Documentary

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5f0GitIp3AU     Thats the link to my video.

                All I can really say about the project is that time is everything. I ran into multiple problems when creating my documentary, luckily I had allotted quite a bit of extra time to compensate for most of the hang ups. What can I say besides “best-laid plans of mice and men oft go astray.” I am very confident that my video could have been much better and I am not trying to blame any bad feedback on my hang ups, but with the hands dealt to me throughout the project this is the best I can do. I never really understood the difficulty of making a documentary now. I had a great idea for one in my head but day by day I realized how hard or long it would take me to get the shots I wanted or to edit those shots into the scenes I wanted. I assumed that a majority of my struggle to complete the documentary would get footage I realized rather quickly that the hardest part is editing and picking music out. My musical selection in my documentary is horrible the only song I could put on was the only song not deleted off my computer when I used virus scan to clean my computer after I got a virus from a YouTube to mp3 site. So all in all, I am a little disappointed with my documentary. It feels, for lack of better words, half ass and I am not too big a fan of that.

Proposal

My thesis is, are we really who we act like we are on Facebook?

My documentary is aimed at anyone who has a Facebook because anyone with a Facebook can be a victim of its Schrodinger like effects. I will be interviewing at least two people asking them about whom they are and why they post what they do on Facebook. My documentary will try to get people to understand that by using Facebook the way they might it paints an unfair picture of who they are. The location of my film will take place around campus, probably in the dorms and rooms of who I interview. My shooting schedule will most likely be very sporadic but still make sense and flow nicely. The time allotted for now seems sufficient but as I start filming it may take longer, we will have to wait and see. My audience should care because this effects them and everyone they know it may make people realize that Facebook is not real life and the only way to truly know someone is to get to know them offline. My documentary will be pieced in four parts: getting to know the people, getting to know their Facebook, what others think of both, conclusions from the findings. I plan on shooting this documentary in almost a “true life” style. My shots will be more or less like this: in the first part outside, in the second indoors, the third part outside and the conclusion in a mixture of both. I want to do this because by having the first part outside it shows a more social and open view of the person. Indoors for the second part shows the person secluded and closed off view of the person. The third part being shot outside brings the documentary back to seeing other people outside, saying that real people connect with you in person not secluded in your room. I think this will be the most effective way of getting my point across that we need to disconnect and find who we really are not who we think we ought to be on Facebook.

"Dark Days" Analysis

After watching the documentary “Dark Days” the one thing that captured me the most was how there was no narration throughout the whole video. No narrating made the whole documentary come off as one very long recording of these people’s lives. I think I liked it so much because it was the absolute bare minimum of what a documentary could be. There was no (noticeable) outside opinion shaping what the documentary was supposed to mean. What you got from it was what you got from it not what someone else wanted you to. One of the other things that captured my attention was the choice for black and white. I thought at first it was to show how bad their lives were living in the tunnels, but it did not make sense because at the end when they got the section 8 housing it was still black and white. I think the choice to have black and white was to strip the video again of anything but the story. It gave no specific directions on where your thoughts were supposed to go, just a direction towards the point of the whole thing. So if you look at the entire video the bareness of it actually drew you towards a very broad topic which is different from every documentary we have watched so far. Though the topic was broad it was not vague and actually very powerful. The bareness actually helped to make every person look exactly like one of us, except not living in a subway, it made them human which in turn made the graveness of their situation slap me in the face.

Link to Final Movie

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7r1pwWz8a4

Videogames and Art

Videogames to an extent can be art. In the first article what was talked about was a “rock” stage. This rock stage was where the magic happened and where every other thing was shut out, so what is important could be focused on and turned into something amazing. This I believe is when videogames are art, it is when there are no people playing the game and you can just marvel at what was created for us. This is not true for any video game; games like “WACO” and “Grand Theft Auto” are not. Those games do not have any purpose, argue all you want about how they are expressions of what people feel but explain to me how the senseless murder and other bad things are art. If you were to say those are killing games so all killing games are bad you would be wrong, other games involving killing have purposes, reasons, and motives. When some video games are being created it is about the game and what the creators are trying to produce for the public. Most games up to this point should be considered art. When you add the players into the mix, you see that video games as art disappears. We play games and manipulate what was created and destroy the world that was painstakingly planned out and created. What is done in video games is not art and those who create the games know this, why else would after everything we do in videogames it all resets. Nothing is every permanently ruined in videogames, so what was created can be restored and brought back to its former beauty. Lastly there are videogames that are purely for destruction and have no purpose. Like the games I mentioned earlier and others like them. I would argue till the gas is turned off to anyone who believes games like those are art. As far as I am concerned people who think that those games are art more than likely believe that Christ’s image burnt on toast belongs next to the Mona Lisa.

