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now i'm off to watch a bootleg of mean girls the musical. thanks internet

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grrrr.

i had almost finised this when my tumblr app crashed. FFS

So it turns out that internet censorship, especially in China has not affected their citizens at all. While they do not have access to Google, Facebook, or eBay, Chinese people instead use baido, several Facebook equivilents and taobao, respectively (Crampton 2011). Kudos to them for creating platforms for themselves.

Admittedly, I don't use Facebook as much as I once did. I mostly use it for checking the latest cosplay news on melbourne and seeing what my international friends are up to. The platform itself is basically dead, because its coloured like a corpse.  Ooh blue and white is so in season this year.

Sina Weibo allows for users to make their profiles reflect their personality, like myspace in the day. Ugh, I'm so old. Users can select form predefined themes or create their own for that extra personalisation.

Even the way people use social media in the east, vs the west amazes me. side note: technically, australia is in the east, becasue we're east of the GMT.

The average viewership for YouTube videos is around the four minute mark, before peopel lose interest, whereas China's Youku and Todou, the average viewing time is much longer, as a result of the content people are looking for. Interestingly the fan base for Prison Break is huge because of the episodes being pirated, and fandubbed (Crampton 2011)

https://youtu.be/U-6FN4R0bsc

also turns out my tablet doesn't like to embed videos. this is from my favourite free show on youtube #ThisMightGet, I pay for youtube red, but would much rather watch something of this length, than a full episode of youtube branded content.

References:

Crampton, T 2011 'Social media in China: The same, but different' CHina Business Review, Vol. 38, Issue 1, pp 28-31

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(cartoon by Phil Hands)

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social gaming.

So many people use candy crush as the first social game. they’ve probably never heard of Doom, where you link up your consoles and battle it out with friends via a LAN, Local area network (Martončik 2015).

Or the cultural phenomenon that is(/was) Second Life, I went so far as to play it. I found it incredibly boring, probably because I had a previous knowledge of the community, it’s strange y’all. There’s everything in Second Life that one can find IRL, there are lecture theatres and universities, property moguls, doctors offices (Berger, et al 2016). Then there’s the seedier side, I think I ended up in a sex dungeon, but totally didn’t want to explore it that much, mostly because of how bored I got.

The idea that people will run around virtual worlds forming relationships with other players confuses me deeply. I much prefer to play games that have a narrative. 

Most recently I have almost finished Far Cry 5. The main story doesn’t allow for multiplayer online play. YES! No having to deal with some tween attempting to insult other people (I’m looking at you Overwatch). There are online functions of Far Cry 5, because that’s what everyone wants apparently. The online Arcade allows users to team up with friends, other users or even playing solo (Ubisoft 2018).

References:

Berger, M, Jucker, AH & Locher, MA 2016, 'Interaction and space in the virtual world of Second Life', Journal of Pragmatics, vol. 101, 2016/08/01/, pp. 83-100.

Martončik, M 2015, 'e-Sports: Playing just for fun or playing to satisfy life goals?', Computers in Human Behavior, vol. 48, 2015/07/01/, pp. 208-211.

Ubisoft 2018, ‘Welcome to the Far Cry Arcade’, Far Cry 5, viewed 2018/05/25, <https://far-cry.ubisoft.com/game/en-au/far-cry-arcade/>

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mental health and social media

TW: mental health, suicide An ex-coworker of mine recently started a youtube channel to share his story, in his first video he explains the events which led him to this point. It can be incredibly scary posting something so intimate, raw and emotional to a worldwide audience, but without taking that risk he is unlikely to find a supportive network of peers.

The intent behind posting videos to youtube which discuss mental health is twofold. Firstly the creator is wishing to share their story as a form of therapy. Secondly the creator will become a voice of others coping and managing mental health issues, as people will turn to sites like youtube to gain knowledge about their mental health issues (Oliphant, 2013). 

In 2015/2016 I was having multiple depressive episodes each month, it wasn’t until I watched the above vlog from louna maroun that everything clicked. I just thought I was stressed, and it took some time for me to reach out for help, mostly due to the negative stigma surrounding mental health and males particularly in Australia (Black Dog Institute n.d.) The website I initially used suggested a mindfulness program, which although free I never used. I wanted to try mindfulness my own way, which is when I got heavily into cosplaying. I found that when I was focused on a task and doing something I was less likely to experience negative mental health issues. 

I wouldn’t necessarily go as far as other people have to share my story online as yet, but who knows, maybe one day I will. 

References: Black Dog Institute n.d., e-Mental Health, viewed 22 May 2018, <https://www.blackdoginstitute.org.au/research/key-research-areas/emental-health>

Oliphant, T 2013, 'User Engagement with Mental Health Videos on YouTube', Journal of the Canadian Health Libraries Association (JCHLA), vol. 34, no. 3, pp. 153-158. Available from: 10.5596/c13-057. [22 May 2018].

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I feel like this is more appropriate

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We spoke about self harm today, someone mentioned makeup and here is my favourite #SFX #MUA 

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I celebrate #starwarsday every year by watching #HyperspaceHoopla. it takes me back to a simpler time. 

