#7 [3/28] (A Study of "The Life Blog")

The emotional, melodramatic, this-is-my-life blog. Let’s call them Life Blogs.

We’ve all seen them. Most seem to be penned by underage teens and young adults. They are surprisingly abundant on blogging sites like Wordpress and Tumblr, whose user-base has a younger age range than sites like Google’s Blogger and Google+.

An August 2011 survey estimated that 13% of U.S. adults have joined Google+; it was projected to have 22% of U.S. adults in a year. However, the age for joining was lowered from 18 to 13 (Jan. 2012), which may account for the growing number of whiny life-documenting blogs seen there.

Tumblr, A microblogging platform and social networking website, is most popular with the teen and college-aged user segments with half of Tumblr's visitor base being under the age of 25. That’s a lot of teen angst.

But for today, I will be focusing on Wordpress, which has an audience with wide-ranging ages.

I’m not talking about blogs with thoughtful, significant, and/or funny content about the details of a person’s individual life. Good writing, especially, can give insight into the mundane aspects of everyday life and cause reflection and revelation. What we’re dealing with here seems to be an extension of Twitter, a blog dedicated to the trivial issues in someone’s life, an online space meant for venting and whiny complaining.

One example of this type of blog, found on Wordpress, is username Pandaclouds’ blog “I am dramatic.” It’s aptly named! One of Pandaclouds’ posts is titled “That was weird.” and is a short exposition on her (her profile pic is pink so I can only assume it’s a she) emotions during the month of January. Sadly, not a single fellow blogger even liked this post.

Another example of a Wordpress-hosted Life Blog is username AppointedMan (talk about narcissistic!) called “HarsH ReaLiTy.” One of his posts is titled “3:47 AM…” and is a detailed account of insomnia and a random dream he had, and its apparent meaning.

I’m not saying these blogs don’t have valuable content. In fact, some of the articles are witty, useful, and creative. However, the majority of these posts seem to catalog emotions, complaints, rants, and other moody things.

AppointedMan obviously believes he’s appointed to share his opinion on the world, and his life, with everyone. Clearly. Interestingly, this guy has graduated college and is actually older than 30. Woah. I would’ve never guessed.

Language shared by both blogs includes words such as “can’t” and “guess” and other informal contractions. Much of it seems to be negatively connoted. Most of the posts, if not all, are written in first person and heavily feature “I”, “me,” and “my.” The tones can range from happy to depressed to moody to over-contemplative, depending upon the author’s mood at the time of writing.

Most of these blogs use multimedia sparingly. Words are often the choice method to communicate “feels” (emotions) in these posts. However, some authors include gifs, photos, even handmade poems and art. Song lyrics seem to be a favorite.

So, what does it take to have a Life Blog? The basic elements:

·         author can be any age

o   must be deeply connected to emotions/inner turmoil

o   must be able to communicate emotions (skillful writing not required)

o   must complain at least once a week about something

·         posts must include opinions/feelings

o   can included art/song lyrics/poetry/pictures/videos to communicate this emotion

o   can included mundane details about life

o   can include sweeping philosophical theories about life

o   can be about nothing substantial at all

As far as blogger feedback goes, comments must be respectful of the author’s feelings. The author reserves the right to his/her opinion, and may not like being addressed or told to “suck it up.” Mostly, they just want to be heard.

And there you have my anthropological study of Life Blogs.

Note: Due to the rather negative review of these blogs, I have not put up links. However, they can easily be found on Wordpress.com.

Links to my past comments on others' blogs

Blog 5

• https://laurelanddtc375.wordpress.com/2014/03/03/post-5-words/
• http://amm356375.wordpress.com/2014/03/03/375-blog-post-5-stock-option/
• http://textsandtechnologiessl.wordpress.com/2014/03/03/post-5/
• http://kyleennk.blog.com/2014/03/02/dtc-475-instructional-technologies/

Blog 4

• https://laurelanddtc375.wordpress.com/2014/02/19/post-4-game-design/
• http://amm356375.wordpress.com/2014/02/19/375-post-game-design-connected-to-mcluhan-concepts-stock/
• 
  

Blog 3

• 
  

Blog 2

• https://laurelanddtc375.wordpress.com/2014/02/03/blog-2-having-to-do-with-goodfellas/
• http://amm356375.wordpress.com/2014/02/03/375-blog-post-2-stock/

Blog 1

• https://laurelanddtc375.wordpress.com/2014/01/24/blog-1/
• http://paisleypeterson.wordpress.com/2014/01/24/dtc-375-blog-1/

#6: When I was your age...

