Showing posts with label Dallan Linton. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Dallan Linton. Show all posts
Tuesday, November 27, 2012
Thursday, November 15, 2012
I Really Don't Get Twitter.
Maybe it's just because I haven't been using it long enough, but I just have not been able to get into Twitter at all. I remember making my account in five minutes while I waited for the midnight premiere of The Dark Knight Rises in a movie theatre. The fact that I was able to do that is amazing technology at work by the way, but that's another post for another time.
Since that day, I've accumulated a whopping 26 followers, and have tweeted a whole 137 times. While I think this is a considerable amount of tweets, I know some people that would think it's just a days work. In fact, some of the people I follow seem to think 137 tweets is a one day quota. It's annoying as all get out, to be honest, but it's not nearly the worst thing I've come across.
I find myself getting constantly frustrated when I write out a well thought-out and articulated tweet, only to realize I'm 783 characters over the limit, and have to trash the entire thing. I also find tweets on my feed from people I don't even know. Upon further inspection, it's because somebody I do follow has "re-tweeted" this individual, probably because he/she was very touched by it, and wanted to share with everybody else, because "they will definitely care as much as I did". Half of the time, these re-tweets are from people telling them to re-tweet the message. my favorite is, "Re-tweet for Heaven, ignore for hell." I'm sure Jesus Christ is determining everybody's salvation on this one little message on a website that only a fraction of the world population uses, or even has access to. I sure feel bad for those poor souls who died in that 2006 year period of time before twitter was even around, they're really SOL on that whole Heaven thing, huh?
There are some things I like about it though. I like being able to follow my old high school sports account, so I can get updates on how badly Center Grove is beating Lawrence Central this week, and not have to text a friend who is still in high school (a number which dwindles every year after you graduate) to figure it out. Also, there will, every so often, be a tweet by somebody that cracks me up. All in all though, it's not really worth it to me to check it everyday. I'd much rather use Facebook, or maybe even call somebody. Call me old fashioned, I guess.
Since that day, I've accumulated a whopping 26 followers, and have tweeted a whole 137 times. While I think this is a considerable amount of tweets, I know some people that would think it's just a days work. In fact, some of the people I follow seem to think 137 tweets is a one day quota. It's annoying as all get out, to be honest, but it's not nearly the worst thing I've come across.
I find myself getting constantly frustrated when I write out a well thought-out and articulated tweet, only to realize I'm 783 characters over the limit, and have to trash the entire thing. I also find tweets on my feed from people I don't even know. Upon further inspection, it's because somebody I do follow has "re-tweeted" this individual, probably because he/she was very touched by it, and wanted to share with everybody else, because "they will definitely care as much as I did". Half of the time, these re-tweets are from people telling them to re-tweet the message. my favorite is, "Re-tweet for Heaven, ignore for hell." I'm sure Jesus Christ is determining everybody's salvation on this one little message on a website that only a fraction of the world population uses, or even has access to. I sure feel bad for those poor souls who died in that 2006 year period of time before twitter was even around, they're really SOL on that whole Heaven thing, huh?
There are some things I like about it though. I like being able to follow my old high school sports account, so I can get updates on how badly Center Grove is beating Lawrence Central this week, and not have to text a friend who is still in high school (a number which dwindles every year after you graduate) to figure it out. Also, there will, every so often, be a tweet by somebody that cracks me up. All in all though, it's not really worth it to me to check it everyday. I'd much rather use Facebook, or maybe even call somebody. Call me old fashioned, I guess.
So How About That Election?
It seemed very...anti-climatic, didn't it? I can't be the only person who thought so. I'll admit, I really tried to get invested in it, and it totally wasn't just because the group I'm in for this project is using the election as our topic. I had FOX News running on one TV, CNN on another, and occasionally flipped to MSNBC. I had Google Election on my laptop, and even put Phillip DeFranco's live online coverage of the election in another window. I had noted some very interesting observations. Predictable maybe, but interesting nonetheless.
First and foremost was the biased of the coverage I was watching. FOX was obviously very biased towards the more conservative candidate, Mitt Romney, and MSNBC was obviously very biased towards the liberal crowd. CNN was more in the middle, as they have been for the past few months, and everybody involved in the Phillip DeFranco Live show was pulling for an independent candidate, so there biases toward either major party wasn't really too great.
Some more stuff I noticed is that FOX News was actually getting their predictions in a lot faster than everybody else. Now this can mean two things. Either they're really good at predicting which candidate will win a state, or their really loose with their assumptions. Either way, it worked out in their favor that Tuesday night.
