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Video games are never just about pastimes. When we try to observe it, we can found that people can cast a different perspective: there is a perspective on culture, and a perspective on technology; There may also be a perspective about the person who plays the game, and a perspective about the person who develope the game; There is even a perspective on media, and a perspective on the industry; There's also a perspective on social change and game history. They are like an indispensable two-voice, playing a cultural piece of music called Recreation.

Remembered when I first installed the Internet at home, I played a bunch of mini-games online, then I bought some PC games from a few shops. Among my favorite games were Plants vs. Zombies, Gold Miner Vegas, The Sims 3 and 4, Adventure Quest, and Chinese MMORPG 倾世情缘(Qing Shi Qing Yuan). In the past, I used to play games to pass time. And as time grew, I found that knowledge is also increasing through these games, it could also affect our minds. For example, some story-based games can actually reflect the problems happening in our modern society. By playing games, not only can increase interpersonal relationships but also refresh our perspective on life. Maybe by this, I became more open-minded.

In the 1980s and 1990s, influenced by feminist and LBGT movement, many mainstream media forms, such as TV series, movies, music, etc., were more or less affected by the queer style. They began to try out the temperament of non-heterosexual Gender in their perform, fashion, or storyline design. For example, ‘Sex and the City’ appeared a gay friend, Stanford of the first heroine, Carrie, later appeared in the TV series ‘Will and Grace’ and ‘Queer as Folk’ on the theme of urban gay and lesbian.

Now in the 21st century, some popular idols have coming out publicly, and under the influence of fanart or fanfiction, fans are willing to take the initiative to participate in the idol's behaviors into their desire of LGBT, imaging their idols becoming a same-sex couple with another. So, is there any LGBT element in the game world? I think there are few, but still are. It can be seen that in recent years, with the social trend and the development of the LGBT affirmative movement, the number of LGBTQ characters in video games has gradually increased, as has the number of LGBTQ-friendly players.

Last week, I found an online video game called 'A Gay's Life', An independent Chinese role-playing game about a Beijing gay teenage boy, Ling Hao (凌浩), navigating everyday life illustrates the "harsh realities" of the dating scene, judgments, family pressure, and discrimination against LGBTQ people in China.（Huang, 2018）.The game was designed by 27-year-old Gaole Huang and established as a hobby with the support of a team of gaming enthusiasts, influenced by his own experiences as a gay man who grew up in the region of Shandong before moving to Beijing.

Below will be some pictures and GIFs of the game’s screenshots.

(Game’s splash screen)

(When he first come out to his best friend.)

(When he get married to a women he doesn’t want to.)

(He feels excluded in society as a part of LGBT communities.)

Ling Hao: “My Grandma said, must wear a red scarf in wedding, looks festivity“

“I hope through an easy-to-read, immersive, emotional, and interesting interactive story, I’ve created concrete figures to show some of the awkward situations that gay people around me still face in today’s society,” Huang said.

Most of the comments for the game A Gay's Life are positive. On Weibo, one of the most highly rated words on the game was "real", and most of these comments came from LGBT communities. As for heterosexuals, a 30 years old author stated, he played to the end of the game, and his strongest feeling is: "as a heterosexual, I seem to get these things easily, but it is so difficult to get it here." 

A comment from a straight man, the game gave him the information which is different from what he thought in the past. For example, he used to think that the LGBT community itself is very complicated, they don't want to have a fixed relationships, but after he played and he found that it is because the resistance is very large when "homosexual" been together, their love is not accepted by the mainstream, which makes their feelings to be more fragile.

Another example, he felt that as long as its real love,  it doesn't matter if the state allows the marriage or not. After playing the game, he found that marriage can play a certain role in protecting the interests of partners, such as the partner can obtain benefits when they purchase a house. But "gays" cannot marry, means that there is no way to enjoy the protection and welfare brought by marriage, this is also a form of implicit discrimination of the society.

After I played A Gay’s Life, it gave me a better layer of understanding of the LGBT group's psychological. In its several endings, some of them make me touched, some make my heart breaks. Our country, Malaysia, is not legally recognized for LGBT, the same as China. Malaysia, in fact, there are groups of LGBTQ people, but to protect themselves, most of them won't coming out to the public, some not even dare to tell their families, because these groups easily receive a peculiar look from others. Some of them might be despised, judged, scolded, bullied, they can't even do something they like or love someone they want, they seem like a criminal in others' eyes, feeling the groups of people are disgusting, weird, sinfull. I was really disappointed to see these phenomena, I'm not sure how can I help them, and I think now all I can do is to mentally support them as I can. And I hope the people who don't like LGBT groups of people, they can at least respect them. However, through many positive reviews that I saw in the game’s forum, I can feel that the societies of the younger generation are slowly accepting LGBT communities. By the way, this is a very good game to play.

"As in real life, having a variety of characters and their personalities and backgrounds helps to build a richer and broader overall fictional universe," Steven Choo, a spokesman of Blizzard Entertainment, told The Post's Comic Riffs (Cavna, 2016)

In recent years, the LGBT community displayed in the game might become less popular,  they become more ordinary, just like the passers-by who pass by in our life. But because of the injection of these characters, it makes the whole game to be more complete and real.

