A Myspace Memoir

When it comes to the whole social networking thing, I consider myself a late bloomer: I didn’t get a myspace until sophomore of high school and a facebook until a month before graduation. In fact I was quite behind when it came to anything technological: I did research papers without the internet until second semester sophomore year when I was forced. It’s not that I had anything against technology, it’s just that culturally I was raised using technology as it was needed and as it was needed only. Eventually I caved and decided that seven plus page research papers was a valid reason for using the internet, but I had a hard time adapting to the idea of “social networks”. As a kid, I played outside and when a new kid moved into the neighborhood, if they didn’t seem weird, I introduced myself. Something about doing this online just seemed foreign, not to mention, how could I tell whether they were weird? The only reason I finally caved on the idea of social networks was due to severe peer pressure. I grew tired of waiting for invites to come through the mail only to be disappointed when I found out that they went out via some online network that I didn’t have or not being updated on happenings on friends lives because the announcements had also happened online.
Part of my reluctance to join social networks is probably based on the fact that I only had dial up and a partially working computer until college, but mainly on the fact that I didn’t place much value on this. When I did succumb to peer pressure, myspace was the in network. On my snail speed connection, I filled out all of the necessary fields and after about two hours, I was able to upload a photo. Now what, I asked myself. Luckily for me myspace had a search option so I looked for friends and was able to add them. To speed up the process I told friends that I now had a myspace and before I knew it my friends list was huge, only problem was I had no clue who most of those people were. That didn’t really bother me because I never had many pictures online nor did I actually talk to friends online, I just had a profile for the same reason I had pokemon cards when I was younger: everyone else did, legit, everyone. I was content just having a profile, but then I started to receive complaints about how boring my profile was. MY best friend at the time suggested that I add a custom layout. For some strange reason I listened to this and with my dial-up connection I set out to trick out my myspace page. After waiting an hour for my custom layout to get uploaded, I was happy to see that my profile had some life. But soon after accessorizing my page, I forgot it existed.
I pretty much let my page just run its course until one day in junior year when I got an email telling me that my profile had been “fished”. Allegedly someone had hacked into my profile and caused some sort of mayhem that finally made myspace suspicious that it may not be me. I followed the protocol set up by myspace which allowed me to change my password and send an alert to all of my friends letting them know what happened. Despite this mishap, I decided to keep my profile until that summer when I returned to my job as a middle school teacher’s assistant. One day, as student awkwardly asked me if I had a myspace. Hoping that they wouldn’t search for it, I said no. Naturally, being a middle schooler, the kid looked me up and before I knew it their friends had done the same. This presented a lapse in professionalism for me because at the time I was sixteen, barely two years older than the oldest student their, but in a position of authority. When my my space search results revealed a picture of me bighting my libe with the quote “wanna pet my tiger,” I knew that it was time for me to get rid of my page. The quote on my page was an inside joke between me and my friends from middle school, but I saw how this could’ve easily made me unemployed. That night I, “applied to delete,” my myspace account and took a sigh of relief for avoiding a very awkward moment. While I had been warned of the dangers of putting certain things online, feeling young and invincible, I always thought that it wouldn’t happen to me. That day at work humbled me and forced me to realize that I was just a vulnerable as anyone else with a myspace account.
My incident with myspace had made me reluctant to join any online social networks, but as senior year ended, I cracked once again and decided to get a facebook account. I had been hearing about facebook for my entire high school career but I had no clue what it was. Prior to leaving for my internship, I got a text message telling me to check my facebook for the details for the end o the semester party. This presented a problem because I didn’t have a facebook! The person that sent me the text message finally explained to me what it was after several lol’s and get serious(s), she made it sound so much more secure and grown up than myspace that I had to get one! I had wireless internet at this point so setting up my facebook account wasn’t anywhere near as time consuming as setting up my myspace. I soon learnt how to upload pictures manage privacy settings, find friends, and all of the other things that make facebook wonderful. I suddenly became a much more social person as I reconnected with friends and got the mass invites to events that replaced the quasi-personal text messages.
My transition into college was also made much simpler due to my use of facebook. Prior to arriving in August, I was able to meet people from my year, my future roommate and even people who just shared common interest. One day during the summer while I was sick I managed to fried almost the entire class of 2012. During orientation I learned about student groups and through them I was introduced to facebook groups. These groups proved to be very helpful as it made the social transition into college much easier because I could easily find people who shared similar interests. No t to mention there’s pretty much a group for everything on facebook: I even found a group of people who share my name. I also found that the majority of my peer preferred this form of communication over e-mail because it’s quicker due to the frequency which most check it but not as invasive as a text message when discussing homework.
In a matter of months, using facebook became second nature. In fact, I cant really imagine life without it. Since getting a facebook I’ve experimented with other social networks like linkedin, which proved to be irrelevant for me because people tend to not look for student employees there, and a few other facebook knockoffs. Facebook has become universal: it seems as though in a few years it’ll be almost as essiential as an e-mail address itself and maybe eventually as important as an id. No matter which country you’re in or what language you speak, facebook is the choice of communication. Now that I’ve developed a comfort with facebook, I see myself blogging in the future to appease the part of myself that’s always wanted to be a journalist. No matter what, I don’t see myself jumping on board with the twitter phenomena: it just seems to self absorbed. My dependence on faebook does raise an internal struggle for me: What will happen to all those kids who know nothing about life before facebook. In a world of IMs, wall posts, tweets, and blogs, I’m afraid of what will happen to the generations to come. Will they know how to interact with each other without an electronic middleman?

