The Baby Social Giants

I've said before that I was late to the social media scene. Having a tech-savvy dad meant that I was well versed in the idea that the internet could be a dangerous place and that social media was a opportunity for bad people to manipulate children. As a result, I missed out on the Myspace craze. My little sister, being the rebellious kid she is, has a Myspace account. It took a lot of willpower and a little bit of sisterly love for me to not link her profile here.

Cyberbullying is something I've heard of but have been fortunate enough to never experience. Amanda Todd is a case I've heard of recently through the internet channels. Her cyberbullying began after a topless photo of her released online. She transfered schools, but the harassment followed her online. A student set his profile picture to her topless one, another told her to kill herself. Amanda attempted suicide by drinking bleach and, following her failure, a student reccomended via Facebook that she try a different kind of bleach. Amanda made a video of her holding up flash cards, telling her story. Days later she committed suicide.

The Lori Drew/Megan Meier story was a special case in the way of cyberbullying. At first sight, I assumed that the teenager was the creator of the cyberbullying. But as I read I found out that the adult in this situation was the cyberbullier. Myspace facilitated the attack and without its existence  I don't think that this kind of bullying would have been possible. Impersonation is something that has become much easier with aid of the internet. Included in my father's internet-safety speech was a healthy dose of "no one is who they say online".  I could go on to facebook right now and within moments create a complete profile of someone who has never existed. Lori Drew used this to create a man, build up the trust of a young girl, then tell her to kill herself. That kind of communication is on the of the dangers of the internet.

I personally have not heard of any musical success stories on MySpace, but I do not doubt that they exist. Tommy and the High Pilots is a band I've been fond of for quite some time, but I've never really investigated their online presence. Their MySpace page provides full clips of their songs and also houses basic information about the band, including information on the genre and how the group was formed. The MySpace page includes a stream which links directly to their twitter feed. I'm following them on Facebook also and they have a presence on the crowdfunding site PledgeMusic. PledgeMusic is a kickstarter-esque website where fans can donate money and receive tiered rewards as a result. Their PledgeMusic page is here.

Digg is a thing I have never touched. If it counts, I used to watch the weekly DiggNation web show every week, until it was discontinued this last year. I also know that they're a little like Reddit, which is a thing I know about.


Assignment Post

LinkedIn and a Professional Image

I made a LinkedIn some time ago, but never really got around to filling information into it. At the time I was wavering in my aspirations and didn't really feel that a professional image was in my future. But now, as I near the (hopeful) end of my college career, I'm looking towards the internet for potential job opportunities. And LinkedIn is a wonderful tool for that.

So, job history in hand, I logged into LinkedIn and went about the daunting task of updating my online presence. LinkedIn fortunately makes it easy enough, with an 'Improve your Profile' feature that takes you step by step through adding information to your profile. With Walmart, Play N Trade, and Sams Club making up the bulk of my job history I have to say that I'm eager to add to my employment section. If anything, updating my LinkedIn profile has helped to give me a direction with where I want to go with my life. 

By the way, I've currently got two connections but I'd like more from around DSU and the English for New Media program so feel free to add me! My LinkedIn Profile

On the mission of cleaning up my online identity, I Googled my name. Having a distinctive name is both a blessing and a curse; the majority of the first seven pages of results were bits and pieces of my life. My Facebook privacy is set to high, leaving most of that information safely stored away. My Twitter popped up, my Google+, and to my surprise a college scholarship profile from 2009. I quickly went about deleting and censoring profiles as necessarily. I'd like to think of myself as a relatively good person; I stay out of trouble and thus don't have much to worry about online. So the pruning of my Google results amounted to mostly removing profiles that 13 year-old me had set up. My twitter history is the next on the chopping block. I recently hit 5,000 tweets and while nothing compromising hides in those tweets, I would like to do everything in my power to maintain a semi-professional image online.

The Internet Remembers: The Onion’s vile Quvenzhane Wallis tweet

The Onion’s vile Quvenzhane Wallis tweet

Even satire can go a bit far. Famous satirical news outlet, The Onion, sent out a tweet calling a young girl a rather colorful word. The tweet was deleted fairly quickly, but the internet was quick to snatch up an unforgiving screen cap of the tweet.