Reference List Cavna, M. (2016). The wildly popular ‘Overwatch’ says a main character is gay. Will this be a step forward for video games?. Retrieved 3 December 2019, from https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/comic-riffs/wp/2016/12/23/the-wildly-popular-overwatch-says-a-main-character-is-gay-will-this-be-a-step-forward-for-video-games/

Huang, Z. (2018). Indie game offers stark insights into gay life in China. Retrieved 3 December 2019, from https://www.scmp.com/tech/policy/article/2178329/gays-life-indie-web-game-offers-glimpse-harsh-realities-faced-lgbt

Wilkie, A. (2018). Video game ‘A Gay’s Life’ provides insights into life of LGBTI people in China - Star Observer. Retrieved 5 December 2019, from https://www.starobserver.com.au/news/international-news-news/video-game-a-gays-life-provides-insights-into-life-of-lgbti-people-in-china/174616

Fandom is the abbreviation variant for "fanatics" (Jekins, 2016). The term "fandom" has first used in news reports of sporting events of the late 19th century to identify followers in events. According to Hutchins, T.J. & Tindall (2016), one way to keep fans involved is to build online fan groups through social media, providing a platform for people to connect their interests online with each other, even in different locations.

“ Are Fandoms Good or Unhealthy Obsessions? “

Video URL: (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=onxeBOnjWnU)

When fans become part of the community, fans in the fan community gain a sense of identity and a "style" by sharing a unique set of concepts, symbols, meanings, and values of their idols (Lee Cooper, 2014). Many pop artist's fandoms have their own exclusive names. For example, Lady Gaga fans call themselves Little Monsters, and Katy Perry fans are Katy Cats. The corresponding names of other stars and fan groups, as well as The Killers- The Victims, Charli XCX-Charli's Angels, Nicki Minaj-Barbies, Rihanna-Rihanna Navy, Ariana Grande-Arianators, Demi Lovato-Lovatics, etc. These fan group names are more than just a symbol, they are an identity. Some of them think the community is more powerful than ordinary music fans.

“Most people are fans of something” (Gray, Sandvoss & Harrington, 2007)

If someone asked you “Are you a fan of someone/something?”, what would you answer? Will you honestly tell them about your fandom? Or you will just deny that you are a fan and keep silence?

Some people might think that the fans are ‘weird’, ‘lunatic’, ‘toxic’, ‘disgusting’, and even some of the people will despise them. As most of us know, many fans will express their strong emotions on social media such as the star's Facebook or Twitter, or even offline events, arguing with people and even causing a fight. Of course, the more extreme star-pursuing cases have actually happened among fans.

That is why some people might afraid to admit that they are fans of someone/something, this is to protect themselves to be judged by others. From my observation, some people who don’t want to admit that they are a fan is also because they might afraid of the cultural crush, I use music as an example, there are so many kinds of music such as K-pop, J-pop, Chinese, and Occident music, they are from different countries and cultures. Some of them might choose to hide their online identity in real life, which some of them might prefer to stay alone in real life, but actually an active user in his/her fandom.

This video shows some screenshot of negative comments in the K-pop girl band, Blackpink’s fandom (No offense to Blackpink fans, I am not a hater, this is just for an example.)

“BLACKPINK HAS THE WORST FANDOM EVER | BLINKS “

Video URL: https://youtu.be/zxYByCOg6D0

For me, I will answer honestly tell and talk about my fandom with my own circles. I think this can be a kind of topic to share interest and fan culture, it can also improve the relationship and connectivity among each other when we are sharing something we like to another. If you ask me about which fandom I am, I will say a lot, because I like lots of things and people and I do not belong to just one fandom. For TV Shows, I am fans of Superhero movies and TV Shows such as The Flash, Arrow, Justice League, Spiderman, Thor, Doctor Strange, Chinese dramas such as The Untamed, Ashes of Love, Scarlet Heart, Japanese Dramas like Enu no Tame ni, Death Note, Unnatural, etc. Besides, I also like to play games and watch cartoons, Anime, and Comics. I even have a lot of idols in the online world from different platforms such as Tumblr, Instagram, YouTube, and Twitter. That is why I don’t really tell people I am a fan because there are too many things that I like, I will have to spend a lots of time to talk about it. Some people might not think that they are a fan because they are not obsessed with a thing and don’t really know as much thing about their idol as their fandom does, in my opinion, I think a fan can be someone who really likes something and want to know more about it.

Sometimes from a movie or TV show, I found someone that I interested to, then I will find more about that person online including his/her online account (if they have), I even read fanfiction of the characters that I obsessed to.

Fan culture, or fandom, is a term used to describe societies built around the mutual interest of elements of popular culture, such as books, films, TV shows, artists, sports or sports teams, etc. In fan cultures, these masterpieces and artistic expressions bring the form of fan fiction, fan art, cosplay, fan videos, filk songs, and other interactions with a group, individual, or fictional universe ("Fandom and Participatory Culture – Subcultures and Sociology", n.d.). Through social media, I also gain a lot of knowledge and made friends from interested circles online. I am thankful for the internet to bring us together and share so much information online so we can know more about them through these platforms. Of course, It also brings a lot of benefits to my real life such as I’m having more topics to talk about with my real-life friends, I can know more about different country’s culture, I gain a lot of inspiration for my works, and can even improve my drawing and storytelling skills.

