Beating a path through the digital wilderness

Social networks looking grayer

“As someone who has dabbled in multiple social networking sites, I have to say, Facebook seems to be losing its allure, at least for me … At the moment, Instagram is my choice for social networking.”

This comment comes from Senior English major Tara Donavanik, writing in the student newspaper The Clause,at California’s Azusa Pacific University.

She is uttering what some are wondering about Facebook and Myspace: Are they losing their allure, at least to young people?

Interesting data

Some 2010 data from the Pew Research Center’s Internet and American Life Social Network Site Survey indicates the answer is yes. The answer seems clearer that college students have moved away from MySpace (only 12% of undergraduates and 6% of grad students use it), but the data for Facebook shows declines, too.

For a site that was started by Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg as a way for college students to connect, fewer students appear to be using Facebook.

According to the Pew results, only 1 in 5 undergrads regularly uses Facebook, while only 15% of grad students use it.

Data for both MySpace and Facebook seem stronger at the high school level, with more than 1 in 3 (35%) of high school students using MySpace, and 26% using Facebook).

A possible reason

Offering up her own take on the data, Donavanik notes, “Maybe as we get older, time becomes of essence and curiosity about an ex or an acquaintance becomes low on our priority list.”

According to the Pew data, age influences the choice of an individual’s social networking site. For example, Linkedin is a popular network site that people use to develop and maintain career connections, although it is also used to exchange social information as well. But because it is more career-oriented (and even career-enhancing), some 37% of undergrad college students and 38% of grad students were using it in 2010. One would assume those numbers are even higher today.

Twitter accounts for 21% of college student use, while other SNS sites like Instagram, account for another 14% of college usage.

Although Facebook logs a smaller percentage of college students than Linkedin, the Pew study does show FB to have the largest share of daily visits by its users, while LinkedIn users visit the site once a month or even less.

35 and older growth

Indeed, the growth among users of social network sites has been in the post-college generation of older adults. The Pew Center study summarizes this as follows:

“Internet users of all ages are more likely to use a SNS today than they were in 2008. However, the increase in SNS use has been most pronounced among those who are over the age of 35. In 2008 only 18% of internet users 36 and older used a SNS, by 2010 48% of internet users over the age of 35 were using a SNS.

“This is about twice the growth experienced by internet users 18-35; 63% of whom used a SNS in 2008 compared with 80% in 2010. Among other things, this means the average age of adult-SNS users has shifted from 33 in 2008 to 38 in 2010. Over half of all adult SNS users are now over the age of 35.”

Usage still strong

Overall, the Pew Research Center data shows the following about the demographics of all Internet users, as per its August 2011 survey:

* Percent of all adults who use the Internet: 78%.

* Men outnumber women slightly (80 to 76%).

* White, Non-Hispanics outnumber Black, Non-Hispanics, 80-71%. Some 68% of Hispanics use the Web.

* Ninety-four percent of those 18-29 use the Web; 87 percent of those 30-49; 74% of those 50-64, and 41% of those 65 and older.

* For household incomes over $75K, Internet usage is almost 100%; for household incomes less than $30K, usage is at 62%

* For those with no high school diploma, Internet use is at 43%; for high school grads, it is 71%; for college grads, usage is 94%.

The tone of comments

The Pew Center has also studied the overall “tone” or mood of comments on social networking sites (SNS) and has found the following:

* 85% of SNS-using adults say their experience on the sites is that people are mostly kind.

* 68% say they have had an SNS experience that made them feel good about themselves.

* 61% had experiences that made them feel closer to another person.

* 39% say they frequently see acts of generosity by other SNS users.

Nevertheless, Pew says that “notable proportions of SNS users do witness bad behavior on those sites and nearly a third have experienced some negative outcomes from their experiences.”

For example nearly half of SNS-using adults say they have seen mean or cruel behavior displayed by others at least occasionally.

Teenage usage

When it comes to teenage SNS-users, Pew discovered that 95% of all teens ages 12-17 are now online, and that 80% of those online teens use social media sites.

Further, the experiences teens have concerning the tone of the comments posted on the site is different from adult experiences. For example, only 69% of teens think their peers are mostly kind to each other on social network sites. Another 20% say peers are mostly unkind. Only 5% of the adult SNS-users reported people to be mostly unkind.

