#smc15

At first, I didn't know how exactly anonymous operated, and how they were successful as a protest group. It was difficult to grasp over the lulz, long cat and other in-group jargon. But even when I got to understand what it all meant, I still didn't see how humor made light of the protest. Was it just for the sake of laughs(an in-group thing)? Or was it mocking higher power, as I'm "Haha you guys don't understand and so we're laughing at you". Either way, it certainly proves inquiry and this is how the revolution starts. I argue that humor isn't a good fit, especially if they are debating a serious issue. What does work, I believe, are things such as the masks in supporting their name and identity: anonymous, their techy invasions for action: DDOD attacks/actions, and their cohesive environment.

        There was another group in history that attempted to divide power equally. They were known as “Communist” but unlike anonymous, they didn’t work out. In Communism, certain people rose to positions of power despite the fact that power was supposed to be divided among the masses. People were able to do this because there wasn’t a sense of anonymity. Because people could be well known, certain people were able to rise up to be a harsh leader. They kept this position of power because they were recognizable. People feared them. In anonymous, however, leaders are not easy to rise up because when one tries to rise up, everyone counters it very quickly.   The people are able to rise up because there is minimum consequence for doing such a thing online, which makes them more inclined to act. The people who were oppressed by a communist leader, however, had a much higher risk of failure that even could have resulted in death. The person in power already had an established name, and was able to get away with punishing the people revolting.   The fact of not knowing who people are makes people more inclined to fight injustice.

No matter how big or small the concept is, working together will always make things better. I believe that hearing a second opinion will always have better results whenever new ideas are being thought of.

Many media figures have used social media platforms like Twitter or Facebook to build relationships with fans online. Justin Bieber and Miley Cyrus are just a few that come to mind that have used social media to create this imaginary relationship with fans. Bieber and Cyrus’s fans feel close to the superstars by reading their posts online and responding. If the fans are lucky they might sometimes get a re tweet or a favorite on Twitter from these celebrities and this only enhances this imaginary relationship. In the reading Making Monsters: Lady Gaga, Fan Identification, and Social Media the author discusses how fans build imaginary relationships with celebrity figures through social media. “Of the kinds of imaginary relationships with media figures that Caughey describes, he highlights one particular type that he finds to be “more common and significant” (53), in which fans display “intense admiration” for a media figure.” (Caughey 4). Over the past couple years this admiration has only grown stronger for Bieber, Gaga and Cyrus. So much so, that social media has given these fans nicknames like, Beliebers or Monsters as the article refers too. Social Media encourages these imaginary relationships with media figures to grow and it is not going to stop anytime soon.

 The lady was so engulfed by the Farmville game that she lost touch of reality.  And 3 months prior to that, a South Korean Couple spent so much time nurturing a child in an online game that they forgot to nurture their real life child, causing him to starve to death. Video games were so urgent in the lives of the people in both of these cases, that their real life obligations no longer took priority. It is evident that in modern times, video games are much more serious than one comes to expect. While most people who play video games don’t end up committing murder, a lot of other people waste the time they could have been using to accomplish something else.  

in my house, video games were never allowed. i remember being maybe 11 or 12 and saving up for a nintendo DS before my mom gave me a stern “no,” forcing me back to my room to read a book. in the long term, i thank her, because now i’m a great reader, writer, and it kind of makes sense to me as to why she didn’t let me ever have a video game system. when i was in 8th grade, my mom bought my sister and i a Wii, seeing it was okay because it was a form of activity and had more of a thinking process than sitting in front of an xbox and shooting people or staring at steam waiting for a friend to log on. i was drawn to the article by millington about the wii not being a modern video game, just because this is pretty much the reason i had the game. reading about it’s flaws, such as not being able to detect body fluxes and other type of physical sensitivity to humans, made me realize i still have no idea why my mom bought me this. there’s nothing sophisticated about this - it’s just another $100+ console that distracts you in, how i was raised to believe, an uneducated way. I never found video games appealing, even after playing a bunch and giving them all tries, but to me, they’re honestly all boring and don’t really give me much of a reason to play them.