Introduction

This essay is to show parts of social media that we never truly think about and to introduce how it can affect us from being human. I can’t say that I am happy or unhappy with this essay as I struggled with this hard and at the time this whole assignment was announced I was having a personal problem I couldn’t control at all so yeah. If anything I would want to just look back at this and just change my writing process entirely as I was not under my normal in-school influence and more personally distracted then normal.

Social media and online life is something we get easily hooked with. We use social media to listen to our favorite musicians/singers, we use it for personal pleasure, and we use it to interact with one another from very far away differences. It would be surprising if there was something we never use social media for. The only thing I have to say I was surprised to find out about the internet that people use it to make a memorial that should’ve been about a few days into an eternity.

We “find ourselves” online through either anonymous identities or names we either think are funny, representative, supportive, or realistic to ourselves and our interests to the internet forces us to makeup to use their services. We find those similar to us via filters and search bars that guide us to groups with other people that share our own believes, interests and culture. This one I am against doing for personal reasons but we also use social media to try and find our “Soulmate” for multiple reasons. We also use social media to quickly transfer money by using something like paypal or make money by streaming or uploading videos for the world to watch and donate if they wanted on Youtube and Twitch. Youtube and Twitch are more than ways to make money online but they are more easy to do, their bigger reason is to let people express themselves and their interests or (mostly)whatever its users want to show.

So this is when I learned social media was a unending memorial and these were two bits that I felt were quick to the point in “Ghosts in the Machine” by Jenna Wortham about her views of death and the internet. “Perhaps the most profound side effect is that death no longer obeys any laws of finality... When funneled through social media, death lingers longer than a traditional mourning period might call for”. So when I read this article and specifically these parts I was both surprised and confused. I was only surprised as I did not expect it and I was initially thinking that there was no way this was real. What confused me was why did people do this so long after the death of someone? There's no reason to keep going they’re gone, the time of grief is over, time to move on in life and let them rest. Not go to their twitter or facebook page every month and writing something about the person.

Now, this quote from Sherry Turkle in her article “Stop Googling. Let’s Chat” I understood apart of me that I didn’t expect to see and learn from me constantly using the internet whenever I can for personal entertainment “In 2010, a team at the University of Michigan led by the psychologist Sara Konrath put together the findings of 72 studies that were conducted over a 30-year period. They found a 40 percent decline in empathy among college students, with most of the decline taking place after 2000. Across generations, technology is implicated in this assault on empathy”. I just didn’t know what to think of me as a person as I have multiple different things of me that could be reasons of my own lack of empathy but I never thought about social media being a factor in it. When I think about it now I can think about bits and pieces of my life where I can see it visibly the lack of empathy but it was mainly for other reasons not just social media.

When it comes to the death of a relative I don’t feel anything for myself or for my family as the relatives that did die were those I either never heard of/forgotten about or those that I never had a true connection with but to try and think if that lack of empathy was because of my constant use of technology I just can’t think or just be in a complete mess in my head.

If I had to compare our use of social media I want to say smoking because it’s something we get addicted to thinking were fine as everyone else is doing it, that it’s legal in the nation, it relieves stress (to those that believe that). The one thing we never understand until it’s too late is how it affects us negatively. Sucking us of being human in the real world while we socialize on our phones even if we’re a few feet from each other.

Technology is more than a form of entertainment. From personal experience, technology can be a simple and impacting way to understand the struggles and stories people deal  with in life. Some of the stories can be about things you have a general idea about that gives you a better understanding then what you originally knew. I never had a story that I could personally relate to but those type of stories can happen. Now the way I heard this story are going to be strange to most people but video games is where I get these stories the best. I hear impactful stories while playing video games because I do LFG (Looking For Group) forums all the time for the game I play and I can get good stories time to time. Some funny, some just random talk, and then some that are just impactful to the views of life.

