Beating a path through the digital wilderness

Aphonic over Words with Friends

In another era, WWF stood for the World Wrestling Federation. Still does, I suppose, although today those initials are more commonly known by online gamers as Word with Friends.

Somewhere around Thanksgiving I got hooked into this addictive game which, along with other games like Hanging with Friends and the (non-interactive) Angry Birds are taking up a lot of people’s times these days.

Popularity rising

With its ubiquitous accessibility, via terminal, laptop, notebook, or smart phone, Word with Friends seems, indeed, to be everywhere. And with its links to Facebook, many of the moves you make show up on your wall, thereby advertising its presence to many others and the many others who have befriended those many others.

Who wouldn’t want it known that their best achievement of the day was scoring 131 points by their adroit playing of the word “djebel?”

A domino effect

It’s the well-known domino effect, and it now has more than 3 million Facebook users “liking” this game, and probably wasting a lot of otherwise productive hours playing it.

Those prone to finding their glasses to be half-full as opposed to seriously leaking,  would point out that you can increase your vocabulary with such word games as this thinly-veiled version of the classic game of Scrabble.

Hmmm…

I suppose my reaction would be, True if you think any of the following kinds of words will be useful for you in the conversations of life:

Qi, qat, xi, vodoun, oedemas, yegg (egg with an extra-large yoke?), quin, jeux, nixe, nae, qua, tael, ratel, eclat, recta (2 rectums?) and quean.

Or how about rec, rem, urd, mae, ecu, kex, kae, and jauk?

All these and many other wonderful words are legitimate parts of the King’s speech, according to your friends at Words with Friends. And of course we use these gems all the time in our everyday chats. These are the words that come tripping off our tongue when we are confronted with six consonants and a vowel (or, worse yet, the opposite). Right?

Too scrambled?

Well, only right if we are using a handy-dandy word unscrambler. Or is that descrambler? Neither seems to find favor with the text program I’m using now.

These descramblers bring up a serious ethical issue, of course, to players of WWF: Is it cheating to

use a crutch like that? Or is a descrambler really a crutch? Might it merely help you to unclutter all the knowledge of universe  you already possess so that you can get right to these words that you already knew so well?

The tree and the thud

And, like the tree no one ever saw or heard falling in the wilderness, does it matter if no one hears it? Would Aristotle or Immanuel Kant insist that you come clean and tell your opponent you’re using a descrambler before starting the match? And if BOTH of you use that aid, does that negate the ethical quandary and create an even and virtuous playing field? Or is it that you are both now cheating?

But if you’re both cheating, why play the game at all?

The game of life

The backers of WWF would say that playing this game allows each of us to come face to face with deep and important ethical principles which can only help us out in the rest of the game of life.

This all, of course, presumes that people are actually playing WWF and not just logging on to use the chat box, which is one great way of getting around paying for a text package on your cell phone, especially since you can access WWF on that very phone and text until your heart’s content — or until you run out of words — for free.

A serious side

Proving once again, however, that there is an upside to everyone wasting time on the Web, consider the following story posted just today by CBS News:

“Beth Legler, of Blue Springs, Missouri, began playing Words with Friends more than two years ago on her cell phone, reports KCTV CBS 5 in Kansas City. That’s when she met an Australian couple named Georgie and Simon Fletcher of Queensland, Australia.

“One day during a game, Georgie told Beth that Simon was feeling under the weather, so Beth asked her to describe his symptoms, since Beth’s own husband, Larry, was a doctor.

“When hearing that Simon was experiencing fatigue so severe that he couldn’t walk to his mailbox and burning in the back of his throat, reports MSNBC, Dr. Legler had some words of advice for his wife’s online friends: get to a doctor immediately.

“Legler thought Simon was experiencing angina, a condition that occurs when your heart doesn’t get enough oxygen-rich blood. That causes pressure or squeezing in the chest, but could cause pain elsewhere in the body like in the shoulders, arms, neck, or back. What usually causes angina? Heart disease.

“Simon was reluctant but went to the doctor, and as it turns out, Dr. Legler was right: Simon had a 99 percent blockage in his artery and was on death’s door.

“Simon had two stents implanted through emergency surgery, and has recovered. ‘I owe Larry everything,’ Simon told KCTV. “I’m really lucky to be here.”

“Said Beth, ‘It’s been a wonderful experience to have had made some great friends and know that Simon is well because of a word game.’”

Wow. I’m speechless. Or is that aphonic?

 

 

Riding herd on the e-books stampede

One of my favorite books of all time is Lonesome Dove, that neo-classic tale of the West by Texan Larry McMurtry.

Although he has a passion for writing westerns of both period and modern vintage, McMurtry explodes the stereotype of what a writer of westerns is all about.  That’s one of the reasons I like his books so much.

Books in his saddlebags

I’ve never been in McMurtry’s home but, I bet that in place of a Winchester rifle and crossed branding irons above a massive fireplace, you would find rows of books packed into wall-to-wall shelving.

I get that image because Larry McMurtry is a guy in love with books.

How do I know that? Because the guy owns one of the larger antiquarian bookstores around, called Booked Up, that comprises four buildings and contains some 400,000 books. That’s bigger than a lot of college libraries, and it’s not found in Houston or Dallas but way out in Archer City, Texas. If that town sounds vaguely familiar, go check out McMurtry’s breakthrough novel, The Last Picture Show or its sequel, Texasville.

This is one literate cowboy.