Although this wasn't exactly exclusive to election night, there were a fair number of times where news stations would show how many tweets a certain candidate was mentioned in. At times, they even had entire segments dedicated to this one subject. Now, I had some trouble considering this a legitimate subject to report on. The reason being because these tweets can mean anything. They never tell you how many tweets are positive thoughts praising a candidate, and vice-versa. That would take a considerable amount of researching, an impossible amount actually. The whole thing just isn't a very good source to report on, in my opinion.
At the end of the day however, I found myself looking at the winner and saying to myself, "Oh, okay." I feel like, if the results were any different, my reaction would have been exactly the same.
First and foremost was the biased of the coverage I was watching. FOX was obviously very biased towards the more conservative candidate, Mitt Romney, and MSNBC was obviously very biased towards the liberal crowd. CNN was more in the middle, as they have been for the past few months, and everybody involved in the Phillip DeFranco Live show was pulling for an independent candidate, so there biases toward either major party wasn't really too great.
Some more stuff I noticed is that FOX News was actually getting their predictions in a lot faster than everybody else. Now this can mean two things. Either they're really good at predicting which candidate will win a state, or their really loose with their assumptions. Either way, it worked out in their favor that Tuesday night.
Although this wasn't exactly exclusive to election night, there were a fair number of times where news stations would show how many tweets a certain candidate was mentioned in. At times, they even had entire segments dedicated to this one subject. Now, I had some trouble considering this a legitimate subject to report on. The reason being because these tweets can mean anything. They never tell you how many tweets are positive thoughts praising a candidate, and vice-versa. That would take a considerable amount of researching, an impossible amount actually. The whole thing just isn't a very good source to report on, in my opinion.
At the end of the day however, I found myself looking at the winner and saying to myself, "Oh, okay." I feel like, if the results were any different, my reaction would have been exactly the same.
Dungeons and Dragons for Jocks
The talk about video games a couple classes ago got me thinking, for some reason, about fantasy football. It's sort of a video game, right? I'll admit, after I gave it a shot last year, I've been hooked on it ever since. It's just super fun for any football fan.
The whole concept just baffles me. A game that's incredibly fun, that is not specific to any age-group, and is 100% free. All that is required is a love for football (some knowledge of the big players would help too). What's even more baffling is how it brings a huge community together through the internet, a community that would have been impossible to put together without the internet. Whoever came up with this should get a huge pat on the back.
However, the community is not limited to just an online relationship. I'm sure countless friendships have been made over a conversation about fantasy football. Two avid players could go on for hours on end talking about how Calvin Johnson got 36 points this Sunday, or how one has to resort to Josh Freeman as a starting QB because Eli Manning's putting up so little points, or how one cries himself to sleep in a corner because Jim Philbin benched Reggie Bush for making a very minor mistake, or how he lost because his opponent had Doug Martin, who ran for 250 yards, got 4-5 touchdowns, and put up 58 points...Well, I think you can figure out how my fantasy season has been going.
The whole concept just baffles me. A game that's incredibly fun, that is not specific to any age-group, and is 100% free. All that is required is a love for football (some knowledge of the big players would help too). What's even more baffling is how it brings a huge community together through the internet, a community that would have been impossible to put together without the internet. Whoever came up with this should get a huge pat on the back.
However, the community is not limited to just an online relationship. I'm sure countless friendships have been made over a conversation about fantasy football. Two avid players could go on for hours on end talking about how Calvin Johnson got 36 points this Sunday, or how one has to resort to Josh Freeman as a starting QB because Eli Manning's putting up so little points, or how one cries himself to sleep in a corner because Jim Philbin benched Reggie Bush for making a very minor mistake, or how he lost because his opponent had Doug Martin, who ran for 250 yards, got 4-5 touchdowns, and put up 58 points...Well, I think you can figure out how my fantasy season has been going.
Parasocial Relationships With Inanimate Objects?
There's been a bunch of talk in this class about parasocial relationships, which are essentially a strictly one-sided relationship where, often times, one person in the relationship doesn't even know about the other.
I never gave these relationships much thought, as I don't really try to immerse myself in the life's of very many celebrities. However, I have started to think I have a parasocial relationship with something I've (up to this point) have really taken for granted, my guitar.
You see, I brought my guitar home last weekend for it to be worked on. It had some issues that needed to be dealt with, and I thought that I could go ten measly days without it. It seems I was wrong, as I've really been missing it. I can't tell you how many times I've reached for it, only to realize I'm grasping at air.
All my woes aside, it got me thinking. Do we develop parasocial relationships with our belongings? Maybe this has already been brought up, but the more I think about it, the more objects I can label as a parasocial relationship in life. Phones, wallets, keys, guitars, we can become attached to almost anything.