When I was your age, I had a CD player. Not an I-pod, not an MP3 player, but a CD-ROM disk reader.
It was grey plastic, about as big as a small dinner plate. It had a place to put in the funky headphones right in the side, making it portable. You opened it up by pressing a button latch thing, until it resembled a flat grey clam. Then you slipped the CD in, being careful not to scratch the surfaces.

Oh, you don't know what a CD is?

Well, it's a flat round disk with a hole in the middle, like a flattened, shiny doughnut. One side is encrypted with music, which somehow plays when you put it in your car, computer, or CD player.
Usually CD albums come with a max of twenty songs; they have limited space. So when I had my CD player, it was just me and one album for as long as I wanted, until I decided to switch out the disk.

The CD player was important to me because it narrowed my focus. There wasn't a million and ten songs from a million and ten artists I didn't recognize, like on the smartphones and MP3 devices you see these days. Nope, my CD player allowed me to connect deeply with each album I listened to, wherever I was. I may have not had the myriad choices you all have today, but I enjoyed quality over quantity. I could listen to an album over and over again and never get sick of it, because that's all I'd known.
I'm not saying it was easier or better than what we have today, I just know you will never experience anything as simple and almost intimate as listening to one artist's entire album repeatedly. You all have so many choices, you could listen to one album these days; but why? There's no point when you can skip through artists with the press of a button.

(#5) I Once Thought EBooks were for Lameos

I love the feeling of book in my hands. I prefer softcover, because they tend be less clunky and I can find them in smaller fonts and book sizes. Currently, I’m reading a series of books by Tad Williams, which I thought were only in print. I was sad when I couldn’t find the first book in this series at Half-Priced Books almost two years ago. They had stocked the last three books, but who starts a series by reading the second book?! So I literally and figuratively put the series on a shelf until I could find the missing book.

On a whim, I checked my Kindle app on my phone the other day. I couldn’t believe it when I found the first book’s EBook edition! It was about the same cost as a printed book, a price I was willing to pay.

My experience with reading the book on my phone was actually very enjoyable. For one thing, I could adjust all the settings for my Kindle app, including font size, spacing, brightness, and even the font itself (which had a weird but powerful effect on how the text appeared to me and how I read it). At first I was hesitant about EBooks, being stubborn and set in my physical-book ways. But then I realized—a book is a book, no matter what form. I care more about the content than about the packaging it comes in.

Dennis Baron states that “critics still attack the newest technologies of writing not simply as deceptive, but also a impersonal, mechanical, intellectually destructive, and socially disruptive (Baron 11). I used to be one of these people, not really trusting EBooks, and certainly never liking them. Only after the ease with which I found and read my long-searched-for book was I able to change to my opinion. Sure, text on a screen will always seem slightly less personal then printed words on touchable pages. There’s no passing-on an EBook to someone else once you’re done with it, no real ownership of a physical thing. However, I believe that true book-readers won’t care too much how their favorite stories are packaged; what matters to us is the quality of writing and storytelling. Just because the story or message is on a screen doesn't mean we perceive it differently, or the story loses its value. Besides, like the pencil Baron refers to, I don't think printed books will be a technology that ever completely fades away.

For anyone who watches/reads  Martin's "A Song of Ice and Fire" series

#4 (Environments and Story Arcs)

McLuhan has a few main ideas about environments: how they were, during the time of print technology, and how they are now, during our age of electric technology. "Environments are not passive wrappings, but are, rather, active processes which are invisible," he states (McLuhan 68).

 McLuhan also believes that "anti-environments, or countersituations made by artists, provide means of direct attention and enable us to see and understand more clearly" (McLuhan 68).

So what is an anti-environment? Simply something "that raises the unconscious environment to conscious attention" (Alice Rae).

In Jonathon Degann's Game Theory 101 the most important component of a successful game is Story Arc. That is, a beginning, middle and end which turns the game into an "adventure in which the players and the pieces are characters." I don't think this is hard advice to follow; in fact, I think most people enjoy a good story, which typically has a story arc.

If McLuhan is correct, then video games themselves are environments. Many of them are antienvironments, like the Stanley Parable, a game that directs the user's attention to itself as a video game. So what could our environments in video games, combined with the story arcs (or lack thereof, in few cases) tell us about our society right now? Increasingly, games like the Stanley Parable mock the established, invisible environmental rules established for first person games. We can see an increase in antienvironment games, which play with environment including such accepted, basic rules such as Story Arc.