Nastalgia (Building something)

When I was younger and I finally learned how to navigate the internet, I remember nickjr.com used to have this app online that allowed you to build and maintain your own aquarium. You had to feed your fish, keep your tank clean, so on and so forth. You had the option of selling or trading your fish and there were various ways to earn points. Recently while browsing facebook I found an app that was quite similar to the the one I used to play online. After creating my aquarium, I realized that at 19 years old, fish don't hold my intrest the way that they use to!

Luckily for me there's a whole chain of these games based on the same concept. Later that same week I discovered an app called farmville. Farmville allows you to create your very own farm on a small plot of land, invite other friends who have farms to be nieghbors, plant crops, buy live stock, snd pretty much everything else that coud be done on the farm. Like secondlife, I was also able to customize my own avatar to look eactly how I wanted him to and he's not a puff of smoke (a human shaped blank spot when using slow connections at time.

The app does give the option of purchasing the onlive currency, but its very easy to just earn it. Creating a farm is quite simple as is maintaining it: all you have to do is click and read. Given that it's an on going process it's technically time consuming but playing for just 15 mins every three days is also very possible. If any one is interested in seeing my farm, u'd have to be my friend on facebook (my name there is Shomari Shakir). OR I'm sure someone in your network is bound to have a farmville, in fact George and i just became neighbors!

I love my farm! It's quite easy to maintain, it reminds me so much of my childhood and It's incredibly simple. If you're looking for a relief from the stresses of finals or if you just want a guarenteed acomplishment, I strongly recommend creating a farmville farm!

Playing Well With Others

Side note: I think this tittle will get me a lot more hits! lol

It's refreshing to see so many varying styles of blogs in the class. Looking at each one is different so it's not boring going through and reading classmate's blogs. That being said, it was quite interesting that on pretty much all of the blogs that i commented on, my comments were the only ones.

An issue that I came into while trying to comment on blogs was losing my posts. I'd either forget my blogger password and by the time i went through the system my comment would be gone. Not to mention some blogs just didn't show my post. To avoid this i started typing my comments in word and then just pasting them onto the blog. I'd say i successfully posted to about 4. Of the blogs I posted on, I only have minor acquaintances with 2 of them, I wouldn't say that we know each other very well, and i didn't chose their blogs because i know them, but because they seemed interesting.

I thinks that this is pretty useful when we need to share large amounts of information with each other given that clark tends to send out so much email that it all gets lost in the shuffle. The only disadvantage i see to it is that it's not meant for instance response so I wouldn't pose a question that I needed answered right away, but If wanted to start a conversation, this is an excellent venue for that.

Second Life creating an Avatar

I created my second life avatar Slash Bovarro about a month ago. I can honestly say never have I hated something that I created so much. First of all, I was a puff of smoke up until a week ago which was quite irritating. And when my avatar did finally arrived, to my surprise it wasn't the one I had selected during the avatar creation process. I didn't stress about this too much given that it is secondlife: I should be able to alter my avatar completely pretty easily to make him look the way I wanted to right? WRONG! As I tried to chage my avatar I realised that there were certain limits... so so much for having an avatar that looks like me!

I tend to be a very spacy and day dreaming person so secondlife would allow me to quasi visit the places that I usually just imagine that I am in my head. Im sure this technology has some actual practical use such as allowing people from around thw world to meet face to face in a way for various reasons. As mentioned in class it would be cool to take a campus tour virtually as an avatar and Since Im a tour guide I'd so appreciate being able to just give a tour from my room in my pajamas without having to face the New England Winter.

Given that I was a puff of smoke for so long, I really didnt c the oppertunity for social oppertunities. Ive also struggled to leave help island which probably makes my chances of social interactions very limited.

Im not sure that this technology can support all of its users. It just seems too big for its own good which is why I believe Ive had so much trouble with my avatar. Im also afraid of the social implications of having a world that's completely based on fantasy and I think athat an age minimum should be enforced on such a program.

Assignment A creating a Blog

1. I decided to use blogger because it definitely has more bells and whistles than cicada yet seemed more user friendly and straight forward than the other option. I also already have a gmail account so setting up a blogger was that much more simple.
2. Setting up a blog was quite simple. I actually expected it to be because it's so popular these days and I seriously doubt that it would be if it were more difficult. The only difficulty I had came later and that was only that I had forgotten to verify my e-mail.
3. While it seems that there are opportunities for social interaction, becuase this Blog is specifically for class I didn't look. Not to mention, I'm not a huge fan of complete strangers reading my thoughts.
   
4. Depending on how the blogging goes in class will determine whether or not I continue using such technology after class is finished. I think that I'll probably still prefer an old fashion journal, but you never know.