Final Project

For my final project I created a blog, titled Social Media, that includes two blog posts. My first post is about how different generations are impacted differently by social media. It talks about what forms of social media are used most by the different generations and how they use it. My second blog post is how social media can be incorporated into the classroom and have a positive impact. It talks about different forms of social media that can be used and how it will benefit both the educator, students, or even the parents.

The World's Hackers

I decided to do my final essay on Hacktivism. I looked at Hacktivism as a whole and famous Hacktivist like Aaron Swartz, Anonymous, Deric Lostutter, and The Jester. I hope you enjoy!

My essay can be found here!

Video games and violence

The full piece may be found here

This piece will discuss my opinion on video game violence and if it can cause violence in real life. The things I go over include: A movie, Violence for fun, Violence as a plot device, Violence as a shock factor, my temper, video games and mass shootings, common video games, and me concluding with my thoughts.

In this post, I tried to include more than my usual amount of links and images, so that it felt a bit more expanded, and when I checked the length, it had a little over 10 pages worth of material, and above 2000 words, so I feel like I have plenty of material in it. The only thing that I feel is a problem is that most of the material I cited were news stories and the games themselves (believe it or not, there is actually a way to cite software (I did not cite it by hand! I used EasyBib, which does the grunt-work of making citations for you!)). I did however find "Grand Theft Childhood" by Cheryl Kutner and Lawrence Olson to be of great use, where a study from 2006 was discussing points like why kids play video games and what video games they play (I did not cite it very much in this paper, but used it liberally in several other papers talking about the same issue). As I look over the paper, one thing I do realize is that the part of violence in real life is an afterthought. Even so, I hope that you enjoy viewing this piece!

Digital Humanities Exhibit Reactions

One of the exhibits that caught my eye was entitled "Rated E for Everyone", which was focused around the subject of video games. It starts off with the Fortune 500 report that the total revenues for the video game industry in the United States hit $25.3 billion last year. He then adds that most rumors have been dispelled about links of video games to violence and obesity. In fact, video games can benefit people of all ages. A study found that compared to non-players, children that were moderate gamers "showed higher levels of pro-social behavior and life satisfaction and lower levels of conduct problems, hyperactivity, peer problems, and emotional symptoms." Moving on to teens and young adults, apparently playing video games could make them better surgeons, help overcome dyslexia, improve vision, ease pain, help them to make quicker decisions, and reduce stress. He also mentions in his presentation that senior gaming is on the rise. Neuroracer, which is a game created by neuroscientist Adam Gazzaley, is a simple driving game that causes players to take fast turns and make quick decisons, that has also dramatically increased memory and multitasking in seniors.

Another exhibit that I enjoyed was Angelina's topic about social media, mentioning many aspects it it. She talked about the challenges that social media poses to society, such as making it very easy to hide behind technology. She also brings up how people tend to voice their controversial opinions about things that they wouldn't normally do in person, and even that many social media accounts are false. Another topic she tackles is how social media impacts different generations. Baby boomers tend to not understand social media very well, Generation X finds it a bit easier to get used to and navigate, and Millennials are extremely social media savvy because they have practically grown up with it. She then moves onto a more important issue regarding the potential addictive qualities of social media. In 2016, 78 percent of Americans had a social media profile, which is a 5 percent growth compared to 2015. She concludes with results from a survey conducted by Tianjin-based Nankai University, that 68 percent of young people spent over six hours a day surfing the web during they summer break.

How Are Women Portrayed In Video Games?

My essay, "How Are Women Portrayed In Video Games?", tackles the issue of the misrepresentation and sexualization of female characters in video games. It talks about specific video games, as well as people such as Anita Sarkeesian who have addressed this issue. The main purpose of this essay is to inform readers about how women are commonly represented in video games, and why a change is extremely necessary and long overdue.

