Blog #2 Rewrite: Wikipedia

            Two men named Larry Sanger and Jimmy Wales created Wikipedia “the Free Encyclopedia” in 2001. Wikipedia was an online free encyclopedia because in the past encyclopedias like the Britannica Encyclopedia were only available and you had to pay to use them. Wikipedia works by having anyone create or add information onto a page. So thousands of people edit and create pages every day. This is the main concern a lot of people share when it comes to Wikipedia. Is it really that reliable? There have been instances in the past where information has been downright wrong so why should someone trust it? There are committees of people who go onto all of the pages and edit them to make sure they are right. These people are often called noble amateurs.

            In his article The Nobel Amateur, Andrew Keens talks a lot about how he feel about these so-called “noble amateurs”. He describes them as "A hobbyist, knowledgeable or otherwise someone who does not make a living from his or her field of interest". Keen feels as though since these people are not professionals that they have no right to share information told as fact on the Internet.

Wikipedia really isn’t all junk. If you go to the bottom of basically all the Wikipedia pages you can see list of references that the page was quoted or built off of. So if you don’t believe Wikipedia you can check out what that page has to say about your topic of Internet. Because it has been around for so long, pages have been built upon and built upon over the past ten years. That means that the probability that there is an error in the page has become very, very, very slim. This is probably why Wikipedia is 17^th most visited site, while Encyclopedia Britannica is 5,128^th (Andrew Keen). I know for a fact that I have seen a Wikipedia page vandalized. Only about ten minutes later, it was quickly fixed and that was probably seven years ago when I last saw a majorly vandalized page. Wikipedia is no longer vandalized as much as it used to be because people are starting to respect Wikipedia as a more credible source of information.

I think that Wikipedia is a good resource for students and anyone looking for research. While it does have some flaws, over time they will be most likely smoothed out. And without those noble amateurs we would not have access to a vast amount of free information. If we didn’t have Wikipedia, we all probably would have to pay for Britannica Encyclopedia at one point or another.

Extra Blog: How I Gained Internet Recognition

            If there is one thing that you should know about me, it’s that I love the Internet. Yet up until this year, I was a nobody on the web. Yet somehow my Internet popularity seems to have grown on Tumblr, Deviantart and Youtube.

            One of the main reasons for my rise in views were the friends I made earlier this year. For example, I had had a Youtube account and a Deviant account since I was in middle school and they hardly got any page views. I posted things, yet they never seemed to get popular, usually only gaining about one hundred views if that. What happens is that make some new friends at an anime convention that I go to.  Now, when I try to find them on Deviantart I realize that they are super popular (I am talking thousands of page views and hundreds of followers). Never the less I wasn’t surprised when I saw their art, which far suppressed mine. One of them convinced me to get a Tumblr. At first I hesitated because I didn’t even know what a Tumblr was. Finally I caved in and created one. Not only were my friends popular and well known on Deviantart but they also happened to be well known on Tumblr!

            I cosplayed (which is basically dressing up as characters from anime, manga, cartoons, video games etc) with these friends a lot and we even had a couple of photo shoots. Now when my friends would edit the photos and upload them to Deviantart or Tumblr, they would label who was in the photo with our accounts (Tumblr and Deviantart). Suddenly I would have a mass amount of page views, favorites/reblogs and followers/watchers appeared on both my Deviantart and Tumblr. I also created a handful of Youtube videos that contained my cosplays. I would post my videos on my Tumblr and my friends would reblog them. Suddenly I would get a slew of notifications about how people were reblogging and liking my videos. Soon my Youtube videos gained a lot of views.

            Another way that I gained a lot of followers is to get into fandoms right before their peak of popularity. At the moment I have been into Homestuck for a while and my friends and I were into it before it hit its peak of popularity. I was into Homestuck and cosplaying it this spring and its popularity peaked this summer. So when people went to search for Homestuck things, they often came across my friends’ (and some of mine) stuff (art, videos, cosplay ect).

            While I am still obviously not the most popular person on the Internet I have still definitely raised in my Internet ranks over the past year. So these are a few tips I can give to people who want to get some Internet popularity.