 

Pictures for Video

This would be the first picture, because in the first sentence it talks about what i do when i first log onto facebook

 This picture would come up because i talk about how i am a rugby player.

 I picked this one as the picture showing my party side....because its the only one that would be

appropriate.

This picture of my cat will for the purpose of the video be Schrodinger's cat.

.....

The songs will go in this order: Gyorgy Ligeti - Requiem, Clint Mansell - Requiem For A Dream, And only the crescendo at the end of Tchaikovsky - 1812 Overture for the conclusion.

I also plan on using paint or text boxes on youtubes editor to help explain the relevence of each picture.

I will have the other six photos by tomorrow evening because contrary to what others may think it is surprisingly hard to take pictures that you can relate to a somewhat difficult quantum mechanical theory.  If I could get any suggestions in class or as a comment I would be very grateful.

Tracks for Essay (with explenations)

Gyorgy Ligeti - Requiem 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P1lcZM0MNek&list=FLn4c5eIAqDdUhnWZkZHgAXQ&index=17&feature=plpp_video

I chose this song because my essay starts off as a cautionary tale meant to cause despair and frighten people into becoming who they really are and not who they want to be....and nothing says despair like a song written by a holocaust survivor whose inspiration is the suffering he felt in Auschwitz.

Clint Mansell - Requiem For A Dream
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22ut_pzoWgY&feature=BFa&list=FLn4c5eIAqDdUhnWZkZHgAXQ

I chose this song because it is just one of those songs that can really build you up, in this case for my conclusion.

Tchaikovsky - 1812 Overture
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N0cpKzDoOdA

I chose this song because it is such an awesome song to end anything, like in V for Vendetta.

Analysation of Screen Caps

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6WGNd8QR-U

This is when the tempting hallucinations start in the video. Beforehand, one of the crew members noticed some gages that are spacing out.

 

For whatever reason he is temped into taking off his helmet causing him to die, from the window you can see his crew mate panic.

The crew notices that something is going on, and star freaking out.

They try to figure out what is going on here but to no avail. This only causes more panic.

The system warns them that something is going on, yet the still try to persevere and fix it.

The system on the spaceship runs a program to select who will be going out next to work in the mysterious void.

When the computer selects the next man for the job the others force him to accept it and without much hesitation he accepts.

When he goes out in the void everything is going fine. Inevitably the gages start freaking out again, and he begins to notice some strange things. It is still too much for him however.

He takes off his helmet and succumbs to his fate causing more panic inside the ship.

One of the last ship mates goes out and stares at the bodies; he begins hallucinating like the others before him but the video ends before that.

Music Video Analysis

I chose to analyze Mastodon’s song “Oblivion”. It is a song about the things in life that attract you the most can sometimes be the worst thing for you. The video itself has the members of the band out in space at a space station. The go out one by one and while they are out there they are memorized by some unknown force that convinces them to take off their helmets, killing themselves the moment they do. The part that really gets me is the members are scared to go out because they know nothing good is out there. Even though they know it is bad for them they still go outside and get tricked. The words of the song like most mastodon songs are pretty crazy and cryptic but they can be easily understood if you listen for instance “I flew beyond the sun before it was time, burning all the gold that held me inside my shell” is like if you do something before you’re ready and it ends up hurting you in more ways than you thought. Then “The eyes of a child see no wrong, ignorant bliss, impending doom” says that we do childish things that we know will hurt us and for a moment we are happy but we won’t be for very long at all. The music is cool because there are three different parts for each verse and those parts are each sung by a different member of the band. For each part the rhythm and intensity of the music changes, now it is Mastodon that we are talking about so it is still heavy metal but you can still since the change in every part. Also, it is not the heavy metal you’re used to. It is almost like a heavier version of Pink Floyd, all the intense strong meaning with heavier music

Speech

http://soundcloud.com/william-l-schmidt/this-i-belive-speech

Revised Draft of Talk

Explaination of Schrodinger's Cat

Schrodinger’s…Facebook?

How do you use Facebook? If it is anything like the way I use it you may be in trouble. So when I log on Facebook I update my status with something goofy, I comment on the pictures from last weekend and I post something on the wall for my pledge class. Those few things are just a fraction of the day. For most of the day I am rushing between classes because I am a material engineering student and meetings because I am captain of my fraternities dance blue team and I am service/philanthropy chair. When I go back to my dorm people do not see me reading, doing homework, or scheduling and planning events. This is a problem because we are only showing a part of our personality. It is not the real us. It is an even bigger problem when I apply for a job and my highlighted personality on Facebook makes me look like a bum.

