You want to be my friend?

After our lecture from a few weeks ago that discussed gender and how we represent ourselves with photos on such social networking sites such as Facebook (is even owning a bebo account cool anymore?) got me thinking of how we use these sites as a social tool amongst our friends. With a conscious view of Facebook I started to take a more critical stance in how we portray and interact through this technology. It seems this social tool is almost abused or exploited to place individuals into a social status ranking. Just browsing through my friends on Facebook its revealed that a large amount have at least 300 contacts... and counting. Who actually talks to 300 people on a daily or even weekly basis? Are these people actually connected with a "friend" in a physical, tangible friendship in the real world? Maybe this social activity is redefining the term of friendship. Many occasion, people I know vaguely add me as a "friend" on Facebook yet when seen in the flesh simply ignore you or avoid the awkward interaction with some one they knew from high school or a party but are apparently friends through the cyberspace world. Maybe this dependency on facebook as a social networking tool is creating a phobia of real life human interaction, or maybe just a statement to boost the egos of the socialites amongst us.

YOU PLAY STARCRAFT?!

So Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty came out this week.

-cue fanboyism-

OR, in my case, fangirlism
Yes, I happen to be female.

I am by no means an expert on this game, or games in general, really. And I really wouldn't call myself a 'gamer chick' (somehow I find this title slightly degrading) but I have to say, I was as excited about this game as my brother or my male friends.
I grew up on the original Starcraft as much as any male gamer did.

However, apparently, Starcraft + girl = shock and confusion (and very occasionally, admiration).
Every time i engage in a conversation with a group of males about starcraft strategies or even just indicate that I know the names of the units, literally everyone freezes and the heads turn towards me in slow motion.
"YOU PLAY STARCRAFT?!"

On Tuesday(the day it came out), I was lining up for my copy of Starcraft II (incidentally, the line was filled with males) I received quite a few odd stares and one guy even did a double take when he saw me holding a copy of the game. Their expressions were easy to read: "YOU PLAY STARCRAFT?!"

SO I thought it would be a very good starting point for a discussion on gaming and gender and the supposed lack of female gamers.

I think it would be worthwhile considering briefly what it means to be a 'gamer'.
Does one qualify as long as they play games?

"NO" would be the outraged answer of a 'hardcore gamer'.

So what games do you have to play in order to be considered a gamer?
Do games like Super mario brothers, Final Fantasy, Pokemon or Tekken (to name a few) count? Because I see no lack of a female audience for these games. Gaming consoles are common nowadays in most households and played with my females as much as males.

I see social norms/stereotypes as well as the deeply ingrained social psyche as the root of the problem of the lack of females in games like Call of Duty, Halo or Starcraft. To put it simply, war games. Most girls seem to naturally not have any interest guns, machinery, armour, aliens or intergalactic war. But perhaps it is because they are taught, subconsciously, not to? As children, they are not given transformer robots, toy soldiers, toy guns or spaceships to play with. They are given soft toys or barbie dolls. Social norms mean that girls cannot identify with such games because they did not grow up being encouraged to have an interest in such things.

Also, I think girls find it more difficult to get into games such as Starcraft or Call of Duty is that they cannot relate to the characters.  It is dominated by male characters becasue women traditionally do not take military roles. Consequently, girls do not gain any sense of empowerment in playing such games.

This brings forth the issue of female characters in games. They usually take on a more passive role as either healers or, if they are part of the attack force, mages (which relates to the age old idea of women as witches). Examples include Aeris in Final Fantasy VII and Lulu in Final Fantasy X.
In Starcraft, there are not many female units. The medics are female. They speak girlishly and of course, allude to nurses who are also traditionally female. Dropship pilots are also female. They cannot deal any damage, it is again a passive role.
Of course it is not to say that female characters do not have more active roles in games. However, they are still a minority and there are not enough to attract a large female audience.

I'm rambled on long enough. One last thing:
It was mentioned in the lecture this week that perhaps the reason males play more/are better at games is because of growing up with older male role models such as older brothers. I think this is also a truth for girls with older brothers. They are, it seems, more likely to have an interest in games.
I am one of those people i guess.

_

Let's face(book) it...