A vexing question

Because I admire McMurtry the author so much, I plopped down $6.95 plus tax for the current issue of Harper’s Magazine at the Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport the other day. The article catching my eye was one by McMurtry asking the provocative question, “Will Amazon kill the book?”

Since this is one big-time bookseller asking the question about another, I thought McMurtry might just be the right guy to answer that question.

He did, and the answer is no.

This, despite the Amazon CEO’s apparent desire to see books go to the back of the shelf. Keep in mind we’re talking about the kind of printed book that the world has known for the past 500 years or so, ever since Johannes Gutenberg started cranking them with his movable type.

One Click

Reviewing Richard L. Brandt’s book, One Click: Jeff Bezos and the Rise of Amazon.com, McMurtry is quick to give credit to Amazon’s founder as a creative genius. In fact, his review begins by noting the following:

“If the late Steve Jobs was the Thomas Edison de nos jours, perhaps the ever-present Jeff Bezos of Amazon is our Henry Ford. Both Bezos and Ford had a single culture-changing idea that they executed doggedly until the culture came round.”

The Kindle: Year 4

McMurtry is referring not only to the creation of the gigantic online flea market we know as Amazon.com, but also to the new kind of electronic book reader that Amazon launched in 2007 that we know as the Kindle.

But McMurtry disagrees with Bezos that the e-book is going to render ink-on-paper books obsolete as we all migrate to the e-screen of Kindle and – although Bezos might not acknowledge it – the Barnes & Noble version called the Nook.

I wrote about these new technologies a couple years ago in this blog, asking the question, “Will the e-book catch on?” Certainly the sales that Amazon is touting of Kindle seem to indicate they are indeed catching on.  But my own personal observations, made over the past year on my college campus of 5,200 undergrads, indicate otherwise. I just don’t see that many students sitting under the trees reading e-books.

Doubting the worst

McMurtry, doubts that e-books will wipe out traditional tomes. Keep in mind, however, he has a financial interest in the health of the printed book. He does have to pay the utilities for all that bookstore space out in Archer city. Nevertheless, he writes:

“Less attractive about Bezos is his obvious irritation at the continued existence of the paperbound book, which provides, still, serious competition to sales of his e-book device, the Kindle.

 “He has pointed out that the traditional book has had a 500-year run; he clearly thinks it’s time for those relics to sort of shuffle offstage. Then he will no longer be bothered with old-timey objects that have the temerity to flop open and cause one to lose one’s place.”

 Bubbles can burst

Acknowledging the opening-weekend kind of success the Kindle is having, McMurtry cautions, “The culture has surged in the direction of e-books, but the surge might not go on forever. It might be a bubble.”

Those of us who have felt the deep satisfaction of taking our time to browse through a bookstore – large or small – and walking out with more than we expected to buy, can appreciate where McMurtry is coming from.

And that kind of customer satisfaction, especially of finding the unexpected volume that had long eluded us elsewhere, is not always such an accident.  Again McMurtry writes, “Stirring the curiosity of readers is a vital part of bookselling; skimming a few strange pages is surely as important as making one click.”

 Is older better?

Every time I cast my lot with traditionalists who say the older is better than the newer, I know I run the risk of sounding my age. In fact, the older is not always better. As a writer and a college professor, I know what research used to be like in musty old libraries vs. what it is like now with the library sitting on my lap as those needed references appear in seconds rather than hours.

Still I hasten to add that reading from the printed page in a nicely bound book that you can keep as a reminder in plain sight after you’re finished, is nothing to write off so easily.

At least it doesn’t require a battery or a frantic call to the Geek Squad if the e-reader refuses to waken from its zzzzzzz’s.

Breaking news: The world is still there

Remember the “Where’s Waldo?” books, challenging kids to find the not-so-subtly dressed namesake in the midst of an equally colorful and crowded setting? Oddly enough, I was thinking about them last week while talking to my students about the coverage of international news.

What do Waldo and foreign news coverage have in common? It could be that although neither Waldo nor the events and people of the world are easy to find at times, they are both there if we take a little time looking for them.

The traditional lament is that the nation’s news media have cut back drastically on the coverage of international news. That is an accurate statement. There are fewer eyes on the world from the likes of the network news companies and newspapers like The Chicago Tribune, which collapsed all their foreign bureaus and let their sister paper The Los Angeles Times staff them instead. Of course the LA Times is also cutting back, too, as are all newspapers around the country.

The reason, however, is not that journalists don’t believe the world is a pretty good story.  In this age of globalization, it is more a story than it ever has been. The problem is that the media exist in the same market-driven economy as every other business. So they will turn their attention to the places and stories that interest readers and viewers.

Local news comes first

And Americans are more interested in America than anywhere else. The international media scholar Jaap vanGinneken writes about the unwritten rule of news priorities in America when he posits that 10,000 deaths on another continent equals 1,000 deaths in another country, equals 100 deaths in another state, equals ten deaths in the capital city, equals one celebrity.

That’s a little paraphrased, but you get the idea. As John Cougar Mellencamp sang, “Ain’t That America?”

Yet there is another side, or I should say sides, of this debate on cutbacks of international news coverage. You could make a strong case that the only cutbacks are in those media we’ve traditionally looked to for world news. In case you haven’t noticed, there are a few other windows to the world and these portals have been mushrooming. Like the following:

* The World Wide Web. Remember it? That’s the portal that features a lot more than Words With Friends and Facebook. Hard to believe, but true. Did you know there is even one site, sponsored by the Newseum in Washington D.C. that allows you to scroll through today’s front pages of 626 newspapers from 60 countries around the world? And did you know you can find virtually any newspaper in the world simply by going to a listing like onlinenewspapers.com and clicking on the paper you want, some of which have English translations available?