Reaction To Digital Humanities Exhibits

The first exhibit that I had focused on was created by Michaela Fapore. The name of this exhibit was Women In Video Games. For her exhibit she had created a type of powerpoint. From working through the powerpoint I had learned a lot about how women are portrayed in video games. Personally, I do not play video games often. So reading these facts such as how only 2 of the top 20 video games in the United States feature a woman on the cover surprised me. Michaela also talked about empathy studies such as how adolescents whose favorite video game was violent had scored low on empathy scales. After I had finished working through this powerpoint, I felt as though I had learned a lot about how poorly women are portrayed in video games and how video game developers portray them in that way because if the woman in the game was a solider, boys would not find it believable.
The second exhibit that I had looked at was created by Amanda Deasy and was called Video Games: Bringing Social Awareness. The main idea of her exhibit was about answering the question, "Can digital games make users more socially aware". Amanda had focused on 3 video games that share a bigger picture, which it portraying a current social issue. The first game she had talked about was a game that we had talked about in class, Dragon Cancer. This game is about a boy who has pediatric cancer. The second game was named Papo y Yo which focused on child abuse. Lastly, her third example was Depression Quest which had the social issue of depression. I enjoyed working through this exhibit because it was nice to learn about video games that aren't just about violence. These games are about social issues that still give you a fun experience while playing the game. After reading about these three games that Amanda had mentioned, it makes me want to learn more about them and eventually play these games.

Reactions to DH Exhibits- Jacob

No Man's Sky and Procedural Generation (Devin Vickroy)
This exhibit focused on the video game "No Man's Sky", and how it uses procedural generation. The only form of procedural generation I have witnessed in video games is Minecraft map generation. As an Xbox gamer, I have had no interest in No Man's Sky, as I viewed it as Minecraft set in space (In fact, I secretly wished the game would be a failure, which as of right now, seems to be the case). The good screenshot selection did convince me that I was viewing the game incorrectly, as I saw a good deal of variety in vegetation/flori, as well as animals and terrain. I did also feel like this game would only be worth getting at launch, given it has the ability to "discover" a planet. This presentation was generally effective, though I would like to have seen a few more examples (I.E. Left 4 Dead director AI placing items for good pacing, spawning hordes and witches for those taking too much time).


Video Games Good for You (Kiersten Worthy)
This presentation focused on the benefits of video games. I really liked how the author did a good job with research and bringing up examples. I really loved the one with "Minecraft" and children on the ASD (Autism Spectrum). I and a little brother are both on the high functioning end of the ASD, and even though I do not play Minecraft nearly as much as my little brother, we both find it a fun game to play together and to talk about (such as moments where he is trading with villagers and I am preparing an ambush on the village), and after he played Minecraft, I noticed that he became increasingly social. "That Dragon Cancer" was also mentioned, which was a game about dealing with a child who had cancer. I have not played this, but I like the concept as a coping mechanism of sorts. There was also a mention of virtual reality technology (did not mention video games specifically) helping out veterans with PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder). I was rather shocked at the way this was presented, since I assume that most heroes of war jump to the assumption that these sort of media desensitize us to war, but it appeared to have actually helped veterans cope with PTSD. Ultimately, I feel like this presentation was very well done.


-Jacob

Convergence Culture

A contemporary convergence culture is when new and old culture collide. There are several types of convergence such as media, technological, economic, social, cultural, and global.

As long as new technologies keep flying in and off shelves, there will always be obsolete technologies and their respective followers.

Take for instance a video game you can buy. These are the formats that I can list off the top of my head:

• Cassette Tape (beyond obsolete)
• Cartridge (apart from nintendo mobile systems, obsolete)
• CD (obsolete)
• DVD (facing obsoletion, still used for physical pc platform distribution)
• Digital Downloads (Very current, existing since the Xbox 360/Playstation 3 era)
• Blu-Ray (Current, used on Xbox One/Playstation 4)

Here are the game systems that I am currently aware of which have had a newly produced physical game:

• Xbox One
• Playstation 4
• Wii U
• 3DS

Of course, the game publisher has the discretion of which console they wish to publish a game on. Several publishers such as Ubisoft, Electronic Arts, Microsoft Studios, and Sony Entertainment have entirely abandoned consoles from last generation (Xbox 360/Wii/Playstation 3). Why is this? The games being published are often times too heavy to run on a previous generation system. The last major release I recall seeing on any previous generation system was the Xbox 360 getting Rise of the Tomb Raider (and that was considerably heavy).

