#short and easy to read story about a guy whose psyche is trapped in his work computer

[portugalisinsa]

#going into the tags hoping i'd see some book reccs but its all discourse ;w;#well i'm not gonna claim these are all highly intellectual works but here's some of my fave adult fantasies#tainted cup by robert jackson bennett#the thief by megan whalen turner#winnowing flame trilogy by jen williams#locked tomb series by tamsym muir#goblin emperor and witness for the dead by katherine addison#a natural history of dragons by marie brennan#the mountain in the sea by Ray Naylor#god killer by hannah kaner#temeraire and scholomance by naomi novik#october daye by seanan mcguire#i'm also getting into t kingfisher books :)#gods of wyrdwood by r j barker was also good#i really need to find more books by non-white authors tho

No babe it’s so cool and hot that you always insist that fantasy books written to meet a 4th graders’ comprehension skills have more complex themes and a greater sense of praxis than anything written for adults

[ariibees]

A Short Review and Analysis of Cybersecurity Themes and Examples Presented in the Emoji Movie

Please realize that I wrote this in 30 minutes as a class assignment. It is a pure, messy, unedited stream-of-consciousness. :D

The plot of this movie is well-described as a combination of the The Lego Movie and Inside Out. The main character is an emoji who, instead of performing his task of acting as the emoji type he appears as, switches between multiple emoji types. After destroying part of a necessary operating console to use the emoji bar in text messages, he and another emoji sneak into other app to visit a hacker to reprogram him to conform to societal norms. They then spend most of the movie attempting to move to Dropbox for plot purposes while anti-virus bots chase after them and the phone is at an increased risk of being factory reset. The main character is then captured and sent for a public execution, just before which the antagonist is stopped and the risk of a phone reset remedied. There is also a side-plot which involves two emojis dealing with marital problems under the stress of their son becoming a criminal and running from the board’s ruling and another side-plot in which two children must face communication issues in resolving their own emotions in regards to the other.

The most important takeaway from this specific movie is the unfortunate prevalence of marketing in the media created as cheap and blatant cash-grabs, seen commonly in a number of studios. These films may be based around a specific pre-existing toy or product to sell (an example of this would be The Lego Movie, or many video game movies such as the Angry Birds movie) or cash in on a pre-existing franchise (such as in many of the newer animated adaptations of Dr. Seuss stories). This movie’s plot and major themes may be tied back into the topics discussed in class through the major point of cybermarketing, as this movie (which features several prominent games and online services) was heavily advertised online using its appeal of a common object (emojis), popular music, bright coloration, and well-known games and services to draw in viewers.

This movie also, albeit briefly and somewhat inconsistently, touches on problems with online anonymity, communication issues arising in young teenagers, and the unreliability and poor education on the increased prevalence of interconnectivity, the internet of things, and the internet as a whole. One example of the problems with online anonymity and communication is in an earlier scene in which two of the main characters discuss how social media such as Facebook has led to an oversharing of personal details and a degradation of genuine reactions and real-life interactions. Other scenes include those with “troll” characters who deliberately use their perceived untouchability to verbally harass other characters. It also shows how the internet can often provide entertainment without much value, in which several characters are trapped by the draw of cat videos on Youtube. More directly related to the real-life effects, the human character who owns the phone that the film mostly takes place within has proportionately little screen time and is shown to be constantly hampered by his phone while still being unable to exist without it (having it on his desk during class, being unable to express his emotions without the use of emojis, the teacher being forced to relate to emojis to explain the concept of hieroglyphics, several students being so distracted by their phones that they walk right into each other, and malfunctions in phones having tangible real-world associated negative social effects). One app is also disguised as another out of distrust for authority figures who may look through the phone. Further communication (and privacy) issues can also be seen when the main characters are attempting to guess a password. In order to guess the password, they read over the main character’s email trash, finding what is framed as a romantic letter that was never sent (but was really just copied song lyrics instead of original writing) and using the intended recipient of the email as the password, showing the need for better education supporting secure passwords. (On a related note, the following scene shows the characters walking into the supposedly secure Dropbox but an “anti-virus bot” is then later able to break through the firewall and directly steal content out of the cloud.) another scene earlier on in the film similarly touches on how quickly common objects can be made irrelevant or mostly lacking value as emoticons are seen as frail and incapable of properly communicating in the same way that emojis can, with emoticons barely able to express words at all. Better education could also be used in scenes which attempt to draw upon existing concepts but are incorrectly executed (such as in which a character unplugs his phone during a factory reset but everything magically reappears; another character sees during this scene an odd emoji and is immediately infatuated and does not question its unordinary nature or pursue how it was created).

