into the sequel for the film, fans were sent on a scavenger hunt across different media to find secret clues that eventually led them to special screenings across the country of a trailer for the film.  The scavenger hunt had fans going on to different websites, play video games, go to actual locations where mysterious men handed out cell phones, and fans ended up watching an online clock countdown until 8am when they had the option to sign up for a screening.  The whole thing was very mysterious and required a lot of faith and commitment from fans to even end up at the screening.  In the end it sounded like some fans were expecting to see much more than approximately 2 minutes of footage.

This story was very intriguing to me was the way in which this viral campaign crossed several different media.  This attempt at advertising the movie would only tap into a market of people who are active in several different media (i.e. internet blogging, video gaming, film watching etc.)  It made me think of our recent discussion about how much of what gets posted on the web is not meant for everybody, because this is a specific example of only one specific type of fan being affected by the campaign.  It really makes me wonder why the studio or the production company or whoever is in charge of this marketing would go through so much effort for just such a small number of fans.  How can making this select group go through so much effort to see a trailer help get millions of tickets get sold when the film actually comes out 10 months from now?  My only thinking is that film bloggers will talk about the experience (like the way in which I heard the story) and word of the movie will slowly trickle down to all kinds of fans.  Anyway, let me know via comments if you guys have any thoughts or similar experiences with viral marketing.

Will I ever have to “grow up,” move out, and really be forced to do things on my own? Sure I’ll move out and live away from my parents…i’m already doing that… but will I REALLY have to do all of those “grown up” things on my own like our parents had to?

As Shirky and Mittell point out, it’s not really the changes in technology that matters, but it’s that new technology removes obstacles, allowing new social behaviors. THAT’S what matters. Right now I’m applying for various summer jobs and internships. With just my laptop, I’ve been able to type up my resume and cover letters and submit them all across the country via e-mail. Not only that, but I’ve been able to send drafts and revisions back and forth with my mom. We finally realized that instead of e-mailing drafts numerous times for slight changes, we could just use the screen sharing application on iChat! From 321 miles away, my mom was able to actually see my computer screen, read the current draft I was working on, and then make corrections herself. We could talk to each other  as well. Technology made it so easy for my mom to help me create my digital resume – I may not need to learn how to do these things on my own. No matter where I am, it seems like I’ll always be able to have Mommy by my side for some extra help.

Having been in this class for only a month now has really opened my eyes to things that I would usually never seem to notice when browsing the internet. I really wanted to watch the Olympic USA vs. Canada game today on NBC. One option comes to mind, watch it on TV. Having too much work, I had to sacrifice the historic match to get my reading and other work done. I tried to find an online stream so that I could take a glance at the score every once in a while but was not successful. Over here in Axinn, I have been working but also found a LIVE blog of what is going on in the game. Already, three times while writing this post I have gone back to the blog to click refresh to see if USA has come up from our 1 goal deficit. I just tweeted this in hopes that maybe I can brighten some other peoples study days up with a little bit of news from the battlefield in Canada. I have also picked up on how there are “Share This” links on just about every article of every page that I visit on the internet now. I never really used them but am now seeing that if I had a “list” in twitter of friends that really enjoy photography, I could easily tweet them when I find new technologies or devices while browsing. The ability to “Share This” used to be about copying the URL, pasting it in an email, and sending it to someone whoe would be interested. Now its more so choosing which ones not to share because it is so easy to click the little tweet button on any article on CNN or the entry page for a free Caribbean Cruise giveaway. Everything is becoming more of a web that we are all entagled in. (in a good way in my mind). I was going to delete my Twitter immediately after the class ended but I’m thinking of reassessing that decision. USA still down 2-1 with 5 minutes to go, lets pick it up boys.

As I checked my Facebook profile today I was reminded of what Shirky said about how people can use the internet to gather people into a specific group or cause like with the case of the missing sidekick. I saw a real world example of this in a picture that two of my friends were tagged in.

Needless to say even from a thumbnail it was easy to tell that there was something up with the photo. 

After clicking on the picture I came to see that this wasn’t a joke but a serious case of a missing girl in the community. The comment below the picture also called for people to tag themselves in the picture to spread the message, and make it their profile picture as well. As opposed to joining a group like 1,000,000 for against prop 8, amongst others, this is an example of an interactive campaign for something on Facebook. Cases like this one are seemingly normal these days, for example the recent disappearance of actor Andrew Koening has been very active in the news recently and when people were still looking for his whereabouts friends and family took to twitter. I recalled seeing messages asking for help in finding his whereabouts last week. However, seeing this picture on Facebook really cemented the new use of the internet as a tool because I felt that this time I was part of the audience.