Youtube

I had a youtube phase. Not much came of it really, and not much of it still exists. I did videos for a little while, some vlogs and some creative content, but most of it was sporadically posted and not very well done. 'Teenage me' had some decent ideas, but much of the execution was way way off.

I've got a behind the camera personality. I like shooting, I like editing, but I feel so derp in front of the lens its not even funny.  The above video is one that came as a result of this. For my Video Production II class in High School, my group wrote up a script for a romantic comedy. When the day of filming came, we couldn't find a female lead. Solution? Borrow an old cheerleader uniform and a wig!  What could have been a terrible romantic comedy turned into a hilarious (or at lease we thought so) comedy in itself.

Youtube's great. That video, uploaded by a friend of mine, was one of my only excursions into that area of the internet. I'd like to get into creative video making again, but I'm not really sure how to go about it. Maybe someday.

A blog post about twitter (which will be tweeted)

I've been on twitter for two years. Like with Facebook, I saw it as an utterly useless waste of time. Why would I want to let anyone know what I'm eating for dinner or what movie I'm watching? More so, who would want to read about the mundane details of my life? Under that logic, Twitter was dumb.

Almost 5000 tweets later and I've changed my tune. Twitter is neat. I spend tons of time scrolling through tweets and I routinely tweet things myself, both 'useless' things and thought provoking ones. Originally, I caved and got a twitter because, as someone living in the midwest, I wanted a way to find out when bands I listened to were touring and if they were maybe stopping within 5 hours of South Dakota. If you want to scroll all the way back to the beginning of my following, you'll see this reflected. The next step of my twittering was the adding of personalities and news: Stephen Colbert, YouTube personalities Charlie McDonnel and TheFineBros, comic artist Jhonen Vasquez. Then came the brands, Bioware, Dorkly, and Team Fortress 2. During this period, I didn't tweet. I creeped. My time on Twitter was spent going through the tweets of all these famous personalities I followed.  I was one of several thousand to them.

I went to a party over the summer between my Freshman and Sophomore year of college. It was a NARP for the online website and community Destructoid, a yearly Midwestern meetup. All of the people here were ones I had only met online and never in person. This party was probably the first place I was asked "do you have a twitter?" and the event that started my participation in twitter.  Now, nearly two years later, I'm connected with so many different people through twitter. People from my hometown, people here at DSU, and people I've never met in the real world yet talk to frequently.  My news comes from my twitter. My casual conversation comes from my twitter. What I had deemed a waste of time only a few years prior is now one of the primary fonts of my information.

I've found that when something is going on, Twitter is the place to be. When the Pope announced his resigination two days ago, I found out during class from Twitter. When there's a big gaming event going on (E3, PAX) the news from those press conferences goes right up to twitter. Even when I'm at an event like that, information on what's going on and where I should be to get the most out of my experience is up to Twitter.  Past-Me was wrong; twitter is pretty neat.

What started as a way for me to simply get information has become a social medium for me to communicate with others and become a cog in that information-passing wheel. Retweets, original thoughts, casual conversations; all of these are things I've experienced over twitter. And unlike facebook, my dad isn't following me on Twitter so I've got a little more freedom on that front as well. 

[VIDEO] Sessler's ...Something: Violence in Videogames

When I was a kid, confined to getting my entertainment from a few hours of after school cable, Adam Sessler was one of my absolute favorite video game personalities. Now seperated with the TV channel G4, Sessler is working with Revision3; a youtube channel.  His segment Sessler's ...Something was something I only discovered earlier today, but I've been marathoning episodes left and right. I'm really glad to know that someone I valued as a TV personality as a kid has transitioned into New Media for something as informative as his new series.

44interactive - My Impressions

I really like the way the 44interactive website works and their blog is no exception to this.Their blog has the logo and motto up in the upper left corner, making it pretty easy to see where you are and what 44i does. The page itself is incredibly simplistic, using a white background with mostly black text and green accents matching their logo.

Overall the simple layout makes it easy to focus on just the content. Categories are sorted along the left, with month by month archives below.