First time meetings at Conventions

I wouldn't say I'm against this whole thing with people being friends with people only through the web and never meeting in real life until the day of the whatever convention but from what I saw on Frontline, these people need to get a life! They talk about how long they stay sitting on their computer chair all day playing online games without breaks like they're proud of it, which I think is ridiculous! I know as an ATEC student I should probably be proud and supportive of all this especially since I'm more of an indoor than outdoor person but still I believe there are limits to how long you keep yourself glued to your computer. Hello people, it's Spring now. Get up! Get out! Enjoy the awesome weather of Texas! No sarcasm!

This week's Frontline: Digital Nations

The first thing I recall from this video is the part where the army uses video games to recruit kids as young as 13. Now I do believe this is a progressive way to get children interested in joining the army but why at such a young age? I mean, I don't think kids are dumb enough to not be able to differentiate between the game world and reality and think it's okay to go out there and start shooting people. There are many similar first-shooter games out there but they are rated for older audiences for a reason, at least I believe so. Kids should stick with playing more peaceful, bright, colorful jolly games instead of those violent and aggressive ones the army is having them play because kids can just get brain-washed so easily and can be sensitive to what their minds absorb and bloody war games should the last thing they should be thinking about. You don't want to hear you're kid saying, "I wanna shoot people's brains out!" when asked what they want to be when they grow up. If you ask me, I'd be on the rebelling parents' side and yell out whatever it was that was written on their posters.
The second part is the Korean kids gluing their faces to the computer screen in the gaming center all day. I think it really has caused a serious disorder and more psychiatrists should acknowledge its threats so more parents can be aware of it as well. I'm not too sure if the camp idea is helping much because according to what Frontline was showing us, all those kids were thinking nothing but of going home to their beloved computer games. But what they're teaching the second graders (especially the song) is a good start and hopefully the next generation's kids will find better ways to spend their childhood lives than just playing games all day.

Culture Convergence Conclusion

I must admit I did quite a few skimming through some of the chapters because it was just getting way too redundant! I wasn't really surprised to see the same concept of how great collective intelligence is in the online world rephrased for the last time in the book's afterword and conclusion.
The only difference I see between each chapter is that the author just uses a different example just to support the same idea over and over again. And like someone had mentioned in class, the reader most probably would've been able to understand what the author was trying to say in just one paragraph for each chapter. Yes, the whole the book could have been summarized in just one chapter.
The only thing I learned pretty much is that there are some CRAZY fans out there that will do anything to get their hands on almost any type of information. Jenkins did more than a good job with his supportive examples to express his thoughts on that.

blogs online

I took an ethics course last semester and remember reading that social networking all started with blog sites. A whole bunch of people gather to talk about politics and current events and such by posting and commenting blogs. But how do those people find those blogs? Through google and other search engines, of course! Whenever I need to look up something like "What's the best way to get soap scum off of tubs?" or "What's the best way to deal with brothers and sisters-in-law?", I am usually led to some interesting blog posts that written by people who went through similar problems as me and most of the time they are pretty humorous! It is really an excellent way for people to share ideas about common facts and wonders.
Not that that is why I created a Blogger account(it was a required for some of my classes).

chapter 5, Growing Up Online

I do believe that the president of the PTA (I think it was) is a bit paranoid but considering possibilities of online bullying that lead to kids committing suicide, parents should keep track of their children; not to the point where they ask for account passwords but to at least have a chat with them every now and then just to make sure they're not secretly living a miserable life. It's definitely hard to stay in close contact with teens keep track of them will most likely irritate them and might cause them to drift away from the family but as a parent, you must be responsible of your kids' actions and is your duty to help lead them on the right path.
If I had a teenage kids, I don't think I'd let them keep a computer in their own room because I know as teens, they'll probably lock themselves up in their rooms never participating in family activities, but at least I know they're not chatting with Lord knows who all day. I don't want to be a lousy parent and rather be a proud one. Kids these days are much smarter than we think but there still are naive ones that can seriously use some parental guidance. Based on what we saw in class today, I think "To Catch a Predator" is a great starting point to show young teens what they may be getting themselves into from too much online chatting!
I hope I don't sound TOO much like the crazy mom..

fanfiction

What makes people write them? Same reason why doujinshi mangas exist, fans just want more and if the authors don't give it to them then they just got to do it themselves. I don't write fanfics (not one of specialties) but I have done a few Zelda doujinshi mangas back in high school when I was full of questions like who Sheik really was and who the fierce diety masked person was in Majora's Mask before I was able to beat both games. I didn't have easy access to the internet at the time so I decided to make up my own answers by making up my own Zelda comics.
Even after finishing the games, some people may not have liked with the way things ended(like with character coupling) and create fanfics, modifying the story to their satisfaction. There's also cross-over fanfics where fans completely change the story by introducing characters to others from a different show/game/movie just to see how it'd be like. I honestly don't like those types of fanfics, though.

Chapter 4, Folklore and Pop Culture

I've been reading about the difference between folk and pop culture and from what I understood, the only difference is pop culture started out as folk culture but is now spread around the world coming from the same source. I also understood that pop culture was created with the help of the digital world; people who share the same traditional folklore stories come together and talk about legends and the like that was passed down by their family lines, letting others know about them and spread the word. As they spread, stories are added upon and modified, becoming more and more popular as they grow.
Star Wars, of course, had one of the biggest impacts in the digital world. I remember watching Japanese cartoons when I was a kid and was always sick of seeing KFC sponsored Star Wars commercials with American kids fighting with light sabers and the same music playing in the back over and over again; it was THAT popular (and I never cared to watch any one of its movies even till now).
I would say that anime is also a good example that shows how much folk and pop cultures' collision in the digital world. Old Japanese stories made up for kids to help guide them on the right path and not do wrong turn into base story lines in now-a-day popular anime series and now since anime is wide-spread around the world, so many people know about those stories too.
There's a series of short story Japanese cartoons called "Nippon no Mukashibanashi" that are all based on the legends and sayings that have existed in Japan for centuries and they can all be found on Youtube for the world to see!

http://www.literacytrust.org.uk/Research/popularreviews.html
http://www.units.muohio.edu/psybersite/cyberspace/folklore/intro.shtml