Even though sometimes people might not understand why we like such things, but luckily we still can find someone who has the same interest online through our fandom, we know that we are not alone, and there is someone who likes the same thing as you do. We cannot control people’s mind, if there is someone who likes it, there must be someone opposite, what we can do is ignore the negative issues, and learn more positive knowledge from what we like, we don’t have to be shame on what we like and what we are. By worshiping an idol, fans developed a 'varied creativity space' and gain inspiration from it, growing self-confidence, this is also a positive attitude, as long as fans haven't done something evil and immoral, a fandom might bring peace and a lot of advantages to someone.

 Reference List

Duffett, M. (2013). Understanding fandom: An introduction to the study of media fan culture. Bloomsbury Publishing USA.

Gray, J., Sandvoss, C., & Harrington, C. L. (Eds.). (2017). Fandom: Identities and communities in a mediated world. NYU Press.

Fandom and Participatory Culture – Subcultures and Sociology. Retrieved 2 December 2019, from https://haenfler.sites.grinnell.edu/subcultural-theory-and-theorists/fandom-and-participatory-culture/

Do you know what is “Crowdfunding” and ”Crowdsourcing”, and what is the difference between them? Actually, most of us are using the internet and social media, but we might not realize that there are a lot of crowdsourcing or crowdfunding platforms around us, and we might even being a part of them now or before. In this post, let’s talk about it.

Crowdsourcing and crowdfunding are both new and innovative developments that make use of mass collaboration to get jobs done. Tapping into the crowd for skills and resources can fuel growth, improve efficiency and make everything possible (Hebert, 2015). Simply put, crowdfunding is collecting funds from the audience, it seeking money to finance individuals, charities, or start-up businesses, whereas crowdsourcing is collecting anything including information or a work product from the audience. So crowdfunding is actually a specific kind of crowdsourcing.

 Crowdfunding

Crowdfunding makes use of the convenient access of large groups of individuals through social networks and crowdfunding websites to bring together investors and entrepreneurs, with the ability to increase entrepreneurship by growing the pool of financiers within the traditional circle of owners, cognates, and venture investors (Smith 2019). According to Kaur and Gera (2017), successfully raising funds is key to a crowdfunding campaign. It is important to advertise and promote the campaign on a large scale through social media to make it a success. Facebook and Twitter normally have the right channels for most crowdfunding campaigns as they approach the most users and encourage interactivity. But it also depends on which channels their group is interacting to, Instagram is becoming increasingly popular, and LinkedIn might be more suitable if their campaign is relevant to a professional audience (Wu, 2015).

In the year 2003, ArtistShare was launched as the first online fan-funding platform (referred as "crowdfunding" today) for talented artists. ArtistShare was founded in the United States and has since kicked off the crowdfunding industry. The platform founder Brian Camelio known as “father of crowdfunding" and "a pioneer of modern crowdfunding" ("ArtistShare: The First Crowdfunding Platform In History - Solidaridad Latina", n.d.). In the time where the traditional music industry is being hit by digital music, think if a song can be downloaded from the internet anytime or easily copied from friends, excluding those loyal fans and copyright defenders, how many people will buy CDs? According to Camelio, record companies around the world spent more than a billion dollars a year to attract the public to buy CDs, and the advent of digital music has made the sale of record music extremely difficult. At this point, Camelio believes it's time for the music industry to change. The experiment is successful and has known as "a pioneer in the crowdfunding space", thus opened a door to the era of internet crowdfunding.

There has been a lot of international research on crowdfunding platforms. According to Massolution report (2015), it can be divided into four categories:

Lending-based crowd-funding：An investor invests in a project or company, obtains a percentage of his or her claims, gains interest income in the future and recovers the principal (I give you the money, then you pay me principal and interest).

Equity-based crowd-funding：An investor invests in a project or company and acquires a percentage of his equity (I give you money to give me shares in the company).

Reward-based crowd-funding：An investor invests in a project or company to obtain a product or service (I give you money to give me a product or service).

Donate-based crowd-funding：An investor makes a non-reimbursable donation to a project or company (I'll give you the money and you don't have to give me anything).

New technologies are being developed by crowdfunding. Artists are making movies, music, and art. Developers are designing new games Disaster relief is motivated by money inflows. The ideas crowdfunding makes possible are really constrained only by the methods forward developers can search to involve the crowd in the financing a task (Schweissguth, 2013)

Crowdsourcing

We all used the Internet before, so we've likely come over one of the best examples of crowdsourcing online which is Wikipedia (http:/www.wikipedia.org). Well, as a University student, I use this website frequently and it really helpful for me to collect information for my studies and even real-life stuff. Of course, the information cannot be fully trusted as it can be edited by any users, but at least I can get a rough idea of what I want to know about.

The word "crowdsourcing" was first used in “Wired” magazine article by Jeff Howe in June 2006. According to Marchionda (2011), Crowdsourcing is a method of providing the services, ideas, or information needed by appealing contributions from a large group of people. In the earlier days, this has sometimes meant a long, lengthy process, hampered by the interaction challenges one might expect to encounter before the internet.

In fact, not much attention is given to crowdsourcing before it was adopted by web-savvy corporations created to take advantage of the networked universe. This is the main reason why the term crowdsourcing was popularised only a few years ago, even with the existence of the concept for quite a while now. Just like the internet has played a role in the development of the term, social networks are changing the way we think of crowdsourcing and will proceed to do so as the advantages of using social media to make crowdsource more widely known. Social media is becoming an important element of crowdsourcing as it allows enterprises to appeal to more people. Like Jeff Howe(2008) states in his book "Crowdsourcing: why the power of the crowd is driving the future of business", it is now “faster, cheaper, smarter, easier.”.

