Media & Society-Week Two

 Topic One

-I’ve never used Twitter before so I’m still unfamiliar with all of the intricacies but three of the people/groups I followed were:

* Claire Hummel (@shoomlah) because she’s someone whose work I greatly admire who works in one of the fields that I hope to make a career in. I love seeing what inspires and interests the artists I look up to and getting a glimpse into the process of someone I consider to be the at the top of the field.

* Nicholas Kristof (@NickKristof) is a journalist who is a household name in my home and whose reporting I find insightful and interesting.

* Johnny Hollow (@JohnnyHollow) is one of my absolute favorite musical groups and I want to stay up to date on shows and releases of theirs.

-While I’m on Facebook multiple times every day, I’ll admit to using it to see other people’s news far more than sharing my own (while I was pretty active for the first 6 or 7 years I was on Facebook, now it’s pretty standard for me to go about two years in between profile picture changes and posts are few and far in between), so I don’t ‘share’ things very often. The last thing I shared was a video of an intricate glass wine carafe in the shape of an octopus, because I love wine, cephalopods, and unique craftsmanship.  I generally ‘like’ my friends’ more personal posts, such as announcements about promotions, trips, birthdays, etc. My mother shares a lot of science news and tags me if she thinks I’ll find certain pieces interesting (I always do). I almost never post news stories.

-I feel like while social media definitely can enhance one’s ability to take part in activism and democracy, whether or not it actually does is a very different question. I feel like there’s a definite trend of “slacktivism”, as some call it, where the people can fall into the trap of doing small, easy things online and getting a sense of participation when in fact, what they’ve done has a negligible effect on the success of their cause. I, myself, have fallen into this trap. It’s hard for me to get a sense of whether or not this has impacted the actual, real-world participation in democracy of myself and the people in my social network. Would I be more likely to call my representatives about an issue or go out campaigning for a candidate I support if I couldn’t sign a change.org petition or the like? I’m really not sure. I do still physically participate when it comes to certain causes, occasionally, and I always vote in local and national elections so I try to not be too much of a “slacktivist” myself. For a somewhat recent example, my mother and I were aware of the Women’s Marches scheduled to occur across the country but we had been very busy and weren’t planning on going. However, when we saw photos from our friends on the East coast (and a couple of my friends in England, even) on social media and the general news coverage, we decided to drop our plans of taking it easy for the day and jumped in the car up to Portland. I do think if it hadn’t been for the sense of something significant happening nationally and globally we got from both social media and the news, we probably would have stayed home that day.

Topic Two

-I found Sherry Turkle’s talk very interesting because almost my entire experience of socializing through technology has been positive. There have been many times where I’ve been physically isolated from friends and peers where email felt like a lifeline to others. Living in sparsely populated rural areas, moving a lot, and having somewhat obscure interests for much of my childhood and early adolescence meant that I frequently had no-one that I enjoyed spending time with in ‘the real world’ but my computer could both connect me with old friends and find online communities where I could discuss my various geeky interests with others. When I lived in England, Skype allowed me to talk to family and friends ‘face-to-face’ and Facebook Chat allowed me to have 3am ‘conversations’ with my friends. I struggled with severe homesickness while living over there and I can only imagine how much worse it would’ve been without Skype and Facebook. An important thing Sherry Turkle talks about, however, is a modern trend towards not being able to handle being alone. Perhaps because I was an only child, home-educated, and an introvert being alone has always felt very comfortable to me. Certainly there are times when I like to socialize, either out and about physically or just online, but I actually always find a need to have time by myself afterwards. Her point about being able to control interactions through digital channels of communication is a very interesting one to me. I can see how this can have negative but also positive consequences for communication. Sometimes, especially in a disagreement, I’m thankful that communicating via text or chat allows me to take a step back and calm down. I do feel like she has a point about this causing us to edit the version of ourselves others encounter, however I’ve been on both sides of an argument where someone blurts out something that they ‘didn’t mean to say’ that has had lasting, harmful effects on the relationship that can’t be repaired. I feel like digital communication can sometimes give us room to take a breath and really consider our words before we put them out into the world.

I don’t have any ‘device free’ zones in my home or blocks of time especially devoted to no technology but I feel that if I’m out with a friend, I don’t look at my phone. If someone in my family wants to talk to me about something, I put done my Kindle and give them my undivided attention. I feel like it’s just a basic question of etiquette. We may not have a societal set of manners for this new era but I feel we’d all benefit if we did.

-Games…I love games. I’ve been playing computer games for my whole life. The games I have on any given device is only limited by that device’s capabilities. Over the years, I’ve downloaded or installed easily 100+ games onto the various computers I’ve owned. My phone’s limited memory is mostly dedicated to music and photos, so there’s only two games on it (Blossom Blast Saga and Plague, Inc.). My Kindle Fire requires serious data management because it’s memory is also limited, so I regularly cycle through games on it. At this point I’ve gone through dozens of them, but currently I can only have four (Gardenscapes, Cooking Dash, Fishdom, and The Lost Lands).  I enjoy all sorts of games but strategy and adventure are my two favorite genres. I especially enjoy games where you build cities, empires, etc.

I enjoy games as a time-killer or a short reward after accomplishing something (e.g. I just finished doing the dishes or writing a paper, so I’ll sit down and play Gardenscapes for 15 minutes before moving on to my next task) and as a way to experience new, imaginative worlds. The Myst games were and continue to be some of my favorite games ever.

-I probably spend 30-35 hours a week either on social media or playing a digital game. I feel like I am part of a community on social media, I do like and comment on my friends’ posts and I use Facebook Chat a lot. When it comes to gaming, I always like the solo games.

I’ve never seen the appeal of MMORPGs, gaming is always ‘me time’ to me, especially during the many times I’ve worked in customer service, after spending nine hours straight dealing with people who are frequently demanding (or in a bad mood and find the cashier who can’t talk back a great release for their frustrations), escaping to a digital world where I can solve puzzles, explore new worlds, or become the ruler of an empire in blissful solitude was a useful way to de-stress. The idea of spending my time at home talking with people, even just on World of Warcraft, simply sounds exhausting.