I live a parallel virtual reality. One, that I'm ashamed to admit, I've been sucked into so deeply it feels like I'll never be able to get out it. What started out as fodder for some sort of vague amusement and peaked as my guilty pleasure, has completed its dreaded cycle and ended now as an obsessive addiction - both the bane and basis of my e-existence. And I'm both ashamed and glad to say that I'm not alone.

In all honesty, the last thing we needed was another platform to form our identities, market ourselves and make friends - trust me, real life is enough (Ask anyone who's ever been through adolescence and they'll vouch for this). Yet it appears that almost every regular Facebook user works hard to try and create and then sustain their online identity - so that it is always an apt indication of who they really are. Which then begs the question who are they, really? In some cruel twist of fate, it appears that the roles have become reversed, and grossly so. Ever heard a comment like "that is SO going on facebook" or "omg new profile pic!" after taking a photo? Sounds all too familiar? Yeah, I had a feeling. It’s almost scary how determined we all are to cement and sustain our online personas as an apparent extension of our real life ones. But that isn’t necessarily how it plays out. Instead, what we we’re actually doing is changing and shaping our online identities into the way we want to be perceived and then attempting to recreate and reflect that in our daily ‘real’ existence.

We've come to manipulate and alter our social existence to feed our other virtual one. So is our Facebook profile really a reflection of who we are? Or do we strive instead in real life to live up to some distorted definition we've created of ourselves?

I don't know about the rest of us...but Mark Zuckerberg, you have created a monster.

How to make a brain slushie...or at least grab the attention of 4chan

So during my skimming of Australian News a couple of weeks ago, the image of a young girl's face full of tears and the out of control phenomenon of internet 'trolling' caught my eye. This 11 year old posted a video on Youtube ranting about 'popping a glock' into all her haters mouths making a 'brain slushie' pointing out that they were all just jealous of her looks and whatnot. This attracted the attention of 4chan 'trollers' who harrassed and cyber-bullied the tween. All the drama provided much material for the Aussie media to trigger a debate on the controlling of internet content and its access.

My first reaction: "Where are her parents?" and "Wow, she looks older than 11". I pretty much missed the point of the article and thought more about the wonderful choice of words the tween used. In retrospect it makes me wonder; how net savy parents are nowadays, restricting kids on the net as a good idea (?) and the risks we all face when putting our opinion out there on the wild wild web whether it be through Youtube or blogging. Obviously this girl's parents aren't too up date with the goings on of the virtual world (and their own daughter's). Her mother quote "does not go on the computer" thus could hardly judge what is appropriate, so scratch the first two off my train of thoughts. And this girl had no shame telling her haters to get 'AIDS...(from her)..none existent penis'. Risk? What risk?

Hey, she's only 11, so her maturity level probably isn't that high so we look to the parents to ensure such incidents don't happen. Sure, you can't protect your kids from every danger on the internet but you can at least implement measures and educate yourself on the use of the internet. Oh and get to know your kids I suppose. I have seen the generational barrier that causes many parents to avoid the internet, computers and technology in general like it's the plague but I believe it is a necessity for parents to get to know the basic ins and outs of the internet because cyber-bullying is real. As for the drawbacks of sharing public opinion? I'm sure there's a privacy option for most sites (correct me if I'm wrong). If ya wanna go public, remember that everyone has an opinion and trollers will troll out of the share joy of getting a reaction. Just don't let your 11 year old daughter share theirs publicly or you'll have to step in.

Sometimes, people just don't learn.

Female? Male?

“Hi, my name is Amy. I am 19 years old, a straight, Asian (South Korean to be specific) female. I am a power gamer. Wow, CS, you name it, and I probably would have played it. :)”

With the information I've given you here, you might imagine me reliving the photo above at home, 24/7. Well... Surprisingly I’m just an average girl and I do have a social life.

Some non-gamers think that people play games because they are bored out of their minds due to their incapability to socialise, or if one chooses to play games over going out to socialise, he/she is called an addict. I DON’T THINK IT’S FAIR. Gaming is a form of entertainment, just like watching TV or going to the movies. I understand that games are more addictive than those other forms of entertainment, but it doesn’t mean you become an addict once you click ‘play’. So yeah. Wipe off that stereotype please :)

My direct influence that got me to start Wow and CS (the apparently MASCULINE games) was my boyfriend. I know of many females who have been introduced to masculine games by their boyfriends (because he played more of games than of her :P)and most of them do enjoy it. Whenever I say I play online games with my boyfriend, the response is ‘LOL’. We may do less ‘staring in to the eyes’ than the non-gamer couples but I would say we just have one more type of entertainment to enjoy.