Through crowdfunding or crowdsourcing, the entrepreneurs, businesses, humanitarian efforts, and individuals today can make use of the power of mass partnerships to build future success especially through the internet and social media platform. I believe that these two elements are important to internet platforms and they are really helpful in our life if we use it in the right ways.

 Reference List

ArtistShare. (2016). Retrieved 29 November 2019, from https://www.artistshare.com/

ArtistShare: The First Crowdfunding Platform In History - Solidaridad Latina. Retrieved 27 November 2019, from https://solidaridadlatina.com/2018/10/29/artistshare-first-crowdfunding-platform/

Hebert, C. (2015). The Difference Between Crowdfunding and Crowdsourcing - Crowdfunding Hacks. Retrieved 29 November 2019, from http://crowdfundinghacks.com/crowdfunding-vs-crowdsourcing/

Howe, J. (2006). The Rise of Crowdsourcing. Retrieved 1 December 2019, from https://www.wired.com/2006/06/crowds/

Howe, J. (2008). Why the power of the crowd is driving the future of business, ed. 1st, 2009.

Kaur, H., & Gera, J. (2017). Effect of social media connectivity on success of crowdfunding campaigns. Procedia Computer Science, 122, 767-774.

Marchionda, M. (2011). Crowdsourcing Spreading like Wildfire with Social Media — Intranet design, intranet consultant, social intranet, website planning - Prescient Digital. Retrieved 28 November 2019, from https://www.prescientdigital.com/articles/web-2.0/crowdsourcing-spreading-like-wildfire-with-social-media

Massolution, C. L. (2015). Crowdfunding industry report. See http://reports. crowdsourcing. org/index. php.

Schweissguth, S. (2013). Crowdsourcing vs. Crowdfunding: What's the Difference?. Retrieved 29 November 2019, from https://www.crowdsource.com/blog/2013/07/crowdsourcing-vs-crowdfunding-whats-the-difference/

Smith, T. (2019). Crowdfunding Definition. Retrieved 30 November 2019, from https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/crowdfunding.asp

the word "troll" is originally a verb refers to a fishing method, it also a noun that refers to a stupid ugly cannibal monster who lives in dark places in Scandinavian folklore (Moreau, 2019). With the advent of network and social media, the word can be referred to as the users who left angry or emotional comments, or any messages online to insult or annoy someone. There are different opinions for people who used this word, at first, people use the word as a verb to refers the behavior of irritating others on the internet is to attract the people to "get hooked". Since that the act of those users or who we can also call "haters" is really annoying and disgusting, it would be really suitable for the mythological troll, who is hiding behind their screens and hurt or annoy people with their keyboard without any reason (Moreau, 2019). Although some people may use the word in the context of a sense of humor, the truth is that online trolling can become quite annoying and not always a joke (Hanson, 2019).

In this generation, most people will share their favorite things or their own works through the Internet, then people can learn a lot of things through social media platforms. But become a famous author or creator might not be really easy all the time. When you made up your mind to become a creator and share your works or daily life to the public on the social media platforms such as Youtube, Devianart, Pinterest, Instagram and so on, you might get attention and followers from different countries, but not all of them are good. Some of the creators might really care about the other users' comment, they will try to improve and do what they want, but some of them will be possessed. For some creators with fragile hearts, they are easily get hurt because of the comments, it is not rear to hear about someone hurt or even killed themselves because of the harsh comments on their social media platforms. Some of them might already feel stressful in real life, but the negative comments might increase their feeling of helpless, and whatever happens to the victim, the trolls will act like it is ain't of their business, the victim hurt themselves because they are too frailty.

According to Raleva (2018), some celebrities and government have their official social media account. With what they have posted or comment, a lot of people will notice it, then it can also cause conflicts through different opinions on the internet. Then there comes the existence of the online protests and activisms, they gather the users that have common opinions with them then run the protest in reality or online to make the team grow bigger and tell the opinions with may ways to get people's attention.

It is good to make reference from others' comments, but I believe that if you are a famous person in a platform, no matter how good have you done, there will be always different opinions and conflicts for whatever you do. I think that it is sufficient to do whatever you can and improve yourself in the way you like, the most important is what you like, not how other people think of you, as the world so big, you can't turn into a perfect person and to be liked by every one especially the trolls, they will never get enough to throw bad words to whatever you do, and the more you care about what they say, you are giving more chance to let them hurt you. So, the best thing you can do is see more positive comments and be thankful to the person who supports you, don't feed the trolls, do anything you think is good and feel happy with. In my opinion, I think the internet is a platform for me to record my lifestyle and some works that I have done, it also helps to look for inspirations and knowledge, it is a really convenient platform to everyone because we can do so many things through internet. Even though I never met any trolls or haters below my comment areas (also because most of my social media are set to private and unlisted), but I often saw trolls under some famous celebrities or internet stars that I like. When I saw the comments such as "go to hell", "B*tch", "ugly shit", "fake", I feel ridiculous and masty. I don't understand why are they commenting these kind of comments under people's work, especially on youtube, if you pick any famous videos, there must be trolls under the comments area, then when the fans are replying them, they started to quarrel under the comments, which I think it is disrespectful to the creator.