* Alternative News Portals. Although they may take you out of your comfort zone in reading about or seeing the world through the prism of Western eyes, some significant alternative news agencies have developed over the past 20 years or so. The most significant of these — by far — is Al Jazeera. This is the independent news agency out of Qatar that offers both a newspaper and video stories of the world’s news,  and it offers them through the prism of the Middle East and not the West.

Al Jazeera had the most profound effect on the flow of international news of any news organization in recent memory. Entire regions of the world now feel their story can be told through non-Western eyes, and that’s a big thing for them. We may not agree with the Al Jazeera viewpoint, but it is interesting to have an alternative view of world events.

In looking at world news impact, you could also make a strong case for CNN as well, especially if you’re talking about CNN International and not Domestic. The former has a lot of non-Western correspondents.

* New Models of News Media. Into the hole left by closed foreign news bureaus of traditional media have stepped some new kinds of news media organizations. On the international scene, one hopeful sign is Globalpost.com. It’s mission, straight from its Web page, reads: “The GlobalPost Mission is to provide original international reporting rooted in integrity, accuracy, independence and powerful storytelling that informs, entertains and fills the void created by diminished foreign coverage by American media.”

It is staffed by a network of foreign correspondents who live in the regions of the world they cover and who contribute their reports as freelancers to Globalpost, which has only 18 full-time staffers at its Boston headquarters. The funding comes from a small group of private investors who believe in the importance of international news. Globalpost also accepts advertising and offers subscription services to members who join.

The job is ours

Ultimately, the responsibility for keeping up with world news lies with each of us as individuals who should want to be informed citizens of that world. It’s not that hard to find news of the world; it’s just located largely in places where we aren’t used to looking.

But then, Waldo wasn’t always where he was supposed to be either, was he?

 

Sniffing out fantasy on the Web

Leave it to a New Yorker cartoon to prod our thinking into reality, fantasy, and the online world of communication.

In this cartoon a terrier is having a conversation with another canine and says: “The thing I like about the Internet is that, online, no one knows you’re a dog.”

Wait for it.

Reality and the Web

Murray Gordon, who has merged the worlds of psychology, philosophy, and computer science in his academic and professional careers, tells us what most of us already know about how the Internet stacks up against what we normally know as reality. BTW, the latter is a fuzzy concept at times, no?

“I have found … that there is a recurrent theme which spontaneously arises concerning the body and mind when people begin reflecting on their experiences in the online world,” Murray writes. “In the everyday world, we can see each other, and make judgements and evaluations of others, consciously or unconsciously, based on their physical appearance.

” What sex are they? What clothes are worn? Neat or messy? Young or old?  Am I attracted to her or him? Do I appear attractive to him or her? But online these usual evaluations and judgments are turned on their head. One young woman tells me that what she really likes about internet chat rooms Is that ‘online, you can be whomever you want to be.’”

Personal experience

I have discovered this to be true myself. In my single years I ventured into the world of online dating and actually found Ms. Right waiting there for me. We’ve been married 11 years now, so the experience can definitely work.

However, as most online daters have found, the search is not always an easy one. Sometimes finding your soulmate is more like navigating a maze rather than following a clearly marked trail.

A year before meeting my wife Anne,  I struck up an online relationship with a nice woman, half a continent away. Our online conversations seemed to bring out the best of us both as writers. Since our “relationship” was totally text based for several weeks, that was important, plus the fact we could make each other laugh pretty easily.  Everything seemed to be clicking. We were both journalists and our love of words and well-turned phrases flourished in our exchanges.

You’ve Got Mail

It was like the scenes in You’ve Got Mail when Joe and Kathleen couldn’t wait to get home to their respective computers to read the other’s e-mail. And when two people who have never met can feel that way, fantasy must be playing a role in those expectations.

Finally, we faced the moment of decision that all online daters face: whether to risk what was a pretty satisfying fantasy, made up of daily online exchanges, to meet face to face and see whether fantasy matched reality. So I hopped on a plane and she met me at her airport.

Within the first five minutes I knew it was a mistake.

The fantasy-sinker was the non-verbals ,which aren’t part of the online experience. She laughed too hard and too quickly at things I said; sometimes even before I said them. The way she physically moved seemed out of synch with the way I thought she would. Something about the eye contact wasn’t quite right. Then there was something else: she just didn’t smell right. I was back on the plane the next morning, headed home alone.

Seinfeld lives

Reminds you of the nitpicking way Seinfeld evaluated his endless parade of dates, right? Maybe so, but all these nonverbals were real to me. And about the smell — what’s up with that?  Not as strange as you might think, and I actually have some backup for that assertion. In addition to some recent studies done on how a person can actually sniff out a similar or opposite DNA, there is the following from Psychology Today:

“Psychologists Rachel Herz and Estelle Campenni were just getting to know each other, swapping stories about their lives over coffee, when Campenni confided something unexpected: She was living proof, she said, of love at first smell.

“‘I knew I would marry my husband the minute I smelled him,’ she told Herz. ‘I’ve always been into smell, but this was different; he really smelled good to me. His scent made me feel safe and at the same time turned on—and I’m talking about his real body smell, not cologne or soap. I’d never felt like that from a man’s smell before. We’ve been married for eight years now and have three kids, and his smell is always very sexy to me.”