Generation exclusivity might also be used as a tool to entice players into a new generation. For instance, when I played Halo 5, I felt like it could fit well on the Xbox 360. It felt about the same graphically and technically, and if Microsoft wanted to, they could have easily ported it to Xbox 360. The only problem with this is the new gameplay mechanics, a nearly double length campaign, and well over 50 GB of additional content (at this point, I believe there is so much content that the current game size is the launch size doubled).

This is just like the decline of video cassettes. At first, when DVDs were considered the new luxury format, releases were relatively rare, but quickly speeding up. People who wanted to keep video cassettes could stay with cassettes, but eventually, video cassettes became phased out due to the increasing popularity of the DVD and the infancy of the Blu-Ray. The DVD is currently undergoing a similar phase, but they are at the beginning of their end. In a way, Blu-Ray can be considered a reincarnation of DVDs. The Blu-Ray can hold far more data than a dvd, has higher quality, is far more scratch resistant, and all Blu-Ray players are reverse compatible with DVD discs (ensuring nobody had to purchase their favorite films again). All of these changes are welcome, but it took me a little while to decide to switch. The primary reason for me converting was due to me getting tired of DVDs repeatedly freezing up and skipping.

Archives

What is an Archive?

When I hear the word archive, I think of a place you go to find information. According to The National Archives, an archive is a place where you can gather facts, data, evidence from letters, reports, notes, memos, photographs, and other primary resources. Archives are used for many things such as to store items as proof that something occurred or even explain how something happened. An example of an archive would be the Pennsylvania State Archives. The Pennsylvania State Archives purpose is to obtain, maintain the original existence, and make available the permanently valuable public records or the Commonwealth along with private papers relevant to the history of the state of Pennsylvania.

Why Make an Archive of Vinyl Record Covers?

Vinyl record covers are one of the first forms of artwork for media presented on a vinyl record, and vinyls date very far back. While it is very likely that there are archives of the songs featured, it is very unlikely that there is an archive dedicated to the cover art. These are especially important to archive, as these are printed on cardboard and can wear/lose their colors quickly. Also, it is worth making a scan of the back of the vinyl cover, as these are typically the only way a person can see the names of a vinyl’s songs.

Our Examples

We have chosen to show you four Vinyl Record Covers that make our case for why there should be an archive. Our first example is the legendary record cover for The Beatles album Abbey Road.
If you talk to anyone over the age of 16 they will be able to tell you exactly what the Abbey Road album cover looks like. It has been repeated time and time again by different people of all different ages, and different races. We have examined the cover as critiques as well, asking why is Paul the only one stepping on the white mark. Album covers like this and like my next example, Jimi Hendrix vinyl record cover Axis Bold As Love,redefine music and album artwork.

The Hendrix album cover is what is known as Afro Album Cover, which African American artists use. It is also historic because it is Jimi Hendrix, one of, if not the greatest guitarist of all time who’s life was cut way to short. Another example is the cover of the Kiss album Sonic Boom.

This cover artwork was done by Michael Doret, an artist who worked on other Kiss albums as well. This album cover has sort of a comic book look to it, with the large animations and bright colors.

Pink Floyd’s album cover for The Dark Side of the Moon is also a standout vinyl design. This album with a simple cover design was meant to focus on things that “make people mad.” It was designed by Storm Thorgerson, the prism dispersing light into color is meant to represent the band’s lighting and the theme of the record.

New World

My piece of electronic literature, New World, is a hypertext narrative. It is set in the future and follows the experiences of a young woman.

Electronic Literature

My original work of electronic literature is a google map essay of the 2016 post season baseball. I play baseball here at UPJ, and am very passionate about it. So my story is a true story of actually events that took place no more than a month ago. My essay is titled The GOAT is Lifted, and when ya read you will see why!

