I am not sure about this site! :p

It looks like everything is tallied up on this site. If we visited someone or made a comment. Boy I feel like I am being watched (big brother). Its a little weird (I think) and I am sure this is part of the whole thing about doing this blogging on this site so (our) or (maybe I should say the Institution of Higher Learning) Instructors see how we preform. I am way off the path laid out for us in the syllabubs to follow, sorry I am getting carried away now that I am blogging I cant stop help me help me. Just joking see you all in class even if I haven't written anything about our reading I will tell you guys in class.   

How do I look from there?

I still have issues with regards to the whole perspective that we actually establish an identity just by placing it out on a blog site. The whole idea of snap shots of our perspective with regards to who we are as individuals seems a little shallow to me. I know that we are using words to share ideas on blog sites, yet even within close relationships who we are as individuals, more or less often is still a mystery.

Not liking this learning experience

I had thought that I was computer savvy but this whole blogging thing is causing me more stress than learning. I am caught between working on my ability to write and have you all see what that looks like and also trying to learn to do blogging. Maybe there is a time where you get to old to learn! hehehehe
I am going to try and ride this out but I already feel like I am so far behind that only a full time tutor can help me overcome my procrastination. I am a passive/avoidance personality which increases my stress level and anxiety and in turn causes me to withdraw even more and this in turn causes me to become depressed because I am not meeting the demands that I have set for myself. Well enough about me. I not sure that I want this to be shared with you all but I feel like at least I am trying to make some kind of identity, as the old guy trying to learn something new.
 

Ladies, ladies, ladies...

The prevalence of psychological disorders is on the rise. One of the main contributors to these disorders is the thought processes of the patients. Many studies have been done to research the effect of media on people who are predisposed to psychological disorders. How does advertising and popular media affect these thought processes?

Out of all psychological disorders, eating disorders are one of the most dangerous. Anorexia and bulimia have high relapse rates and often lead to death. According to multiple authors, “There is considerable evidence that exposure to attractive, thin female models increases depression, guilt, shame, stress, anger, and body dissatisfaction in women at risk for eating disorders” (as cited by Fister & Smith, 2004, p. 394). Are the images portrayed in media partially responsible?

Recently, one 14 year old, Julia Bluhm, voiced her opinion on the appearance of women in magazines. She started by creating a petition asking Seventeen magazine to present women in a more realistic manner. Over 84,000 people signed and supported her cause.

In response to the petition, Seventeen has agreed and created a Body Peace Treaty. The treaty involves simple things that promote a healthy self-esteem and has been signed by 87,743 members. In July, Bluhm told her supporters:

Seventeen listened! They're saying they won't use photoshop to digitally alter their models! This is a huge victory, and I'm so unbelievably happy. Another petition is being started by SPARK activists Emma and Carina, targeting Teen Vogue and I will sign it. If we can be heard by one magazine, we can do it with another. We are sparking a change! (Bluhm, 2012, para. 2)

Will this new petition in place targeting Teen Vogue be equally successful?

If our magazines, our advertising, our marketing began to adopt this ideology, what would that mean for women at-risk for anorexia and bulimia? Would the prevalence of these disorders decrease? But perhaps this is just another example of the “can do” girl: “…the self-branded girl [that] is encouraged to be self-reliant and empowered, especially within a consumer context” (Banet-Weiser, n.d., p. 283).

References

Banet-Weiser. (n.d.) Branding the post-feminist self: Girls’ video production and YouTube. In M. C. Kearney (Ed.), Mediated girlhoods: New explorations of girls’ media culture (pp. 277-295). New York: Peter Lang.

Bluhm, J. (2012). Seventeen magazine: Give girls images of real girls! Retrieved from http://www.change.org/petitions/seventeen-magazine-give-girls-images-of-real-girls

Fister, S. M., & Smith, G. T. (2004). Media Effects on Expectancies: Exposure to Realistic Female Images as a Protective Factor. Psychology Of Addictive Behaviors, 18(4), 394-397. doi:10.1037/0893-164X.18.4.394

Seventeen. (2012). Body peace treaty. Retrieved from http://www.seventeen.com/health/tips/body-peace-pledge

This week's blog post topic

Hi all,

Here is the prompt for this week's blog post. Let me know if you have questions/comments. 