I’ve always liked games since I was a little kid. I’ve always had some kind of gaming device in my life as far as I can remember (maybe just because I’m an Asian). I was never given a Barbie doll to play with despite the fact I have 2 older sisters (they never did either), but more of Lego and Nintendo. It might be that my upbringing has influenced me to have more male friends than female friends since childhood.

I don’t like being left out of a conversation. I mean who does. And it is a common experience for girls to be left out of a conversation with a bunch of guys, talking about games. So why not join them? Why should we be a GIRL and be left out of a conversation? Why should we make sandwiches and prepare drinks while the guys sit on their butt and play games with their mates? Maybe I’m PERFORMING male gender here, to prove the equality of males and females.

Well I’ll quit my blabbering here.
I’m extremely sorry if I offended anyone. Cheers :D

Ethical Issues around mobile privacy

From Lookout, a mobile privacy "watchblog" some alarming privacy statistics for mobile applications:

• 29% of free applications on Android have the capability to access a user’s location, compared with 33% of free applications on iPhone

• Nearly twice as many free applications have the capability to access user’s contact data on iPhone (14%) as compared to Android (8%)

• 47% of free Android apps include third party code, while that number is 23% on iPhone * third party code enables custom ads to be served and/or analytic behaviour tracking.

A user's location, call history and personal contact list is highly sensitive data, as opposed to web cookies stored in your browser. It's only bound to increase drastically over time. Here are a few "topics" to consider:

1. What implications does this have for mobile phone users? How about for advertisers and mobile providers?
2. Does this affect your opinion of favorite iPhone or Android apps -- in particular free ones? Should mobile app developers take it upon themselves to help reverse this trend?
3. How can we as users of this technology stop this violation of privacy? Through government, our purchasing decisions, or both?

Julian Assange

Interesting and, given this week's events, timely interview with Wikileaks founder Julian Assange.

Women In Gaming

As a gamer who has an older sister who consistently is able to best him at games such as Tekken, Ridge Racer and World of Warcraft, I found the idea that women find it harder to get into games which have high access barriers ("hardcore" games) extremely interesting.

Our parents were employed when we were younger, and so my mother bought a NES for my sister and I when we were extremely young. I must have been about two or three, and my sister four or five, when we were casually smashing away at Street Fighter 2, trying to pull off Chun Li's Spinning Bird Kick. My sister is now better at most video games than I am (and most of her male friends as well) and I have an inkling that our early exposure to video gaming could be the reason.

Most girls aren't given a Nintendo or a Playstation when they are younger, socialised instead to play with dolls or whatever else they are given. Video gaming is seen as violent and, by corollary, non-feminine.

Now fast-forward about twenty years. In a society where failure is seen as the worst thing that could possibly happen, we tend to forget that "sucking" is extremely important in the learning curve.



It is rare that you will find something which you are good at immediately. As a kid, you are allowed to suck. Adults don't have the luxury of sucking: it is something which we are to fear and avoid at all costs. Thus, women who haven't been primed to playing video games from an early age end up in a similar state to your mother when she tries to send an email: confused, inept and feeling that they will never be able to move past their ineptitude. They aren't given the space to become good, and they abandon the pursuit of video gaming.

This, I feel, is the reason why there are fewer women who play video games.

Social Gaming

It was mentioned in the Monday lecture, that gaming is a completely antisocial activity. I agree that there are definitely antisocial gamers who spend large amounts of time on their own, but there are also people who spend the same amount of time on their own reading books or watching TV, which may also be considered antisocial.

There are also gamers who play for the purely social aspect of it. Gamers like myself like to go to an internet cafe several times a week with friends to play games such as Heroes of Newerth or Dota. These games are fast paced team games that involve a high degree of team work and conversation to ensure victory. It is not uncommon for people to be shouting at commands at each other or congratulating each other for a well played maneuver. The atmosphere is much like that of a sports field.

I agree that there are many gamers who are antisocial, but there are also many gamers out there who will game solely as a social activity.

James

facebook - a mirror reflecting yourself?