I use Schrodinger’s Gedanken thought experiment to explain this thought because of how perfectly it is applied to us and Facebook, it also provides a simple solution. Getting on to the experiment, its similarities to my point are pretty stunning. Essentially without Facebook we are in the same super position as the cat in the bunker, we are a sum of all possibilities (possibilities being moods, mindsets, etc.). What Facebook does is opens the bunker and whatever personality traits we chose to put on our wall become who we are as a whole; we are no longer the sum of our whole selves. This is a bad thing, because now new “friends” see a contradictory Facebook page from your personality and potential employers see someone who they do not want to hire. Just like how we would see a cat that is alive with many traits if we were on the inside of the bunker, but the bunker creates a narrow collapsed view of a dead cat.

As if that was not worrying enough, according to the experiment we cannot have a very diverse and deep personality while Facebook takes and shows only the one shallow, cut down personality. It is like when the cat is in the bunker and with all of the possibilities, and the outside observation forces one outcome to become entangled with that cat. Hence, causing reality to collapse on what we observe inside the open bunker. Taking this over to Facebook, it is like having our diverse personality stuck in our bunker but what we think the public want to see in the bunker becomes what traits of our personality we chose to show. So this means that even though we have diverse and deep personalities, the narrow personality that Facebook creates, is subconsciously what we are trying to become. It means that even though I am a responsible, smart, chair of philanthropy and service, and captain of a dance blue team; I am secretly and subconsciously striving to become the wreck less, goofy, rugby player on my Facebook.

The answer to this problem however, is pretty simple, do not post just what others want to hear or see. Show all aspects of your personality let Facebook be like a billboard showing everyone what a friend in your close friend circle (what a person in the bunker would see). That would eliminate the personality that is created by Facebook’s collapsing effect.

Rough Draft for This I Believe Speech (Not Complete...Subject to Major Change)

Schrödinger's….Facebook?

If we lived in my perfect world I would assume that everyone is familiar with Schrödinger, but seeing as we do not I will try to explain.  Schrödinger’s cat is a Gedanken thought experiment (an experiment that can be thought about but never actually tested, only supported).  The point of Schrödinger’s experiment was to show how silly Quantum Physics is (it also is a pretty effective way of explain wave particle theory). The experiment goes like this; you put a cat in a box with a radioactive substance and I Geiger counter hooked up to a hammer that is hanging over poison. The cat is alive (or both alive and dead depending on what version you hear) when you put it in the box and you leave it in there for an hour. At the end of the hour the cat is either alive or dead because the Geiger counter either goes of releasing the poison or not. The point however is that for that hour you have no idea if the cat is alive or dead, so technically it exists in a state where it is simultaneously both alive and dead. However when you open the box our observation of what we see becomes entangled with what actually happened, essentially what we observe forces reality to settle on one of the two options. Now what causes reality to settle our reality if it even is settled is one of the biggest debates in Quantum Physics today.

Now me being the nerd that I am started to think about how a theory like that could apply to Facebook. Here is what I came up with. People have very large personalities with a lot of different aspects of their personalities, similar to the possibilities of the cat living or dying. When we are in public with people no one personality becomes the prominent personality (one may be more obvious but not by too much), like the cat in the box it is the sum of all the possibilities. However Facebook is where we only make one of our many traits visible to everyone, so Facebook is what forces reality to settle on one of our traits. The poison and the system which sets it off is any factor that contributes us to have the traits we want to be seen on our Facebook.

In the end I believe that

The Serenity to Change the Things I Can by Mark Olmsted: Response

I did not like this essay because it did not speak to me and it was not very well written, in my opinion. My first issue with the paper is that it did not speak to me. I guess you cannot really call that an issue but it bugged me. Mr. Olmsted is a recovering drug addict who has never liked litter so he decided after his step into sobriety that he would start picking up litter. He now picks up litter every day and says it helps him stay clean. That’s a great story but I was never and never will be a drug addict and good for Mr. Olmsted but if I picked up trash on my dog walking route in Chicago, I would need four bags to do the area in front of my house.  The style and format of the essay is not very well written, in my opinion, because it felt more jumpy then what I think he was trying to do. He would jump between how what he does changes his life and what he is actually doing. It is by no means a bad essay just not my cup of tea.

This I Believe Response: We Need a Revolution by Carol Besse

I chose this article because I too believe we need a revolution. In fact I have written papers similar to this essay. When people think of revolution they think of them as unlawful or wrong, a mindset like that is wrong. Thomas Jefferson once said “A little rebellion now and then is a good thing and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical.” I like to believe that our country is in a draught, with topics such as the environment or the education system (the two points in Ms. Besse’s article) drying us out even more. Every politician clams to have a key to a well but with every election the cracks in the dirt stretch further. However there is always a quiet before the storm, and we have been quiet for far too long; the storm of our peoples revolution can be seen on the horizon. Its thunder is felt in the distance, but like Ms. Besse said it might take quite a bit longer before we feel any rain. She says that a revolution is painful. She says there is not a revolution now because we do not feel enough pain yet but if we do not feel pain now we eventually will; be it at the pump, at the doctors, or at the grocery.