Nowadays people can't get rid of technologies and the internet, and these social media platforms should be a good place to enable people to share, learn, or record anything online for themselves or to the public. But then, some of the people are using this platform to hurt people through their screen to have fun and even egging some ignorant people to do it together. The best ways to prevent trolls and social media conflict is trying not to expose every of your private information, don't show every post as public, don't reply to the trolls' comment. These can prevent the trolls or haters to found you easily.   Although the network cannot take direct harm to people, but still hope that we think about the consequences when typing, sometimes your heartless words could hurt others' psychology, then you could become a murderer or accomplice, in your unknown situation. The easiest way is to ignore what you don't like to see or just click the "report" button no matter you're a creator or a viewer.

Reference list

Eil, P. (2019). The Worst Effects of Online Death Threats Are Things No One Can See. Retrieved 7 November 2019, from https://www.vice.com/en_asia/article/qv7yyq/the-worst-effects-of-online-death-threats-are-things-no-one-can-see

Hanson, J. (2019). Trolls and Their Impact on Social Media | James Hanson. Retrieved 4 November 2019, from https://unlcms.unl.edu/engineering/james-hanson/trolls-and-their-impact-social-media

Hughes, E. (2017). Dealing with Conflict on Social Media | News for Authors. Retrieved 5 November 2019, from http://authornews.penguinrandomhouse.com/dealing-with-conflict-on-social-media/

Moreau, E. (2019). Here's What You Need to Know About Internet Trolling. Retrieved 5 November 2019, from https://www.lifewire.com/what-is-internet-trolling-3485891

Meaning of "Activism" and "Protest" Activism: the use of straight and conspicuous action to attain a result, normally a social or political one ("ACTIVISM | meaning in the Cambridge English Dictionary", 2019). Protest: a sturdy complaint expressing disapproval, disagreement, or opposition ("PROTEST | meaning in the Cambridge English Dictionary", 2019).

The first time I saw the words "Activism" and "Protest", my first impression was that a large group of people, some of them might be holding cards, shouting, using violence, angry and even unreasonable. But after in-depth understanding, slowly with some online news readings related to activism and protest,  I get to know that activists and protests can be divided into online and offline, or people can also do other activities besides violence to run a protest or activism, for example, street art, singing, playing music. For this post, I would like to talk about an activist which happened in London and Australia in a few weeks ago, called "Extinction Rebellion". 

What is Extinction Rebellion and who are they? Extinction Rebellion (XR) hopes that the government will announce “climate and ecological emergency”  and take immediate action to deal with climate change. It describes itself as an international "non-violent civil disobedience activist movement".

The central idea of this activity is mainly to protest against climate change, ecological collapse, and the crisis of biological and human extinction in the world today, through non-violent resistance.

It was launched in 2018 and organizers say it now has agencies inclined to take action in dozens of nations. They use an hourglass inside a circle as its logo, to symbolize time running out for many species in the world ("What does Extinction Rebellion want?", 2019).

Three Demands List In XR's propaganda description, the truth facing the world today: We are in the midst of an unprecedented world crisis, and life on Earth is facing disaster. Many scientists agree that we are experiencing severe climate degradation and that our actions are triggering a huge extinction. And in terms of the story, XR also has its own "three demands list" which are: 1: Tell the truth -Governments must inform the public about the global climate and ecological crisis and highlight the extent of its serious crisis.

2: Act now -Reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 0 by 2025 and immediately start saving the biodiversity that has died.

3: Beyond politics -Governments need to establish citizens' conferences and accept their leadership in the context of climate change and ecological equity.

What did they do? Most of the activities in the past, they blocked some of the city's busiest routes and traffics, some of them glued themselves to trains, some of the German protesters chained themselves outside Angela Merkel's Chancellery.  

This October in London and Australia, They also blocked the busiest roads again at peak.

The Protesters said "find out more about the severity of the ecological and climate crisis" to the people who angered by the protests, and some of them causing criminal damage like smashing windows, then they said they are "super careful" to not injure anyone around("What does Extinction Rebellion want?", 2019).  

Why Are they Doing this? "I’m an environmental scientist. I am a marine ecologist. I have studied this for all my adult life. And intellectually, I understand that we are at the very brink. And that is enough. I had to do something." --Martin Wolterding, 75, Environmental Scientist

“I am pretty much fairly new to activism. I’m not an extroverted person, it’s out of my comfort zone, but my confidence is building with it. Of course I’d rather be doing other things, like anyone else." --Ben Burdett, 40, Carpenter

“We know it can work. For 30 years the government hasn’t listened to scientists so we need them to start listening, telling the truth, and start acting on the truth.” -- Reem Ramadan, 41, clinical psychologist

(Taylor, Zhou & Smee, 2019)

Video source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOW9gLHLyKI

As we can see, most of the protesters joined the organization to stand for the next generation, to ask the government to tell the truth, to announce people about climate emergencies and take action to improve it.

Selfish Actions 

Even that the starting point and the reason for protests is good no wrong, but the actions are seriously affected some others’ lives,

On 7th October in London, terrified Londoners have dismayed by the chaos caused, including Adeline Adjei, who was forced to abandon her car walk through the crowds with a friend with cancer to the hospital for 20 minutes (Hawker, 2019).