Facebook has become a necessity and practically everyone in the modern world is on facebook. It isn't a casual move but has become a symbol of being 'cool' and modern. Facebook is no longer a tool for communication but has become a platform where people can portray to the entire world, what they are or what they 'intend' to be.

For example, people having many friends on facebook are thought as being highly social and that they would make a good friend to you and then you add them as well. But who knows whether such people know everyone on their facebook friend list or have they randomly added people to increase their friend list? On the other hand, people who do not have good profile pictures and have less friends on facebook are thought to be reserved and backward. Isn't facebook really deceptive? How can you judge a person by looking at their profiles?

Newspaper reports also mention that too many employers these days stalk their employees on facebook, gather their personal information and fire them from their job the very next day. Click here for the article. This, however, is a bad tool to judge an individual's style of working or behavior because who knows whether or not are you a part of their open profile or their 'limited profile'? Basing judgements on partial truth or many a times on just a 'portrayed image' may deprive the deserving candidate from a good job experience. Too many workers have lost their jobs because of such stalking being done by employees.

People should remember that one should not judge a book by its cover as what may seem to be the truth may not actually be the truth. Befriending random people by looking at there attractive profiles can prove to be extremely unsafe since such people are very quick at hacking passwards and messing up with your profile. An attractive profile, good pictures and certainly many mutual friends are not a guarantee of you knowing that person. Its better to be non judgemental than juding people through such social networking sites, both for personal and professional use.

Obama's 'kill switch' has been approved.

US Senate committee has approved the new 'kill switch' bill to help prevent cyber terrorism. This bill means that at any time Obama can ask internet providers to shut down the internet at any given time and up to a period of 120 days. After this period, under an amendment in the legislation, it must be approved by the committee for extension. Within this bill, the internet is being described as an American 'national asset'. This has been deeply criticized by many academics.

This 'kill switch' was proposed on the 19th of June 2010 and was approved on the 25th of June. This bill seems to have been put through very quickly with only 6 days in-between being proposed and being approved. Perhaps too avoid as much scrutiny as possible.

The implications of implementing the 'kill switch' on America and the rest of the world may lead to disastrous outcomes if this kill switch is actually executed. It may mean that websites such as facebook who are based in the States, will not be able to be accessed for long periods of time. This would especially hinder facebook addicts or any other providers that are shutdown. This will not only be annoying to the general internet user, but many corporations will lose 'x' amount of dollars a day as they have become so reliant on the internet for doing business. Will they be able to claim back this money that they have lost in business? Probably not.

So if there are all these bad implications why have a 'kill switch' switch in the first place? In the bill the internet is being described as a 'national asset' of America. Therefore, it must be protected from terrorists. They seem to think the best way to do this is to shut it down so no one can access private government files or anything else America wants to protect and deems as a national security issue. However, they may not have realised that this itself will instil terror into citizens not just in America but around the globe. Playing right into terrorist hands or even doing the work for them, as they will be the only people to benefit from the closure of the net. This bill is also interfering with the concept of the 'open web'. America may have jumped the gun on this idea and may end with up with unwanted and unintended consequences.

Social Gaming (Not an Oxymoron)

The other day the point of Gaming as an Anti Social exercise was raised. As an avid gamer myself I decided to look at my own gaming habits and see how this related to me.

In this new tech culture it seems that everyone is connected to everyone else, wireless networks connect households to the greater Web and online community. My flat alone has 7 computers networked not to mention the Playstation and other gaming bits and bobs. We are constantly gaming together and it is in my experience that it brings us closer together as a small household, be it as entertainment, a source of friendly competition or a common ground for conversation.

Online gaming can be a social experience, sure there may not be the physical interaction but that is not to say there is no interaction at all.
First and foremost online gaming is a platform where instantly you are linked to others who have at the minimum, one common interest with yourself. As a stepping stone one can see gaming as a facilitator for new relationships.

For example I used to play World of Warcraft (WoW), which is categorized Massively Multiplayer Online game (MMO for short). I found myself using it not only for entertainment but to socialize, with in game chat I fount myself logging to have a chat and catch up with my Guild mates (a guild being like a player association working together for co-operative play) with the actual gaming being used as a background for this conversation. My flat mates can attest to me blabbering away into a headset talking bout the most ordinary of things and general banter in addition to game related talk. Even after quitting WoW I still regularly talk/chat to those friends I made whist gaming and regularly play other games with them.