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The full convention experience menu for exhibitors.

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can’t stop the feeling

TW: mental health. ayo sis, this week we talk about bullying, an experience i am all too familiar with. my experience predates social media and the digital age, though social media has definitely allowed for an increase in the accessibility and ease of bullying. it should also be noted, the example i provide, is only one, but it deals with the issue of siblings as bullies, like the story referenced in boyd’s chapter.

Once upon a time, in a land not so far away, there lived some trolls. these trolls had bright colourful hair and gems for belly buttons. The trolls were happy creatures and loved to share their passion of music. They definitely did not look like this guy VVV

It’s a sad fact of life, people will experience bullying and hate from both our peers and those we don’t know. 

In reading boyd’s piece on social media and bullying, wouldn’t it be interesting if Facebook implemented a feature where parent’s could set up their child’s account as a sub-account to their own, where they can actively monitor their children’s activities, like Abigail and Ashley’s mom did (2014). oof. that would go down well in the super religious homophobic states in America. 

I can relate to Abigail. 18 (ish) years ago, I was ostracised by my older sister when we would go on holidays. Every year. As opposed to being a happy kid running around making friends and being a ‘normal’ child, I spent most of my days either playing video games in our caravan, or spending time with my grandparents, cross-stitching or doing crosswords. I am and was the epitome of a social butterfly, and have the social anxiety disorder to prove it.

Last year’s Vidcon Australia featured a panel on trolling in a digital community. Specifically, how to not “feed” them. In the panel, the featured creators, spoke about dealing with criticisms in an online environment. Which included talking though the criticisms that are affecting you the most with someone you trust. (HeyoDamo 2017) It’s great to see leaders in the community working towards building a better environment for all users. keep up the good work fam.

boyd, d 2014, “is social media amplifying meanness and cruelty?” in it’s complicated - the social lives of networked teens, pp 128-52.

HeyoDamo 2017, VIDCON AUSTRALIA 2017 VLOG, Youtube Video, viewed 20 April 2017, <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FVwETBA1S28> 

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Last week I looked at how politics, activism and social media are linked. I may have jumped the gun a little with talking about activism, but it's an integral part of the political landscape, and has lead to the removal of some governments, most notably, the Egyptian revolution of 2011, in which social media and Twitter played a significant role; the most used hashtag of 2011 was #Egypt (Twitter 2011). It’s clear that social media, particularly Twitter has the ability to mobilise large groups of people quickly. The affordances of Twitter, which allow users to post short public messages with easily searchable hashtags help to drive further traffic to the causes and highlight them in greater detail.

Not a great example of twitter causes, as this is taken from the feed of my i-doc Coop Mode, but the more tweets a topic gets, the wider the audience.

It can be argued that the term activism has a negative connotation, while social movement is more positive. Both terms refer to an improvised and non routine form of collective action leading to a common goal of social change (Eom et. al. 2015), like that of the Arab Spring. The collective action of protests following the 2016 presidential election of Donald Trump in which protesters claimed Trump was ‘not my president’ has not amounted to much (yet), and has been hailed by critics as too little, too late (Wilson 2016).

Are the critics saying the same for those protesting for Gun reform laws? The red states are, they’re protesting to keep their guns.

References:

Eom, C, Oh, O and Rao, HR 2015, Role of Social Media in Social Change: An Analysis of Collective Sense Making During the 2011 Egypt Revolution, Information Systems Research, Vol.26 No.1, pp210-223

Twitter 2011, Hot Topics, viewed 15/4/18, <https://2011.twitter.com/en/hottopics.html>

Wilson, C 2016, Finding Lessons for Today’s Protests in the History of Political Activism, Smithsonian, viewed 15/4/18, <https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/finding-lessons-todays-protests-history-political-activism-180961309/>

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Turns out, the collective noun for penguins in water is a raft, and on land, they're a waddle.

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Check out @Publix’s Tweet:

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This was closer to christmas, as evidented by the castly lit up in the background, and I think there's christmas music playing too. Anyhow, this is me perfoming, the people in the enterainment base wanted to send me to a dance party in Tomorrowland, but when I got there, the captain for the area was like, yeah no, you're going to do a roaming set. They're the holy grail of sets, no lines, no quotas of people you have to see, you just roam the area and do whatever the hell you like.

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The ideals, dreams and hard facts that created America surely does not include being able to live below the poverty line. In 2012/2013, I worked for the mouse, and was paid around US$8.50 per hour; which equates to AU$10.96. Assuming I worked 38 hours a week, after rent, I earnt US$234, but that wasn’t always the case.

In my role (disney speak for job) I was a performer, shifts ranged from a 3 hour lunch cover shift to a 14-hour day on Christmas Day, two separate shifts bridged together, plus I got a late lunch of turkey and stuffing. The company had no obligations to give me 38 hours a week, I could have been rostered 6 days of lunch shifts. Some people were. How is that acceptable to pay people so little, especially when a ticket cost US$90+, food costs more than an hours work and the all the merch they sell?

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