Some of these things are stuff that we often refer to as, "Things we can't live without." That's pretty drastic, isn't it? We must care deeply for these objects. They don't care about us, they physically can't.
Now maybe it's a different type of parasocial relationship. I don't know everything about guitars the way one might know everything about John Mayer, and I certainly don't sit in my dorm caressing guitars because I miss mine so much. Although, I know people that probably would.
I never gave these relationships much thought, as I don't really try to immerse myself in the life's of very many celebrities. However, I have started to think I have a parasocial relationship with something I've (up to this point) have really taken for granted, my guitar.
You see, I brought my guitar home last weekend for it to be worked on. It had some issues that needed to be dealt with, and I thought that I could go ten measly days without it. It seems I was wrong, as I've really been missing it. I can't tell you how many times I've reached for it, only to realize I'm grasping at air.
All my woes aside, it got me thinking. Do we develop parasocial relationships with our belongings? Maybe this has already been brought up, but the more I think about it, the more objects I can label as a parasocial relationship in life. Phones, wallets, keys, guitars, we can become attached to almost anything.
Some of these things are stuff that we often refer to as, "Things we can't live without." That's pretty drastic, isn't it? We must care deeply for these objects. They don't care about us, they physically can't.
Now maybe it's a different type of parasocial relationship. I don't know everything about guitars the way one might know everything about John Mayer, and I certainly don't sit in my dorm caressing guitars because I miss mine so much. Although, I know people that probably would.
The Video Game Talk.
A couple of classes ago, we talked about how video games could potentially "save the world" as the Jane McGonigal, the author of the assigned article, put it. The argument was that the development of creativity and determination in those that play video games, along with the teamwork skills they develop in multi-player games, will give the next generation the skills they need to solve the worlds future and current problems. Although this is a nice thought, and makes sense on paper, there are a few fallacies that I would like to point out.
The first thing I would like to point out is the TED talk of her that we watched in class. It was discussed a little bit afterward that she seemed to be only talking about one type, or genre, of game, that being the MMORPG (Massively Multi-Player Online Role Playing Games) genre. Examples of games in this genre would be World of Warcraft and Guild Wars. I happened to notice that she not only stuck to that genre, but really only talked about one game throughout the entire talk, World of Warcraft (WoW). While there's no doubting WoW's success and popularity, it's ridiculous to talk about it and assume that what applies in WoW applies in every single other game in existence.
When you just look at World of Warcraft, her ideas are really on point. However, I can take almost all of her points and throw them out the window, simply by replacing World of Warcraft with Snake. Almost everybody knows of the game Snake. If not, you can figure it out with a simple Google search. There is no multi-player option that requires any sort of teamwork, and there's no real amount of creativity required to play it. You simply move a line around, and try not to hit the walls or yourself whilst collecting dots that appear on the screen.
There are countless other games that one could find contradictions in Jane's argument. The whole idea becomes very weak when she's only using one game to run on.
Now I'm not saying that there isn't some truth in her idea, and I'm certainly not downing video games at all. All I'm saying is that video games alone are not going to be the cure-all ingredient for the worlds problems. They might help a bit, but they're only one factor in a plethora of all the other hobbies out there.
The first thing I would like to point out is the TED talk of her that we watched in class. It was discussed a little bit afterward that she seemed to be only talking about one type, or genre, of game, that being the MMORPG (Massively Multi-Player Online Role Playing Games) genre. Examples of games in this genre would be World of Warcraft and Guild Wars. I happened to notice that she not only stuck to that genre, but really only talked about one game throughout the entire talk, World of Warcraft (WoW). While there's no doubting WoW's success and popularity, it's ridiculous to talk about it and assume that what applies in WoW applies in every single other game in existence.
When you just look at World of Warcraft, her ideas are really on point. However, I can take almost all of her points and throw them out the window, simply by replacing World of Warcraft with Snake. Almost everybody knows of the game Snake. If not, you can figure it out with a simple Google search. There is no multi-player option that requires any sort of teamwork, and there's no real amount of creativity required to play it. You simply move a line around, and try not to hit the walls or yourself whilst collecting dots that appear on the screen.
There are countless other games that one could find contradictions in Jane's argument. The whole idea becomes very weak when she's only using one game to run on.
Now I'm not saying that there isn't some truth in her idea, and I'm certainly not downing video games at all. All I'm saying is that video games alone are not going to be the cure-all ingredient for the worlds problems. They might help a bit, but they're only one factor in a plethora of all the other hobbies out there.
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