Well you guys can all trust Wikipedia on this, but I still think it’s a kind of giraffe (and if I’d been quick enough this week, I would have changed the Wiki entry to say that).
Man, I would suck at Balderdash.
Dude looks like a lady March 27, 2007
Or, more aptly, avatar looks like a lady, but I’ll get to that later.
Video games, just because I don’t know much about them doesn’t mean that they don’t fascinate me. As stated before, my time deficit has really stopped me from enjoying the multiple hours of multiple player fun that I could have been having while I was instead wasting my time on academic essays. But once I graduate, it’ll be a life of gaming for me…until my parents kick me out.
Of all the articles, the Jakobsson & Taylor on about EverQuest peaked my interest the most. As a die-hard RPG fan (can you says Paper Mario?!), I’ve always found the ability to fall in love with a game that has a plot but it wasn’t until my first encounter (think 1995) with online gaming that I realized a game’s very nature is changed when other unpredictable people are a vital part of your gaming success. Like the article discussed, the gaming becomes more like applying group-devised strategy to chat room interaction…only now it’s more than chat room interaction, you have a physical character on the screen of most of these (post text-based) games, also known as an avatar. Therefore, just as social capital and cultural capital are very useful resources in chat rooms, blogging and other interactive online activities, they have become imperative to successful online gaming. As this article highlights the importance of abiding by norms, building a good reputation, and building social networks, it becomes easy to see how real life skills are essential to successful multiplayer gaming.
Which brings me to the topic I’ve been dying to talk about, this falls under the relevant category of lived experience pertaining to video games. As we all know, video games can become popular by gaining hype and, like everything else that’s popular, it usually doesn’t matter whether the hype is good or bad, hence the way many of us played Doom when we were obviously too young to be killing horned goat demons. In the same way, I was told to stay away from Second Life; that it’s weird and the people who spend all their time on it are pathetic and need to get more fresh air, and people always scrunched up their faces when talking about it. Then one day, I decided to just do it anyway, I was looking for kicks and I wanted to see this grotesque spectacle with the many ‘losers’ who pay homage to it.
Typed in the website, created an avatar, downloaded the free software, studied for a midterm, and then double clicked on the icon. BAM. Suddenly, I am this character running around on the screen who can fly (how cool is that?!) and, even though it’s 1am, there are at least 10 other people in the same area as me (and 1 million in other areas). I can talk to them, I can learn the rules of the game through interactive training challenges, I’m given some spending money and I have the ability to change my appearance. Alright, so now it’s like, ‘fine stef, you discovered a game, good for you, get to the point” … WELL, here are the highlights condensed for your reading pleasure:
- you can look ANY way you want, this means instantly changing your body shape, size, hair, clothes, etc. It’s so different from real life (RL) where you need to jog every day for a month to just get rid of 5lbs
- I arbitrarily picked an avatar of the opposite sex, mainly because a lot of the females looked scary or skanky, and so it was very weird to go through a game where people treat your avatar as YOU and to be a man, which is not me. I really didn’t know how to respond when people said gendered things to me. I found myself pondering gender and power relations as a result of this.
- the vast amount of opportunity is almost overwhelming. If I were researching this game and the way it works, my juiciest bit of field notes to date would be about a conversation I had with someone online. I asked, so what can you do in Second Life (SL)? She responded, “You have two options, you can do in SL what you do in RL … or you can do in SL what you can’t do in RL.” I then made my avatar run away incase she was expecting me to pick the second option, if you know what I mean.
The point is this: millions (5 million+ on SL alone) of people are playing these types of games for huge amounts of time. Why would someone forsake their RL in order to spend hours in SL? Perhaps because of the opportunities the game gives. Not only are social capital and cultural capital a huge part of this game, like in EverQuest, but you are given more ways to gain them. More than just purchasing things, you can sell them, you can write programs to make your own objects and advertise them, you can gain capital by manipulating your appearance in a split second, and you can get to know millions of other people. Perhaps the rapid expansion of the popularity of these games is connected to the idea that they allow you to gain more capital in easier and more fun ways than you can in real life. Therefore, those who are disenchanted with their first lives find an environment where they easily excel.