Sniffing genes

And about that DNA sniffing? From Discovery Fit & Health, there is word of this study:

“In several studies, researchers have had women smell men’s used T-shirts and rank them according to how attractive the smell is. In the past, women have indicated that the most pleasurable shirts belong to men with different major histocompatibility complex (MHC) genes than they do, so scientists believe that women can subconsciously smell a man’s genes. MHC genes, which affect the immune system, have been determined to play a role in everything from sexual attraction to marital happiness.”

When’s the last time you smelled anything or anyone on the Web?

A test will follow

OK, I agree this is starting to sound weird, but my points remain:

1. Fantasy is alive and well in communication exchanges happening in the virtual world.

2. While fantasies provide a welcome escape from a harsh reality at times, they also provide a weak foundation for relationships that must enter — at some point — the world of reality.

3. Nonverbal communication often is the litmus test to measure whether fantasy matches reality for two people considering a relationship together.

And don’t forget the question inherent in that New Yorker cartoon: How do you know the person on the other end is really human at all?

 

 

 

 

 

Fishing for an identity

Experts in intercultural communication remind us of the importance that narratives and rituals play in our lives and in orienting us to our own identities, history, the norms and expectations of our society. Each society uses rituals and narratives for this purpose, and they combine to form powerful tools to teach us.

I’m thinking of the opening scenes of the Robert Redford film, A River Runs Through It, where Norman MacLean describes beautifully how he and his brother learned at the feet of their father, a Presbyterian pastor who taught them the value of faith, fluid writing, and fly fishing, in equal measures.

As Norman said:

“We were left to assume, as my younger brother Paul and I did, that all first-class fishermen on the Sea of Galilee were fly fishermen and that John was a dry fly fisherman.”

Learning the values

Hours of painstaking practice, on a daily basis, reinforced their father’s instructions on these three values which had long been central characteristics of this Montana family of the early 20th Century. Norman and Paul learned the lessons well.

When I see that film, I can’t help but think of the times my own grandfather took me trout fishing, and of the times I took my own two sons to hunt for the big bass on Indiana lakes. Then I think about the much greater amount of time the three of us have spent apart, glued to the computers.

The stark truth

Let’s face it:  You don’t get much connection to the family or your own identity  from the Internet. You may learn about them, but they don’t become ingrained in your DNA as Norman’s and Paul’s lessons did.

Instead, our time spent in the virtual world of the Web provides us with narratives that are snippets or soundbites, constantly interrupted by hyperlinks to “related stories” to which we happily leap, distracting our attention from the main story or narrative that — frankly — was getting a little too long anyway for our short attention spans.

Welcome to the virtual world

And instead of the rituals of the family dinner, learning writing or fly fishing from Dad, we spend hour after hour vicariously living others’ experiences, often with a stand-in avatar for us as we get lost in some online video game or doing armchair traveling around the world.

We already know we have become more splintered as families as everyone heads off to their own laptops to explore their virtual worlds which may not be representative of the corner of the world we inhabit at all. That being so, how do we expect to understand that culture as our parents and grandparents did?

It’s not just family members going their own way, but also members of the same culture or society doing the same thing. The younger we start out exploring the world on the Web instead of the real world in front of us, the more time we spend away from the rituals and narratives that teach us about that culture.

And, since we learn a lot about our own identity from our culture, we make it harder to discover that identity.

No mall directory

Is it surprising that we wake up one day to discover that, like the first-time shopper in a huge shopping mall, we have no idea where we are in relation to the places we want to be or how to get there? There is no mall directory, because there have been no narratives and few real-life rituals to point us to our destinations.

The other day I was watching a TV commercial for one of those online services that helps you track your family tree. Something like Ancestry.com. There was this woman who was talking about her great-grandfather as if he were someone from an alien planet whom she knew absolutely nothing about until she paid this online service to discover his identity.

Hitting home

Then I realized, I don’t even know who my own great-grandfather was. As a child raised on television, I can tell you the name of Tonto’s horse, but not the name of my grandfather’s dad or mom.

A telling sign about how we’re losing our sense of our own culture? Wouldn’t our grandparents chide us for side-stepping the importance of knowing our own family history?

Is our time spent in the virtual world, as opposed to the real one, exacerbating that disconnect from our own culture? At best, it doesn’t help.

I’ve got a (not-so-private) secret

I say I don’t want or need love in my life. Truth is, I lie to myself because I’m afraid to end up alone.  – Anonymous.

There isn’t a time of day I don’t think about killing myself … I try to be the fun-loving, lighthearted nice guy. But who is it I’m trying to deceive? – Anonymous.

Question: What might happen if we were to use the worldwide public stage of the Web, in all its openness, to expose our deepest, innermost secrets? Would anyone actually do that?

Answer: Yes Many Web users are venting their personal longings, embarrassing moments, quirkiness, complaints, fears, and angst on sites designed especially to reveal secrets. The two comments that begin this blog post are two of those actual secrets posted within the past two weeks on sites set up for this purpose.

Anonymity is key

The caveat is that they are revealed under the promise of anonymity.

It is ironic that the world’s most public forum which can and often does embarrass people by making private facts public, is also the same forum that people are relying on to keep their identity secret.

PostSecret

Among the web sites that are available for bean-spilling is PostSecret, which seems to have started the trend, or which as least is one of the most popular of the public secret sites.  How popular? As of today, more than 1,066,000 Facebook users alone have “liked” this site.