As a final note, this movie shows the inescapability and concern associated with illegal activities on the internet, mostly surrounding hacking, the usage of “bots”, and other concerns. Firstly, one of the main protagonists is considered a “hacker,” one of a presumably illegal group who uses a wristband to remain constantly connected to information on the phone. She is shown to supposedly have the ability to access anything unsecured, using this information to gain access to secured areas (she lists off a large amount of data she has already collected on the person whose accounts they are attempting to infiltrate) while also having supposedly removed an emoji from the phone’s system itself. This can show the amount of access that hackers can gain over nearby systems they can connect to and how unprotected but seemingly unconcerning information (such as -- as was given in the film -- preferences for food, animals, and people) can be used to profile a potential victim of hacking. Next, the usage of “bots” (formally considered anti-virus bots by the main antagonist) shows the unreliability of automation, remote work, and the ability to remove harmful content. In a fairly early scene, these bots appear to deliberately ignore a number of viruses in the area, instead focusing on a differing assigned target, showing how even normally-functional systems can be manipulated to ignore their original function. Later, one of these bots is given an “illegal upgrade” by the system supervisor in order to extend its capabilities, appearing much less concerned towards data damage or deletion and instead only attempting to destroy its target with increased ability, representing mistrust and concern in how seemingly “beneficial” but shady add-ons can oftentimes corrupt or further damage a system (earlier anti-virus bots deleted viruses and spam, while the illegally-upgraded bot was considered to be particularly ruthless and harm the continued psyche and job-mentality of other vital working emojis). In addition, the illegal upgrade is presented as being a part of the phone already, with a custom storage pedestal built into the texting app, showing how oftentimes harmful or illegal add-ons can appear to be normal and a part of the system on first glance. As for the last note on other internet concerns, a number of other anthropomorphized concepts are seen in various scenes, including viruses, trojan horses, people who pirate content (music is one example given in the film), spam emails, and internet trolls. The most prominent case of this is spam, in which one of the main characters is almost immediately roped into signing up for an offered service; additionally, internet trolls are seen to have a damaging effect on another character’s feelings of self-worth in regards to how their friends treat them.

Altogether, this made me more aware by seeing how this film highlights several problems with the internet and how we use it in modern society, as well as the general issue of how marketing is aimed to maximize profits.

A few additional thoughts from about an hour after writing:

The hacker character’s design includes a black hat, possibly a nod to her being a black hat hacker (while a “good guy,” she is first found in a shy bar and her main goal is to hack her way past a firewall to access the cloud.) Her name, Jailbreak, also refers to her actions in regards to the phone. Part of her character arc also includes a reveal of her “true” and previously unknown identity, relating to the anonymity of a hacker attacking a system and how the person behind the screen is oftentimes unknown.

Pirates, viruses, internet trolls, spam, and trojan horses all exist on the same plane of existence in the movie, being a possible nod to the clear lasting impacts that each of these may have on the websites they are present on, whether they are a portion of code or a person affecting someone else.

In fact, the entire scene with the bar is made to reinforce the dangers of certain areas online, characters even pointing out how it is hidden from authority figures and parents because they would not want their child to be using it. It shows how easy it is to be sucked into problems dealing with online threats and how viruses can easily avoid anti-virus software that is comprehensive and secure.

The bar also has each of these character using similar models or character designs to reinforce the fact that while torrenting and such may seem to lack much danger, many of these files could be hiding viruses within them.

Bonus reply after I posted this on our class forum:

“Great analysis (10/10); you explored many of the movie's implications and allusions in detail. I have not seen the movie, but from your discussion the movie seems to be somewhat humorous and full of references to modern technology, but without much psychological or philosophical depth. Some of the movie's scenes, as you described, can have benefit; the scene with the individual that was able to find a user's password by looking at a love letter both emphasizes the importance of creating a hard-to-guess password, and also relates to the forum post a few weeks ago about the data that can be gleaned by going through someone's trash (PII in trash cans may lead to the discovery of passwords). Overall, the movie sounds like it could be superficially interesting and possibly funny, but without real significance, so I would give it a 6/10.”