According to Chung (2019), In Melbourne,  A woman, Sally, said that her mother died at her home in Spring Street on Sunday. She wanted to go there on Monday to collect her mother's belongings, but when she heard about the protests on Monday, she switched to Tuesday.

But she didn't expect that when she went yesterday, she caught up with the intersection of Spring Street and was blocked. Unfortunately, she couldn't walk past because of a knee injury. She tried to explain to those people that her mother had died after 12 years of fighting cancer and that she needed to visit her mother's house in the hope that they would let it go. But those people simply replied, "If we don't protest here, more people will die." 

After the reporter tried to explain to some of the protesters about Sally's situation, ask if they can let her pass, but when she drive through the crowd slowly, but there is a protester who suddenly jumped in front of her car not to let her go. 

"They think it’s so important but what is important is the everyday, good Australian people just trying to go about their everyday lives. It’s not fair.” She said.

The activity by XR makes the intersection is blocked every day, the tram is delayed, traffic is paralyzed from time to time, be late to work and school, a group of police in a state of disarray, everyone's life has been seriously affected! 

But then this group of people still said that they are no wrong, with a righteous look, they say they wanted to save the earth because they care! Care about the Earth, care about the next generation, care about humans' future!

Sorry to say this, but they don't even care about the lives of others now, they even sit back and ignore the grief of others now, and they don't care about the lives of others now, and what's the future?

In my opinion, I think it is important to stand out and tell our voice to the government or others because if we don't tell, the government might just ignore and continue on what they are doing, that is why activism and protest are important. However, I think that we can try to choose a non-violent action because it might not 100% effective even we used violence, then those people who were injured or sacrificed are not worth it. The next and important thing is I hope the protesters can think of others, even the reason and starting point of protesting are good, but I hope they run the activities in a way that won't disturb others' life, at least not causing the irrelevant person to get seriously disturbed even they are not injured.

Reference list:

ACTIVISM | meaning in the Cambridge English Dictionary. (2019). Retrieved 26 October 2019, from https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/activism

Chung, F. (2019). Climate protesters block woman from dead mother’s home. Retrieved 15 October 2019, from https://www.news.com.au/technology/environment/climate-change/its-just-disgusting-woman-breaks-down-as-climate-protesters-block-her-from-reaching-late-mothers-home/news-story/96e2bc2aeba0510da8371a8531779006

Hawker, L. (2019). Extinction Rebellion: Fury as cancer victim forced to WALK to hospital ‘selfish bast**ds'. Retrieved 22 October 2019, from https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1187912/extinction-rebellion-news-latest-protests-london-climate-change-hospital-westminster

Home - Extinction Rebellion. (2019). Retrieved 25 October 2019, from https://rebellion.earth/

PROTEST | meaning in the Cambridge English Dictionary. (2019). Retrieved 15 October 2019, from https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/protest

Taylor, J., Zhou, N., & Smee, B. (2019). Extinction Rebellion: who are the protesters, and why are they doing it?. Retrieved 22 October 2019, from https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/oct/12/extinction-rebellion-who-are-the-protesters-and-why-are-they-doing-it

In this digital era, online political engagement is becoming the main mode of participation and discussion of youngsters. The public, especially the younger generation, are actively using social media and mobile devices to participate in political activities. They use the tools to obtain political information, making their own political content and expressing political opinions (Yamamoto, Kushin & Dalisay, 2015). In political realms, more and more diversified new media and its mode of operation provide more and more convenient channels for young people to speak, such as Twitter and Facebook.

Impact of Social Media to Politics

Based on a survey of 526 Malaysian adults who been interviewed before the 2008 national election about the use of online media, levels of political participation, and intentions of voting. As expected, the survey resulted that the use of online media is positively related to the higher levels of political participation of Malaysian voters. The use of and exposure to social networking sites, political blogs, party websites, political online videos, and political ads online showed strong associations with political activism. Yet, the voters' possibility of voting was not predictable through the use of political online media (Willnat, Wong, Tamam & Aw, 2013).

There are some examples of politicians who have their own social media accounts such as Barrack Obama, Donald Trump, Dr Mahathir, and Mohd Najib. Through social media, they can access a larger audience ecspecially the younger ones. It also enables them to fill the gap between youngsters and politics, as they can reply and communicate with the audiences through the platforms, and even bring some benefits for the election if they can do or say something that earns residents' hearts. In addition, some of the users like to create memes and videos about politicians. Even some of it is made for fun, but still, it could attract more people to know about the person or what is happening to the politics nowadays.

For me, I don't follow any politician or anyone involved in politics and government on social media, because I feel bored about it, and I am not really interested in politic topics. But I do follow some news websites or some users that create memes or interesting videos. So that is where I get some information about what is happening around me nowadays.

However, we should not easily believe in everything posted on social media, because there is a lot of fake news from different unknown sources. The best example that I could think of right now is in last few months, the outflow of the lovemaking video of two men on social media, which said to be Haziq Abdullah Abdul Aziz with Economic Affairs Minister Datuk Seri Mohamed Azmin Ali. After a while, Haziq then confessed that he is one of the men in the clip on social media and the other one denied. Because of these clips, it set off a wave of the news that is related to the politicians included or related to that videos, and even the topics about homosexual, for a few weeks. Until today, the police are still investigating the truth of the video. So, we can see how powerful is the impact of social media on politics, can even change or ruins someone's life with the news and online information.

