Parenting & Facebook

Works Cited

"Facebook Voicemails from My Mom." YouTube. YouTube, 17 Oct. 2011. Web. Nov. 2013.

"Flowchart: Should You Friend Your Parents on Facebook?" Cool Material. N.p., n.d. Web. Nov. 2013.

Hurley, Katie. "Facebook Perfect Parenting." Huffington Post. N.p., n.d. Web.

"Mean Moms Caught Making Fun of 'Ugly' Babies in Secret Facebook Group." Jezebel. N.p., n.d. Web. Nov. 2013.

Medoza, Mathra. "Moms on Facebook." Huffington Post. N.p., n.d. Web.

"Mom: Verdict Shows Cyberbullies Will Be Punished." YouTube. YouTube, 01 Dec. 2008. Web. Nov. 2013.

"Norton Online Family." AllFacebook. N.p., n.d. Web.  Nov. 2013.

This Is 40. Dir. Judd Apatow. N.d.

"Welcome to Facebook - Log In, Sign Up or Learn More." Facebook. N.p., n.d. Web. Nov. 2013.

Superheros, Geeks and Women

    Last weeks discussion with Caleb really put alot of thought into my head. Especially with the idea of the Geek culture.
     Ill be kind of honest when i felt like the lecturing was bashing men a little bit. I do think men have taken over the realm of the geek, but i still think they have left room for women to be involved.

Heres some of my thoughts....
   

     Lets be real, the idea of "GEEK" is turning into a business. Chris Hardwick for example has turned his nerdisms into a big business. His Nerdist group was recently bought by Legendary pictures and now he has the title of President of Digital Business. When it all comes down to it, the geek life now is capitalistic way to advance in business. We all know one of the oldest rules in business is the classic slogan..."Sex Sells" and i think that was brought into play with some of the Cosplay pictures that were on display in our lecture. The women were really just taking advantage of their situation and doing whats best for business more or less then they were being over-sexualized and getting taken advantage off. Is a fanboy really going to want to see a grown man in his 30s in a sexy Ms. Marvel costume??...No, he wants to see a woman just as attractive as the comicbook character he enjoys to read about. By NO means am i saying women cant have higher ranking jobs in the geek universe like CEO etc, but they should also take advantage of their strengths, and sex is one of them. I applaud the women for dressing like they did because their using the best of their abilities to advance in the business that is being a nerd or a geek, even if that means dressing a little too sexy.


     I also think we looked at the role of women in superhero/geek films a little wrong as well. Yes, Black Widow was over sexualized and sortof a sideshow act in the Avengers film, but she was still an integral part of the team. You also have to look at it from a business aspect, when Marvel comics first came around, not too many women were lead comicbook characters let alone, leaders of teams like the Avengers. People want to see the comicbooks they loved so much as children come to the screen the way they read them, not a 180 degree difference. Todays directors of the superhero film need to keep the original stories in tact, they like to make good, fair movies but they also need to give the audience and the people what they want.  Again, im not bashing bigger roles for women in the comicbook world, auteurs are just doing what works for the moment now.
     We also brought up the character of Kate Beckinsale in the Underworld Franchise. Correct me if im wrong but we discussed how she was very violent and shoot first and ask questions later. Like i said earlier, its not that we cant have reasonable and strong female characters as opposded to her character in Underworld, its just what works for business! People go to movies to find that sense of escapsism from our own reality, and they want to see that sense of craziness, they want to see a beautiful woman firing automatic weapons and not thinking of a reasonable solution to a problem. Movies are capitalizing on characters like these because thats what works for the movie business not because they are disgracing females.
      Be on the lookout for bigger roles for females in the superhero universe. Joss Whedon, director of the Avengers: Age of Ultron has stated he wants the Scarlet Witch to play a big part in his next film. The character of the Black Widow,  who we looked at earlier, will also play a much bigger role in the film Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Also, Edgar Wright, who is directing the upcoming film, Ant-Man said the female hero The Wasp, will be just as integral to the film as Ant-man himself.