Extra Blog: MSPaint Adventures (Homestuck)

             A topic that I have often Tweeted about on Twitter is Homestuck. But what is Homestuck? Many people have no idea what Homestuck is. Homestuck is an online (and intereactive) webcomic created by a guy named Andrew Hussie. He has been creating webcomics for years (all on his website MSPaint Adventures) and Homestuck is his current ongoing comic creation. But why would I blog about a webcomic on my digital cultures blog?

            An online webcomic is a comic that is published online. What makes Homestuck so special is the fact that it mixes not only writing and art (all of which created in Microsoft Paint) but also flash animation and original music (which you can listen to and download here). There are even some parts in the comic where you can play as certain characters and move them around the screen. It combines many different art forms to create an amazing story with interesting characters and complex plots. It has a massive fandom that constantly reads Homestuck. I know I have friends that have an app on their phones that alerts them to when an update has been posted.

            The fandom of Homestuck is awesome. There have been multiple original and parody songs created about Homestuck (many of which you can listen too/download on this site ). Not only music and videos are created but also fanart and fan fiction. You can find Homestuck related things on almost every website including Facebook, Youtube, Twitter, Tumblr, Fanfiction.net, Deviantart ect.  The Homestuck fandom is so large and prominent on the Internet that on the night of a large flash update, the fandom shut down Newgrounds. Newgrounds was not ready for the flood of users accessing the site to view the flash at once that the bandwidth was exceeded. I even gained a large group of friends because we all shared the similar interest in Homestuck this past summer.

            I highly recommend Homestuck to basically anyone who wants an interesting story with awesome art and an interesting plot. Click here to go to MSPaint Adventures home page.

Extra Blog: Tumblr

            Everyday when I go onto my computer in the morning I check four websites, Facebook, Youtube, Deviantart and Tumblr. Now, basically everyone has heard of Facebook and Youtube, the other two are slightly lesser known (at least to many people I know). It was only earlier this year that I got into Tumblr and I love using it.

            David Karp created Tumblr in 2007. Currently, Tumblr is the 10^th largest social network site with 6.81 million visits a week. It is a social blogger (it is also called a micro blogger) site that allows users to post text, images, videos, links, quotes and audio to their personal blogs. You can like posts made by other people. You can even follow users or tag groups and view what they post on your dashboard feed. Your dashboard is updated when you or people you follow post new things. Users also have the option to reblog or like other posts.

            I got my Tumblr account back in April. A couple of friends that I met at an anime convention convinced me to finally get one. At first I had no idea how to work the site and I thought it was silly. I never thought that I would have fun using Tumblr, I was wrong. I find so many funny memes on Tumblr and it is a great way to intact with my friends and new people I meet from my posts. Many people (including friends of mine) post music that they have created, videos or works of art. It is great to see what other people are doing and what new things people are creating. I also use Tumblr as a place to find out more information about news stories. I knew about occupy Wallstreet and the London riots because of Tumblr. I even found out about the new bill that will shut down sites that contains copyrighted information (Tumblr would be shut down if this bill was passed).

            I personally am very glad that I got a Tumblr and I think that many people could benefit from getting one.

Extra Blog: LOL Cats and Other Memes

            While you surf the web, you may come across many random silly pictures. Many times they are with animals making funny faces, or cats with horrible spelling or a picture of a celebrity photo shopped into random situations. These are called Internet memes. A meme is a concept or idea that spreads person to person in a culture. So that means that an Internet meme is a concept or idea that spreads from person to person in the Internet culture.

            Internet memes often parody or mock something in society. Whether it is a video game reference or just a random dumb picture, there are thousands of memes on the Internet. Memes are normally spread through email, social networking or blogs. When captions are included they are often spelled wrong (as seen in LOL cats). For example, more will be come “moar” or like will be come “leik” or the becomes “teh”.

            The source for most Internet has been from 4chan. This is because it is a message board and often people’s reactions can be in the form of pictures. Other sites like Reddit or Tumblr are also places where memes are often born.  