I hardly think that games are anti social; in fact I consider games to be just another forum to meet people without the physical boarders that restrict us normally, as the Internet expands so does our interactions with the ever increasing pool of online gamers.

Religion of Apple + iPhone

Excellent piece about the "Religion of Apple" and the 'Jesus' mysticism associated w/the iPhone.

Note: You'll need to be logged in @the Uni (or the library proxy) to access this to save and/or print

Marketing prof Russell Belk of York University and Gulnur Tumbat of San Francisco State study the parallels between Apple's fanbase and the followers of religion, assembling a framework for Apple's mystical mythology. They believe the entire Apple brand is based on four key myths. Heidi Campbell, a scholar at Texas A&M aggregated their work for a recent article

"How the iPhone became divine"

Here are Campbell's four key "myths" about Apple:

1. a creation myth highlighting the counter-cultural origin and emergence of the Apple Mac as a transformative moment
2. a hero myth presenting the Mac and its founder Jobs as saving its users from the corporate domination of the PC world
3. a satanic myth that presents Bill Gates as the enemy of Mac loyalists;
4. and, finally, a resurrection myth of Jobs returning to save the failing company...

Abstract: This article explores the labeling of the iPhone as the ‘Jesus phone’ in order to demonstrate how religious metaphors and myth can be appropriated into popular discourse and shape the reception of a technology. We consider the intertextual nature of the relationship between religious language, imagery and technology and demonstrate how this creates a unique interaction between technology fans and bloggers, news media and even corporate advertising.

In broad terms

Spending hours on end playing games, eyes glued to the screen, forgetting about real life while fighting battles, creating personalities, mastering adventures and fictitious skills in a virtual world is commonly considered as anti-social and therefore male.

 And though speaking in very broad and general terms here it might be worth asking what good it will do to get girls spending just as much time playing computer games? Besides the gaming industry making money from this rather big target group what will we achieve by researching female gaming behavior, finding ways to have them spend more time in front of a screen and thereby becoming what we deem anti-social (which besides being dubbed as male lacks a positive connotation)?

 The  gaming industry sells sex & violence to adolescence boys and comes up with ‘play dress up, cooking and decorating games’ (top of the list when searching for 'girl games’ on google) for young girls. So assuming girls and boys behave as expected by social norms and play the games targeted at them we’ll see an oh-so modern generation growing up in a digital age, being fed the same old stereotypes.

 Society may have advanced technically, but whether that technology has done our social interaction both online and in real life any good is still questionable. We may become anti-social creatures stuck with very clichéd perception of gender.

 Rather than wondering how we get girls and women to become more anti-social and get playing we might want to start pondering on the occurrence of some of the worst sexism and the manifestation of persistent gender stereotypes in the online and virtual world.

 

Gender/Games

I'm not going to lie, throughout the whole segment about gaming in todays lecture, all I could think about was Final Fantasy. Over the 13 Final Fantasy games, the protagonists have been male. The legendary game that is FF7 presented us with Cloud and his massive sword (perhaps another comment about gender symbolism in games..? ha), 9 had Zidane, 10 had Tidus and 12 had Vaan, just to name a few. It wasn't til the release of FF13 where the protagonist was in fact a female, Lightning.

I, myself, am a female gamer. I was given my first playstation for my 6th birthday and have had an interest in video games ever since. The Final Fantasy games have always been my favourite, as well as Diablo and a variety of FPS and RPG games. Even though I am female, having Lightning as my central character in FF13 was somewhat disconcerting. This could be due to a number of reasons. The first being that I am familiar with central male characters from the previous games. Another could be that since gaming is [apparently] seen as a more male activity and I have been gaming for the majority of my life, I have fallen into a similar method of thinking female characters are inferior to male characters and should be left in the background only used to heal (Thanks Aeris, FF7). Or maybe the familiarity of being female and controlling a female character was frustrating, i.e. I am not like her, at least when a guy is my central character there are blatant differences that separate us and the level of reality is limited. However, Lightning yields all the attributes all the other male protagonists from the Final Fantasy games have had, the only thing that really separates her is that she's a bit of an angsty, moody girl.