I liked the format of her article as well. She began with her background which opens up what she is going to talk about in the article. She then speaks of what she expects us to do, and why she thinks we should do it. She finishes off with why she would revolt. I like the format because the essay showed us her background, what we should be doing, and why she would be with us revolting. Her background also shows the reader what her generation would have been doing had they been facing the hardships we face today.

My Speech Outline (With citations)

Preparation Outline

PREPARATION OUTLINE

NAME: _____William Schmidt_______________________ SECTION: _____017_     _____

TITLE OF SPEECH: _A Painting Is Worth a Thousand Words….. What About A Picture or Video? ____

 Be sure to label learning styles throughout.

Introduction

  I.        Attention Catcher: I love cameras but I hate myself for it. I have been to so many places and seen so many sights but all I think about while I am there is getting a picture. Do not take this the wrong cameras are amazing but they are sometimes too much.

 II.       Listener Relevance Link: Now I have plenty of problems with cameras, and I did not even know until I was enlightened to how cameras impaired my mind.

III.       Speaker Credibility: I have had a photography class before and I did pretty well, but after taking the class I realized what the camera does to us as humans.

IV.       Thesis Statement: I cannot live without cameras in my life and I doubt you can, but this is a cautionary tale.

 V.       Preview: Let me explain how cameras have changed the way we think, the way we learn, and why it scares me.

 

Body

  I.        First Main Point: How pictures change the way we think

            Listener Relevance Link: I watch the news quite a bit, and I am sure most of you do too.

            A.  Sub point: Let us take a look at how cameras have changed history

                  1.  Sub-Sub point: Anyone remember Vietnam, or at least learning about it. If so most of you know that we were doing pretty well in the war, but the Tet offensive changed all that. Pictures and videos got out showing the public the horrors of war. Within months of the public seeing those images the war was ended.

                  2.  Sub-Sub point: A little more modern example is Facebook. Most of us have one. Well how many of us have those friends on Facebook where their profile pictures are cool but in person the person is a gross… a few.

            B.  Sub point: What am I trying to get at?

                  1.  Sub-Sub point: For some reason humans can read about all the horrible atrocities in the world and maybe promise to throw a few dollars at them; when we see videos and pictures of the events we freak out and start entire movements…do you follow me?

                  2.  Sub-Sub point: Maybe it is because pictures bring to us what words cannot, or maybe we just became a society who is all about what we see. Seeing is believing

Transition: If cameras can do that to how we think, can they change how we learn…yes!

II.        Second Main Point: How cameras change how we learn

            Listener Relevance Link: I am going to take a wild guess and say most of you are visual learners (you and the rest of this generation)

            A.  Sub point: Where is my proof?

1.       Sub-Sub point: Any one in here not enjoy math. Thought so, and do you want to know why? The difference between math and every other subject is that math cannot really have pictures applied to it (except if we draw them out…which we are encouraged to do!)

2.       Sub-Sub point: Any athletes in here? How many of you would be lost if your coach wrote a critique of your performance instead of going through a video of it with you….yeah I know, crazy.

            B.  Sub point: How can I say that cameras are responsible?

                  1.  Sub-Sub point: Well look at our generation. We have videos everywhere, there would not be if they were not extremely effective at getting a point across.

                  2.  Sub-Sub point: This is also the first time in history where we can upload pictures or videos from our camera and instantaneously have it on the internet.

Transition: That sounds cool and awesome why is it worry some?

III.       Third Main Point: Why the first two points scare me.

            Listener Relevance Link: How many of you have seen the Grand Canyon. Do the pictures even come close to how it is in person?

            A.  Sub point: Cameras are giving us so much and taking away just as much too.

                  1.  Sub-Sub point: Cameras have made us think and learn differently, they make us faster.

 

2.       Sub-Sub point: But we almost rely on pictures to help us think we can no longer make the jump from a picture book to a novel (figuratively speaking of course)

            B.  Sub point: Arming ourselves with pictures (futher explain first sub point)

                  1.  Sub-Sub point: We use pictures to help us learn and think more and more. Agreed?

                  2.  Sub-Sub point: What happens when we only use pictures to learn and think, or can we even go that far?

Transition: To sum up.

Conclusion

  I.        Restatement of Thesis: I cannot live without cameras, is that a bad thing?

 II.       Summary of Main Points: Cameras change the way we think and learn, but it may not be for the best.

III.       Clincher: Now this is just my personal views…. but how many of you wanted to see pictures as proof Osama was dead, or said “dude the party was crazy just look at the pictures on facebook.”