            Many people look at Internet memes and shake their head at the stupidity of what they have just witnessed. I will be perfectly honestly, most if not all memes are completely dumb and honestly have no point. Yet they are still hilarious. I guess you could just say that it is born from our culture on the Internet. We often use memes as inside jokes with our friends it is great! Knowing memes can even help get people into new groups of friends or interests. For example take my friend Ted. He was familiar with the “u mad, bro?” meme and he and his friend often sent pictures of it to each other. One day Ted got a picture that had a pony on it that said u mad, bro? He looked up what the pony was from and ended up getting hooked on My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic (which also is huge in the meme world at the moment). 

            If you wish to find out more information about memes or memes and their origins you can visit the site Know Your Meme at here.

Blog Eight: Smart Mobs

            During this week’s class, we read two segments from Howard Rheingold’s book Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution. Rheingold tells us that he first noticed the use of smart mobs in Japan when Japanese teens would text each other to meet. Smart mobs primarily use handheld devices, like phones instead of computers to send their messages. This is because the cost of a phone is a lot less than that of a computer. This makes it accessible to more people. An example of this would be the smart mob that happened in the Philippines in 2001. Large groups of people were assembled via text message to protest President Joseph Estrada. It was a peaceful protest and ended up being quite successful. And without cell phones, this smart mob wouldn’t have even existed because the Philippines are a poor country. But that is not the only way that smart mobs can work. They also can be used to creep on your favorite celebrities or find a love interest.  

            Yet smart mobs can be good. Often people are afraid of what can happen when smart mobs “go bad”. Like the London riots that got out of control and that can scare people. But most smart mobs are peaceful and have a good message. Like the hacker group Anonymous in operation BART fought for the people with their smart mob. After BART authorities disabled the cell phone signals, Anonymous thought it was unfair and decided to take action. They created a Youtube video and called the people of BART and surrounding areas to show up at the subway station to protest. Another example of a peaceful but meaningful smart mob would be Operation: Drop Dead done by some students of the University of Maryland. At a set time on October 17^th a few students suddenly fell to the floor unmoving while a couple other students placed signs next to them. The objective of the mob was to give North Koreans a voice.

Smart mobs have also helped create flash mobs, which are a fun, entertaining sudden group of people who assemble in one place. Sometimes it’s just for fun, like the group Improv Everywhere. They are a group that gets people together to do funny improv flash mobs in big cities like New York City. For example, they have done multiple mp3 flash mobs. This is a group of people download an mp3 file and listen to it at the instructed time and general area. From there a voice directs them through funny activities until they all meet in the end.  This is only one example of how a flash mob can be a fun and peaceful.

Blog Seven (REVISED): Cyber Bullying

In the past few years, the Internet has grown in use and importance in our daily lives. We rely heavily on it for doing many things nowadays like shopping or paying bills. While many things have become a great deal easier for us, a new problem has arisen mainly in the younger generation. Cyber bullying has become a great issue in the past few years. Cyber bullying is harassment through electronic means. Facebook, Formspring, Myspace, Twitter, Youtube and even instant messaging are different Internet mediums that have often been used for cyber bullying. It is a big problem that our society overlooks cyber bullying and does not take it seriously. Often we brush off cyber bullying and label it as “drama.” Danah Boyd in her article, The Drama! Teen Conflict, Gossip, and Bullying in Networked Publics, says this is why “For teens, sites like Facebook allow for similar performances in front of engaged audiences.” Not only is bullying on the Internet often very public, but it allows people to say things they normally would not because they do not have to say it to the person’s face. 

We read an article in class about a boy named Tyler Clementi. Tyler Clementi is an example of when cyber bullying can go to far. Clementi was an 18-year-old student at Rutgers University who committed suicide after a classmate live streamed a video of him engaging in sexual acts with another man. This story really shows how the Internet can be used to slander other people’s names where the entire public can see it with such damning evidence as video. Without the Internet stories like that of Clementi’s could not have happened. Clementi even wrote his goodbye on his Facebook wall, “Jumping off the gw bridge sorry."