My 15 Favorite Rollercoasters- A Google Map by Jacob Bacci

One of the few joys in my life that does not involve screens is Rollercoasters. If you noticed the title of my tribe’s blog, I named it “Millenial Force”, since our tribe had no other ideas, and as the blog designer, I chose to give a callout to my favorite coaster, Millennium Force. Since the major part of this project is a list of fifteen of my favorite coasters (I actually would have put more in, but I decided 15 is a plentiful number, and it sounded nice for a list.), I would like to list all of the theme parks I have been to and any coasters I did not go on (Denoted by DNR) and when my latest visit was:

2016: Cedar Point, Kings Island

2015: Kennywood, Six Flags Magic Mountain (DNR: Ninja, Goliath), Disney’s California Adventure/Disneyland (DNR: Goofy’s Sky School), Legoland Carlsbad, Seaworld San Diego

2014: HersheyPark

2013: Busch Gardens Williamsburg, Disney World (Florida, All properties), Universal Orlando (Both properties) (DNR: Dueling Dragons- Chinese Fireball)

2012: Dollywood

This list is made for the reason that I know people can be opinionated on coasters, and you might have been on a coaster that opened after (or closed during) my latest visit (I.E. Dollywood- Lightning Rod). Also, we have probably been to different parks, so I might not have yet rode a certain coaster (I.E. Six Flags Great Adventure- Nitro). I have not listed any coasters that are no longer in operation as of my latest visit, and I will not be listing any kiddie coasters.
Also: If I seem biased to Cedar Point, let it be said that everyone can have a bias. Now go back to your HersheyPark and Kennywood bias!

Here is a link to the finished project, a google map containing the 15 coasters I have loved the most, in no particular order.

Here is a playlist of all 15 coasters Point of View videos (what a coaster looks like from the front seats). I have made sure to find videos where the camera does not shake around. The only one I could not find a really good video of was California Screamin’. Don’t bother trying to listen to the soundtrack, as it is easily overpowered by the noisy coaster. Since it was the last ride on the list, I added the soundtrack as a bonus video.
A word of advice before you go into the playlist: If you do not want to take any chances on motion sickness, DO NOT WATCH ON HIGH FRAME RATE! If you get sick due to high frame rates (like me), I am guaranteeing you that these videos will make you vomit!

As a bonus: Here is a photo album of my reactions to all of the Kings Island/Cedar Point coasters that I listed.

Angelina's Electronic Literature Component

My Google Maps essay, Just 3 Days, is a true story about a spur of the moment trip that my family and I had taken to Rome, Italy.  I decided to do the Google Maps essay for my piece of electronic literature because it made it very easy for me to make the reader feel as though they were experiencing this trip with me whether it be the stressful feeling of running around the airport or the amazing sights of Rome.

Text Mining

Michaela

To find out what the common trends were in the latest posts in our blog, we copied all of our blog posts into Voyant, which is a program that will pull out the most used words, and figured out which words we used the most in our individual posts regarding social media, as well as all of our posts as a whole. My individual results largely represented the results of our entire group. To the right is an image that shows my most used words, which were media, social, virtual, and identity. Virtual and identity were tied for third.

Dylan

When I used Voyant to inspect my blog post on social media, it showed me a lot. Voyant showed me that, when I am talking about a certain topic, I tend to say the topics name a lot. For example as you can see through my link, I use the words social, and media a lot throughout my 474 total word post. I believe that Voyant is very helpful because it shows you what you are saying, and if you are repeating yourself. It helped me out in this post, because it really showed me in my writing that I was getting the point of social media across.

Jacob

When I created a corpus (or text examination) of my recent blog post about personalities online, this is what I found. As I had predicted, I had different results than my teammates, with my most common words being:

Like (10)

Just/Online/Personality/Things (6)

This was no surprise to me because I have a different writing style than my teammates. I prefer to write long example posts, while my teammates prefer to write shorter examination posts (which holds true for several of our group posts as well, which I usually write afterthoughts on the topic). I took a conversational approach to this post and my corpus ends up with little matches to my teammates’ corpus. I found it interesting that I incorrectly predicted my corpus, but I am pleasantly surprised by the results.

Angelina
Just as my tribe members had done, I used the website Voyant to see what the common trends were for my most recent blog post about Social Media. By copying my blog post into this website, I was able to find things such as my most used words which were media, social, identity, virtual, and post. These top five words represent my blog post well because it was about social media and our virtual identities that are created through them. The photo below was captured from Voyant. All of the words in the photo were used in my most recent blog post, however, the words that are larger in size are the words that were most used. 

Social Media?