 

 ISToulouseHumsweb. "Vietnam - Camera at War." YouTube. YouTube, 16 Feb. 2008. Web. 27 Sept. 2012. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mt1izoMRu6k.

 

"Scientifically Based Research on Graphic Organizers and Visual Learning." Scientifically-based Research on Graphic Organizers and Visual Learning. N.p., n.d. Web. 27 Sept. 2012. http://www.inspiration.com/Resources/Research.

 

 

"Are Smartphones Ruining Photography?" LockerGnome. N.p., n.d. Web. 28 Sept. 2012. http://www.lockergnome.com/news/2012/09/22/are-smartphones-ruining-photography/.



 

 

I Cannot Imagine My Life Without…..(Overview Of Speech)

Now I did not really understand the assignment so originally I wanted to do modern medicine as my technology. My outline would be something along the lines of:

How Modern Medicine Revolutionized

1)      How we live

2)      How we act

3)      How understand our physiology

4)      How we learn

 

However, after reading the blog I don’t think I can do that so I also came up with this option:

How Video/Picture Cameras Revolutionized

1)      How we think

a)      “Seeing is believing”

2)      How we learn

a)      “Visual learners”

3)      How we act

a)      We need to record everything

My Digital Life: Final Draft

Facebook is supposed to reflect who we are, but is it really “who we are”? Facebook was created so you can keep your friends updated on your life. It was supposed to attract people like you who had the same to meet and keep up on your interests. We see that in the beginning of Facebook it was just that but it was evolving. People would share and post with close friends and interact more or less how they did in normal life; then the streamline information effect we read about in the “Is Google Making us Stupid” took effect. Instead of every bit of our lives being shared, we began only showing the parts of us we wanted to highlight. We highlighted our “party animal” side with endless photos of us at parties, or our “political guru” side with endless statuses about how we knew that our candidate could magically fix everything. We were no longer posting about the “boring” stuff. People were less concerned about using Facebook as a means to meet people and more as a web site to boast and show others how cool or popular they are. We no longer cared about connecting with people we actually knew but rather with how many people we were friends with. Facebook was destroying our social skills as well.( http://www.avoidfacebook.com/2011/04/28/facebook-effect-on-society/) We could argue with someone over comments on a status and then see this person in class and not say a word; if someone really pissed you off all you had to do was block them from your profile and you would never hear from them again.( http://www.thehalsreport.com/2011/01/the-social-impact-of-facebook-in-2011/) The way we would handle situations on Facebook could not be transferred over into the real world, Facebook was like a social armor that we could do or say anything in but when we took it off and were in public we would just shut down.

My Facebook history is an interesting one. I looked all the way back in my Facebook history and I found a few interesting things. When I first started “facebooking” (apparently because a girlfriend made me) I found most of my statuses were about her or about how much I liked her. We would have endless conversations with absolutely no substance on each other’s walls. I would “like” things on Facebook that I knew she would enjoy, and I would play her in games and pick out virtual buttons that I thought she would like. Looking back I’m extremely embarrassed with it but, that is what Facebook was to me, it was a way to interact with my girlfriend and occasionally my friends. If you were to see this you would see that Facebook’s only purpose was to show others my affection for my (now ex) girlfriend. You would not see any other side of me, only the side I wanted people to see. If you were to ask me about anything I had posted back then I would get all embarrassed because that was the Facebook me, not the real me.

 Facebook started to take on a new meaning for me. I began posting everything and sharing everything. If I got sunburn one day you can bet I posed one hundred statuses recording the whole experience of that one sunburn. The stupid me, the intelligent me, and just about every other me there was put on display for every one of my friends to see. There was no part of my life that I would not post about. I “liked” just about everything that even remotely appealed to me, and I had statuses all the time. I was also posting on other people’s walls more than ever before; I was just about as social on Facebook as I was in real life. Now judging off Facebook you would guess that I was super social and knew everyone, but again that was not the case. It was the Facebook me, the real me was actually pretty shy, but it made me look cooler. Facebook at this point was just a means for me to look cool and attract new friends.

 

 The last phase of my social transformation was my bare minimum/stream line/”cool me” stage. I would rarely post statuses and I never liked anything. I only posted the important things and I would “unlike” groups and pages that were no longer cool to me. I would post pictures of me playing rugby, of me partying, or of other things that were cool and were what I thought would get me the most likes. My statuses were always funny and would get a ton of “HAHA” comments, or they were really deep or smart and would start big long conversations in the commenting section. Now I find that I’m still using Facebook like I was in the recent past but only more stream line and more open. I only post interesting things or things I think are funny and my photos are starting to include family. So maybe I’m starting to grow into using Facebook how it was originally meant to be used.

