My final post

Well, this certainly has been fun. Honestly, this is probably the most interesting engauging english class I've ever been in. No, I'm not just kissing up for a good grade. I really enjoyed the focus on the new media and things more relevant to our society than books that were written one hundred years ago. Not to say that old books can't be relevant and engauging, I personally loved Brave New World, but this divergance was extremely fresh and welcome. I might even miss this next semester when I have no english. Well, not necessarily the six page essays, but the thought and discussion that goes with them.

Speaking of essays, I think i like mine. I found out a lot about the file sharing debate and here people stand on it. I feel like a can make a real argument now when it comes up in conversation. Earlier in my blog I mentioned that I really liked Lessig's book. Now I might as well be married to it. It provided some extremely convincing stats and commentary for this essay. I was seriously interested in the book too though. After I read through the parts that were reletive to my argument, I couldn't help myself. I read the entire book in one sitting (well, most of it. There was a lengthy part in the middle concerning bussiness that didn't make any sense to me). I spent three hours that should have gone toward my essay reading that book. And although I still got the essay done in time, it really would have been nice to finish before 4 AM. Lessig is a smart man, I'll tell you that. I had to alter my argument after reading the book. I originally planned to argue that the files belonged to the people as long as nothing was payed, but that just won't work. It's just wishfull thinking. Neither side is really right in what they're doing, but file sharing is the lesser of two evils. Music is not dying because of file sharers, but the file sharers are really suffering. Theyr'e gettng the equivalent of a life sentance for j walking. It's just not fair.

Soooo.... That's it.

That's all I've got.

...

That can't be true, I have to have something here!

Here we go! Dancing robots!



And with that, I bid you farewell!

Once Again, at a Loss For Words.

Well, I've gotten a little lazy, but here's another wonderful blog entry. Today, I find myself at a loss for words, and since I have to write a six page essay, that's a reeeeeeally bad thing! I should be writing about the music industry and P2P file sharing, but I have no idea what to write. I want to write about how people should control the ownership of their music and not corporations, but that's pretty difficult. Especially since I can't seem to make "Free Culture" work. The page just won't load! That was probably going to be my best source and it isn't there! Now I feel like whatever I write is going to come off as "LOL college student arguing that his illegal actions should be legal...". Now all I have are dozens of articles explaining how dangerous and stupid file sharing is. Perfect.

...


Hmm...


Halfway through this entry I tried to access Free Culture. It worked... Maybe I can stop complaining now... It's nice, but it doesn't write my essay for me. =(

Ok, so other than this essay I need to write, maybe I can talk about social networks and how 90% of the class is too paranoid to use them. I was completely surprised by the number of people who refused to interact with 43 things! I could understand with stuff like Ryia, but 43 things? Come one guys! How's a marketing company going to make use of the fact that you want to kiss in the rain!? Honestly, if you are really trying to avoid aiding companies in knowing how to market products toward you, you might as well never leave your house, watch TV, or use the internet. To cut yourself off from all market research means cutting yourself off from society.

Well that's my two cents. Now I have an essay to write. Wish me luck, sense and sanity.

Peace out.

We can re-build it! We have the technology!

Yes! We can make it faster! Stronger! Like nothing the world has ever seen! We'll take this broken visual entertainment and make it into, "Lonelygirl"!

Honestly, I've never watched a single video from Lonelygirl, but the story on Wired was pretty cool. Although knowing that it was on Youtube, I would have been positive it was fabricated. No one is their real life selves online. The fabled web forum acronym, G.I.R.L., even proved to be true! For the less web savvy people out there, the proper usage of this would be:

Person A: Hi guys, I'm a girl.

Person 2: LOL. Sure, Guy In Real Life. There are no girls on the inernet.

IT WAS TRUE!!! There may have been a girl on screen, but a guy was writing her script! All joking and sexism aside, Lonelygirl was a brilliant idea. I never realized just how hard they tried to make it seem real without actually saying "This is real". The fact that the guys talked to a lawyer about it just struck me as really funny, but I suppose they would need it. There are morons out there who would probably tried to sue when they found out that she wasn't real. I'm actually very thankful for the style of entertainment that Lonelygirl started. My favorite online video series, Yugioh: The Abridged Series, probably wouldn't have been dreamed up without it. It's certainly a really cool idea, shows that are only a few minutes long, but how far can people run with it? The genres that can be covered seem kind of slim. Just comedy and teen drama. Could an action oriented program be done in this manner? That's what I want to see!

...*idea*

I just got a great idea! What if someone made a War of the Worlds kind of thing? Where its done in a radio transmission style portraying the action. What if someone told a story and fleshed out an entire science fiction world with only short diary entries from different people? That would be so cool! Think Lost, but you only get short clips from different people to tell you what's going on. You can get stuff from the protagonist, the antagonist, bystanders, anyone!

Wow, now I'm inspired, but I don't know what to do with it!!! I don't have the resources to do this! JJ Abrams! I demand that you start on this project immediately! Stop editing your new monster movie and make an online series!

Hmm, well that burst of genius strayed a bit from the topic. So, in conclusion online episodic content like Lonelygirl is a really good idea and JJ Abrams needs to hop on that train. It could be so much more than it is now. It's just going to take one really good, well funded series to get everyone to catch on. So that's it for now.