I’m going to tell a story that I heard over the summer from just finding random people on LFG to do something I know I can’t do alone and before I start let me just note the people I was with were all adults as I said earlier I was finding random people. The story I heard when I was doing missions with someone then his buddies hopped in the voice chat we were in. I never started the conversation as I was dead silent as I wanted to focus on what I was doing in the game. I can’t remember much of this part of the conversation but the guys soon started talking about how they or someone they cared about was going through or overcame drug addiction. I can’t remember much of that conversation as they never talked that much on it but this part of the conversation I remember as this story made me say to myself “I deeply respect this man.”.

It started when one of the guys talked about how he was in the military reserves. After he finished talking one of the other guys started talking about how he was actually deployed onto the field for 2 years then after he was honorably discharged from service he got put in the reserves and how he hated it.  “They were all truck drivers.” he said referring to everyone else working their. Before he went to leave, he researched what they could do to him. The military could do nothing to stop him from leaving as he already was honorably discharged so he quit the reserves. He dropped his gear off at the building and when he told the sergeant in charge of the place, the sergeant started yelling at the guy. The guy yelled to the sergeant that he couldn’t stop him from leaving and that he could beat the sergeant up. He then yelled towards to the men listening to the conversation saying how he went to battle for 2 years while they had no experience except training. He then challenged them to stop him. No one stood up and he walked out the front door and just like the research told him they did nothing to him. I had a deep sense of respect for him after his story as I had no knowledge of the military and I never knew that his story could ever happen, especially that nothing happened to him after. I was both surprised and amazed by his story I had to remember it. It’s stories like this that you can’t hear in your daily life unless your job is to find the most random and crazy stories for a newspaper or article job. I took a few things from that story is that even if you work for the Military and your abide not to leave there are conditions that they can’t touch you just for leaving. One thing I still wondered but never looked up is what could the military/government have done if he wasn’t honorably discharged.

Many people have different ideas about how to understand and gain a bigger impact of life but to me the best source can be just meeting random people using technology to talk to them server to server as it’s a part of their own life and in their own words unedited by reporters or editors for a article so it’s a really reliable source. LFG in video games can find you people you can get a story out of but it won’t just be told randomly unless they are seeking for attention. For me I only hear these stories after someone else or I bring up a topic the person with the story can relate it to. If you do find an interesting story don't be afraid or nervous to ask for more details as that's when you learn even more so you can understand the bigger meaning.

People imagine all kinds of possibilities for their life like for example what their dream job will be, what kind of house they’ll live in, and what their future family would look like. But when it comes to fear, our imagination tends to wander and over exaggerates what is currently happening from a small incident to a big life threatening risk. People repeatedly conceptualize potentiality however when it comes to fears or concerns our imagination tends to roam and overestimate what is presently happening from a minimal circumstance to a serious life threatening incident.

The boys on the island over exaggerated a mighty beast out of fear and believed there was on the island and their imaginations included what the beast looked like and where it came from. Their imagination made them believed one of their own friends and the corpse of a fallen soldier was the beast without confirmation that what they saw was real. In the real world the world sees this similarly with police officers on a case at night and they imagine their suspect is armed with a gun when their suspect is actually not armed and they shoot without hesitation because they imagine their lives are at risk.

In Chapter 5 of “Lord of the Flies” by William Golding, the survivors stranded on the island fear of a beast roaming on the Island based on talk of the little children. While this is happening they also start to act uncivilized in many ways. After seeing these Issues Ralph calls an assembly to address these issues and then ends it with trying to debunk the talk and fear of the beast. “You! What were you mucking about in the dark for?” (pg 85). This shows that the fear in the little children about a beast was there imagination and that what they thought was a beast was actually Simon as he was walking around at night. When Simon went out

In an article made by Shaun King about Police Brutality. This article relates to my thesis as it talks about how Police are trained to shoot the imagined possibilities instead of waiting for confirmation and reality of the danger. This connects to the children as the police images the danger of each case while the children image the danger of a beast roaming around on the island which lead to them to fear that their lives are coming to a close end.

