Utilizing Facebook

One of the positive uses for Facebook is its use to promote causes through statuses recently. Facebook has such a large following that these movements for awareness really do make a large impact and spread the word to millions of teenagers, that ordinarily would not know anything about these significant dates. A few months ago Susan G Komen Breast Cancer Association was asking people to make your status "I like it on ______" to spread awareness and gain support for their important cause. Almost every girls status on Facebook contained these personalized phrases. Another cause is just around the corner.

"Change your FB profile picture to a cartoon from your childhood. The goal? To not see a human face on FB till Monday, December 6th. Join the fight against child abuse. Copy & paste to your status to invite your friends to do the same!"

This movement is to show a large outpouring of young people that are interested in spreading awareness for certain social issues. This is a smart idea because young people often do not vocalize nor get involved with social issues that one day are going to largely impact our lives even more. Young voters could also be more involved in the elections, considering they are able to vote and do not take advantage of the opportunity that our parents consider a privilege. This is our generation's way of being involved and vocal about our ideas. Hopefully this type of awareness will lead to our generation into becoming more involved in media, social issues, and politics in the future.

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Television Online

A lot of times I miss my favorite scheduled programming like Gossip Girl and 90210. These two shows are on Monday nights from 8 to 10 and often times I have way to much work to watch it when it is aired. After talking about Hulu and streaming sites, I realized how much these sites are contributing to the death of television. I happen to use Surfthechannel.com and usually choose the the Megavideo links to watch my favorite sitcoms. Many times these links are slow, hard to hear, pause many times while playing, have viruses, or are removed due to infringement. This site also allows people to watch new movies, old shows, and new sitcoms. When you click on each show and episode, Surfthechannel will provide any user with a list of possible links.

Juicy Campus and College ACB

This week in class the topic of gossip rumor websites was thoroughly discussed. I found the points were presented to be very accurate and highlight many concerns of victims on these vicious sites. I know that I was personally a victim of Juicy Campus many times my Sophomore year at Catholic University. The site had proved to be a booming fad on campuses all over the country, it existed as an anonymous collaboration of posts that ripped girls apart physically and emotionally. The problem with the anonymous aspect was that any victim would walk around campus humiliated and questioning who write such mean and possibly untrue things about them. I will til this day remember every post about me that clearly was written by upper class man girls that utilized the Juicy Campus fad to bring younger girls down and feel insecure. One of my best friends had it way worse, there was a column written about her daily and the titles were so cruel. She cried for days on the phone with her mom and dad begging to go home. The site was impossible to escape and slandered many students names yet it was virtually impossible to get the posts taken down. The creators say that the site was made for students to make connections about funny events on campus but why did they not ban the page once it became a display of pure cattiness? I remember telling my dad when I first found out to find ways to stop this site but he quickly found out there was not any way. Schools were interested in banning but due to creation logistics the site was not going anywhere. Even my friend in Ohio was a victim at some point. There were girls all over the country disturbed by the existence of this site, driving some to commit suicide. The owner's did not realize the emotional impact that it has on a person to search a website and find their full name posted and up for interpretation for enemies, friends, or strangers to comment on. I personally an so glad that the site was taken down, although a site that is almost twice as cruel has replaced it, College ACB. The addition of pictures makes it all the more horrifying. When will the creators of these type of sites realize that they are going to far to achieve popularity and create a new booming social medium?

Learn about the Juicy Campus debate at this site

The Adventures of Formspring... and Cyberbullying.

This week we briefly covered the topic of cyber bullying during presentations. Cyber bullying is a complete breach of privacy, which unfortunately has become a common fear for American teenagers and adolescents. Due to the fact there will always be newer technology emerging that makes different kinds of communication quicker and easier, children will always use their involvement with such mediums as social networking sites to say things they would never ordinarily say to people's faces. Cyber bullying is extremely cruel, it can either happen between two people or it can occur between a large group of people due to the fact these sites make every aspect of life public. This adds to the humiliation that these victims feel. Formspring makes this bullying ten times easier, formspring is a website attached to someone's facebook that allows anonymous questions to be asked to the owner or the facebook.
The anonymous aspect is what gets this site into trouble, people can post disgusting questions and posts to hurt a classmate and get way with it. Formspring has also been known to experience quite a bit of hacking using IP addresses. This allows people to further disguise their identity when attacking others online. Formspring is a very dangerous tool to give to students or children in middleschool because it can misused and have serious emotional damage on its victims. Formspring reminds me a lot of the campus anonymous web directory, Juicy Campus, which was very popular in 2007.
Juicy campus allowed people to anonymously post anything or any stories on this site for people to comment. Of course the medium started out to be a fun way for college students to share crazy times, it quickly flourished into a site covered in awful anonymous posts bashing college girls and humiliating them over the internet. The site had to be closed down due to recent suicides because of its existence. This is a huge concern due to the over zealous amount of suicides recently due to bullying. The first time I saw a formspring last year, people from my old high school were posting humiliating questions to this girl and openly mocking her on her own website. I remember being amazed at how calmly she answered these questions. I discussed it with her the next time I saw her and immediately asked why she would start this site and put herself out in the open with such mean people on the internet. She commented that some posts were mean but some brightened her day. I do not know why anyone would leave this site up for people to analyze and criticize her as a person. I also think it is a very vain site to have.
Formspring has the possibilities to leave a lot of damage on our young generation. Previous generations did not have the exposure to this technology like we do so we can not even guess the potential impact this anonymous site may have.

Gaming Wikis

The video gaming world has become a realm that the average individual cannot likely understand. Users become completely infatuated and consumed by the world and game created for their enjoyment. There are endless gaming wikis available online for active users and even the motivated user that is interested in creating their own video game. One for example, Wikia gaming, allows the gamer to be interactive, as well gives the gamer access to Action, Adventure, Blogging,Shooters, Simulations
,Game Industry, Fighting,,and Racing Strategy. All the games are free and once the gamer is finished they have access to an active so they communicate with all of their other gamers.
Another product on the shelves that has revolutionized the game world is FPS Creator software. This software, which I read about on their wiki, is a commercial application that allows inexperienced or experienced users to efficiently make new games very quickly without any programming. The wiki describes its efficiency in saying, "FPS Creator uses a drag-and-drop system in which the user can select entities such as walls, floors, ceilings, doors and windows to create a level. This level can then be populated by entities such as furniture, desk objects, enemies, weapons and pick-ups. Light-markers can be used to place lights of which the color and range can be defined, and true light mapping has recently become available with a newly integrated tool created by the same developers." This site is ahead of its time and will lead to many new emerging video games in the future. The video game world, which was always interactive, has become even more so now that users can communicate while playing with one another and discuss the game on blogs or chats, even though users are probably living across the country. Wikis available about gaming sites allow people that are interested to quickly access information and get involved with barely any experience with the gaming world. Wikis are a fast and (at times) can be an accurate representation of efficient digital information.