The Facebook situation is an interesting one. You see that our use of it obviously evolves as we grow but is Facebook really portraying who we are? I think you can look at your own use of Facebook and see that it is not. We post only what we think is cool and not anything else. We do not want anyone else to see our not so cool sides so we don’t show them and when we get into public we become awkward and insecure because we don’t have our Facebook armor to protect us.( http://news.oneindia.in/2011/08/09/tech-negative-positive-effects-of-facebook-part-1.html)  We have to like everything and Facebook ends up consuming our lives leaving little time for real friends and real fun. Because of that we are growing into a reclusive culture where the online version of us is nothing like the real us and even I am a part of this problem which is kind of a scary thought. I have not actually examined my Facebook life and my real life until now, and I certainly did not expect that Facebook was more or less a prison. I say prison because we only post the cool us so in public we feel trapped to only act like the person our Facebook reflects

My Digital Life: Extremely Rough Draft

Facebook is supposed to reflect who we are, but is it really “who we are”? Facebook was created so you can keep your friends updated on your life. It was supposed to attract people like you who had the same to meet and keep up on your interests. We see that in the beginning of Facebook it was just that but it was evolving. People would share and post with close friends and interact more or less how they did in normal life; then the streamline information effect we read about in the “Is Google Making us Stupid” took effect. Instead of every bit of our lives being shared, we began only showing the parts of us we wanted to highlight. We highlighted our “party animal” side with endless photos of us at parties, or our “political guru” side with endless statuses about how we knew that our candidate could magically fix everything. We were no longer posting about the “boring” stuff. People were less concerned about using Facebook as a means to meet people and more as a web site to boast and show others how cool or popular they are. We no longer cared about connecting with people we actually knew but rather with how many people we were friends with. Facebook was destroying our social skills as well. We could argue with someone over comments on a status and then see this person in class and not say a word; if someone really pissed you off all you had to do was block them from your profile and you would never hear from them again. The way we would handle situations on Facebook could not be transferred over into the real world, Facebook was like a social armor that we could do or say anything in but when we took it off and were in public we would just shut down.

 

My Facebook history is an interesting one. I looked all the way back in my Facebook history and I found a few interesting things. When I first started “facebooking” (apparently because a girlfriend made me) I found most of my statuses were about her or about how much I liked her. We would have endless conversations with absolutely no substance on each other’s walls. I would “like” things on Facebook that I knew she would enjoy, and I would play her in games and pick out virtual buttons that I thought she would like. Looking back I’m extremely embarrassed with it but, that is what Facebook was to me, it was a way to interact with my girlfriend and occasionally my friends. Facebook started to take on a new meaning for me. I began posting everything and sharing everything. If I got sunburn one day you can bet I posed one hundred statuses recording the whole experience of that one sunburn. The stupid me, the intelligent me, and just about every other me there was put on display for every one of my friends to see. There was no part of my life that I would not post about. I “liked” just about everything that even remotely appealed to me, and I had statuses all the time. I was also posting on other people’s walls more than ever before; I was just about as social on Facebook as I was in real life. The last phase of my social transformation was my bare minimum/stream line/”cool me” stage. I would rarely post statuses and I never liked anything. I only posted the important things and I would “unlike” groups and pages that were no longer cool to me. I would post pictures of me playing rugby, of me partying, or of other things that were cool and were what I thought would get me the most likes. My statuses were always funny and would get a ton of “HAHA” comments, or they were really deep or smart and would start big long conversations in the commenting section. Now I find that I’m still using Facebook like I was in the recent past but only more stream line and more open. I only post interesting things or things I think are funny and my photos are starting to include family. So maybe I’m starting to grow into using Facebook how it was originally meant to be used.

 

The Facebook situation is an interesting one. You see that our use of it obviously evolves as we grow but is Facebook really portraying who we are? I think you can look at your own use of Facebook and see that it is not. We post only what we think is cool and not anything else. We do not want anyone else to see our not so cool sides so we don’t show them and when we get into public we become awkward and insecure because we don’t have our Facebook armor to protect us.  We have to like everything and Facebook ends up consuming our lives leaving little time for real friends and real fun. Because of that we are growing into a reclusive culture where the online version of us is nothing like the real us and even I am a part of this problem which is kind of a scary thought. I have not actually examined my Facebook life and my real life until now, and I certainly did not expect that Facebook was more or less a prison. I say prison because we only post the cool us so in public we feel trapped to only act like the person our Facebook reflects

