Confessions of an Online User

For my first class blog entry, I would like to share to you my personal online journey so far--- the social networking sites that I have had an account with and the ones that I use at the moment. This does not include the gaming websites and the sites that I usually visit. This blog entry will be more focused on social networking sites such as blogging, networking, et cetera.

I spend a disturbingly huge amount of time online. I have not been keeping track of the exact quantity of hours, but let's just say that as long as I have an Internet connection I'm most likely to be online. So here is my 25 cents worth of Internet experience that takes a big chuck out of my everyday life. I confess, I am an Internet Geek (if there's such a word).

Love at first sight

My very first online account was with Friendster. Yes, Friendster! Although I'm no longer using it, I kept it for sentimental reasons. The tiny detail at the bottom of my profile page stating that I have been a member since August 2004 will remind me of my rookie years. Oh, the early years of being online, can you still remember yours?

I remember having a competition with my friends when it comes to Friendster. Who collected the most number of strangers--- uhm, ‘friends’? Who has the coolest profile page? And the list goes on.

I have also tried other networking sites, pre-Facebook era. I had MySpace, Bebo, Virb, hi5 and more (let’s stop here or I’ll embarrass myself further). Although I wasn’t able to fully use them, I just made an account, had a browse, then left and forget. Is this normal or what? I have also had aMultiply account, it has served me well when it came to uploading photos and keeping contact with my friends a few years ago. And then, there came the almighty Facebook!

Flash forward to 2010, I have ‘evolved’ from the sticky caps typing teenager on Friendster and MySpace, to this overly obsessive Facebook-user of our generation. I admit, Facebook is the first site that I visit everyday, what’s yours?

If I can remember it right, I think I created my Facebook account around 2006. I never used it as excessively as I do now until most of my friends migrated to it. Now almost everything and everyone depends on Facebook. I have been thinking of leaving for good, deactivate my account and go back to reality. However, in our Facebook generation, isn't it that Facebook suddenly became our ‘reality’, well, somehow? Thoughts?

And so, I created a list of pros and cons about Facebook. I know that this may not be an exhausted list, but this is purely based on my personal view on the site. It would be nice to see your own view on this. So go on, make your own list and we can compare notes.

PROS

1. Keeping contact with friends, family and acquaintances, as well as expanding your network. In which, it also leads to number 2.

2. Stalking them.

3. Facebook’s status update feature can be your outlet to voice out your thoughts on random mundane things.

4. Being invited and to keep tabs on the latest events. Plus Points to your used-to-be non-existent popularity level.

5. Adding your crush/es and use it as a confidence building weapon to advance your own personal motives (as what I’ve been told).

6. Pointless applications, mostly illogical quizzes and very addictive games to boost your happiness level--- as well as helping you master your procrastination skill.

7. And much more.

CONS

1. High chance of ending your relationship with friends, family and acquaintances. In return, you are building a strong bond with your laptop/computer and your Internet connection.

2. If you fail in your university degree or lose your current job, you can always rely on the path of the bright ‘stalking’ career. All those hours of training must pay off in one way or another. However, don’t forget that it might bounce back to you, that is, your privacy is also jeopardised by the prying eyes of your ‘friends’.

3. There is also a great chance that you end up ranting too much on your Facebook page. Either:

a. You will end up annoying your friends because of your stat flooding, which in turn result to losing a number of them.

b. You become your own antagonist.

c. You publish too much information which fuels number 2.

d. All of the above, plus more.

4. RSPV-ing to events is now redefined. Also, you end up having too many ‘events’ to attend that you become this wild social animal. If you are the one having the event, there is a big chance that there will be 6000+ people keen to attend (you might have to rethink your next birthday party).

5. Huge chance you will end up having online relationships--- just online, no real life boyfriends/girlfriends (which may be good or bad to some).

6. As stated above, you become a Master Procrastinator, which also entails a great chance of you failing your university degree or losing your job--- Bachelor of WWW Dot major in Social Networking Sites, minor in Facebook, and a current Masters degree in Procrastination.

7. Much more as well--- unfortunately.

Blogging

I had my first ‘Hello World!’ in August 2006 on my first blog with Blogger. However, I have put up and put down numerous blogs over the years, for privacy, personal and online-bipolar-changing-mind reasons. I have also tried LiveJournal and WordPress but I stayed with Blogger back then.

At the moment, I believe Tumblr is the perfect blog (micro-blogging/RSS/bookmarking) site for me. I do not like sharing thoughts and typing huge amount of texts about my boring life to strangers (or so I thought). With Tumblr you can post and repost interesting photos, quotes, videos that may or may not be related to your thoughts and emotions--- a very subtle way of documenting your current state of mind. Also, I find the Tumblr’s interface to my liking, minimalist blogging and such. Like the other bookmarking sites that I have used (WeHeartIt, StubleUpon, 1x, etc) Tumblr somehow became my main base to be inspired and discover interesting things online. Well, that’s my personal view on blogging sites.

On the other hand, when it comes to micro-blogging, I have Twitter and Plurk. I tried Plurk for a couple of weeks since my friends overseas use them, but I gave it up since the pressure of maintaining your ‘karma points’ beats the whole point of blogging. I used to enjoy the early days of Twitter, when marketers, spammers and celebrities have yet to plague it. I guess I feel that the enormous amount of people and information on Twitter killed my interest. Now, as much as I want to delete my Twitter account I’m keeping it for research and observation purposes.