Later

Reading and Writing

I got around to reading Free Culture this weekend and I honestly couldn't stop myself. I read all the way up to chapter two before checking the course packet and seeing that I had gone too far. It was good stuff. The man was bringing together some very strong stories to support his case. The parts about the Wright brothers and FM radio were good, but what struck me the most was his chapter about the doshinji industry. Walt Disney copying has only come so far in America and it is slowly rolling to a halt, especially on the internet. On youtube, people are making five minute parodies of cartoons and movies. A video called "Yugioh: The Abridged Series" started the fad. The Youtube user Little Kuribo began making these videos where he pieced together bits of episodes of this cartoon and dubbed his own voice over. To people who used to watch the show, it was hilarious! He sparked dozens of other copycats and the views of his videos rose to over 1,000,000 people. Then, at about his fifteenth "episode", disaster struck. Youtube began to remove his videos for copyright infringement. THIS is exactly what Lessig is talking about! Some one is making the equivalent of a doshinji, keeping only likeness and changing dialog, story, and character personalities. He isn't even making any profit and his largest audience is 1,000,000 views, but apparently he is enough of a "threat" to a television show that isn't even on the air anymore that he needs to be squashed. It's absolutely ridiculous! We're not required to, but I plan on reading this entire book because I like the way Lessig thinks. He's got some valid opinions and points that need to be read by more people!

That takes care of the reading portion of my title, the writing involves my essay topic, WoW!!! Yeah, who would have thunk it? The one guy who plays World of Warcraft is going to write his essay about it! That's a shocker! I know it was in the examples of things you could write about, but I guarantee I would have come up with it anyways! I just need to come up with a good point to argue. I also need to figure out what the questions to consider were. I thought they were going to be put on the 108 blog, but they're not there yet! Now I have to try and write two paragraphs about a thesis I haven't come up with using questions that I don't know. Awesome. Well, I better get writing it. Till next time.

An interesting article I stumbled across.

I'm not usually big on making updates when i don't have to, but this really struck my interest.

http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/Content?oid=322407

A Nintendo employee got fired for talking trash about her co workers on her anonymous blog! Apparently, this isn't the first time this sort of thing has happened. Many other companies have fired employees for posting in completely anonymous blogs. I just thought this could be an interesting article to discuss in class, so here it is!

Miis!!!

STEVEN COLBERT!!!

More on memes.

In light of our current topic, I'm going to drone a little more about memes. The articles we've been reading seem pretty consistent to what I know about them. Memes are social fads that have been around forever, but are now spreading even faster due to the power of the internet. Actually, when I start to think about it, there's a lot of things that spread very similarly to memes in real life, but they just took much longer. Most legends seem to be pretty similar to memes. Vampires, werewolves, bigfoot. They all must have started somewhere and spread throughout the the world. The only large difference I see is purpose. The hamster dance was made to be funny, but legends were mostly made to... Well... I guess for the most part to entertain people. They were told around campfires like scary stories are now. So... Uhh... I guess that idea just got scratched. I suppose another difference is the time they have taken to set into our culture. Think about the hamster dance. When is the last time you saw that? How many years has it been since that thing was flying about the internet? It's old news! People have moved on. In another decade or so, it's likely it will show up on VH1s I love the 90s revisited and we will never hear of it again. Why is it that we're going to be making werewolf movies forever, but no one's going to care about modern memes in a coupe years? I think it's the time that older memes had to set in. Back when the idea of werewolves was spreading and becoming popular, what was there to take it's place? Nothing. There weren't people jumping up to make new legends, they were only expanding on previous ones. People didn't just move on after a few months. They stuck with it for centuries until werewolves had a deep history and legacy.

Even though modern memes and ancient memes fit the same definition, can we really call them the same thing? Isn't that kind of insulting to our culture that's developed over dozens of generations to be lumped in with things like the dramatic chipmunk? It just doesn't seem very fair. I personally think that the memes of the internet need a new name. Flash memes. I'll admit, I stole the idea from flash mobs, but it fits! They form suddenly for no real reason, they maintain themselves for a short time and then they dissipate.

Lastly, I'd like to add a little criticism towards the discussion we had on Wednesday's class. I really felt that the side of World of Warcraft was poorly supported. I was the only one there who actually played the game, and I really felt that the other people who were trying to support the game weren't helping at all. Yes, there are people who are payed to play the game in china and sell the currency for real money. Yes, there are cases of people dying from playing the game too much and neglecting their own bodies. These are extreme cases though. There are over eight million players in the US. The number of people who have negative consequences from this game is so small, it's not even funny. There are millions of players out there, just like me, who play this game as a hobby. I have legitimate friends in this game. it's the equivilant of a pen pal, but you get to chat whenever you get on. 90% of the content in this game requires a group of people to complete! Unless you go on a chinese server, you're going to interact socially with these people! You might realize the one person in particular seems better then the others. In the future, maybe you call on him to help you again. Then one day he calls on you for help. You get to know each other, inside jokes form, topics outside of the game come up. Before you know it, this person is your friend!!! It's no different than gaining friends through blogging, or even in real life! Completely legit' I say!

Now before I go, here's a video that's relevant to both memes and WoW. LEEEROOOOOOOYYY JEEEEENKIIIIINSS!!!!!

This video spread like wildfire across the internet. It probably did more to promote the game than Blizzards advertising at the time! Basically, it's a group of people talking about what their plan is for taking on the next room, when suddenly, Leroy runs in and screws everything up. To the untrained ear, they sound like they're legitimately talking about the game, but if you've played the game, the stuff they're spouting off is idiotic. The video was made as a joke, but when non WoW players saw it they thought it was even funnier because the people sounded serious. There's a nice chunk of strong language in the second part of the clip, just to give you the heads up. Enjoy.