Anyway, I guess my point here is that maybe gender issues/roles/ideas are becoming more open and noticed in the world of gaming. FF13 took a pretty big risk in making Lightning the central character, and I can imagine there was a relatively high level of negative feedback just on that topic. Personally I did not really like it, but let's be honest, FF13 was pretty disappointing all together. Perhaps male gamers would enjoy playing as Lightning as there is that level of unreality for them, experiencing something new, something you can only do in the world of video games? Or the opposite, it could threaten their manhood? Or maybe they wouldn't even care. I hope there are some Final Fantasy fans out there who can comment on this.

Fading Gender Lines

From what I have seen in the lecture notes on gaming the research points to gender differences between the male and female sex in the virtual world of gaming. Yet this seems to be to an extent only at this point in time.

The study by Hartmann and Klimmt of 18-26 year old females looked at four elements that put females off certain games:

1. negitive representation of females in games (stereotyping and/or sexual objectification)
2. violence in games
3. lack of social interaction in 'action' games
4. competitive nature of many games

The least import factor was negitive representation in games and the most important factor was lack of social interaction. Females seem to what to be known as sexy indiviuals in their virtual life and this seems to be the same for male individuals as well to be protrayed as strong and heroic even if this is not how these particular men and woman aren't percived in real life.

What surprised me was that a lack of social interaction in games was the main deterent for females. I thought that it would have been the competitive nature of the games as that is typically a male thing. So I thought that they would have been put off from acting in these male ways. Yet the study by Royse and others found that female power users wanted to look sexy while kicking butt. The more emersion females have in this 'male dominated world' of gaming the more they grow fond of it.

Females seem to want to be sexy in this virtual world on both points here. They want to look sexy through their avatar and feel and look sexy while having a lot of power and skill in the game. A competitive nature seems to be embraced in these games. This was found in Bertozzi's study where males were more likely than females to assist a weaker player in the game. in the reading for this week too by Betozzi "You play like a girl!' the competitive nature of girls is brought up through the game of counter-strike. Woman clans who stick together in their groups percive other girls who are the weaker players as sluts as they try to get help that they know they can get through other male players and try to get ahead which is what these females clans are trying not to be. These females clans in counter-strike have percived themselves to have worked hard to get the status to play among the boys in a competitive nature without the discrimination of falling out of the typical schema of a woman. This schema says that woman should be 'warm, beautiful, caring and to be put on a pedastel'. These woman in these clans seem to get quite aggressive about it, some even say more so than men.

No matter how females tackle these games of having either a passive or active stratergy they want to compete with the males in the game. Females may want more social interaction in these games but this competitive nature of the games is how social interaction is done through these games, so it seems to be embraced by some woman who participate in these games, sometimes done in their own unique ways. This behaviour of competition in females shows that the gender lines are beginning to fade through this behaviour of wanting to look good in the virtual world of gaming and being percived to be good. Is this drawing any connections to how females and males are interacting in the real world (work, university etc...) in this day and age?

Semi-relevant musings on internet self-portraiture

DIY profile photos are a pretty familiar concept for anyone who has been near Bebo or Facebook. Most people have at least one Facebook friend who is an avid fan of the "flattering-above-angle-self-portrait", or perhaps the "flattering-high-contrast-webcam-photo", or even the "unflattering-low-contrast-low-angle-webcam-photo". Perhaps you are even one of these people. If so, that's cool.

(I totally didn't just alienate you.)

No, but seriously. Pretty much everyone with a camera light enough to hold without dropping it and snapping the lens off has tried it. While many people have this down to a finely honed talent (and are therefore harder to spot, since their photos are so well done it's like someone else actually did take them) there tends to be a signature style for this kind of arms-length photography.

1. The Flattering Above-Angle Pose. This is more popular with newcomers to the DIY profile pic. Turns out taking a photo from an angle so high it's like it was shot from a security camera makes an individual look more attractive. I'd post a link here, but seriously- just look on Bebo. Conveniently, this particular style of photo invites the occurence of Phenomenon 2.

2. The Visible Arm. This is what happens when you hold your phone/camera out at a flattering angle of choice, and the arm holding said device can't quite escape the camera. I mean, if you want a wide enough shot you're going to have to stretch your arm right out, right? You'll usually see The Visible Arm extending up towards the edge of the frame. A lot of people have developed admirable skill at avoiding The Arm (web-cam, tripod, and "balance camera on stack of books" methods certainly help) but you'll also find people who are blissfully unaware of it. And it's totally not embarrassing.