Unfortunately Clementi’s case is not the first and is not the last. Just recently, another gay teen committed suicide due to cyber bullying. Jamie Hubley was bullied because of his sexuality. The fact that he was being cyber bullied only increased the severity of his depression. Jamie began to drink and cut himself because of his bullying, he would write about his problems on his blog. Jamie kept an ongoing blog on Tumblr (titled "You can't break...when you're already broken") where he wrote about his feelings. Often the posts he posted were depressing or just sad blurbs. On the Friday before his death he wrote on his Tumblr, “It’s so hard, I’m sorry, I can’t take it anymore.” He was found dead on Saturday.

What would have happened in this situation if Jamie’s parents had known about his Tumblr posts? Also if Jamie’s friends had seen these posts why did they not do anything about them? Often kids who are depressed try to seek help and are often ignored. Jamie obviously wanted someone to reach out to him, yet seemingly no one did. As Danah Boyd says in her article Overprotective parenting and bullying: Who is to blame for the suicide of Megan Meier? in today’s society “parenting today seems to require the absolute believe that you’re child is the best child ever”. Often parents will write off what could be cries for help from kids as normal teen drama. Yet in Jamie’s case, it would have been beneficial for someone to read his posts on Tumblr, and his parents could have been the ones to check in on him from time to time.

There are multiple different cases just like Clementi and Hubley’s. Cyber bullying is an issue that needs to be taken more seriously. It is harmful and kids need to be taught how to handle situations where cyber bullying is taking place. No one should have to suffer and pass what is really bullying off as drama. Parents need to take part in their children’s lives without being a helicopter over everything they do. Cyber bullying is a real issue that needs to be taken seriously.

Sixth Blog: A World of Surveillance

What is privacy? In the United States, we feel as though our privacy is a part of our American privilege. With all new technology our privacy is deeply endangered. Your every move and information that you put on the Internet can be tracked, traced and stored without your knowledge. In Simson Garfinkel's book Privacy and the New Technology: What They Do Know Can Hurt You he say’s "It's a future in which what little privacy we now have will be gone. Some people call this a loss of privacy” (Garfinkel). We are slowly becoming a society that George Orwell predicted in his book 1984. A future where our every move is tracked or stored and what media we view is censored.  

Even Google has had a great impact on our Internet lives and privacy. Googlization is happening, even though it may not be as clear we would like. In Siva Vaidhaydanathan's book The Googlization of Everything: And Why We Should Worry Siva puts it best by saying "we are not Google's customers: we are it's product". Even though we many not like to think it, Google does affect different areas of our lives. Google affects our personal decisions like our political opinions or our moral ideas on subjects like abortion or gay rights. Google also has the power to control and survey almost the entire world. Almost everyone use’s Google and because of this, it’s power just keeps growing. Google keeps track of what you do on the Internet, your likes, dislikes, what your favorite food is and even your fetishes. They even show you advertisements based on your likes. If you are worried about Big Brother Google watching your moves you do have the option to change your privacy settings to make it harder for them to track you. But when that happens Google slows down your services. 

Google even stores everything about us. For example, during class we had three people go and Google their names. Nothing came up when the first boy searched his name. I was the one who searched my name second. But when I looked up my name nothing about me showed up. The third boy went up and videos and pictures and news articles popped up about him. This was because he had played juniors hockey and the almost everything that came up was about his hockey life. Even though nothing came up when I searched my name there is a lot of stuff on the Internet that I have posted or things that have been posted about me. If you look up my name and my old high schools name, lots of old athletic records and race times come up. On the other hand if you search my main Internet name, lots of things come up. I have a vast life on the Internet but I never use my real name, only my one username.

If there ever is a day where Google does decide to use our information, we have a lot at stake and in the open. It just goes to show that we need to be careful what we post on the Internet. You never know who will end up with your personal information in their hands.  