     

My Own Personal Cultures

     Discussing the princess culture ideas last week definitely opened my eyes up a bit. I started to notice young girls in my family, cousins and a few nieces etc who really displayed those traits of narcissism and the concept of entitlement. I even came to notice a few of those traits in female friends of my own age. But the biggest revelation that came to me was my own personal culture that I came to define as the cowboy culture and the quarterback/pointguard culture.
     Just like the idea of being obsessed with the pink and everything princess like, most young boys in my family and myself included don't pass the age of ten without getting a hat and gun holster fastened to their waste. You could have consider me a real life version of the character from Willy Wonka, Mike TV, constantly watching anything from Tombstone to Diehard, always shooting my fake gun at the bad guys on tv. Like the concepts of the superhero culture the cowboy culture I had developed made me aggressive and sometimes cut off from other things.
      When I got older and like most males, the cowboy identity  switched to the quarterback/pointguard identity. Admiring everything sports and cutting myself off from a lot of things, including schoolwork, and also giving me more of a cockier or "diva" attitude when it was time for football and basketball season.
       But now I feel like I don't really consider myself in any culture. Who's really to blame for this...Parents...The Media...The kids themselves? I don't really know, but the main thing I do know is, find what you like to do, do your best at it, and don't let anyone judge you for it.

Andrew Storey

Letting it all soak in..

   It usually takes a few days after we stop talking about a various topic for it to really sink in with me. After two or three days I start to see a lot of the signs and notions we talked about for the various problems in our media. Well the following just happened to me in about the cycle of 3 hours.
  
  I had some free time today and decided to kill some time playing video games. I had slipped the game Call of Duty:Black Ops and started to play. If anyone is familiar with this game you know there is a pretty gruesome interrogation scene in one of the beginning levels. You as the main character takes a piece of broken glass and puts it inside a Russian scientists mouth and begins to punch him to gain information. It took me about 4 years of owning the game to realize how wrong this is! I really became that victim of the militainment and stepped inside that 3rd sphere of the virtual citizen soldier, not realizing the reality of whats happening other then saving the day in my fictional videogame world.

   After watching Food Inc. today I also realized a few things...Going to make my luxurious dinner tonight of generic brand mac n cheese and a ham sandwich, I began to notice the branding of all the food I bought. Almost every product I own has some sort of "hometown farm" brand to it like the movie said that disguises the product, when reality its only owned by 3-4 major companies.

Also, I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm still a little freaked out to eat chicken as well...

   

Andrew Storey

Brandalism

“Many a small thing has been made large by the right kind of advertising.” – Mark Twain

After todays class I started to think more about  cultural jamming. I really dont believe that the examples of the improveverywhere.com really are cultural jamming. Throughout the reading of the Harold article i kept focus on cultural jamming as interupting of the system, intervening and turning an idea or system on its head. I feel like for it to truly be cultural jamming you have to take the preconcieved idea or notion and flip it around to a worldwide audience. I think that idea also needs to be based on a capitalistic society. After some research today, i think i found a classic example of cultural jamming just as good, if not better, then the ones we discussed in class.


http://sobadsogood.com/2012/07/23/22-brilliant-examples-of-culture-jamming/ 

Im not sure how to post the pictures on here, but the above link is to a website showing billboards of the cultural movement known as Brandalism. Brandalism was a street art movement started in over five UK countries that challenged the authority and the status quo of the advertising industry. Their movement is displayed through the billboards they put up that have really provacative messages that really takes that idea or system like we discussed in class and flips it around. A good example of one of their works is a billboard that says "NIKE" with the classic "Just do it" slogan but in the nike logo the I is replaced with a knife and the words are dripping blood. I believe Brandalism is a great example of cultural jamming because its really flipping the system, the system being advertising, on a capitalistic level. I also believe its a good example of politics. The technical definition of politics, "is the practice and theory of influencing other people on a civic or individual level", and i truly believe thats what this movement does.

little off topic, but i cant not talk about it

Thinking back on it, it amazes me to think what our technology has enabled us to do. We can watch people with remote control robots, tap cellphones, track people over the internet and so on.

Like we talked about in class, we also all these great social media platforms to share ideas, concepts and miles upon miles of information with each other. But it sickens me, I mean sickens me, turns my blood to venom when I see people abuse this. Not even five minutes ago I had gotten home from class and sat down on my couch like every other student does. I checked twitter, I checked the onion, simple things to provide the entertainment in our times of boredom. But then I decided to check Vine, an application I actually enjoyed quit a bit until now.