Later on in the book the boys are more split than ever with Jack leading the Hunters as savages. During a thunderstorm, after discovering the corpse of a dead soldier that crashed on the island Simon grabs the parachute off the corpse to tell the others of his discovery. After finding the boys he is quickly mistaken as the imaginary beast they believed was real and then assaulted by the savages and died in the water. “Softly, surrounded by a fringe of inquisitive bright creatures, itself a silver shape beneath the steadfast constellations, Simon’s dead body moved out toward the open sea” (pg 154). This shows how powerful imagination has on people’s speculation and quick actions without any real proof their thoughts are real and not false images. Being far from the fire and with the lightning behind Simon all the boys saw from him was just his darkened figure with the parachute in hand so the others believed Simon was the beast out of fear and because they had no logic to proof that it was Simon because all they saw was shadows and their imagination took over their true senses.

In an article on LA Times talks about a police shooting that happened not too long ago that caused a whole commotion. The police involved in this article were on a case about somebody breaking windows and running through people’s backyards. They had a police copter flying over and saw the guy they were about to shoot and lead the officers as the guy was running and ended stopping in his grandmother’s backyard where the police caught up to him. On the article there is a video from the body camera of the officers and then one of them say something similar to “He’s got a gun!” and then they shot about 20 shots at the guy. What the officers thought was a gun was actually the guy’s phone.

Imagination has lead us to our entertainment but the darker side of imagination lead us to fear inanimate objects or fear ourselves and those around us. Imagination also is what makes us believe something is something more deadly. This is a problem we see in our own life from police on duty, and in “Lord of the Flies” with the boys at night.

Works Cited

Golding, William. Lord of the Flies. New York: Penguin, 2006.

Winton, Richard, et al. “Stephon Clark Shooting: How Police Opened Fire on an Unarmed Black Man Holding a Cellphone.” Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Times, 23 Mar. 2018, www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-stephon-clark-shooting-sacramento-explainer-20180323-story.html.

It was Saturday morning and today was a good day for me. It was 8:30 AM EST and in 3 and a half hours I was supposed to be ready for an invite to a raid (end game event).

To those who think I waste my time playing video games that’s not the case. I only complete raids once, then that’s the end of me doing that raid. I only do the weekly activities, then there’s nothing else for me to do until next reset day (Tuesday).

I got out of bed, went to the bathroom to pee. I washed my hands then left after drying them. It was 10:30 when I got on the PS4, after I ate breakfast. I went upstairs and grabbed my headset from my room. I had nothing to do on my characters as I already have done the weekly events then I remembered about Xur. Xur is a weekly vender that shows up on Friday and stays until the weekly reset. This week he was on Io (a moon of Jupiter) so I went there and went to the fast travel (a quick teleport to a location) that was closest to him.

When I found him he was selling Vigilance Wing as the exotic weapon being sold but his exotic gear is what caught my eye. For the Hunter (One of the 3 playable classes) he was selling the Orpheus Rig. I was in awe at the timing of it. The Orpheus Rig was the one exotic boots you needed for a NightStalker (One of the 3 ability trees depending on class) as they give you extra super energy (Ultimate energy) for all tethered (suppressed and increased damage from players) targets by your tether. After buying them I infused them with my Stomp-EE5 (a pair of boots) as I didn’t need it for anything. I just went on doing strikes (multiplayer activity) and public events (an activity when in a explorable location) for faction tokens for the faction rally (a monthly event) for an hour and 15 minutes. I went to the tower to decrypt engrams I had and went through my gear before I got an invite. Minutes after going through my entire weaponry I got the invite. I plugged my headset in, put it on and went to join the party.

“Hey how’s it going?” I asked signifying them I was on.

“Oh you know doing what we always do, lead people to victory.” Josh said as he was a co-sherpa (Sherpas are in a subreddit and help those who want to learn the raids of Destiny) for the raid.

“Ok all were waiting on is Tek then we can begin.” Marvin said wondering where Tek was. “Also join up on us when you’re ready while we’re waiting for Tek.” Josh said.