But don’t worry, I won’t quit my day job, my computer keeps crashing every time I play for more than an hour.
If you don’t want to risk going to the website and getting hooked, here’s a pretty good clip I found about the game:
Random Poll #2 March 26, 2007
Question A:
What is your favourite ‘video game’? This includes online games, flash games, shareware (if you remember that!), gaming console games, etc.
Question B (for if you don’t have a game crutch to pass time with):
What do you think about the LARGE AMOUNT of media coverage of environmental issues in the media since 2007 began?
- – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – -
There, that’s officially the end of the post, since people don’t like reading really long entries. However here are my answers just incase you’re curious (or incase you’re enraged that I can expect people to write back when I won’t spend the time on it and you’re feeling rather deprived of my opinion on the matter).
Question A: Fav game
Well, I have been known to be an RPG junkie, as addressed in an earlier post about BBS games, but since post-secondary I’ve pretty much had that preoccupation diminish. This is primarily due to being too broke to upgrade my shoddy N64 with its 5 games to one of the newer consoles but also a consequence of the lack of time.
However, the other day I was sooo stressed and annoyed and bored (from school, what else) that I used Stumble Upon(TM) and found the most delightful flash game. Not only does it combine very simple controls with huge point amounts, it also has soothing classical music in the background and BUNNIES. It’s called Winterbells, check it out.
Completely unrelated to my bunny madness is my recent experience with Second Life, which I will probably devote a whole entry to. Every time I learn more about it, it blows my mind – not in the ‘what a wicked game’ way but in the ‘man this is messed up but I still want to play it’ way.
Question B: The environment and crappy sappy CBC continual coverage.
This morning I woke up to someone recounting their experience in one of Al Gore’s environmental boot camps. Apparently, he personally holds training sessions to equip people to ’spread the word’ (actual phrase used in broadcast) about global warming. He divulged strategies for subtly bringing up the subject with friends. Much of the conversation, which I groggily took in, sounded like the top ten ways to become evangelical… about the environment.
I guess I don’t exactly view that as a bad thing. I think as people are becoming more and more disenchanted with organized religion, they have passion leftover for political/activist causes and might as well use it – AND if the strategies used in religious movements work, then alright. I’m a Captain Planet kid, I cried during Fern Gully, I’ve known all along that we need to practice the 3 (or 4) Rs and learn how to reduce our ‘environmental footprint’ … I guess I’m just getting kind of depressed hearing that none of my personal awareness is paying off, it’s not making a difference, we’re still all going to fry in the global warming hell.
So the media coverage is becoming more of what I’ve heard before and I change the channel because I already know what they’re going to say. But I’m hoping (and seeing) that it does eventually have a bottom up effect, which causes the big environmental players (corporations and governments) to think again. Heck, with all these people tired of hearing about global warming, there is no way anyone will get away with polluting. The media helps us be pissed off about the issue, I guess, and that’s not entirely a bad thing.
An aside: I filled out the Globe and Mail University Survey and flunked the U of L on its environmental practices. If we want to talk about the little people making a difference, I really think the students need to rally for some changes: recycling bins for paper cups (i.e. coffee cups!), styrofoam, and cardboard in every hallway; less wrapping on the food sold (i.e. the sandwich in a wrapper that’s in a cardboard box that has a separate identifying piece of paper); more motion-sensor lights so we don’t keep everything lit up all the time (i.e. the blinding light of the Wealth and Hellness Centre can be seen as I drive home from the bar at 2am), etc. So what can be done? Hmm?
Porn, eh? March 23, 2007
First, just imagine what sort of pictures Tiffany might have had in her powerpoint if she had been studying penis enlargements instead of breast enlargements. Heh.