Is Google Making us Stupid: Response

Is “Google” making us stupid? I think it really depends on how you define stupid. It was said in the article that the internet is not necessarily making us stupid, it is changing us. We no longer sit in libraries searching for books, we just type in what we want on “Google” and suddenly we have every source imaginable. We now, instead of reading every word of the one book we find, breeze through the vast expanse of text searching only for the very best piece of knowledge.  Some may call this stupidity but the world is changing and it would be stupid to try and hold on to the past. I love reading a good book, don’t get me wrong, but when it comes to research I wouldn’t be able to read book after book to only get a page of real info. So “Google” does not make us stupid, it may make us lazier but not stupid. We also may be able to argue that it is making us more efficient, we are now able to breeze through information and pick out important parts in a fraction of the time it used to. Look at grandparents for example; they take forever on the internet scanning every line of material for what their looking for. I do not think we will ever see the end of books but I think we can look at books today like we look at film cameras; they are outdated but they will always be used even though there is a much better and faster mean of talking a picture.

The Rhetorical Situation: Response (It was late and I was tired.)

Rhetoric is created when a person has an exigence, an urgent matter that needs attention. So a question is asked that creates a discourse opening the listeners mind up to the point of view of the asker. Bitzer says rhetoric is used to persuade a reader by never actually asking the audience to change. This paper has rocked my world. We live in a world where we are constantly told what to do and why. We are never given the option to see the other point of view. Rhetoric gives us just that, its whole purpose is to get us to negate our fidelity and open us up to a different perspective. The rhetorical question we are asked is supposed to sub-consciously make us see/understand something the listener does not believe in.  A rhetorical situation is technically not real, it is one polarized scenario created to avoid said scenario. Rhetoric is amazing though because ideally it is used to shift a stance from a negative to a positive. Though a rhetorical position or view is always going to be positive whether it is or is not. Looking again to the world we live in we see that everywhere. Everything is made to look beneficial to us by using one form of rhetoric or another.  A better example is in the Mad Men clip we saw, which basically said “Smoking is dangerous. So is driving a car. So is smoking really that dangerous.” Or “Our tobacco isn’t as bad as the other guys because our tobacco is toasted”. One other great example of rhetoric is in Albert Camus’ “The Myth of Sisyphus” where he argues that even though Sisyphus is suffering eternal damnation he is in fact happy. I find that rhetoric is a good thing, in the right hands, which I know is very subjective from person to person. I also find that it is a part of life, and always will be in our imperfect world. It is cool to think about a perfect world where rhetoric would be non-existent, because there would be no need for it. That’s just fantasy I suppose.

 

My 5 Sources

"Facebook Effects on Society." - Avoid Facebook. N.p., n.d. Web. 03 Sept. 2012. http://www.avoidfacebook.com/2011/04/28/facebook-effect-on-society/.

"Facebook's Effect on Society - Facebook." Facebook's Effect on Society - Facebook. N.p., n.d. Web. 03 Sept. 2012. https://sites.google.com/site/percfacebook/lea-s-paqe.

Phillips, Sarah. "A Brief History of Facebook." The Guardian. Guardian News and Media, 24 July 2007. Web. 03 Sept. 2012. http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2007/jul/25/media.newmedia.

"The Social Impact of Facebook in 2011." The Social Impact of Facebook in 2011. N.p., n.d. Web. 03 Sept. 2012. http://www.thehalsreport.com/2011/01/the-social-impact-of-facebook-in-2011/.

"Trending Stories." Mashable. N.p., n.d. Web. 03 Sept. 2012. http://mashable.com/2006/08/25/facebook-profile/.

Web Comic Responce (WARNING: It was late and I was tired.)

We are a culture that has been kept captivated by our owntrivialness, in other words Huxley and Orwell are both right. We are captivatedso much by the nonsense that everything becomes trivial but maybe not to theextent that is suggested by the comic. If you were to look at the world todayyou would see a culture, extremely aware of what’s going on in the world. Youwould certainly not see a culture where the government is hiding anything.However, what if the over awareness of what is going on in the world is wherethe government hides its secrets. The media is constantly shoving what’s goingon in the world down our throats. The best example of this is the"Internet Censorship Bill"; it was an outrageous bill and was almost immediatelyrejected because of how idiotic it was. Little people though remember that, atthe same time that bill was being blown up on the media and talked about byeveryone, a similar bill was being PASSED in congress making it legal forAmerican citizens to be detained without a trial or due process. If you are nota little nervous now than I do not want to know what does make you nervous. Ourgovernment passed a MUCH worse bill under our nose, because they knew thatpassing a bill about our precious internet would start the perfect storm in ourmedia for them to slip it by. When you think about the government from now ondo not for one second think that our government is honest, but they are smart.How else could they figure that our lives, filled with a vast over flow ofstuff, would be the perfect thing to exploit? It is sad really that so many canbe fooled in such a simple way, I cannot say that it surprises me. Looking athuman nature you see we tend to over-react and have other things pass us by inthe confusion. I do not really know how to end this post, I thought I was awareof how stupid and shallow society was before but this is a new low. I meanAmerica the great is being ruled by the few, while so many become more trivialand more captivated that they allow it. Obviously the few are selfish andcontributing to the downfall of society as well, but their lives are so muchbetter then everyone else’s. Maybe it would be smarter for me to stop trying toenlighten others and instead join the few and live selfishly. It's like KarlMarx said "Give a man a fish, he eats for a day. Teach a man to fish, youruin a wonderful business opportunity", and if our society is content withnot learning how to fish then I will be happy with my successful business.