It’s mission, simply put: “PostSecret is an ongoing community art project where people mail in their secrets anonymously on one side of a homemade postcard.”

The site administrators do the rest and post the cards.

An artistic element

Alongside the compelling lure of looking in on other people’s secret lives, the various secret-posting sites also offer the artistic element of seeing how well the secrets match the selected visual elements of the e-cards posted on the site. So these are not just secrets, but expressions of art, as well.

Among the secrets posted on this site’s e-cards are the following:
•    I slept with someone so they wouldn’t commit suicide.
•    I don’t know how to tell you this, but I can’t become a military wife for fear that you will die.
•    I loved giving birth, but I hate being a mother.
•    Every time I get into a taxi, I check to see if the driver is the man who killed you … I want to ask him how he didn’t see us.

And the secrets go on and on.

Facebook migration

Recently, the concept of posting secrets has moved to Facebook, a site where all wall posts come with names and photos of persons posting them, right? Only partially so when it comes to special “postsecret” Facebook group pages. Like any FB page, you have to ask to become a friend and the person running that page can either accept or reject your request. In the case of a “postsecret” page, the site administrator serves as that gatekeeper.

Postsecret sites on Facebook are catching on at a number of institutions, including college campuses. Earlier this month, for example, some students at California’s Azusa Pacific University set up PostSecret Apu. Within the first two weeks, the site had accepted more than 1,750 friend requests. Some 200 secrets have been sent in already.

The administrator of the site is kept anonymous, along with those who choose to create “postcards” and send them in for posting. However, the identity of those individuals commenting on the secrets, is revealed just like on regular Facebook pages.

College students adapt it

Here is how PostSecret Apu describes itself and its mission:

“This is a student project and in no way reflects the direct values or opinions of any faculty or staff of Azusa Pacific University.

“A place to share. A place to be. A place to express the things holding you back. A place to seek help. A place to help get you to a place of freedom.

“You are invited to anonymously contribute your secrets to Azusa Pacific University’s PostSecret. Secrets can be a regret, hope, funny experience, unseen kindness, fantasy, belief, fear, betrayal, erotic desire, feeling, confession, or childhood humiliation. Reveal anything – as long as it is true and you have never shared it with anyone before. This is meant to be an outlet you might not otherwise have.”

Unease surfaces

Since Azusa Pacific University is a faith-based liberal arts university, the new site is probably more controversial than it would be on a state university campus. There have been some concerns about the kinds of expressions that might come forth  and the possible impact these might have on the university and its efforts at creating a community spirit of believers.

Nevertheless, the site administrator has stated that the only caution the school has issued is to not use the APU logo or to state that this is a university-sanctioned site, which it is not. The administrator also advises users not to name any APU employees in their posted secrets.

Wide range of secrets

The secrets posted on this Postsecret Apu page, cover a wide range of personal aspirations, regrets, complaints, and revelations.  Some are lighthearted and thankful like the following:

•    Not a day goes by that I don’t miss calling you my best friend.
•    On most days I’m too lazy to brush my teeth.
•    Come friends. It’s not too late to seek a newer world.

But there are many darker secrets, too, like the two at the top of this blog post and the following:

•    People assume I dress modestly just because I’m a Christian. The truth is, I’m ashamed of my body.
•    I know I’m as worthy of love as anyone else. But after so many years of telling myself otherwise, I don’t know if I’ll ever really believe it.
•    I lost 35 pounds in an effort to be healthy and desired. I’ve never felt worse about myself in my entire life. Life was easier when I was fat and guys left me alone. Since then I have been sexually assaulted … Being thin is not worth this hell.
•    On most days I feel … so alone.

The poignancy of these secrets is enhanced by the creative visual imagery that serve as the background for these e-cards. The fact there are so many such secrets posted in such a short window of time is an indication of the private world of pain and longing that many college students carry beneath their smiling faces. Happily, others attest to the positive adjustments other students are making in the world as they grow into their early 20s.

Troubled find support

But several of the secrets are dark ones, and the darkest are those that bespeak thoughts of suicide and of those grappling with their own gender identification.

On the up side, most of these expressions garner many comments of support and offers from others to listen and to be friends with those students feeling lost in their pain and confusion.

One of the 16 people who responded to one secret confessing suicidal thoughts said this: I am so sorry you are hurting right now. I’m so sorry that you feel you have to wear a mask when you are in so much pain. Please know that you are not alone in this place, that you are not the only one who has felt this way.

The site administrator has also posted contact information for a local suicide prevention center.

Old freedom finds young supporters

Question: As use of the social media grows among young people in America, do these young folks also become more passionate about the need for the First Amendment?

(You remember: the Constitution’s First Amendment guarantees that the nation will have a free press system. The media can pretty much report what it wants without fear of prior restraint.)

Answer: a study released Sept. 16 by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation concludes that the use of the social media is a pretty good thing for that First Amendment.

Win-Win Scenario

“Students using their multimedia devices to text, blog, tweet, or post on Facebook are simultaneously finding out more about the world – and freedom of expression,” writes Kaila Ward, editor-in-chief of The Clause, the student newspaper of California’s Azusa Pacific University.

The Knight study discovered that 9 out of 10 students who use the social media to obtain news and information on a daily basis express strong support for guarantees of the news media in general. They think folks should be allowed to express unpopular opinions, along with the popular ones.