3. The High-Contrast Photo. Similarly to 1, this is more common with younger photo-takers and tends to fade out after they realize they're barely identifiable. The effect can be achieved in a number of ways. With post-processing such as Photoshop, by using a webcam with those fandangled settings that do exciting things, or simply by owning an unrealiable camera. Closely related to the Camera-Flash-Obscures-My-Face-In-Mirror self portrait.

Why do people take these kinds of photos of themselves? The kind I'm talking about in particular are the ones so unrealistic it's fascinating. Surely if you have any real-life contacts then people will know what you really look like, thus rendering your carefully arranged amateur modelling photos somewhat pointless. I don't mean to bash people who take photos of themselves- I mean, everyone with a camera has tried the arms-length photo before.

But... people seem to have developed an obsession with their online personas.

People want a photo that's going to look good in the thumbnail that's going to be appearing next to every comment they leave. For a lot of people, The Profile has become an aesthetic statement (of the soulllll) where for others it is merely a contact card. The amateur self-portrait is an awesome way to look at people's views of themselves. There's a weird kind of self-consciousness revealed when someone posts a photo so carefully orchestrated as to present his or herself in a particular way. Incidentally, it's interesting to see who posts clearly self-shot photos of themselves, and who refuses to. Some people find it embarassing to post photos where they appear to be consciously presenting themselves as attractive, or hardcore, or whatever.

And remember: just because eHow says it's all good to get professional photos done primarily for your FB profile doesn't mean you should in any way do that. Please. Just stick to DIY.

Gaming = Good for you?

Hello all.

To start this Blog a basic definition of Brain Plasticity might be needed, I can give you the very basic one and if you have any further questions use Wiki or open a book. A good one is called "The Brain That Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science by Norman Doidge, M.D."

My definition:
Brain plasticity is the phrase used to describe how a brain can change itself to overcome difficulties/injuries or increase processing speed and power in well used areas. This speed and power is partly as a result of mylin (A fatty coating) covering the axons on a neuron.

A relevant example of this is different types of game play on brain function. Such as, if you played Halo and completed the game a few times, then you will likely get pretty good at that game. This skill at a FPS will likely transfer to FPS shooters and reduce the length of time needed to become good at other similar genre games compared to how long it took to initially play Halo. Also we can assume that the complex motor skills practiced with Halo will make almost all other 3D games slightly easier to master.

Physically what happens to the brain during those hours spent playing: The neurons being used in motor function, 3D processing and hand-eye coordination are being worked out. Thus will strengthen and an increase in processing speed and power (How fast and in what depth you can think/respond) results, due to a build up of Mylin.

Traditionally (E.g. 10-30 years ago, beginning of video game culture) games have been thought of in a mostly male sense, boys older brothers played games, their friends played games and their fathers played games (I know this is a generalization but role with it!).
On a social level what is the result - Games being thought of as male.
On a individual level - males play more games.
On a psychological level - Males benefit more from the brain plasticity and through increased practice and myelinated axons etc. increase processing speed and cause males to dominate gaming.

What has been happening in Modern gaming culture is an insurgence of female players benefiting from brain plasticity and will eventually (as females start earlier and start with more complex games) match the male players in number and social status. The real question is... Where will the men go?

Hugh


Extra: Above is a picture of my brain after taking part in a Psychological study about video game/ instrument effect on the brain. Red = more Myelinated axons = greater connectivity.