Cruelties on the sites

Further, Pew says 88% of teens using social networks have seen someone be mean or cruel to another person on an SNS, and 12% reported those incidents to be “frequent.” Only 7% of adults reported seeing this kind of treatment frequently.

When it comes to the sensitive subject of bullying, nearly 1 in 5 teens (19%) said they have been bullied in the past year, often online or via text.

According to Pew, teens who use social networks say, “People most often appear to ignore the situation, with a slightly smaller number of teen saying they see others defending someone and telling others to stop their cruel behavior.”

Revealing conclusions

Other Pew studies have revealed the following effects of SNS-sites on users, which go toward balancing the scales some from last week’s post on this site. That post discussed the isolating effects of the social media, but Pew data show there is also a socializing effect as well.

Some of these conclusions are:

* Facebook users are more trusting than others.

* Facebook users have more close relationships.

* Facebook users get more social support than other people.

* Facebook users are much more politically engaged than most people.

* Facebook revives “dormant” relationships. (22% of those are from high school years, in fact.)

 

 

 

 

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Alone in our “togetherness”

Suppose you are one of the diehards spending a couple hours browsing through the stacks of a bookstore and come across the following titles: Life on the Screen, The Second Self, and Alone Together. You might reasonably assume that you have stumbled into a section on movies and, maybe more specifically, what it’s like to be a Hollywood actor.

In some ways, you’d be right if you consider each of us to be actors on the world’s stage as we go about living our lives, interacting with others, and trying to project a self that rings true — or not.

Yet each of these three books is not about movies, but about what has happened to our lives in the age of computers, the Internet, and the Web 2.0 media.

Self-Definition

The books are about how we go about defining ourselves, to ourselves and others, in the age where RL meets VR in the MUD.

For the yet-uninitiated, that means Real Life meeting Virtual Reality in the Multi-User Domain.

The books are all written by Sherry Turkle, MIT Professor of Technology and Society, and they span the years of 1997-2011. Taken individually or together, they show how our current age is different from any previous era humankind has ever encountered.

Reverse expectations

A nicely written excerpt from Publisher’s Weekly presents the gist of Turkle’s latest work, Alone Together, which has the provocative subtitle, Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other.

 “Turkle argues that people are increasingly functioning without face-to-face contact. For all the talk of convenience and connection derived from texting, e-mailing, and social networking, Turkle reaffirms that what humans still instinctively need is each other.

“She encounters dissatisfaction and alienation among users: teenagers whose identities are shaped not by self-exploration but by how they are perceived by the online collective, mothers who feel texting makes communicating with their children more frequent yet less substantive, Facebook users who feel shallow status updates devalue the true intimacies of friendships.”

A sobering thought

The disturbing conclusion is, “Turkle ‘s prescient book makes a strong case that what was meant to be a way to facilitate communications has pushed people closer to their machines and further away from each other.”

On several levels, that seems so. Anytime we see two people who are presumably on a date at a restaurant, yet there they sit more engaged in their I-phones or Droids, we get the picture.

Indeed one of the funnier commercials on television depicts two of these individuals. The woman is trying to have a real conversation with her date while suspecting he is more involved in checking game scores on his smart phone. And the reason it is so funny is because it is so true. We’ve all been a part of this scene, no?

Things that aren’t real

Carl Hays, a writer for Booklist, notes the following irony found in Turkle’s examination of the interface between humanity and technology:

“Turkle suggests that we seem determined to give human qualities to objects and content to treat each other as things.

“In her university-sponsored studies surveying everything from text-message usage among teens to the use of robotic baby seals in nursing homes for companionship, Turkle paints a sobering and paradoxical portrait of human disconnectedness in the face of expanding virtual connections in cell-phone, intelligent machine, and Internet usage.”

Respecting machines

When we are in the presence of a friend or loved one yet choose to focus our attention on the machine in our hand, we are in fact treating the machine with more respect; treating it as if it is more real than the person sitting next to us.

What makes Turkle’s observation more intriguing is that she has been making them for so long. Life on the Screen was published in 1997. How computer-savvy were you fifteen years ago? Did you even have an Internet connection in your home then?

Still, in that book Turkle posited that the Internet, with its bulletin boards, games, virtual communities,  and private domains where people meet, develop relationships or emulate sex, is a microcosm of an emerging “culture of simulation” that substitutes representations of reality for the real world.