On the other hand …

In contrast, only 77 percent of students who don’t use the social media express agreement with the idea of allowing unpopular opinions to be aired or posted.

As the study’s researcher Ken Dautrich puts it: “There is a clear, positive relationship between student usage of social media to get news and information and greater support for free expression rights.”

Chalk up another plus of the not-so-new new media.

Power realized

One college sophomore put his feelings this way: “I think people are slowly beginning to realize the power (of social media). And because we’re so addicted to it, its absence is making people wake up and realize it’s quite a tool to be able to express ourselves and have an audience of that magnitude.”

The Knight study was unveiled to the public in conjunction with Constitution Day, on Sept. 17. The day commemorates the founding and signing of the Constitution of the United States on Sept. 17, 1787.

Another finding of the study: The percentage of students who think the First Amendment gives too much of a blank check to free speech has dropped from 45 percent in 2006, to 24 percent in 2011.

Media use up

Additionally, the study shows that students’ use of digital media for news and information is up the upswing. In fact, that usage has doubled over the past five years. Today, 75 percent of all students get their news from the social media several times a week.

Ward notes, “Many organizations have increasingly utilized social media as a way to gain popularity. Geenration Opportunity, a non-profit, nonpartisan organization, used the hype of Constitution day to present its latest effort, “The Constitution,” on Facebook.”

The organization’s web site built a platform for users to debate contemporary issues or offer their own expertise. The site has already surpassed half a million active users, according to a press release by Generation Opportunity.

Light from a new source

It may seem ironic, but it has taken a media platform that is less than a decade old to convince 20-somethings that a document more than 200 years old still needs protecting.

Write on.

Going batty over role-playing

I am co-editing  a book with my friend Bala Musa on ethics of the social media, and one of the essays to be included in the book caught my attention when its title came across my desk the other day:

Racing the Vampire: Exploring Race & Identity in Second Life .

The essay is being written by Franklin Nii Amankwa Yartey, of Bowling Green State University.

Now, I know the good folks in Ohio and – from what I’ve seen – they all grew up on this planet. So I figured there must be a rationale understanding of this title.

And, of course, there is.

Young interests

The references are to two popular interests that young people have these days:

1. Vampires.
2. Virtual online fantasy sites like SecondLife.com.

For those of you who have not inhabited Earth the past three or four years, you may have missed out on the “Twilight” phenomenon, which originated from the printed page of books by Stephenie Meyer but which morphed into the movie series (three so far) starring heartthrobs Robert Pattison, Taylor Lautner, and Kristen Stewart.

(Swoons are appropriate now for teen and even early 20-something readers).

Buffy reborn

The movie series picks up on the popularity of the TV series, “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” and takes things a step further down the darker path.

The second reference of SecondLife.com is a site we have discussed before – maybe a year or so ago – in this blog.  Second Life is a free 3D virtual world where users can socialize, connect and create using free voice and text chat.

Second Life is one of many “role-playing sites” or RPG’s that have arisen over the past few years.

Chasing dreams

For those over 50, it is the old TV series, Fantasy Island, transported to the 21^st Century interactive Web. You not only watch other people pursuing their dream; you can do it yourself. Sort of. As long as you’re willing to do it in the virtual online world.

As Mitch Wagner, of Information Week notes:

“Second Life roleplaying is popular. It’s kind of a mix between World of Warcraft, improv comedy, and live theater. Users create characters and then improvise scenes involving those characters.

“Popular roleplay communities include Roma, based on ancient Rome; the The Road to Deadwood, based on the historical cowboy town of Deadwood, South Dakota; the Independent State of Caledon, based on Victorian Britain with a Jules Verne flair; and the vampires-and-monsters-themed City of Lost Angels.”

Vamps welcome

The last of these sites suggest there are “destinations” on Second Life involving vampires. In fact, there are a lot of them. To name just three:

• Genesis Order Horde. “Home of the Genesis Order vampire horde, a friendly, safe haven that welcomes all. It’s role-play friendly, with several active social-oriented venues including Club Se>en, a shopping area, a pier and member of several support organizations oriented toward new residents.”
• Vampyr Empire. “Transylvania, one of Second Life’s longest running communities, features a thriving, tight knit family who can offer support for new people coming into this lifestyle. You’ll find towering castles, dark corners and high-class Gothic-style shopping in this popular area.”
• Vamporium. “As soon as you land in Vamporium, you’ll feel a cold wind upon the back of your neck. There’s a whole region and shop of horrors to explore, including dark corners, haunted castles, Hell Maze, crypts and all manner of gruesome creatures. A truly dark adventure awaits!”

An old fascination

A lot of folks wonder why young people are finding vampires so fascinating today. Some parents are shuddering at the thought of their kids going any more goth than – well – they did, not too many years ago and of being sucked into the vampire world.

But then again, haven’t vamps always been fascinating to us, young and old? Today’s parents probably devoured large tubs of popcorn over 1994’s Interview with a Vampire (with Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt in the capes), and their parents and grandparents got to know Bela Lugosi and Lon Chaney as earlier-day bat-men. And of course, there was always the TV sitcom, The Munsters.

Back to that essay

If you haven’t forgotten the initial spark that opened this stroll down Nightmare Lane, it was the question of the essay’s title, Racing the Vampire: Exploring Race and Identity in Second Life. It is one of many essays that takes communication studies into new areas.

In this case, with the advent a few years ago of these popular, virtual fantasy sites like Second Life, a lot of communication researchers and psychologists have been wondering what might happen to the individual identity of a young person who winds up spending so much time living an online life as someone else.