“I'm all set, got my Merciless (an exotic fusion rifle) ready to go.” I said clicking join session to join the fire team.

After a minute or two Tek joined in and we were off to the Leviathan (Location of raid).

“Ok everyone if you follow me we’ll be going through a short cut to our first encounter.” Marvin said as we saw his and Josh’s characters start moving to a hidden tunnel to our right.

As we followed them, we were lead to a forest like area full of enemies and some lights shining on high rocks.

“Ok for this first encounter after we kill all adds (short for enemy) and pick up 2 prisms the WarBeasts (dog like enemies) will spawn in…”(I don’t want to say the entire encounter) Marvin said explaining what was going to happen and where we need to go.

“Does everyone know where they’re going once we begin damage phases?” Marvin asked just to make sure we knew what to do as we all responded with a yes.

“Also make sure you don’t use your supers until we say so.” Josh said adding onto what Marvin asked us.

We started the encounter and we were already prepared with our 4 spores and 2 prisms in hand. After 3 minutes of gathering damage buffs from glowing flowers it was time to damage.

“Alright drop your spores and get to your flowers!” Marvin said as we ran to our respected flowers and with full powered Merciless’ we killed all the WarBeast fast.”

“Ok that was pretty good so before we head to the next encounter were going to take a 5 minute break before we start.” Marvin said as we heard the thud of him lightly putting down his headset. I was already pumped for the next encounter I played my favorite emote (A action you can play/change with a press of a button).

Hello and this is my last post for my Y&TW benchmark. In my previous 2 blogs I talked about internet addiction and one of the physical effect that can happen if you have an internet addiction or if you use your hand for anything non stop. In the first blog I talked about symptoms and how internet addiction is related to other addictions. Another thing from the blog is how some people had different views of why people are addictive to the internet and one of them was connectivity to other people. In my second blog I talked about Carpal tunnel syndrome as it was one thing on my survey that most people had no idea about. Only thing that would raise awareness that I know of is just websites from treatment centers that talk about internet addiction and contact lists for treatments. For my agent of change I did a phone free advisory. At first most of the class hated my idea but soon lightened up as my advisory did good news and shout outs. Then we spent the rest of the day planning a party on thursday which we did had to let a few people take out their electronics so we can figure out the prices. I originally had no idea and asked for help with ideas from my classmates and Ms. Giknis. At first it was stressful because I didn’t know how my advisory mates would take it but it went great so now i'm more calm about my own Y&TW. It was effective as everyone followed along with what I hoped they would of do and i'm glad it went well. At first I felt a little mad that we were getting this benchmark after we just finished another one. After I took it serious I sort of enjoyed it. I learned that people are addicted to both their phones and the internet as Ms. Giknis once said in class that she also seems to be glued to her phone and how she always just turns it on for no reason. I learned I also have an internet addiction that I can control but I always get distracted as last night I wanted to work on this but I just kept watching videos on youtube and as low as I could I yelled at myself at how I have to work on this. I can think of a few ways I could of done my project better and that would be planning it out as I wanted to try and get my agent of change done with all freshmen advisories but the teachers said they had other plans and that I should of asked earlier so time management is one thing I would of changed. Another thing would be me asking for help as most of class I just stayed in my seat thinking about what I would do for my agent of change that I didn’t do the second blog post till the day before it was due. I hope you learned a lot from this so good bye for now.

Donald Moses

Annotated Bibliography

In my first blog post I talked about what internet addiction was and how it can affect your life. I also talked about a few reasons why people are addicted to the internet. One thing I never talked about is carpal tunnel syndrome. Carpal tunnel syndrome is something that only affects the hand and fingers and rarely anywhere on your arm. Carpal tunnel syndrome is when you feel pain, numbness, or tingling in your fingers or hand. Not gonna lie, I have had a bunch of carpal tunnel syndromes in my life at night and its short ones and only in one finger. I wanted to talk about carpal tunnel syndrome as one or two people who responded to my survey said they had no clue what it was when I checked the responses. I sort of blame myself as I left a little explanation at the top but forgot to add that it was at the top on the question. Carpal tunnel syndrome happens when there's pressure on the median nerve in your wrist. The median nerve to simplify it is the nerves in your entire arm and hand. Want a more scientific term for it follow this link. I should mention that carpal tunnel syndrome is one thing you can get from an internet addiction and that’s why I am talking about it.