New pathways

What we had in 1997, Turkle said, was a new way of developing an identity. This new pathway was “de-centered and multiple,” meaning it was created outside of our beings; that we used multiple Internet means and models for creating a sense of who we are as unique individuals.

If it was true then, especially for the more malleable minds of the young, how much more true might it be today as the Web has gone through mega-changes since 1997?

Confusing worlds

As one college student put it, “RL is just one more window, and it’s usually not my best.” The haunting thing here is that he is considering the worlds he inhabits through his computer as real life. He is discussing the time he spends as four different characters – avatars – in three different MUDs. Add in the time he spends doing his homework on his computer, and he lives more of his life there than apart from it.

This kind of life requires people like this student to split themselves into different selves, turning on one self and then morphing into another, as he cycles from window to window on the screen. He believes it allows him to explore different possibilities of who he might be.

Some simply say, “The Internet lets you be who you pretend to be.”

A 2001 flashback

And, in an unsettling flashback to older generations of scenes from Stanley Kubrik’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, we seem to be losing our self-control to computers. As those space travelers did, we no longer give commands to our computers; we have dialogues with them.

And often, the computers seem to have the last word.

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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?

 

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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!

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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.

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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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Bouncing from Pong to Halo

This really dates me, but it was 1973 when I was first introduced to video games.

I had just moved into a new apartment in Longview, Texas, and I was invited to a neighbor’s for dinner. After burgers and beer, he showed me a contraption he had hooked up to his TV set that produced the image of a white bouncing blip across the black screen with a couple vertical dashes on each end that kept it moving.

The game was called Pong, it was the first game made by Atari, and it would open the door to the cultural phenomenon of video gaming.

Decades later

We’ve come a long way since then. Whether that means we’ve progressed or regressed depends on how much time you think you’ve wasted in front of a video monitor, lured into the marvelous world of repetition.

As we have transitioned from the television screen to the computer, videogames have followed us. They are firmly entrenched in the Internet universe. They have grown from the simple games of Pong and beyond to the sophisticated, online role-playing games such as World of Warcraft and Halo 3.

Each of those games boasts tens of thousands of players worldwide at any given time.

The Halo plot

Owned and published by Microsoft Studios, Halo is a trilogy of games that focuses on the interstellar war between humanity and a theocratic alliance of aliens known as the Covenant.

A far cry from ping pong.

The earlier arcade versions of video games, like Pong, Asteroids, and PacMan gave way to more sophisticated role-playing games online with early IBM and Apple machines in the mid-1980s. Games developed into a genre called multi-user dungeongs, or MUDs, which are video games with multi-player capabilities.

For communication theorists, this was when video games moved from the one-one-one mode into the realm of mass communication.

Advertising means change

A change occurred when advertisers began perceiving video games as a platform to reach large and lucrative audiences. The games became more creative and more complex, appealing especially to younger male audiences.

One genre of these online, advertising-supported games is called artificial life games. Players are put in control of a character in make-believe situations. These simulation games are structured around the social interaction of the individual characters controlled by the players.

A popular idea

It is a vicarious experience where the video game player lives the life of a fantasy character.  It’s like the old TV series Fantasy Island, only this time the viewer actually steps into the plot on screen as one of the show’s characters.

The same idea that Woody Allen had in his film, The Purple Rose of Cairo. It was also the same concept in the film of Pleasantville. Real life folks moving into a fantasy world and taking on other roles.

The platform, Second Life, is used to support these role-playing games. In them, players select an avatar (alternative identity) and interact with other avatars in the community.

The immense popularity of games like Guitar Hero even allow us to become virtual rock stars.

Good demographics

Since they have amassed such a huge audience, it is only natural that video games have become a target for advertising.  Video gamers are an attractive audience for advertisers. The Entertainment Software Association says players average 6.5 hours per week playing these games. And the players include a broad range of people, with about 40 percent earning $50,000 a year or more.

In fact, among entertainment industries, video games have leaped ahead of music in revenue rankings. A recent comparison of entertainment media shows the following relative sales:

• Books: $35.7 billion
• Movies: $32.5 billion (including DVD sales and rentals)
• Video games: $21.3 billion
• Music: $10.0 billion

Whether this fascination with video gaming – and especially the desire of many gamers to live their lives as avatars in fantasy communities – is a permanent or passing trend, remains to be seen. But for now, video games seem here to stay.

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