Social media plays a big role in today’s society and in a lot of people's lives. Everything from Facebook and Twitter to Instagram and Snapchat, it is all something that, especially us millennials, waste a lot of our day interacting with. Even though I am a big social media user, I still have mixed views on whether it impacts us negatively or positively. When you use social media, you are building yourself a virtual identity. I would explain the term ‘virtual identity’ as the character you are made out to be online, which means that your virtual identity can potentially be completely different from your actual identity. I have a virtual identity due to having social media accounts and I would like to think that my virtual identity does not vary much from my actual identity because I do not post on social media sites other than photos and the occasional post, I spend most of my time scrolling to see what others are posting. This is where I think that social media is negatively impacting individuals today. We not only spend so much of our day on social media, but I believe that people are very determined to make their virtual identity look amazing. Coming from a girl’s perspective, social media is something that leads you to compare yourself to others, sometimes resulting in thinking badly about yourself. To further explain my point, read this article. The article is about an individual near my home town, who was both very intelligent and extremely athletic but committed suicide because she would see her friends posting on social media about having fun in college, where as she felt as though she was always studying or playing sports. However, she would post photos as well so that people thought she was doing good in college as well. In this case, her virtual identity and true identity were not the same. This shows how seriously we take social media, and virtual identities. On the other hand, however, I do believe that social media has its benefits as well. Personally, I benefits from social media because it allows me to stay connected with family and friends who do not live by. Social media can either have a positive or negative impact, it all depends on how you use it.

Social Media at it's Finest

Social Media is something we as Millennials interact with every single day. Now, to an older generation this may not be the case, and that is why first I will do some explaining. Social Media can take a number of forms from Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat for example. Twitter and Facebook are very similar in the way they operate. Twitter you can post what you are doing in 140 characters or less, this is the main difference from Facebook. I think this is why twitter appeals to a more younger audience than Facebook does. Mostly everyone my age nowadays really does not use Facebook anymore, it has mostly been taken over by our parents. Twitter is home for a lot of millennials, we can get just about anything on Twitter and that is why it is so popular. Instagram is an all picture based social networking site, strickly photos. Snapchat is an interesting one, you can send your friends pictures of whatever for a certain amount of time, then they disappear. Snapchat is also king among millennials. Now that I have explained them a little bit, I will go into depth about my social media.

For me, I am a very big fan of social media. I believe social media is an outlet, and a way to communicate with everyone. For instance I like to follow athletes and see what they are up to along with my peers. I think it is really interesting to follow an athlete and see what they do, on a day in and day out basis. To go along with that, we just had an election in our great country, and i feel as if this was the first election that really used a social media platform. I know from following President Elect Donald Trump, he is very active on social media, and to me that was interesting and also very entertaining, while he was campaigning.

 Instagram is a lot of fun, it is very interactive like twitter, but it is all pictures. I am also on Instagram, and follow about 250 people, and have about 400 people following me. I like to follow people I like to follow people I graduated high school with to see what they are up to, and since I got to college I tend to follow new friends that I have made. I have heard that single men appreciate it, to see if they can slide into someone's DM’s if they do not see a significant other. My favorite form of Social Media by far is Snapchat. Snapchat is just simply the best, it is a great way of communication and everything disappears. So if you were to see me on a social networking site, expect to laugh from the retweets, or the snaps, or the post’s because they are all pretty great.

Virtual Identity

When I think about my ‘virtual identity’, I think about the person that others perceive me to be online. Not only that, but also the virtual identities of my online friends and followers. Personally, my virtual identity does not stray too far from who I am in the real world, simply because I rarely post things on social media. I use social media as a way to occasionally share my opinions about something I am passionate about, interact with friends, and share a few pictures. I will admit that as a younger teenager, I put a lot more emphasis on social media than I do now. I spent hours comparing myself to the pictures of other girls’ looks and lives, and even though I knew that it was not helping me in any way, I had a difficult time keeping myself from doing it. At that age most people naturally compare themselves to others, but social media makes it so much easier to do. Most teenagers nowadays don’t even realize how much social media has taken over their lives because they’ve grown up with technology, so it has become second nature for them to constantly be checking their Facebook feeds and Instagram likes. I didn’t enter into the social media scene until I was about 16, but now I see ten year olds with smartphones and Instagram accounts. I have friends who will spend hours checking out how many likes their latest picture got, and try to figure out the perfect time to post things in order to get the most likes. Sometimes my friends will want to go somewhere just so they can take a picture to post on their Instagram, or immediately scope out the best place for a photo-shoot immediately after arriving at an event (yes, this really happens). Every person I know who does this is a good person, but they still feel like they need validation of their looks and activities through the approval of others.