Social Media for Public Participation in Politics

The Internet, especially social media, has become a new important platform for public participation in politics. According to Gil de Zúñiga, Jung & Valenzuela (2012), through the Internet's properties, political participation on the internet could be divided into virtual online political participation and offline political participation. Online political participation is mainly through visiting government websites, browsing, posting or forwarding current political information, criticizing and protesting government decisions, online complaints or protests, etc. Offline political participation includes attending hearings, contacting government officials, participation in processions, and political elections.

When the Internet is associated with politics, it spawned many fresh things, and online political participation is one of them. Traditional political participation mainly inputs demand into the political system through channels such as interest groups, political party groups, and news media. If internet, due to its fast transmission speed, strong information processing, and wide audience, it is easy to form a concentrated attention and follow-up survey on a certain topic in a short period of time, forming strong pressure on public opinions, which makes the possibility of entering the policy process will greatly increase.

Conclusion

To conclude, the internet especially social media is a really good platform to improve the gap between politics and residents. We as users can also gather a lot of politic information or take action online for complaints and protests. But we also have to be careful of some fake news spread around the internet. There is a lot of wrong information about the news from a lot of unknown sources, which cause a lot of trouble and different causes that could affect people's knowledge and impression.

References:

Gil de Zúñiga, H., Jung, N., & Valenzuela, S. (2012). Social Media Use for News and Individuals' Social Capital, Civic Engagement and Political Participation. Journal Of Computer-Mediated Communication, 17(3), 319-336. doi: 10.1111/j.1083-6101.2012.01574.x

Willnat, L., Wong, W., Tamam, E., & Aw, A. (2013). Online Media and Political Participation: The Case of Malaysia. Mass Communication And Society, 16(4), 557-585. doi: 10.1080/15205436.2012.734891

Yamamoto, M., Kushin, M., & Dalisay, F. (2013). Social media and mobiles as political mobilization forces for young adults: Examining the moderating role of online political expression in political participation. New Media & Society, 17(6), 880-898. doi: 10.1177/1461444813518390

GOLINGAI, P. (2019). Haziq: My political career is over. Retrieved 6 October 2019, from https://www.thestar.com.my/news/nation/2019/06/25/haziq-my-political-career-is-over

I used to be an active user on Tumblr. Speaking of Tumblr, I would like to talk about some of my experience and impressions for Tumblr. Years ago, I was a Tumblr user, I use it because my old friend recommended me to use this and share our works together. I like how it can blog with unlimited words, add pictures and gifs between the paragraphs, and interact or communicate with other users online. So I used Tumblr to post my artworks and doodles online, and I am glad that I have met some friends that have the same interest as me from this platform.

But what I don't like Tumblr for that time is because I received a lot of adult content private messages, and more than half of my followers are porn users even that none of my posts has any adult contain. Most disturbing is some of them posted pornographic website under my post comment, this makes me uncomfortable, so I deleted my previous account and stopped using it. However, when I came back to Tumbler nowadays, I'm quite happy about the decreasing of adult content compared to the past, but the users are getting lesser as well, even that I am still feeling fine with a platform that is not so popular, so I can just share my works as a record for of life, like an online Diary.

Research on Tumblr Tumblr used to be one of the top ten famous websites in the United States, and it dropped to 46th today.

Tumblr is owned by David Karp in 2007, and now by Automattic.

In the year 2011, there is a lot of youngsters being aged under 25 were using and visiting Tumblr. In that year, while LinkedIn and Twitter are growing gradually, Tumblr has doubled its monthly users in a year (Boyd, 2011). This is because it allows users to create custom blogs and publish multimedia and text as their posts, which allow other users to comment, like or republish on their posts. Users can also follow the blogs that they are interested too, so they can communicate or just follow each other.

According to Stringfellow (2013), it has a lot of entrepreneur users are using Tumblr for their businesses. In the year 2013, with almost a third of the Interbrand Top 100 brands with active Tumblr account in the amount of more than 161 million Tumblr blogs and 70 billion posts of it.  

But after the changed hands, again and again, it seems like its popularity is falling down these three years. So, it could be understood that most of the young generations today are not using Tumblr for their blogging.

("Global social media ranking 2019 | Statista", 2019)

So, Is Tumblr a blog or a social network site? In my opinion, I think that Tumblr is a combination of social networking and blogs, just like Facebook plus Blogger. Besides Tumblr, I played Facebook and Blogger as well, and I think Tumblr is a combination of this two, which Facebook as a social network, and Blogger as a blog. 

Why I'm saying Tumblr is a social network site is because it has a similar private communication box (Chatbox) as Facebook(Messenger box), which allows users to message and share information privately. Tumblr will recommend the blogs that have similar interests with the users, as Facebook does for their pages. But Facebook's posts have a word limits for a post, which Tumblr doesn't. 

On the other hand, the similarities of Tumblr and Blogger is both of them did not have word limits. They also have the same functions such as can post audio, video, gifs and so on. These can improve a blog post more friendly and attractive compare to a wordy one. Besides, they do have a lot of different templates to choose or download from another website or even can edit the HTML. However, what is lacking in Blogger is they don't have a chatbox or tools that allow them to communicate online.