My other online whereabouts

At the moment, I can say that I am an avid user of deviantArt, Vimeo, Youtube, LOOKBOOK.nu and Flickr, in addition to Facebook and Tumblr. I am still keeping track of the latest social networking websites that will somehow interest me. I also started using TeuxDeux, a browser-based To-Do application and The Hype Machine; as well as, Formspring.me for entertainment purposes. So far here is my list of the sites that I can remember in which I have had an account and left in addition to the ones I already mentioned: Dipdive, Last.fm, Chicopia, Lexposure, LinkedIn, Shelfari, 43Things and much more.

What’s yours like?

-A-

The SixthSense

Here's the video about the technology which I mentioned in lecture today when we were talking about the move towards a more intimate interface.



I believe that this is the future of user interfaces and while I know that there will be many kinks (for example, privacy issues) to work out, I'm still really looking forward to a day when this kind of technology becomes accessible to the masses, and we move one step closer to becoming cyborgs.

Cyborg Gear

Along the lines of this afternoon's lecture:

DIY Wearable Computer Turns You Into a Cyborg

Makes you wonder...

An interesting article that I chanced upon. Definitely worth a read.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-10796584

Facebook...One for the stalkers

Let’s FACE it; Mark Zuckerberg has created a contemporary voyeuristic monster! In other words we are all stalkers on a day to day basis, having a sly peak at peoples’ lives behind their back, some of whom we have never met or have no intention of meeting. Just the pure satisfaction of seeing a hot girl pout her lips in her profile picture with two of her best friends, or to see a 'jacked' guy on steroids flexing his muscles for the tiny 5x8cm box is so worth the 5-10 hours we all spend on facebook a day.

We are instantaneously informed of a person's persona by their facebook profile pictures. This vomit on the page display of personality is further emphasised by their favourite songs, movies and things that other people have created but that individuals use to express their individualism.

Have you noticed that girls are always with two or three or twenty friends in their profile pictures? This can be taken from evolution as females evolved as social animals. However it becomes clear that the 'hotter' or prettier the female, the less friends occupy the little box as it is blocked by a singular (full make-up and hair done with clevelage at its peak on display) female face...striking a pose. The same generalisation can be said for males who strive to project their masculinity by either flexing their muscles, capturing themselves in a hard rugby tackle, or simply having a few beers with their mates.

The funny thing is that people will often argue that their profile pics reflect their everyday lives and they are not staged at all, but we all spend most of our time working, studying and sleeping but yet none of us have profile pictures of these three things or any other normal activities that comprise for a vast majority of our everyday lives. We always project ourselves in a strange, amazing, awkward and above all things else, stunning form. We are not all models, celebrities and athletes, so why do we project ourselves in this manner?

Just to kind of reiterate..

..That girls do play games. There have been at least two mentions of Starcraft II on this blog, and here's a third. I play Starcraft II and I am a girl. To go on a tangent away from the intention of this blog I feel all those in the world of Blizzard and battle.net should exchange usernames so we can create a super-army and take over the world.

Back to my cave now..

OMG IT'S A CHICK ?1?!

Firstly, to avoid confusion/excitement, I am a male, but the nonsense in the title is unfortunately something that most online gamers would have come across at one point or another. Sadly some gamers are so excited about the prospect of a female talking in a game they are playing on that they are oblivious to the fact that the voice is clearly that of prepubescent boy rather than a girl.

I am an ex WoW (World of Warcraft) addict. I was in a fairly serious raiding guild and played a part in the recruitment of new members so would generally have some relationship built up with the newbies in the guild. Our guild leader, being quite the joker, had a voice masking program to make him sound like a chick when he spoke, he wasn't some freak trying to pass off as a girl for anything sexual, he just did it once in awhile for a laugh. I won't lie though, the voice sounded pretty hot. Whenever we would take newbies on a guild raid he would turn the voice on, almost every time when the newbie would hear his voice, I or someone else would get a private message saying something along the lines of "woah, the guild leader is a girl?" I would play along and say yes etc and then usually get a follow up message of "is she hot?" and depending how much effort we felt like making at the time, we could usually make these people get very interested in this supposed "chick" and they were willing to accept all kinds of ludicrous stories we came up with simply because they were to stoked that they were potentially living out some fantasy of finding a hot girl on WoW.

While we look at reasons why girls may not be as much into games as guys, I think examples of things such as the above are potentially one of the key turn offs. I have no idea what it's like to be female, but I imagine having every second person gush over my gender would be less than appealing. Not to sound like the "White Knight" but I've seen many a conversation where I have put people onto ignore lists etc simply because of the rubbish that starts flowing from some people when a female enters the fray so I can only imagine it sucks even more to be the female. What doesn't help is the huge number of guys using female avatars, trying to cyber people or other rubbish in attempts to score free gold. This is something touched on in the reading where I believe they are called "starfuckers", I'm pretty sure most "starfuckers" I came across in WoW, whoring their avatar out in the middle of Orgrimmar, were males, either that or WoW has the most forward women in the world in terms of sexual advances. Female players that I actually regularly played with on WoW tended to keep their gender pretty much on the low, some choosing male avatars just to avoid the immaturity and not having to deal with PM's whenever they walked through towns asking for cyber etc

While WoW does have a huge user base of highly intelligent people (perusing the forums you come across some really, really bright people) it is also notorious for having some terribly immature people also, so I don't want people who don't game online to get the idea that all online gaming is full of people like the above. What I wonder is that, when looking at the numbers of girl gamers in comparison to guy gamers, is how many girls did we lose from that list because they were turned away from the environment and how many are masquerading as guys so as to avoid it. Obviously I can't get much concrete evidence on that, but this is just what has been on my mind with the gender/gaming topic so I thought I'd throw it out there.

Double clicks starcraft2.exe