Like, oh, a vampire.

What’s important here?

Is race important when you’re a vampire? Is gender? Can some of the problems swirling around those descriptors be eliminated by simply living your life in fantasy land? If so, what kinds of personal identity problems are young users facing? Are sites such as Second Life causing any re-entry problems for the young cybernauts navigating them?

With the popularity of these RPG sites, others have arisen to transport users into faraway places and very strange territories. A few of them are:

• Dreamworld
• Swords and Potions
• Ministry of War
• Kaliedoscope Dating Sim
• Always Remember Me
• Fatal Hearts
• Crush the Castle

And the list goes on and on. So do the questions: what happens to the question young people deal with of, “Who am I,” when they might spend so much time breaking hearts or crushing castles in the virtual world?

Could be that critics of these sites are tilting at windmills themselves.

Familiar turf

Perhaps there is no more danger lurking here than Grandpa faced when he forced his mom and dad into buying much more Ovaltine than they ever needed just to collect enough product labels to send off for his very own Captain Midnight Secret Decoder Ring.

As in most questions regarding the virtual unknown, only time will tell. In the meantime, Beam me up, Scotty!

A Repeat Performance

If the desire to be original is the match that lights the fire for creativity, what does the match of repetition ignite?

Let me put it another way:

If the desire to be original is the match that lights the fire for creativity, what does the match of repetition ignite?

That’s entertainment

Right. There isn’t much that’s unique about repetition, and yet millions of us spend hour after hour doing the exact same thing we’ve been doing over and over, and we call it entertainment.

It is, in fact, online gaming.

What are some of the most repetitive of these games? Does the fact that these games are so repetitive act as a turnoff for video gamers?  Here are some comments from the ardent souls so loyal to these games:

•    Spiderman: Shattered Dimensions: By the time I got to the final level, I was just about ready to throw my controller out the window. (Deadpool Stage was A NIGHTMARE) I seriously can’t think of a more repetitive game. Except maybe the Katamari games. But they had their own charm.

* Show me a game that isn’t repetitive. Every single game in existence, good or bad, will fit this description. All that matters is if you can find it enjoyable.

•    EVERY game is repetitive by nature. It’s not like you go from shooting and free roam to platforming to stealth to puzzle gameplay in Grand Theft Auto. There’s a huge difference between FEELING repetitive and BEING repetitive.
•    A more repetitive game? Let’s just use this generation. I’ll also only list a couple of the games I played and loved: Resident Evil 5 – aim gun, pull trigger; Assassin’s Creed – track down the same 6 clues that lead you to each of the bosses; Gears of War (1 & 2) – aim gun, pull trigger, hide behind wall.
•    Oh, yeah. Put Web of Shadows in the repetitive list as well. Still fun, but still a repetitive mess.
•    Show me a game that isn’t repetitive, and I shall give you Jesus.
•    True. EVERY game is repetitive by nature. It’s not like you go from shooting and free roam to platforming to stealth to puzzle gameplay in Grand Theft Auto. There’s a huge difference between FEELING repetitive and BEING repetitive.

Actually, I’d love a little explanation on this last post. Sounds like there’s something provocative in the thought about feeling repetitive vs. being repetitive, but sorry: I can’t quite see it.

Repetition as fun

What becomes quickly apparent, given the huge popularity of the games mentioned and of three of these comments explicitly, is that repetition strikes us — not as boring — but as enjoyable. (And I’ll have to include myself in that because I spend a lot of time on the game, TextTwist.)

So what might all this time with repetitive games be doing to our pursuit of originality and creativity?

One obvious answer is that these games are diverting our time and attention from other original pursuits ranging from building a better light bulb, to writing the next life-changing book, to finding a cure for cancer.

Wasting time?

We’re wasting a lot of time with these repetitive games, folks, and we’re not getting much to show for it.

Having made this assertion, however, I should tell you that I once spent half of a college lecture in an ethics class discussing some important things I had learned in all the time I used to spend playing Pacman. I must admit I’ve forgotten most of those lessons, however, so they must not have been so significant after all.

A numb world

We do enter a mental vacuum upon playing repetitive games, and that can give our mind a rest from the otherwise busy and complex world we must navigate. Aside from that, however, I’m not sure there’s much usefulness in repetitiveness.

And having made this argument, let me qualify it to the world of entertainment and not to the world of professions or even athletics. There is, in fact, a lot of benefit to hiring a professional to do a job that he/she has done over and over and over again.

For example, I would rather have my wisdom teeth extracted by a dentist who had done that procedure a few hundred times at least.

A sporting caveat

And another example: A quarterback on a football team – or any other position player for that matter – becomes infinitely better at his position if he runs that play over and over again. In fact, we often rate the quality of football players on the number of “reps” they have taken, with “reps” being short for repetitions.

Back to entertainment, though, is there any research that supports the idea that we enjoy repetitiveness? Turns out there is. Like this, for example, from a trio of researchers:

The spice of variety

“The dictum ‘variety is the spice of life’ notwithstanding, people seem to show a surprising tolerance, even preference, for repetition. Whether a favorite snack, pop song, or piece of art, people routinely expose themselves to the same liked stimulus repeatedly.

“Indeed, prior work has shown that people even surprise themselves with this preference; research on the “diversification bias” has consistently shown that people predict a greater preference for variety (and aversion to repetition) than they show in their online, immediate preferences.”

