Social Media

Bobby Aultman, Alec Lapierre, Robby Bearss, Travis Robinson, Austin Grogan.

What gaming has taught me

During class I heard quite a lot of negativity towards gaming. While there were some positives brought up there wasn't enough time for me to talk about my thoughts.

I have been playing video games for the majority of my life. I started out on the Super Nintendo playing Super Mario World, Batman Forever, and Super Street Fighter II. As I grew up I got even more involved in games. I would stay up to date with the newest games and hardware as well as contribute to online communities for video games. Through the years I feel like most of my life skills were gained through video games. I like to believe I had a pretty normal childhood, playing sports and hanging out with friends but I know that I learned a lot more from video games than I did from any sport I played. And I learned a lot more "real life" lessons from gaming than I ever did or will from school. And while its a close second, video gaming almost taught me more than my parents did. Video games have been a big part of my life and I'm not sure if I am the type of person who could have learned these lessons easily without video games. I think that it is hard to understand how much you can learn from video games without having played them and learn from them most of your life. It was very clear in class that most of the people who were opposed to what the readings were saying were not gamers, and while they may have played occasionally, they did not play a prominent role in their lives.

What is normal?

In today's discussion of the Mathew Sheppard case it was brought up that the fact that he was a middle class white male, played a large role in how much media attention he got. It was said that on the south side of Chicago that X amount of children have died in 2012 alone and they get no coverage, but when middle class white kids were in the same situation it was on the news for weeks because of their class and race. I feel as if this is a false assumption. First of all because of the fact that the Newtown tragedy happened all at once, and second of all because it is not a normal occurrence. I am not saying that because the south side of Chicago shootings are more frequent that they are less important, it is that they are more shocking because they are unexpected. An example of the fact that it has nothing to do with race or class, is the story of Richard Szewka. He was shot down on the south side of Chicago on August 13th 2011 while visiting his wife's family. He was a white middle class male, his story didn't make the news any more than other shootings that night. The only newspaper article that went into details was the newspaper in his hometown because he was local, and the fact that his family made the attempt to get the story out. I think that this is a terrible thing because every single one of those people had loved ones, friends just like the family's of Newtown's victims but because shootings have become so normal on the south side of Chicago, no story is special anymore. I'm not saying Richard was special, but none of those lives seem to be as special as the lives taken in areas where it is less shocking. So I do not believe that Mathew Sheppard was big in the news because he was a white middle class male, I think he was big in the news because his story was shocking.



Here is the Article about Richard if you are interested: Richard Szewka

Online movement for VFX

After the Oscars on Sunday, an online movement has started to bring to light what is happening in a certain part of the movie industry, the visual effects departments. Most movies nowadays outsource their visual effects to outside studios, but those studios only make about 5% of the overall profits from the movie (not very much for how much work they do). With several big studios filing for bankruptcy recently, there was a protest outside of the Oscars which got no publicity from the media. One of the major firms that filed bankruptcy recently was Rhythm and Hues, who worked on the Movie Life of Pi. The movie won the Oscar for best visual effects, but during the acceptance speech the visual effects supervisor for the studio tried to bring up the studio, the orchestra attempted to play him off early. When he kept going, right before he got to the good part they completely cut off his microphone. This upset many people in the industry and started the movement over social media sites. This movement was brought to my attention by a friend of mine who is in the VFX industry who changed his facebook profile picture to a green square. He explained the situation, about how the industry is failing itself and that he changed his picture to a green box to represent the green screens they use as a filler for shooting so they can add in the effects later on. They're trying to get the attention of the movie studios so they can see what's going on. The movement has been being shared throughout networks on facebook even outside of the VFX industry and their friends. Many pages have been sharing photos of before and afters of movies before the VFX studios got their hands on the films. I'm not sure if the movement will actually change anything, but I do know they are getting the word out quite well. If enough people see it hopefully it will be brought up to some of the big movie studios and it can change something.

The Twitter Bowl

This Sunday was a big day for a lot of people. Especially football fans, chicken wing enthusiasts, and social media users. By the end of the big game I noticed that every one of the trending topics on Twitter were football related. I was not particularly surprised seeing how The Super Bowl is the most watched event on television. This really got me thinking of how social media has changed the way we watch and enjoy events such as this. As soon as something happened during the game it seemed it was instantly thrown onto Twitter for all the world to read, even though most people were already watching the game. Why did people feel the need to post updates about the same game everyone else saw too? For me, it was fun to go on and skim over the trending topics to see what others had to say about some of the best (and worst) plays, calls, and commercials. I wondered if what I thought was supported or if there was someone I could argue with over it. I imagine that I was not the only one to post my thoughts to see if my idea was more supported than my opposition's. This is not the only time this happens either. I notice every week there is something in the trends that is argued about, just on a smaller scale. Twitter has become the easiest way for people to get their ideas out quickly and effectively and we are now using this to watch shows and it completely changes the experience. It is like sitting and watching the game with several million people all putting their hate, love, and witty comments into your head.