Image found at: CTS

(NOTE): I finished my stamp before it was assigned to glue the cut out in our art books on May 8th 2017

This stamp symbolizes me as I play a lot of games at home. The stamp I made uses the Destiny symbol which is the game I play the most of at home on the PS4. Inside the symbol I wrote my name on the ends then the word Gamer in the middle-bottom which is the word I chose when I brainstormed ideas. Some words that I listed down on my brainstorm are intelligent, tall, strongish, and quick. The brainstorm was to help us figure out what we students wanted to do for starting designs. After the starter designs I chose my gamer design to be my final design as it was more symbolic to my personal self and not my school self. Negative and positive space is important especially when making stamps as positive or negative space will be covered in ink to make the image that whatever other space makes. It’s also important to make sure you know what space is which of the image as if you use the wrong space the stamp won’t look right when you use it. I used negative and positive space by cutting out the letters I used to make my name, and word chosen from my brainstorm as part of the background. I kept the inside part for my letters O, D, and tried to with A as part of the actual image. To truly understand negative space you have to look at the image itself then do the same with the background as you don’t know what the actual image was supposed to be if it's confusing. Trying to put the inside letters was a problem as it was hard to get it to stay on its own and I had to use the cutting knife to keep it in place. A mental problem was just the nervousness of not ruining the cut as I was cutting it. Well what I learned about positive and negative space along the way is a tricky thing to answer. If you mean by this week then no, as a whole through the entire quarter up to now I learned a lot of negative and positive space from how you can use it to make 2 images into one frame. Also how you could just use the background to give pictures details without all the lines and colors.

A. What is negative space (explain this concept to a fourth grader that has never heard of it)

Negative space is when the image and the background forms 2 images or 1 whole image. Most common colors you could use is black and white.

B. Explain how you found negative space in your cut out?

I found negative space in my cut out as my background fills in the image itself to form the other half.

C. Why does it help an artist to see in negative space?

It helps artists to see in negative space because they can see the outline of what their drawing before they color the whole paper or use negative space to find a better image than what they originally drew.

D. Does seeing in negative space enhance drawings, why or why not

It does enhance a drawing because you could see something different than the original image but on the other hand some people may find negative space to make a image dull.

My project is about internet addiction. My goal in doing this is to personally learn to myself about it as how I’m going to change the world is still unknown to me yet. I chose to do internet addiction as I sort of think I also have one but I use it for entertainment when i'm not doing homework or projects. Reason I say that is I spend most of my time upstairs in my room. I also wanted to do this so I can take from this as well and be in my room less.  Internet addiction is a huge issue as it affects you mentally and physically. Internet addiction can make you lazy and not want you to do your work. Internet addiction also ruins your love life and those who you cared about will one day just leave you (unless your loved ones are also online like you). People who become internet addicts are people who are also alcoholics and people who use it to get away from real world problems like people suffering from depression. A sort of positive reason people get addicted to the internet by the opinion of John M. Grohol is the socialization as you could talk to anyone from around the world or relatives you can barely see often. Other times it’s people who like playing videogames and just want to keep playing it. It's important to know about this so we don’t end up with a terrible life and living on the streets alone. Internet addiction didn’t even start serious and never intended to be a real disorder. Internet addiction could also be compared to alcohol addiction. link to image

One place that never has dealt with an internet addiction even to this day is Cuba as with the trade embargo they never had access to the internet. As time progress more people published their own publications of internet addiction but the publication of the DSM-5 from the APA, they stated further research for internet addiction before they added it as a disorder. A few of the mental effects of being an internet addict is depression, anxiety, and no track of time. A few physical effects of being an internet addict is back and headaches, blurry vision, and also carpal tunnel syndrome which is numbness or weakness in your hand from playing too much. Link to image

Recent research estimated nearly 40 million people spending more than 20 hours a week which was doubled from the estimate for 2008. About 50 percent of people between ages 13-17 in the US use the internet for a long amount of time. Research also stated that teen boys spent more time on the internet than teen girls. In 2016 researchers surveyed adults between ages 20-30 and found out 14 percent of them were at risk of internet addiction and most of them had full-time jobs. Through my research so far the impact of it has impacted me greatly as it could also affect my own life as I spend much of my time at home on the internet.