This Honey Child is a Real Boo-Boo: Response

I could not agree more with Mitch Albom. Honey Boo-Boo Childand shows like it are horrible shows. In Honey Boo-Boo alone, you have a mothernot saving any money for college, a pregnant teenage sister, an extremelyun-healthy lifestyle and an exploited six year old. Any one of those alone isworthy enough for a spot on Dr. Phil's couch, but together it is two millionpeople's "guilty pleasure". While reading the article I could notgrasp how every week people could watch such a show; how two million people canjust sit back and watch the epitome of everything a human should not be. I didmy own research and I found a video where Dr. Drew tastes Honey Boo-Boo's"Go-Go Juice", he began sweating and his mouth started swelling as hecalled for a commercial break. He told the audience that he could not focus andhe was shaking uncontrollably. A grown man almost had a seizer from taking asip of this drink and Honey Boo-Boo's mother is giving it too he like there isno tomorrow. I saw clips of the show where Honey Boo-Boo's sister is getting anultrasound and she is only fifteen, MTV would not even put her on the air butthere she is. In multiple clips I’ve seen the cost of the pageants that wouldbelieve it or not cost up to twenty-five thousand dollars, and forget aboutcollege funds because the way Honey Boo-Boo's mom sees it is "My daughteris participating in a sport like basketball so why should I not spend money onmy child and save it, when all other parents can spend money on their child’ssports". Of course Honey Boo-Boo loves going to pageants (Honey Boo-Boo's"sport"), what six year old girl doesn't like getting dressed up as aprincess, but she's six! She doesn't know what’s best for her (and apparentlyher Mom and Mom's boyfriend don’t know either). She's just a six year old beingexploited by her family to gain fame, and I do not know why child serviceshaven’t picked her up by now. It’s probably because, in the words of MitchAlbom, "We don't want to think, we want to be amused. We don't want totry, we want to feel superior. We don't want to correct people, we would rathermock them. We don't do, we watch." This couldn’t be truer, and what betterproof of this than Tony Scott's tragic death, no one tried to stop him.Everyone just watched and recorded it. I only hope, as I watch society jump toits own end, that enough people are recording the action. So one day, years after we are gone our future relatives can be able to watch first hand where we went wrong.

My Social Media Identity Topic

For my essay, I will look at my identity on Facebook

First Writing Assignment for WRD 110

The Reality of Reality Television: How it impacts me andsociety

Reality T.V. is the modern day "opium of thepeople". We try to imitate the characters we see by dressing how theydress, talking how they talk, and even by dealing with personal issues how wethink they would. We look to Reality T.V. for answers and guidance. RealityT.V. even dictates how we feel and how we think or act. Why? Is it because wefind answers to the problems we face today in Reality T.V. or is it because weseek the exciting lives lived on Reality T.V. so we try to act the part? Ithink it is both. In today’s society most kids do not want to talk to theirparents about their problems, they rather go to Reality T.V. where they canrelate to people similar to them for answers. People today see the excitinglives of the people on Reality T.V. so we begin to see their behaviors imitatedon a huge scale causing a moral decline in today’s society. When people look toReality T.V. they see extremes that normally do not occur in everyday life thatis because the producers and directors of the show want it to be as interestingas possible. So when you apply what is seen on these shows to everyday life you’reessentially applying social extremes which over time become the norm and leadto further deterioration of our society. Take a look at "JerseyShore" for example, after the first season you could not go a day in theaverage high school without saying "she was so DTF" or "my onenight stand last night was a grenade". Before "Jersey Shore" Icould not even get my best friend to tell me what him and his girlfriend of twoyears did the other night and after I could get explicit details about lastnight from the guy sitting right next to me. Now Reality T.V. has never reallyimpacted me, I find it to be trashy but I’ve never judged anyone for liking itor even acting like some of the popular characters. Society on the other handis in Reality T.V.'s choke hold and there is no sign of it letting go. Societyseems to embrace Reality T.V. for its excitement and for its shock appeal.There is no benefit to Reality T.V. for me or society.