Posts

Final Post

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This is sadly the last post that I am going to have on this blog. I have enjoyed the time that I have had to blog since this has been an outlet for one of my college classes. Since this is my last blog post here I wanted to look back at what I had posted this semester and see what my two favorite posts are, my favorite blogger, and a couple comments that I felt were meaningful to me. First my two favorite blog posts were “My Opinion on Clay Shirky on Love” and “Online Movements” both posts describe me very well, going against the grain and not always believing what is taught. Both were assigned to me in the class as material and I had to post my opinions on it. It is straight brash and to the point, just like me. My favorite blogger is a woman in my class named Shannon Washington who talks about similar issues but puts her personal spin on it. Honestly really good content and love to see differing opinions on issues. Lastly the couple of comments that I felt were important to sh
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The Wikipedia Experiment

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This week with an assignment from one of my classes I returned to Wikipedia to edit once again. This time it wasn’t for malicious purposes or to troll the largest online encyclopedia but instead to improve the site. I honestly wasn’t expecting much seeing the last time I had edited the ban hammer had come down on me quick. Me and three other group members looked for a page to edit that could use some of our previous knowledge. Fortunately and unfortunately, we chose a topic that is not the lightest subject which is “ Modern Slavery .” I know, I know, kind of a sensitive topic but we had good points we wanted to add about Chinese exploitation of Africans, Saudi Arabia’s exploitation of Egypt and Indonesia, and slavery due to technology. The post had citations and everything yet within 10 minutes the content was taken down. I guess four college students really shouldn’t be qualified to talk about such a sensitive issue but to be taken down in 10 minutes was surprising. All I can sa
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Confessions of a former Wikipedia Troll

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Photo from Pixabay under  CC0 Creative Commons Wikipedia is one of the sites that I have been involved in for most of my life. I first joined Wikipedia in 2006 when a lot of the scrutiny about its legitimacy was all over the news. I also used to not be the best for internet etiquette and would participate in a lot of internet debauchery. Due to the news that Wikipedia was being trolled I decided to join in on the fun. It was really easy back then because their community wasn’t as tightly knit as it is now. I would spoof account (which you could do back then) because it would give your edits more credibility and then change the smallest details in hundreds of Wikipedia pages. Wikipedia finally caught on and started banning IP addresses that were known for doing it (including me). The only problem was that I had a VPN at that time so I just used that and could continue to troll. Wikipedia then created a counter troll movement which created the climate which we see today. I st
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Memes and their future

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From Pixabay under  CC0 Creative Commons Weirdly enough memes have been a part of most of my life. I have been on the internet for a good 70% of my life and it seems like to me memes have been there the entire time. I remember back on my mom’s Dell Dinosaur that dual booted DOS and Windows 95 laughing at “ All Your Base are Belong to Us ” and “ Badger Badger Badger .” The thing was I didn’t even know that they were called memes until the 2010s. We called them funny pictures or cool videos. Now though I feel like they are everywhere and relate to every aspect of life you could imagine. Instead where in the early days there were a few you could choose from a year I feel like now you could have an archive of all the types of memes that happen in a month. This leads me to believe that we are in what could be called the golden age of memes, where everything has a meme about it. It is also my feeling though that this may start to be the downslope of memes seeing oversaturation is be
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Online Movements

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Pixabay under  CC0 Creative Commons This week I was reading part of a textbook that I had to read for one of my classes I’m taking. It talks about how online movements share five things in common with each other: visual content, performances, speed, inclusiveness, and masked organizers. Then it gave two examples of the Zapatistas , a Mexican farmer’s rights movement which was later organized online and Black Lives Matter , a black movement focused on equal rights which found its members online. Though I was thinking that not all online movements share all of these points. For instance, the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge didn’t have masked organizers and in fact every participant was videotaped and the creator of the tread is well known as Peter Frates. Another example how not all online movements share all these points is Occupy Wall Street movement . They were not going to leave Wall Street till they got their message thru spending months on in tent cities on Wall Street which is n
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Reddit, the front page of the internet

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Pixabay under  CC0 Creative Commons Today I am going to talk about Reddit and Reddit Culture. I have used Reddit off and on for about 5 years now and it is now my number one social media aggregator. So, before anyone says, “wait Reddit is a social media site”, it depends on how you use it. The way that I use it is so that I can see what news is happening in the world, what cool things people are doing, and to see some of the best and worst that the internet has to offer. I got into the site because Digg.com wasn’t doing it for me and 4chan had gotten way too weird and cult like. I felt like there had to be a better alternative. I had heard of Reddit before but was always warned about how awful it looked and that if you could get past the looks it was a great site. Though after the first time I saw how communities were setup I made an account that day. After that I really haven’t looked back since. Most of my teen life and all my adult life I have been on Reddit. Pixabay und
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Net Neutrality

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Pixabay under  CC0 Creative Commons To start off Net Neutrality is something that I have a bit of a background with personally. I’ve worked with a couple group that are fighting for the rights of Net Neutrality so I do have bias on the subject. Net Neutrality is a ploy for ISP’s to get money out of internet companies in the way the mob said that they could offer small mom and pop shops protection. Though I feel like everyone at this point has been beaten over the head with how bad getting rid of Net Neutrality is which means I’m not going to talk about it. Instead I’m going to talk about why people should care now more than ever. Since there have been so many bills that have come up in congress addressing Net Neutrality it has caused an almost staleness where people don’t care. This is the time that the ISP’s are waiting for, people are focused on other issues and people just don’t care anymore. There will be just one time where we didn’t say enough and the internet as we know i
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