Andrew

For the week of September 13^th, 2012

Theme: Online Identity and Presentation

In this week’s readings, authors discuss the ways in which the concept of identity has been changed by the Internet age. Palfrey and Glasser state that “Digital Natives almost never distinguish between the online and offline version of themselves” (p. 20). Banet-Weiser notes that “girls reference brands not simply as commodities but as the context for everyday living” (p. 285). Finally, writing in 1990, Haraway says that “gender, race, or class consciousness is an achievement forced on us by the terrible historical experience of the contradictory social realities of patriarchy, colonialism, racism, and capitalism” (p. 197).

In this week’s blog post, you should look for the intersection of these three readings. Your post could, for example, explore the ways in which Haraway’s (last century) idea of the cyborg is mediated or shaped by the ability of teenage girls to broadcast themselves on YouTube. Or you could explore the ways in which you think online and offline identities mix, and how this is related to branding. You’re also free to reject my ideas and write something about your own experiences and the thoughts that these readings sparked. In any case, your post will be strengthened by citing the authors when appropriate and drawing connections between your reading of the three required texts for this week.

Here's a link to a YouTube video mentioned in Sarah Banet-Weiser's article. Read the comments (as Banet-Weiser suggests in the article).

Be Who You Wanna Be?

After having read the material for this coming week, I was perusing the internet for interesting links about online identities. So, in the spirit of our fabulous instructors, here is a little video that shows one young woman's university experiment. I hope this isn't some sort of spoiler for class next week...

What is scary to me are some of the responses her identities elicited.This is precisely why my Facebook account is a pseudonym, even though I know I can be found in the virtual world. All I can think of, though, when it comes to any type of fully online relationship, can be summed up in photos:




Now, am I saying this only applies to women? Of course not. To wit...



It is the expectation vs. reality--how we want people to see us vs. how we actually are. Of course these are hyperbole and intended for comedic effect. But the concept remains the same: can we really trust anyone we only know through the medium of cyberspace??

For the Creatives and Critics: The TV Tropes Wiki

Since you, my peers, are the ones served by this 'blog, I think you might find this either useful or interesting enough to bookmark and keep handy.

This link leads to the TV Tropes Wiki. This is a site, built using the Wikipedia model, that catalogs various tropes originally seen in film, television, comics, literature and so on. As the title states, this was originally a TV-focused wiki that expanded its coverage over time. The standards are not Wikipedia's; this is far more casual and subjective in its intention and execution (and yes, there is a trope entry for that.)

Because this is not a wiki that holds to Wikipedia's notability standards, let alone the standards we're accustomed to in academia, I warn you not to see this as an authority so much as a measure or accounting of common practices. The tropes cataloged here include so-called "metatropes" such as Executive Meddling, and some of them are contended as being tropes at all. (As with Wikipedia, users--"Tropers"--can and do get into fights over definitions, which leads to periodic overhauls of the site's content; e.g. "Did Not Do The Research" got merged into Artistic License, and there was a flame war in the Discussion tab.)

If you critique or create narrative fiction, especially genre fiction, having TV Tropes in your Bookmarks is worthwhile. The names coined here have spread throughout the 'Net, sometimes through direct linking to relevant entries--and I have done this over the years more than once--leading to a push towards a standardization of jargon amongst the 'Net-savvy population of genre fiction fans, critics and creators that's now pushing out to assimilate all forms of gaming, so it helps if you're talking about the next James Bond film and someone tosses off "What did you expect? Bond is a Badass in a Nice Suit." you can follow along. TV Tropes is especially useful when used alongside a more formal counterpart; the difference between the two can be quite helpful when stuck with some part of a story.

I hope that this annotated link proves as useful I intended.