I will admit that I am just as guilty as anyone else of trying to ‘perfect’ my social media accounts in order to give off the best image of myself that I can.. Even though I said that my virtual identity didn’t stray too far from my real-life identity, it is almost impossible for them to be exactly the same. Social media gives people confidence, but not necessarily the best kind of confidence. It gives us online confidence, which I think can sometimes lower our real-life confidence, because it is nearly impossible to embody the perfect image that we have spent hours crafting online. I think that is where the idea of the loss of confidence comes into play, because even if you’re not comparing yourself to others, you are still probably comparing your real self to the perfect, virtual version of yourself that you have created.

 Just like it says in “The Self in Selfie: Identity in the Age of Social Media”, the majority of online comments are centered around looks, because that is what they mainly focus on. Instagram is an app solely to share pictures, which are many times selfies. When someone I know posts a gorgeous, perfectly angled and edited selfie there are always dozens of comments saying how hot/pretty/beautiful they look. Some days I will scroll through my Instagram and see ten selfies in a row, all edited and airbrushed to perfection. I sometimes wonder what the point of sharing a picture of your face is if you’re just going to change it anyway. The people who are liking it are most likely people who you interact with in person, so they already know that you don’t always have perfect makeup and skin. Then I realize that if I posted a selfie, I would probably want to make it look better than my real self too, because I would want a picture that hundreds of people are going to see to represent the best version of myself that I could create. Social media and virtual identities give people a chance to show off a version of themselves that they would not otherwise get to do. Without it, the person you are in real life is who you are to everybody, but with social media, you can choose every detail that you want to show off, and every detail that you don’t want to show off. In many cases, the identity that you create online is how most people see you, aside from close friends and family. A virtual identity gives you the chance to be whatever version of yourself you want the world to see, without all of the clumsiness or awkwardness that real life interactions entail.

Is that Me?

One of my favorite games to play online is Town of Salem. This game is an online reincarnation of the classic "Mafia" party game. The only people who have established allies are the Mafia. The Mafia is a relatively small group (about 3-4 people) who get the privilege of knowing who their teammates are. Another team is the larger "Town", and the town has no clue about who is who. The Mafia win by obliterating the town, and the town win by eliminating the Mafia and other evil-doers. Sometimes, you have really smart team mates, and other times you have to deal with gigantic idiots! Often times, I have cursed at these players. Here is one such instance: "OMG GUYS WHAT THE F*CK! CAN'T YOU LEARN TO READ THE DOCTOR'S WILL! I DO NOT HAVE F*CK*NG IMMUNITY!! I WAS F*CK*NG HEALED BY THE GOD F*CK*NG DOCTOR THAT F*CK*NG NIGHT!!!"

Would I ever walk up to a person at start flying off the handle like that in real life? No! I admit, I have dropped quite a few four letter words, but I only use like 2 curse words an hour (and to me, that is fairly low).

Have you ever created an online personality or character?

Personalities in my opinion are pretty much your presence, under a pseudonym. These often times are just who you are, with few changes.

I have! In fact, the me writing this blog is one of my characters! I am not totally like this!

Last year, I created a blog for a very similar class, where I took on the personality of a gaming journalist with a tendency to be sarcastic and poke fun at things like "Call of Duty". In fact, part of my midterm took place as a new post to that blog.

For characters, these just need to be fictional versions of you, or just not you. 

As a furry, I currently have one character (Fursona- Furry Persona): Adrennec (A portmanteau of Adrenaline (which is a common theme among my characters) and Fennec (his species). To create his personality, I took the Archer character Slater, and combined them with some of my personality. From Slater, he got the dry wit, the shirt, and his lawfulness. From me, he got a tendency to drop a few curse words, a very excitable personality, his good looks, his hatred for drinking, and his love for playing Battlefield. I even have a fursuit (like a mascot costume, but tailored for one body) of him, which I don't use too often, but is a great way of portraying him. Why? No one can see through his head! In a way like alcohol, it makes me less serious, but in a good way!