Now to porn, that’s sort of one of those subjects we get trained not to touch with a ten foot poll. I remember sometime in my 2nd year I was being taught about socialization by the soci department and about bio/neurological processes by the psych people. This arose in many occasions where I wanted to pit the two against each other and see who would come out triumphant (not very original when you think about the whole nature vs. nurture debate hey?). So, I learned that men physiologically get more turned on by visual images than women do, but I also know that women are socialized to satisfy their sexual needs in different ways (if at all) and that women’s accessibility to porn is a lot less than men’s (I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Playgirl mag at a gas station but there’s always Playboy, and let’s face it, Cosmo is not the same as Maxim, at least not yet). So, after coming to these realizations, I don’t know what I really wanted to do to test the two ideas, perhaps put women in a situation where porn is readily accessible and see if they enjoy it! lol but then, you still cannot do away with all the subordinating qualities of porn toward women or control for the socialization of your research subjects. Either way, I let the idea go, but with all the arousal studies being done in psych these days, don’t be surprised if something like this pops up. Or in soci because if you plug “pornography” into Sociological Abstracts, you get 900+ journal articles.
*shrug* well so much for letting my mom read my blog.
Anyways, here is something completely unexpected, at least by me, that combines this past week’s topic with next week’s topic, video games. Here are… I guess World of Warcraft characters singing the song “Internet is for Porn” … umm parental discretion is advised, the lyrics might be a bit PG13 but all in all it’s funny enough.
heh.
Just so everyone knows March 21, 2007
Last week was so not hunky dory because we got out of class early and I was like “YES! Survivor special whoot” but it wasn’t on. Survivor wasn’t on at all last week. And it might be on tonight but jeez am I ticked.
Interesting that you get Bowie popping up if you google image search “hunky dory”
Zzzap! Zzzap! March 20, 2007
Indeed, most media images of the minority are being produced by the majority.
Well, the Ingham article turned me off when she wrote ’site’ instead of ‘cite’ and my attention was particularly caught by the Horsley article. However, being a liberal with an ‘everyone’s great’ paradigm, it is really difficult for me to discuss ignorance and intolerance because I would rather like to think that it doesn’t happen. But it does, and very much so in the media.
It’s interesting because the article talks back and forth as to whether or not all homosexual people should be grouped into one main category of ‘gay culture’ or whether they should be viewed without such a classification. In favour of the category argument, Foucault is cited as having discussed the historical moment when homosexuality started being seen as a “type of life”. Without taking the extra step and railroading the phrase into “way of life” as the author has done, I believe what Foucault was saying could be viewed as pertaining to individual types of life and in no sense does he allude to a larger cultural formation. After all, Dr. Malacrida who is a huge Foucault fan, told me a while ago that despite the fact that he was gay, he was intensely suspicious of the gay rights movement (since I don’t know the specific reason why, I won’t go further with that but perhaps you can ask Dr. Malacrida if you see her). Therefore, Foucault may not have exactly been in favour of the classification of gay culture, especially since he did not hold the same glorifying view of scientific methods (with their binaries) that the general population does.
But I digress. In order to humour this gay culture argument, I thought about how one would characterize heterosexual culture, which is all around us. Would it be through similar clothes that all aim to seduce the opposite sex? Highly sexual music lyrics directed at the opposite sex (i.e. “I’m Fergalicious, I put all the boys on rock rock…” ugh)? Movies about performing heterosexual acts (i.e. American Pie)? Or the constant adherence by males and females to their gender binaries in order to enact the masculine and feminine, which have built in heterosexual characteristics? But not everyone buys into all of that, not every heterosexual person embodies these characteristics all the time; they too have been created by the majority as dumbed-down heterosexual culture. Just like not everyone is gay in the feminized way homosexual men are shown in the Simpsons clip. Not every homosexual could be on the cast of Will & Grace or Queer Eye!
On the other side of the argument is the non-classification premise, which is hugely supported by queer theory. Now, since we’re all attending class at a university in a small city in an ultra-conservative province, you (like me) might need a refresher as to what this is. “Queer Theory – an approach to issues of sex and gender which has primarily arisen out of postmodernist thought. In emphasizing the ‘performative’ aspects of gender and sexuality, Queer theory emphasizes their unnaturalness. From this perspective, there are no fundamental identities underlying maleness or femaleness, homosexuality or heterosexuality.” (Courtesy of Jary & Jary’s Sociological Dictionary, NOT copied and pasted from Wiki).