Do you believe it??
Peter Jackson tries to figure out how to fix New Zealand film.
By Vadim Rizov on 07/02/2010
Peter Jackson tries to figure out how to fix New Zealand film.Filed under: Abroad
In between creating increasingly gigantic films, Peter Jackson got together with David Court, an Australian academic, and issued an 87-page report on the effectiveness, or lack thereof, of the New Zealand Film Commission. It's a compendium of every cliché ever uttered by a frustrated filmmaker, confirming that the development process is long, tedious and discouraging pretty much everywhere in the world.
Even if you're not Jackson-obsessed, the report's surprisingly readable and filled with anecdotes, despite some heavy charts of statistics appended to the end. The thrust is that New Zealand needs the NZFC (without it, a young Peter Jackson would never have gotten started), but it needs a different NZFC, one that (presumably) is no longer acting the same way it did when Jackson was getting off the ground.
That conclusion is based off interviews conducted anonymously, so that no one feels intimidated from speaking -- and, attendantly, it's light on specific case studies and horror stories. Still, you know what you're getting into when "Table one" (on page 17) invites you to contemplate the differences between the current model (deemed "arts patronage") and what Court and Jackson would like to see (dubbed the "talent partnership" model).
Adjectives tell the tale. In the category of "relationship to film makers," "aloof" should become "involved"; accountability should go from "low" to "high," the management culture from "controlling" to "co-operative."
The gist is that the NZFC means well but is staffed by terrified bureaucrats who don't know how to read screenplays and do everything too slow. These insights will be familiar to anyone who's followed horror stories of the Hollywood development process ("The Commission tends to use drafts as a way of avoiding decisions," reports one anonymous soul. "If in doubt write another draft. It's a momentum killer.")
Everyone seems to agree that it's important to nurture young talent, though it's unclear what the best way to do this might be. There's an endorsement of conventional screenwriting wisdom that would warm Robert McKee's heart: "We need to get past the cultural cringe of imagining 'we don't want to tell American stories'. A good story tutor teaches principles that have driven storytelling since the ancient Greeks."
On the other hand, there's a lot of stuff like this: "it is our recommendation not to put too much focus on financial returns. Removing the need to make profit will lead to more creatively interesting projects - which ironically, may well lead to greater financial returns."
So, while they're obviously not bottom-line driven in the way of the Hollywood studios, film commissions have their own conflicts -- the current UK set-up means a master like Terence Davies ("Distant Voices, Still Lives," "Of Time And The City") has to kowtow to younger admins and prove his artistic worth after 20-plus years of repeatedly doing so. And they have their own sense of obligation to investors: "Film-makers must also remember that they are the recipients of taxpayer funding," scolds the New Zealand Herald. "This should not be dispensed lightly."
Filmmaking everywhere is hard, and always for the same reasons.
[Photos: Peter Jackson via Wikimedia Commons, taken by Natasha Baucas, July 28 2009; "King Kong," Universal, 2005.; "Of Time and the City," Strand Releasing, 2008]

@P. Diddy

P. Diddy seems to have a thing about tweeting a bunch of exciting things and then disappearing. He's finished being an ice-wearing super-producer or whatever for the day and like everybody else takes a seat at his computer and decides to tweet about all the awesome and exclusive things he's going to be getting up to later that night.

Granted, P.Diddy's computer monitor is probably the size of a wall and doubles as his cinema, but he's still got time to kill, so he tweets.

If he had Facebook he'd probably be that annoying friend whose status updates are paragraphs- but his computer's huge.

He thinks there's a lot of space he has to fill.

His tweets need to be entirely capitalised and exclaim a lot so that his monitor doesn't look so overwhelming and unnecessarily over-sized. P. Diddy's tweets are to scale with the equipment he composes them on.

P. Diddy's tweets dominate my homefeed. Now, whether this is a guy thing or not...

Master/Slave Complex

The discussion of whether we are masters or slaves to new media is a multi-faceted debate. While we initially created new media, they have grown significantly since their development due to user interactions. These interactions create a sort of sentience to new media.

Originally, new media was created as a miracle communication form. We could interact with people we hadn't even met from around the world in near real time scenarios if we chose. People had never dreamed of needing new media, but it is clear that we are very much dependent upon them today. They have quite literally revolutionized our way of life. It was this turning point, that turned us from the master/creators, into the slaves.

New media have developed into seemingly sentient forms. This sentience is fed by the conglomerated intelligence of all users. We inherently care for our media that we're involved with because it allows us to garner relationships with our fellow users. Humans are social beings and these feelings of attachment transfer to the media that promote them.

This connectivity also pulls on our social instincts to respond to people we otherwise might never have talked to again. How many people on Facebook for instance are you actually friends with? The language of these media are designed to tap our social consciousness. It is this pull that has caused research to start exploring the addiction aspect of new media. People join on to make connections, but then become beholden to social pressures to continually participate. Their continued participation then perpetuates the cycle of pressure on someone else. It's this cycle that forms the sentient aspect of new media, and makes us slaves.