Perhaps we have started to understand the rules we have created for our video games, for our virtual realities. Perhaps we are moving into new territory, developing games which question the environments we have created, allowing us to "see more clearly" our real-world, offline environments.

It may be a stretch, but I wonder if by manipulating the environments in video games, we are beginning to become aware of the invisible, "active processes" in our world now. Maybe manipulating our virtual environments will show us how we can change the environments in our society today.

Post #3 (McLuhan meets Skyrim)

Skyrim.

I freakin' love this game. Whoever invented this magical realm of dragons and medieval war really knew which type of alternate reality I'd like to live.

McLuhan argues that "[t]he instantaneous world of electric informational media involves all of us, all at once. No detachment or frame is possible" (52).

The way I play Skyrim, on my PC, I can both agree and disagree with him.

I am connected with the Steam/Skyrim community when I play the downloadable content available on Steam. Players can make content, and it gets rated and uploaded by other players. Overall, I believe that such a connection with other users greatly improves the quality of my gaming experience. In this way, McLuhan is correct in that I cannot completely disconnect from the Skyrim community.

However, without such content, I feel like I am completely detached from the real world as well as the electric world when I play Skyrim. I'm in my own world. I don't know how McLuhan could argue that when I am playing I am somehow connected with people, that "everyone" is involved.

In my opinion, playing Skyrim is almost exactly like a book. Because it's a first-person game, the perspective is fixed. McLuhan says with the book came "[t]he private, fixed point of view became possible and literacy conferred the power of detachment, non-involvement." Skyrim only offers a private point of view, and not even a fictional one, so perhaps McLuhan was only referring to non-first-person technologies.

Post #2: [Almost] All Forms of Payment Accepted Here

I work at one of the many coffee shops Washington State Dining Services owns around campus. Most people know where this building is; Lighty, also known as the French Administration building (I don’t know why), usually features in every student’s college experience at some point. I serve drinks and sandwiches to a constantly-flowing stream of customers, mostly comprised of students and faculty.

The employees come in two breeds: outrageously cranky or incredibly friendly. Many of them work in the Financial Aid office, constantly desperate for caffeine and headache-relief.

But more importantly, all customers can be divided into the three forms of payment we take: cash/check, Cougar Card/ RDA, or credit/debit (minus American Express). My job as cashier (plus making food and drinks) allows me to witness firsthand the forms of payment people use. Many students use RDA and Cougar Cash; because faculty can’t access RDA (Resident Dining Account) they can use Coug Cash instead. Many staff personnel who use Coug Cash have very old, dated cards, which still somehow work on our system. We swipe their retro, faded, flimsy cards and send them on their ways. Some cards are so old they require extra swipes for the machine to properly read them.

However, many faculty and students use cash to pay for their drinks and breakfast sandwiches. In fact, I always joke that this is as good a place as any to get rid of extra cash. Sometimes I get handfuls of germy change, which I usually never bother counting because it’s a pain.

I wonder if my frequent handling of cash-bacteria is the reason I’ve been sick lately. Hmm.

Personally, I like using a combination of Cougar Cash (you get a discount!) and normal cash, but also debit if I’m really low on the other forms of money. My credit card also works as a debit card, as it links to an online account I can access any time.

In the old days (as of like, 2 years ago) Lighty Cafe used to only take cash and Coug Cash/RDA. The other day I had a customer who came up to me at the cashier.

She asked me, “Do you take credit card?”

I was like, “Oh yeah! Except for American Express.”

“For how long?”

“About two years, now.”

She flipped out, exclaiming, “What? No way! I didn't know that! You guys never told us!!” She was very distressed that no one had informed her we now accept other forms of payment.

I was amazed that this lady, who clearly hadn't visited our cart in over two years, could be so irritated at something so silly. It's just coffee, lady, if you needed to use your card for coffee so badly you should have read the signs posted everywhere that tell you that we now accept your form of payment.

But reactions like this are normal; mess with people’s money or routine in any way, and you must be willing to suffer the consequences. Food services can be a thankless job indeed.

So for now, the place I work accepts nearly ALL forms of payment, making it quite accessible for both students and staff. Maybe my managers should have sent an email to everyone belonging to WSU. Yeah. They'll be sure to do that next time we change anything to do with money...