Now this fine, except that it leaves me in the same place the most postmodernism does, without anything to work with. If there is no gender or sexuality, then why do we even have an article about it? Why do we have hegemonic heterosexual culture? Postmodernist thought often leaves me feeling powerless because if none of this really exists, but we still enact it, there is nothing that can be done by simply stating that it’s not real! And that, in itself, is really why I cannot draw a conclusion about this article. I don’t believe that all homosexual people are the same and I think that any boundaries our society could draw around a term like ‘gay culture’ would just be too narrow to acknowledge all the different people out there and may only add to stereotypes and prejudices. On the other hand, people’s lives, whether they include homosexual or heterosexual relationships, still embody something real and that must be recognized and not devalued. Therefore, rather than listen to experts on this topic, or even myself and my opinion, I guess I would need to do some research into how homosexual people view themselves before concluding what the media should portray in order for America to view people who are gay.
Here’s the trailer for a movie that the article views as a “wider range” of homosexual media portrayal:
Deck the halls with social capital March 18, 2007
So you missed it, all of you (except Nexusstraggler, Natasha and La Joie de la Vivre – think that’s how you spell it, man my French is rusty) missed Sociology Day. It is the only day of the year when Karl Marx comes down people’s chimneys and spreads socialist love to all. I bet you didn’t even put out cookies for him. Well I hope you all got stockings full of structural functionalism (aka ‘coal’).
So now you are destined to listen to me gloat about having taken in the day’s festivities – including the free sandwiches. Well it was a really good day. All the talks were great and interesting and, you know what? The number one reason that I attend soci day is to expand my idea of what you can actually do with sociology, which is a LOT! So then maybe there’s hope for successful careers and money-making opportunities even though we’re not management kids. It also reminds me how very relevant sociology is to things that are happening TODAY that are important and interesting and on late-breaking news (sometimes). There was a presentation about multiculturalism and social trust that applied so well to the discussions that have taken place between political leaders reviewing whether or not the ‘cultural mosaic’ of Canada is truly a good thing. There was a talk about faith-based organizations and help for the less fortunate. Programs like that are more pivotal now than ever with the booming growth of many Canadian cities. Particularly, I just heard on CBC that Vancouver has to start providing more low-cost housing or else the city will look really bad when the spotlight’s on them during the 2010 olympics. And there were many other interesting topics, including “Booberexia”, I cannot believe you all missed that!
There was a discussion of Latour and his book “Reassembling the Social”, which presents actor-network theory. Now, I haven’t read the book, nor do I have an adequately in-depth understanding of social theory to have grasped the key points just from the talk. Though, the book is now on my reading list. The jist of it that I took in, condensed for your reading pleasure, was that sociologists generally looks for certain things when they do research (i.e. surveillance, social capital, class conflict, etc) and this often turns into a self-fulfilling prophecy. Latour rather talks about how people should begin research by simply following actors and tracing their associations and connections that they make.
It was brought up that this sounds rather close to grounded theory and indeed it does, or at least the version of grounded theory learned in methods classes when it is not scrutinized. I was recently reminded by one of my professors that grounded theory comes with its own associations, the largest of which is that there is actually something to be found (or that emerges) in the data.
This is where my knowledge on the topic ends though, I do not yet know enough about postmodernism to know how this approach differs. However, I do want to highlight one thing that hopefully I heard right, Latour believes we should treat actors as beings that are conscious of their actions and the associations that they make. Simply, people know what they are doing! Heck, they even know what you are doing when you research them. I think this is very important because a) too many times does sociological research not give any credit to the subjects it studies, viewing them as ignorant to the social world in which they are immersed and b) we as researchers avoid admitting this. I’ve interviewed people who, halfway through the interview, start trying to figure out which connections I’m going to make about what they say and they start making meaning for themselves and I almost freaking have a heart attack. And I don’t know why. Maybe because we as researchers wouldn’t feel as special if everyone could see everything we can. However, it makes sense, I do the exact same thing anytime someone tries to study me. So, perhaps instead of making more obscure theoretical links that those being studied won’t even conclude, we should put our abstract ideas away and focus on the actual people that make up our research. Though, I’d have to read the book to see if this is what Latour concludes.
Meh, I thought it was interesting.
