Paying College Athletes

Comm322 Video Project


Shannon Grosenbacher, Carly Poor, Terry Lee Miller, Vic Scotland, Corey Bell, & Aaron Strombeck

Male Responsibility

I know this is going back a few weeks ago but I want to talk a little bit about the whole "women are not funny thing."

I do not believe that women are not funny nor do I believe that they do not have to be. I simply believe that it is the responsibility of the male to keep the conversation going. It is not because women are not capable of continuing a conversation.

There is some truth to men feeling that they need to make themselves attractive with humor. But I think it is a little bit more about chivalry honestly. A woman should not have to worry about filling in awkward silences with witty humor, that is the responsibility of the man. However, if I ever find a woman who can fill in those awkward silences with witty humor, that woman is a keeper for sure and she will never leave my side.

I do agree with the idea that women are already attractive to men therefore they do not need to be funny. But a woman with a sense of humor is definitely a much more attractive woman. I also agree that men need to have a sense of humor in order to attract women. Without humor a man is just about unarmed.

So it is the responsibility of the male to come up with conversation ideas and to fill in awkward silence with witty humor, and in some cases embarrassing stories. This is not to say that women are not allowed to be funny, it just is not as necessary for them to be funny.

Why Over Analyze?

The idea has been brought up in this class that maybe we are over analyzing. That things are just the way they are and we are reading just a little bit too much into it. To this I say hell no!

We can not allow ourselves to think this way. We must continue to question why things are being reported to us in a certain way, or in some cases not reported to us. To not question is to be indifferent and those who are indifferent deserve the deepest layer of hell. Right? Isn't that in Dante's Inferno?

On a serious note, I really do believe that there is no such thing as over analyzing. We can not become mindless beings that just absorb rhetoric like a sponge without ever questioning it or thinking about it. I fear that if we let this happen we may end up like those awful creatures that portray human beings at the end of the Disney movie Wall-E.

I believe that if we halt our questioning and allow the media to do what they want, we will lose our critical thinking skills. We will be much easier to control than we already are. Ultimately we will become a race of mindless herds of people, almost like cows. 

So no, I do not believe that we over analyzed any subject covered in class this semester. I do not believe that over analyzing is possible. I have thoroughly enjoyed every minute of every lecture this year. 

In defense of the gamer

This is related to the possibility of gamers one day being able to change the world. I genuinely believe that this is possible.

The issue here is that these world problems are too complex for the average person to understand. So the first thing we need to do is simplify these world problems so that the gamer and the average person can understand them. Then we need to find a way to make the gamer want to work towards finding solutions to these world problems. In other words, we need to make it fun. Once we do these two things, there is no telling what might happen.

We have an army of freakishly productive and competitive people. If we can harness the energy of the gamer onto one task, you guys might be surprised what can happen.

More minds working together is always better than one or just a few. In high school we were forced to get out papers peer reviewed. More often then not, the peer tutor found a mistake or had an idea that the first person had never thought about. So imagine that the engineers and doctors who are in charge of solving the worlds problems had millions of gamers to peer review their work. There is a very good chance that at least one gamer will have an idea that could change the way those scientists and engineers approach the problem. I'm not saying that the gamer can change the world all by him or herself, but if you give them a chance I believe they can be a big help.

Positives of Video Games

"We can play a game that simulates killing people." This was definitely a statement that was shocking for me to think about. Even though I have been playing games like these all my life. It was still shocking to think about. I don't think that killing people in real life is a good thing. I also understand that today's lecture wasn't completely bashing video games in general, but I would like to take a brief moment to defend video games and offer some positive things that video games can do for people.

Video games have become more of a social activity. People of all ages can play games with their friends who are thousands of miles away. These people can actually build very healthy friendships through playing these video games with their friends. A good example comes from Spring Break last year. Me and two of my friends drove 18 hours to Colorado to visit a guy that none of us had ever spoken to in person. My roommate had played League of Legends with the guy for years and always said that one day they'd hang out in person. So they did. These guys had built a friendship based off of League of Legends. Now I know that most people think of video games as bloody and gory and terrible, but you have to admit this story is pretty cool.

Video games have a few other bright sides as well as relationship building.

1. Development of hand-eye coordination
2. Reaction Time
3. Problem Solving
4. Overall brain development
5. Increase creativity
6. Outlet for stress

So the next time you think negatively about video games just remember that it's not all bad.

One Grand Night of Television

Ratings for Sunday Night

I just want to quickly discuss the night of television that was Sunday night February 10, 2013, and how it was absolutely impossible to keep up with it on social media. Last night on there was The Grammy's, The Walking Dead, college basketball, and plenty of other new episodes for shows that I don't know about. It got to the point where I literally turned to my roommate and asked him, "who did this to us?" I made the decision very early that The Grammy's were definitely not as important to me as The Walking Dead. I also made the decision that tweeting during an episode as important as last nights episode was not going to happen. So I definitely felt left out when it came to the social media aspect of everything that was going on that night. I just made sure that I got to see Fun perform and that's all I needed from The Grammy's. It became clear to me very quickly that I was among the minority after making that decision. There were plenty of tweets and Facebook posts about The Grammy's and they continued even while The Walking Dead was on. My theory is that most people decided to watch The Grammy's and catch a re-airing of the new Walking Dead episode later on that night. So I did get that left out feeling, but it's okay because I'm still happy with my decision. I'd rather watch zombies being dismembered than a dumb awards show any day.