Fifth Blog: Music Downloading

            During this week’s readings and class discussions revolved around piracy. In Lawrence Lessig’s book Free Culture: the Nature and Future of Creativity Lessig claims that the most commercial piracy is “the unauthorized taking of other people’s content within a commercial context”. In the past 10 or 15 years, technology has made it incredibly easy to pirate music, video, computer applications and even books. Many people now share mp3 files with each other instead of paying for them either by buying a CD or by purchasing it online. Lessig claims that there are four different types of file sharers. Type A is “someone who use sharing networks and substitutes for purchasing content” also known as someone who downloads instead of purchasing the product. Type B file sharers “are some who use sharing networks to sample music before purchasing it”. Type C, on the other hand, are sharers who “get access to copyrighted content that is no longer sold or that they would not have purchased because the transaction costs off the Net are too high”. And finally type D who “use sharing networks to get access to content that is not copyrighted or that the copyright owner wants to give away.” Type A sharers are is the only type that could be considered harmful. And even though B and C are technically illegal they actually are good for society because it can often give exposure to music that is not mainstream or well known. And D type music sharing is completely legal.

            Lessig gives a great example of how inconsistent the United States is with copyright and piracy laws by comparing it to used book and record stores to the definition of piracy. As many of you may know, used book and record stores buy content from people, then in return they resell the content. “Under American copyright law, when they buy and sell this content, even if the content is still under copyright, the copyright owner doesn’t get a time” but used book and record stores are commercial entities. The only difference between file sharing and a used bookstore is that the file sharer is not making any profit off of the files they share. So why is music downloading so much bigger of a deal than it needs to be?

            Lots of people think that piracy is a bad thing and claim that they have never pirated music or taken pirated music. Yet this is most likely not true. Even a burned mixed CD given to you by a friend is technically pirated material. I definitely have pirated music during my time on the Internet. I have had many different reasons for pirating music in the past. One time my hard drive crashed on my computer and I lost hundreds of dollars of purchased music that the computer store offered one thousand dollars to get back. I decided that I would rather illegally download all of my music back rather than pay for it all again. I have also illegally downloaded foreign music or music that was not available on iTunes or that I could find in the United States. I also have commonly downloaded something by an artist only to buy more of their music later. So by definition I am a type B and C file sharer. I personally have done this multiple different times with different musical artists. For example, my friend file shared me a few Homestuck albums for me to listen to a few months ago. After listening to the albums I decided that I really liked them. So when new albums come out on their website, I purchase it because I want to give the Homestuck music team credit and my business. Another friend shared some My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic music remixes with me and I now purchase it unless free downloading is an option. If file sharing had not happened I would not have known about many of the music artists that I now have on my iTunes. Because of file sharing those artists are now getting more popular and therefore are making more money in the long run even though people are still illegally downloading their music.  

If interested here is the Homestuck music website.

Fourth Blog: Flickr

Our group had a couple main ideas before we decided on our final project. At first we wanted to show a story of a guy how gets sucked into a virtual world and he has to defeat a dragon or something of the sort. The only problem with that idea was that we learned that another group was using the dragon idea. So after some thought we decided we wanted to pretend that we were in a Grand Theft Auto game. Not only would we pretend to be in GTA we decided to have me play a female gamer who is playing as a man in GTA. We decided that we would have our main character (Ryan) would play mimic the things the normal GTA character would do. For example, hijack a car or rob a bank. From here we decided that Dyllan would be the car driver (who ends up killed by Ryan) and Marc would be a fleeing passenger of the car. Then have the final picture as my character leaving the game controller.

After our group decided what story we were going to tell, everything came together very nicely. I happened to have a nice camera, so we used that for our shooting. Our group got together during our regular class meeting time on Tuesday. We decided to do our GTA portion of the photo shoot in the daylight under the bridge by the Banta Bowl. We chose this location because it looked slightly sketchy. There was even some graffiti in that location but we ended up not using the pictures because they weren’t as good as we had hoped.

We then chose to take our “bank robbing” pictures outside of Chase. After those pictures were taken, we took the pictures with my character in Marc’s dorm later on that night. We decided it would be better in the dark to give it a different atmosphere rather than one similar to our “game”. After we chose which pictures to use for our final project I edited the GTA pictures to make them look similar to Grand Theft Auto 3 screen set up.

I had a friend help me create a crowbar icon for our photo because in GTA3, such an icon does not exist. We even made it so that the stars that appear in the game appeared in our pictures. Along with the stars, money also appears on a couple of occasions. Once when Ryan mugs Dyllan and the other when Ryan robs the bank. The time also changes as the story goes on.