If once again, Blogger loses the image, click this link

As a brony ( adult fans of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic), I have a fan character, Buffalo Chicken. His personality is almost an exact clone of Sterling Archer from "Archer". The only things he got from me are an obsession with rollercoasters and a love of games with emphasis on speedy action, like "Titanfall" and Call of Duty. From Sterling Archer he gets things like having a sarcastic sense of humor, a tendency to often times anger his coworkers, a major profanity vice, optimized skills, and can at times be a bit of a womanizer.  

If this image is also lost by blogger, then you can view it here,

When I am on Reddit, I will occasionally post things to my joke account, with the intention of getting down-voted into oblivion (basically, if Reddit doesn't like what you are saying, they will take away some of your Karma). The only guaranteed methods I know of are being straight up offensive or stupid, with a recent thread noting about Call of Duty servers being down in Pakistan. I retorted that it is probably for the best, as the last thing we need are Pakistani playing terrorist simulators and heading off to America to start a mass murder. Can I hide behind a screen? Someone can easily find my ip address and track me down, so I think it is safe to say that is a nope.

But wait. None of this is close to me!

Those are just 3 of my characters! None of those will ever be who I am! I can not hide within the furs of a stallion or a fennec or behind the screen of a tasteless redditor!

The closest online representations of me are my Facebook and my primary Reddit account. But when you see those 2, all you are seeing is just my honest thoughts!

In fact, some of the things I write on Reddit and Facebook are deceitful, such as how I was so happy for "Call of Duty: Black Ops" to be making a come back on the Xbox One, yet in real life, I harbor nothing but a stony heart and a bad attitude towards Activision. Ask me the next time you see me about my opinions of Call of Duty and I will start ranting about how they are never changed and Activision ripped off their former developers.

By no means do I mean to depress you, Ask me about how I am doing online: I will just be like "Oh everything's cool!" In real life, I might break into tears about how I have let certain grades suffer and how things are so different. Even in real life, you might see a happy person on the outside, but on the inside, you will find depressing thoughts. Today, consider taking a look at your fake identities online and comparing them to you. You will see yourself in your fake identities and you will not see yourself in your fake identities. When I took a look, I realized the computer has taken me and split me into two different people: the good me and the bad me.

Do Games Count Too?

About 9 weeks ago, I would have told you that games do not count and do not deserve the same attention as great literature, art, and film. That was because I am not a gamer, thus have not played many or researched many games. After looking at game pieces such as That Dragon, Cancer, I can now honestly say that I believe that some games should be given that attention. That Dragon, Cancer can be looked at as a journey of hope in the shadow of death. This narrative video game offers an engaging story about a four year old boy, Joel Green, who is fighting cancer. Like several pieces that we looked at, this took a personal story from the author and gave it an interactive layer. The trailer can be found here:

Not all games with Transmedia elements are augmented reality. Take for instance this year’s “Quantum Break”. A live action series was produced in order to help enhance the story. When players play through enough action scenes, they will have to make a decision from the villain’s point of view, a perspective rarely seen in video games. A one hour show will play after each decision is made, showing the consequences of the choices. Halo is a well known game series, and it has expanded its universe to have novels, a direct to dvd film, and even an upcoming Showtime series. When it comes down to looking at interactivity, most games are letting the player “help” the story move on. In games like Battlefield, players are just given a laundry list of objectives, and once the laundry list is completed, the game is finished. Other times, games will actually let the player steer the story. These games will often have multiple endings which can be reached in different ways. A game might choose an ending for the player based off of their choices (Call of Duty Black Ops 2) or based off of a decision making scene at the end of the game (Grand Theft Auto V), typically found in a “who do you want to sacrifice” scene. Games can also interact with players like in the case of Grand Theft Auto V, where the in-game shrink gives you a complimentary evaluation about your in-game behavior. (This was mine)

Either way, I promise you that games play a very big role in digital humanities.