Another research study points out that, while repetition and drills have been debunked by many new-age educators who say quality teaching is found in originality and creativity, that may not be the case at all.

Not so fast

“Compare the attitudes and approaches to drill and practice by many academic teachers with the attitudes of educators who are held accountable for the competence of their students.

“The basketball coach or the music teacher needs no convincing regarding the value of drill and practice on fundamental skills. No one questions the basketball coach’s insistence that his players shoot 100 free throws every day or wonders why the piano teacher has her pupils play scales over and over.

“It is well understood that these skills are critical to future performance and that systematic practice is required to master them to the desired levels of automaticity and fluency. We would question the competence of the coach or music teacher who did not include drill and practice as a major component of his or her teaching.”

Applying common sense

There are, of course, some common-sense answers to why many of us find repetition enjoyable. For one thing, repetition connotes familiarity and that is a concept most of us find appealing. Familiarity is comfortable; we know the signposts and context, so navigating the territory is easier.

Don’t you find it more enjoyable to return to a big city years later and remember how to get around and find places than getting frustrated at the wheel and arriving at your destination with that emotional baggage (and possibly a wife who isn’t talking to you?)

Newness and cost

As for entertainment, given the high cost of a movie outing ($25 or more with popcorn and a drink), don’t you want to have some sense that the film you’re seeing will be worth all that? Is it any wonder that movie channels like AMC or TNT have a select group of movies that seem to be playing over and over again? How many times have you seen Godfather I or II? How about Goodfellas, or a Dirty Harry movie?

So whether you find repetition a curse or a blessing, the fact remains that – in the world of online games – it goes with the territory, and millions of us must find that territory fun to navigate.

A dangerous playground

Sorry for the lapse in new uploads. I’ve been engaged in a cross-country move from Indiana to California, and have been involved in the low-tech aspects of truck-loading and driving across the Mojave Desert.

Time to get back to thinking about how new media technology is affecting our lives, though, and I thought I would do that by sharing some thoughts from a friend, Terry Mattingly, who writes an online religion column for the Scripps-Howard News Service.

Values and texting

What does religion have to do with texting, social media, smart phones and the like? Maybe the following from one of Terry’s recent columns will show that:

“GILFORD, N.H. — Everywhere computer professional Brian Heil looked
at SoulFest 2011 he saw packs of young people trying to stay on
schedule as they rushed from one rock concert, workshop or prayer
meeting to another.

“But first, there was one more text to send, one more Twitter tweet to
tweet, one more Facebook status to update, one more snapshot to share,
one more YouTube video to upload, just one more connection to make in
the digital world that now shapes real life.

“This year’s festival (Aug. 3-6) drew nearly 13,000 Protestants and
Catholics from throughout New England, which means there were about
that many cellphones, smartphones, tablets and other digital devices
on hand. The screens glowed like fireflies in the crowds that gathered
for the rock concerts each night on the lower slopes of the Gunstock
Mountain Resort.”

Who gets the praise?

Get the picture? Technology seems as omnipresent as God to many young people who happen to be at events praising one in name but the other in practice.

Heil, a digital designer who runs a workshop for parents and pastors called “Protecting the Playground,” puts it this way:

“Everyone’s connected everywhere. It’s continuous. This is how our
young people experience life today. They don’t even look at the keys on their phones anymore when
texting. …

Texting feels safer?

“Lots of kids are more comfortable texting than they are talking and
having real relationships. They have trouble with face-to-face
intimacy because they’re so used to living their lives online and in
text messages. Texting feels safer.”

But the harsh reality is that the digital world is not safer, according Heil who added, while many pastors and parents have heard horror stories about children straying into dark corners online, few are aware of just how common these problems have become — even in their sanctuaries and homes.

A few stats

He uses the following statistics to back him up:

* Two-thirds of Americans under the age of 18 have reported some kind
of negative experience while online. Only 45 percent of their parents
are aware of this.

* Forty-one percent of children say they have been approached online
by some kind of stranger, possibly an older predator.

* At least 25 percent of children report having seen nude or
disturbingly violent images online. Heil is convinced this number has
risen to 45 percent in the past year or so.  The vast majority of
children exposed to pornography first see these images on a computer
in their own home.

“This is why, if I could convince parents to make one change in their
homes, it would be to never put a computer behind a closed door. …
Keep them out in an open part of the house,” he said.

* Among teens, 45 percent report having sent or received a sexual
text message of some kind. One in five say they have sent or received
a nude or partially nude image, the phenomenon that has become known
as “sexting.”

* Among teens with Internet access, 40 percent say they have been
affected by cyberbullying activities, such as malicious changes being
made to their Facebook pages after the theft of passwords.

No one immuned

Heil notes that there are many self-professing Christian youths engaging in these activities as well, adding that cyberbullying is not confined just to wayward teens and pre-teens. He blames the free-fall world of emotions that youths find online for spurring them into saying and doing things they otherwise might not do or say.

The challenge for parents in monitoring or curtailing deviant online behavior of their children gets tougher every day, Heil notes, because the kids are usually smarter than their adult parents about how to use the social media and put filters in place to keep their comments from unwanted eyes.

There is no V-chip to keep emotionally vulnerable teens and pre-teeens off the Internet as there is to filter out unwanted TV shows or channels. So the burden on parents is to instruct their children in good values and show them how they can be applied to interpersonal relationships and communications.

If that foundation is laid, parental trust should be somewhat easier.

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