            Our final project can be found HERE.

            I had a lot of fun working on this project with my group. I found that Flickr is easy enough to use after I got used to how the site worked. Our preparation for this project was simple. We set a time to meet and take pictures (during a meeting we held) and I brought my camera. When I had all of the pictures edited I found that Flickr was not that hard to use. It was pretty simple after I surfed the site for a little bit. Flickr makes it easy for users to share their photos with other people on the Internet. We tagged our photos as casual gaming and grand theft auto. The reason we chose these was because it basically described what was going on in the photos. In pictures where my character was playing video games, the tag read casual gaming. When the photos showed the GTA ones, the tags read grand theft auto. Tagging can be helpful because if you are looking for a certain topic or subject matter. You just type in what you are looking for and people who have tagged their pictures as such will appear in the search bar.

 

Third Blog: Deviantart and Fanart

            In the book Free Culture the Nature and Future of Creativity, Lawrene Lessig talks about how in our society there are something that are free to copy while others are off limits. Lessig mentions how Disney rips off Brothers Grimm stories. Disney, however, puts their own spin on the stories. He goes to talk about doujinshis, which are spin off comics of Japanese manga. He goes on to explain what exactly a doujinshi is, “It is not doujinshi if it is just a copy; the artist must make a contribution to the art he copies, by transforming it either subtly or significantly” (Lessig). This may be strange to Americans because there is no way someone could create a knock off of Batman, publish and sell it for profit without getting sued. Yet the Japanese don’t ban doujinshi because while they use not original characters they have original story lines and sometimes their own art style.  

Deviantart is a very popular website that was launched in 2000. Their slogan is “where art meets application”. Here, many people post their own art they create. From traditional art (like drawing and painting), to digital art (like photo manipulated images or graphic design) to even artisan crafts and photography, you can find every form of art on this site. People can create an account and post their art. If viewer like your work they may favorite pieces or comment on them. Much of Deviantart however is made up of fan art. Yet no one bats an eye unless an artist claims that the content of their art was their original idea. To a blatant copy issue, users generally get together and report the art to get it removed from the site. You can also find multiple doujinshis on Deviantart. Each one is very different and generally creative in it’s own way. Even I have copied someone else’s style of art and have drawn fan art so that I could learn how to draw better. 

            It’s not just the small artists who benefit from copying and collaborating with other artists. Even some big named artists are on Deviantart. Lauren Faust and Bryan Lee O'Malley are two examples of people whose work you may have heard of work. Lauren Faust has worked on shows such as the Power Puff Girls, Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends and most recently My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. On the other hand Bryan Lee O'Malley was the man who created the Scott Pilgrim vs. The World comics, which ended up being turned into a movie staring Michael Cera in 2010. Faust is one of the artists who actually looks at what her fans create. She has even kept a mistake character named “Derpy Hooves” in the show because the fandom loved it and created mass amounts of fan art around it. 

            So not only can creating fan art help ones own art skills but it also can give artists new ideas so they can build on what they have already created. As long as artist do not blatantly copy other artists (take credit for their work) and give them credit where needed, collaboration should be allowed (and not considered piracy).  

Extra Blog: Youtube

             YouTube has become one of the most recognizable Internet website in the past 5 or more years. “The website provided a very simple, integrated interface within which users could upload, publish and view streaming videos without high levels of technical knowledge” (How YouTube Matters). The first time I remember going on YouTube was to watch the SNL skit Lazy Sunday in 7^th grade. YouTube has been a large part of my generation’s Internet life. You can upload and share multiple videos to friends and family. YouTube is a great example of how convergence in our current culture is helpful for business. Some users have the option of making money on their YouTube videos if their videos are popular. They do this by placing advertisements in the video (along the bottom) and on the side.