Scrolling down I saw the same old things, overweight people dancing to Skrillex, everyone copying the Terio "Oh Kill Em Dance" then I saw something revined, the vine version of getting "retweeted" that made me almost and im still debating, deleting my vine account because of it.

I saw a sick human under the vine name, "The Grey" beating his dog. Slapping it in the head, pulling on its ears violently, and laughing like a borderline dictator. It sickens me that this exists. This isn't the first time either. After I witnessed this I did some research and theirs been a few different instances like this. People kicking cats, throwing them in the ceiling, shooting animals with crossbows, I was on the verge of tears reading some of the articles I found. The fact that we can do everything we can do that I stated above with technology but we cant find a man who posts a six second video on a public application like Vine. It makes me pretty upset to be an American. We can have and fund a remote control stealth plane but we cant put this petty sick freak to justice.

Correct me if im wrong but this man hasn't been apprehended yet. So lets down our own form of activism. If you know anything about this man call animal control, its not something to tread lightly over, post on facebook about it, make it known.


Andrew

You guys made it facebook offical yet?

     I like to consider myself the mediator in my group of friends from back home and even my friends here at Ball State. I like for all my friends to come to me with any problems that they may have be it big or small. Being a person in my demographic, the 21 year old male, most problems that many friends bring up to me is the ever-questioned and the one topic man will never fully understand, WOMEN. That one problem always comes with the exact line or usually a version of it...... "dude we even made it facebook official."

    It isn't near as big as issue as it once was in gradeschool and highschoo but  it still comes up many times today. Not always in that same dialogue but very similar. "Man I just checked her facebook, gotta boyfriend".."She seems pretty cool, I think im gunna DM her"...."She just gave me a relationship notification, what should I do?....are just some of the things ive heard. Digital communication via social media has  replaced simple one on one moments that are significant moments in adolescents and even adults lives. I think facebook is a big reason a lot of people my age lack certain social skills. Many of my friends my age would rather sit alone in class and not socialize or branch out, they'd rather keep their web of friends intact, and that web being held together by a web including twitter and facebook. Also many of my friends would rather ask a member of the opposite sex if their on facebook or if they have a twitter handle.
   
   Twitter in my opinion really has broken the levels of man to women contact that have been almost ritualistic in times before us. Whats to happen in ten years?...twenty years?, by twenty years we're on the verge of having marriages via Ipad.

-Andrew

Lets appreciate twitter for what it really is

After todays class I began to think...How many times has anyone heard people complain about someone's twitter? ....

"He/She tweets the dumbest stuff"

"I like them less and less after reading their tweets"

I cant tell you how many times I've heard friends or peers say things resembling that. But what is twitter really? A place to vent about our exgirlfriend or our biology professor we cant stand?...No, its a connection tool to the world. Its a place for people to share experiences, moments and feelings throughout one internet community. Twitter was even technically made as a tool for sharing experiences. Twitter had its first big moment of popularity at the 2007 South by Southwest music festival. Twitter usage increased from 20 thousand to 60 thousand tweets a day in just a short matter of time. "Hundreds of conference go-ers kept tabs on each other via constant twitters, panelists and speakers mentioned the service and bloggers in attendance touted." according to Steven Levy of Newsweek.

Personally I love twitter. Having three older siblings, one living in Atlanta and two living in Kentucky its somewhat of a fun new way to keep us all connected and share whats going on in each others lives in 140 characters or less. Being an aspiring writer myself, I think its a great way to share a joke or a line of dialogue I have for whatever I'm working on.  Twitter is also more then just connecting on an emotional level. Its an outlet for creative artists on all levels. Ever heard of the author Justin Halpern? He took his twitter handle @shitmydadsays and turned it into two award winning books and a lot bigger pay checks at the end of the week. What about Rob Delaney? He took what was a mediocre comedy and writing career and turned it into a TV pilot, a book deal and headlining comedy clubs across the country.

So when you have your newest song recorded, newest BLOG posted, newest painting or drawing made or simply just a joke you think will make someones day better, turn to twitter....or the old horse that we're too afraid to put out of its misery...aka facebook and put it out there for the world to see. Lets quit complaining about Twitter and use it for what it really is.

-Andrew Storey