So, my conclusion is Tumblr as both blog and social network site because it has both functions for unlimited writing and communicating. Tumblr is a fun website for me as it can write and share a lot of things, and I also discovered a lot of knowledge and interesting works from different people. Even though it is not many users as before, however, the contents are still fun and fascinating,  most importantly it is easy to use.

References:

tumblr.com Traffic Statistics. (2019). Retrieved 28 September 2019, from https://www.similarweb.com/website/tumblr.com#social

Boyd, S. (2011). Andrew Lipsman, The Network Effect: Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter & Tumblr Reach New Heights in May. Retrieved 25 September 2019, from https://medium.com/stowe-boyd/andrew-lipsman-the-network-effect-facebook-linkedin-twitter-tumblr-reach-new-heights-in-may-fc34822e36c

Global social media ranking 2019 | Statista. (2019). Retrieved 28 September 2019, from https://www.statista.com/statistics/272014/global-social-networks-ranked-by-number-of-users/

Stringfellow, A. (2013). The Great Tumblr Debate: Blogging Platform Or Social Network?. Retrieved 27 September 2019, from https://www.americanexpress.com/en-us/business/trends-and-insights/articles/the-great-tumblr-debate-blogging-platform-or-social-network/

NOTE: THIS BLOG IS 100% FOR EDUCATIONAL/ASSIGNMENT PURPOSES ONLY! ANYTHING STATED HERE IS NOT TO OFFEND ANYONE ON THE INTERNET!

Trolling is mostly common around the internet as another method of bullying or provoking drama much like their real life counterpart. The general meaning of trolls is that trolls are online users that wants to bully, harass or provoke arguments for the sake of the users’ satire amusement or personal agendas through manipulation, baiting or being disruptive to any places with conversations held (Oxford 2016). Trolls have been gradually becoming infamous as the internet is more open, transparent and accessible to anyone including those that desire to spread trouble. Much like real life, negative social interactions can still be carried out with alternate identities and methods from griefers, harassments to trolling and flamers. This eventually leads to flame wars, online protesting or campaigning and users being manipulated or provoked that fulfils the trolls’ goals through emotions, preferences or background history.

The trolling culture has existed during the early beginnings of the Internet. In 1992 a Usenet group made “alt.folklore.urban” which apparently was one of the first cases of trolling that happened with the phrase "Maybe after I post it, we could go trolling some more and see what happens." This was then followed by Brice Wellington, one of the earliest trolls, who posted humours satire statements and Usenet users believed it was true. When internet was on the rise, 4chan then became a prominent trolling group and website for trolls to carry out their trolling operations. Nowadays, the trolling culture has then increased significantly due to global politics taking place on social media such as Trump and his Twitter posting and Youtube’s comment sections as many trolls will do anything to spread their influences.

Some Youtubers, companies or content creators can also be either the troll or a victim of trolling due to exploitation or vulnerabilities, mostly when it involves sensitive issues such as politics, religions and beliefs in any form of media including gaming. Most trolls will intend to apply evocative trolling on internet celebrities in order to sway their fanbase to the trolls’ side without blowing their cover while pretending to be the righteous vocal person to shame internet celebrities and solidify their credibility (Hong & Cheng 2018). An example is that when the video game Battlefield 5 was revealed, many users decide to troll in the Youtube comment section with satire statements or memes to protest the game’s direction of implementing SJW/Social Justice Warriors policies and abandoning historical accuracy.

Another case was that a fired Guild Wars 2 developer, Jessica Price, complained that her ex-company had unfair employee treatment to women including herself which explains the reason she got fired. However, the company retaliated that Jessica performed her job poorly when she harshly attacked consumers’ complains and criticism. Many consumers including trolls sided with the company and decided to troll Jessica Price’s beliefs due to the fact that the trolls are mostly fans of Guild Wars 2 that were disappointed by her work as a writer. This leads to trolls trying to bait Jessica Price into ranting a lot more due to her being in an aggressive state during the time in order to cause Jessica to go more aggressive and embarrass herself. Moreover, Jessica Price’s Twitter comment section also has arguments from trolls that are with or against her leading to occasional flame wars and heated debates.

However, much like bullying and anti-bullying, there is also the anti-trolling culture as well in order to prevent trolls from harassing. Some users either block or ban that user though it sometimes ends up succeeding what the troll desires. Some either ignore or mock the trolls themselves such as Margaret Cho, a comedian who countered the trolls with savage roasts.

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/margaret-cho-trolls-who-call-me-fat-and-ugly-are-admitting-defeat_us_5601cd1ce4b08820d91aa305?ncid=edlinkushpmg00000030

In conclusion, it is clear that the trolling culture has become widely used during situations with heavy drama, sensible issues and beliefs or to oppose certain individuals. As more problems arise, so will the efforts of trolls to increase the chaos and discord through manipulation and baiting for their own satire amusement or goals. Users online should be more aware and careful when trolls decide to approach and provoke them into flame war territory.

Feinberg, A 2014, “The Birth of The Internet Troll”, Gizmodo, 27th October 2018, <https://gizmodo.com/the-first-internet-troll-1652485292>

Hong, F. & Cheng, K. 2018, "Correlation between university students’ online trolling behavior and online trolling victimization forms, current conditions, and personality traits", Telematics and Informatics, vol. 35, no. 2, pp. 397-405.

Trolling 2016, , 1st edn, Oxford University Press