Annotated bibliography

Printmaking is when you carve a image in a piece of wood then cover the wood in ink to make the carving on the wood a picture on paper. Printmaking goes way back to the egyptian time as egyptians used relief printing to and design to their fabrics. Printmaking also was used to make the first books. The invention of printmaking was revolutionary as it made comebacks with a new technique after being replaced until digital printing was made. Printmaking was all around the world when it was popular. Printmaking was also used to make famous paintings like the “Bison Couché”. Some ethnic groups had to use stone for printmaking. Chinese also used stone but to only print their names on their work.

You have to think, what would the world be without the invention of printmaking? Here is how the invention of printmaking is important and revolutionary. Without printmaking education might of been different as we couldn’t get a lot of educational books. A library would be pretty expensive to get books from as the books would of been rare to get. Teachers couldn’t print out many copies of worksheets or instructions for a experiment or project. There's more things that couldn’t be possible without the invention of printmaking but i'm not going to write them all down.

I found this image from google leading me to a wikipedia site: url to page

I think the painting is about an old man waking up to a rooster on the wall and sees his son and grandson in the distance. I noticed the maker made it look like it’s sunrise instead of the blue sky and yellow sun high in the sky. What if the rooster is the old man’s wife as the old man as his cheeks are red. I noticed there's a cliff side to the right with a tree on the edge. What if the  two people in the background are going to that cliff and passes by the old man’s house everyday

Soy yo el hijo de padres US.

Yo juego videojuegos en casa.

Yo dos hermanas.

Veo mi casa y familia

Huelo cena de Acción de Gracias

Toco ratón y teclado

Olgo Impractical Jokers en TV

Saboreo PennRose Dinner

Hablo con dignidad en ingles, no español

Tengo posiblemente videojuegos por inmigrantes ilegales

Necesito mi familia y su comodidad

Somos productos de America.

Somos americanos.

Hablamos inglés.

La lengua de cheesesteaks.

No somos germanos.

German esta en nosotros, pero allí no tengo hogar.

I found the feedback I got from my peers helpful but one of the things I couldn’t change were the images as I couldn’t find a high resolution picture of what I used in my first slide but I did do what I wanted to do and make it “bleed”. Another thing that was pointed out was that I had a bright green line that made it stand out and wanted more attention and also remove a bar I had the color black. Another thing I changed was I made a part of the text very small and the exclamation marks way big at first so now the part of the text is bigger and the exclamation marks smaller so it's more visible. One thing I didn’t notice until editing was that the boxes I colored for the slide showed the lines of the box so I fixed that so you don’t see the lines of the boxes.

I made the slide like that because I was told it had to be about us so I took an image of what I love to do, playing video games. My reason why I chose the image does not matter and is not what this script is mostly about. The script is mostly about why I chose to design the image as it is. It has a bunch of color because as stated from one of the research pages we were allowed to go to “Color is the very first thing people will notice.” after reading that I took a bunch of text boxes and colored the background. I wrote what the picture means to me in big letters because that was also one of the statements from the research pages to not be a wimp and use big letters. I made below the big letters another line that is very small because I am quiet almost all the time so I wanted it to match me as well but the ! marks are way big so to me it seems I’m screaming my frustration to the world. I didn’t chose an image to “bleed” because if I did it would hide the name of the games and I didn’t want that. We are allowed to only change the slide after we post the scripts and slides on SLATE but I don’t know what to change if given the chance.