Here’s Latour’s homepage
Random Poll March 18, 2007
Quick: Who’s your favourite theorist and why? And, if you hate theory altogether, why? 
… And if you hate the question and wished I’d asked something else… What’s your favourite question?
But everyone NEEDS tampons! March 14, 2007
Okay, so it’s advertising week – at least I hope it is.
I took in the (somewhat repetitive) Friedrich article and yes, it’s true, advertising makes women feel like crap – kind of. I mean, a lot of the time these days I don’t even compare myself to those women because it’s like they’re in another world, one where having scarily exaggerated body features is admired, but perhaps I am not the best of judge of what the real world is like. I only have to remember that beach season is coming up and somewhere, it does not matter where you go, there will be a blonde chick in a bikini and she’ll look like the girls in the magazines. So there, lived experience.
(Hah, I googled “Blonde chick” and this picture is called “A blonde chick with a nice pussy” oh my gosh)
However, and I knew this would come in handy, Marcuse declared that too much credit goes to the media for preconditioning people in relation to the things to buy and the way to live. He believed that it was really the whole set-up of capitalism that caused us to purchase these things and, more specifically, I think the fact that the product itself is there, created to be bought (and used in desublimation: satisfying oneself with instant, consumerist gratification) is a major part of the problem. If there was no product, there would be no advertising. Therefore, the blame not only falls on the media and advertisers but also the companies that make endless products designed to make women better than they already are: make-up, clothes, high heels, diet food, hair products, nail products, accessories, skin products, purses, etc….
You see, I think it all boils down to good old commodity fetishism as the start point. Marx wrote back in the day before highly intricate advertising campaigns and he was right on the money. He said that capitalism is set up in such a way (with so much emphasis on exchange value, if you want to get technical) that a person’s value is no longer found in themselves, it is found in their labour and the things you own. And let’s face it, the things we own also tell others about how valuable our labour is because the more we get paid the more flashy Hummers we can drive. Therefore, women become convinced that their value will increase if they have those jeans, those shoes. Sort of…
THERE’S MORE!!! The neomarxists didn’t stop there. Since commodity fetishism came about, people have built on it, advertising has drawn on its power to channel people’s desires into certain things (that, according to Marcuse, serve the interest of capitalism itself). If you all remember Althusser from 2200 (my fav theorist, *sigh*), he talks about how advertising uses “interpellation”. It calls out to your true self instead of just promising to add value to it. So if a woman sees another woman as looking sexy in those jeans, she thinks to herself, somewhere in me is a truly sexy woman, that’s who I really am. And advertising says to her, you can be this, you can bring this out in yourself, if you purchase these jeans.
(Althusser pic, hah)
More to the historical relevance, back in the day women had the primary job of reproducing labour power (i.e. maintaining the household) so their moral duties according to societal pressures at the time, were to be a good mom, wife and housekeeper. So much of the advertising back in the day was specifically aimed at calling that out. It still is to an extent these days, just watch any commercial for mini-vans.
So, I guess my opinion is that the media doesn’t hate women and doesn’t want to mutilate them into some grotesque silicon barbie… advertisers are just going with something that is a fundamental component of capitalism itself. The fall-out of commodity fetishism reminds us that this is not a perfect economic system, in fact that it can be very damaging. However, I’m not exactly up on all of the feminist theory and I know there are a lot of patriarchal aspects to Marx and neo-Marxism so…this is just one viewpoint. However, when it comes to advertising, it’s important to look at just how much theory about it that the Marxists really have given us – TONS!
And now, 2 really funny commercials for you:
People in Leth drive like crap March 13, 2007
How much frost was there on the road this morning? Not too much, sure it was icy but it’s not like we were in the midst of a January snowstorm. And yet people don’t know how to drive…
Do you know how it feels to have somone slide sideways in front of you into your lane? And then when you need to put on your brakes to escape hitting them, your own car starts sliding? Four times this winter, I swear. Something is trying to kill me, I feel like I’m in one of the Final Destination flicks.
It feels like your entire body has been hollowed out; like your bones have been replaced with icy cold air. And only after the fact, when you’re still breathing, do you realize that’s what intense fear feels like.
Frig.
