#virtualme

pixelated

i have many <faces>

pixelated

                   Welcome User, to the virtual world. Please sign up. It’s for free! You can connect, chat and share photos, videos, music and anything you like with anybody, anywhere in the world.

Globalisation is interconnectedness, an interaction of people from all over the world. It makes the world a kind of global village, where everyone can get involved in everybody’s business. It also helps to increase the pace of development. The media is the fastest developing entity. A Blackberry mobile with its QWERTY keypad and roll over sensor, outdated an ordinary mobile with an insensitive keypad. But within a span of 2-3 years the Blackberry mobile itself was outdated by the ipad and iphone. Laptops too, are slowly losing out to tablet PC’s. The media has deceloped into an integral part of our life. It has subtly entwined itself with our lives that to a certain extent it has come to define us.

                   Shakespeare said, “To be or not to be, that is the question.” But with the modern media it is,”To say or not to say, that is the question.” The media is open and accessible to all. Anyone with the desire to communicate can make use of it. The phrase “and I quote” is slowly losing its significance. We need not find our voice in the words of others.The media is giving each one of us a voice. It is giving us the power to speak out, to express our thoughts and feelings. Therefore, the need to quote another person is becoming less because now, each one of us has the power to say, what we feel. ‘I can create my own quotes.’

                   Some of the benefits of this fast-paced media are that information is easily available. Time and energy expended in retrieving information from books is greatly reduced. Besides, it allows us to multi-task. It gives us the opportunity and freedom to market ourselves by developing new ways of communicating. Our skills and talents can be exhibited and shared to a large audience. On the other hand, the virtual world reduces personal contact. We do not know the person behind the username except what he/she chooses to reveal and even that may be false. Thus, there is a great risk involved especially in making friends on social networking sites. Another danger is cyber crime, one example I would like to highlight is, hacking, which in turn could be used to blackmail and manipulate.

1) First of all my gaming avatar would look something like this.  I want her to be kick ass, so I would want her to be representative of things that I think are bad ass.  She would have tattoos, and definitely wear pants and not a skirt.  I would ideally want her to be more muscular and less showing on the top, but that was not an option on this sight.  When I was younger I had an avatar for Xbox, and it was a boy because people did not want to play with girls. Now a days I would be a girl though, because I try and be more authentic, and I think there is nothing cool than a strong woman.

2) The second photo would be my dating avatar.  I can see the appeal of having a cartoon avatar, but to be honest if I were on a dating sight I think I would rather just see the real person.  I don’t have many pictures alone, but I also imagine it would be annoying for someone on a dating sight to not know which person in the picture was the person on the site.  In the area titled “social idealization” in the Avatars in Social Media article, it states that oftentimes dating avatars are used for every reason down to the background location.  This photo was taken by a friend of mine in the beautiful Punta Cana.  This possibly romantic setting could also be appealing and therefore makes this picture an even better dating avatar for me.

3) The third photo was drawn by my roommate, Brooke Bittel.  I would use this as my blogging avatar, and I do!  I like that it does not give too much away about me, so that way my blog can do the talking.  It does say that I love pizza though, which is important in a person to me.  It shows that even though you live a healthy lifestyle, you still indulge in the pleasures of life.  Someone else eating pizza I would know has good taste too.  Even if this person was a cartoon avatar I would immediately think to myself “he/she rocks”