I even have my own YouTube accounts. The first was made in May 2007 and only has 5 videos. During all the years that account has been open for it only has gotten a total of 344 video views. Just earlier this year in February, since then I have uploaded 11 videos and gotten over 50,000 upload views and 136 subscribers. Just recently however I received the option set up my account so that I can earn money from my videos. According to YouTube if I set this up, “YouTube will place ads inside or near the video. You will earn a share of the revenue that is generated from ad impressions occurring when these videos are viewed” (YouTube). My other YouTube account and friend’s accounts have not received this message and cannot read the message when I send them the URL.

If you follow the guidelines that YouTube has set on what videos are eligible for you can make money on your videos. This is very attractive to many people. Who wouldn’t want to make money by making videos? Because YouTube does this they also get a lot more people creating new videos to upload everyday. Everyone wants to be the next big viral video. Look at Antoine Dodson who from that one news clip he got money from the auto-tuned song and he appeared on some television commercials. Or you could make big money by becoming someone like Shane Dawson or Smosh. YouTube is a great example of how convergence happens in our culture today.

First Blog: False Identities, Real Problems

During last weeks Intro to Digital Cultures class, our class was assigned a reading from Sherry Turkle’s book Life on the Screen. The specific reading that I will be referring to is from chapter seven, titled Aspects of the Self. Turkle starts out the reading by saying that “When we step through the screen into virtual communities, we reconstruct our identities on the other side of the looking glass”. Turkle tells us about MUDs (Multi User Dungeons) and how they started text based chats like AIM or chat rooms (which eventually lead to social networking like Myspace or Facebook). She goes on to tell us that MUDs gives people “an opportunity for self-expression, leading to her feeling more like her true self when decked out in an array of virtual masks” (Turkle). This is where the problem lies. When you are behind a chat log, it is easier to trust the words that pop up onto your screen. That is why relationships online move so much faster than IRL relationships. Because of this it is also a lot easier to deceive those who you interact with on the web. You can be a totally different person and leave all the cares of the real world behind “He could always begin with a clean slate. When he changed his character he felt born again” (Turkle). Like I said before, this can be a good or a bad thing. The thing that people do not realize is that your life on screen can affect your everyday life. In the Turkle reading, a boy named Stewart said that playing on MUDs had help him talk through emotional problems but it also caused a drop in his self-esteem. Many other people have negative consequences due to their online personas. The two main examples I shall use are relevant in today’s culture (since MUDs no longer exist).

The first being the story that we read in class called “An IM Infatuation Turned to Romance. Then the Truth Came Out” (http://www.wired.com/politics/law/magazine/15-09/ff_internetlies ).  This article was from Wired Magazine and told the story of an Internet love triangle turned sour. The story tells of Thomas Montgomery (who was a 45-year-old ex marine) who pretended to be an 18 year old in order to communicate with 17 year old “Jessica”. Later on, one of Thomas’s coworkers, Brian Barrett, got involved in the affair. Heated emotions flew, and Thomas killed Barrett over jealousy. In the end, even Jessica was a fabrication of the real Jessica’s 45-year-old mother. The second story comes from a news story I came across a few years ago (which can be found here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HFsfDLCkfQU ). This is the story of a girl named Megan Meier. She was 13 years old when she took her own life because of an online relationship. The relationship was with a 16-year-old boy named “Josh” who met her through Myspace and constantly complimented Megan. But after “Josh” gained Megan’s trust he suddenly had an abrupt change of heart. He cursed Megan and told her “the world would be a better place without you”. This was the comment that eventually led Megan to kill herself. As it turns out, “Josh” was a fabricated character created by the mother of a girl that Megan had been having issues with at school.

While creating new personas or realities for that matter can be harmless or even helpful (like with the boy Stewart from the Turkle reading), the fact still remains that many people can use these fabrications to cause harm to others. Both stories stated above started with “good intentions” and fake personas but unfortunately both ended in tragedy. Because the Internet makes it hard to tell who is real and who is not, many are sucked into the virtual world, leaving their real lives behind. Both the murder of Barrett over jealousy and Megan’s suicide over her heart break greatly support Turkle when she says “how complex the psychological effects of life on the screen can be”. Don’t get me wrong, I love the Internet. I spend a lot of time on it. Yet I think that caution should be used because you can get sucked into a false reality, which can end in tragedy.