For my ethnography, I'll be (once again!) focusing on Warcraft. Since I spoke a little bit about this last week, I might re-cover some ground already trodden upon before. If that happens...my bad? I'll do my best to keep my exposition "new".
I played for four years. First I was a horde shaman and an alliance hunter. When raid-time came (read: when my characters got high-level) I trounced the then-broken shaman class in favour of a more entertaining dps class: the hunter. When BC came along, I dumped the hunter in favour of a healing class...the now-fixed restoration-specced shaman. I played that all the way through BC and into Wrath, becoming a pretty premiere healer on a very full server.
So let's start by picking apart what I just said. I'd be willing to bet most of what I said makes little sense to anyone not playing WoW on a regular basis.
Horde --- a lose confederacy of "monster" races on the fictional world of Azeroth. Headed by orcs, the confederacy also boasts trolls, tauren (giant cow-men) and undead.
Alliance --- a somewhat tighter confederacy of less "monstrous" races on the same world. Headed by the humans, it has night-elves, dwarves, and gnomes.
BC --- short for "Burning Crusade". the first REAL expansion of the game. It expanded the level cap from 60-70, introduced new character professions, and added the world of Draenor, the home-world of the orcs before they moved to Azeroth. It also added the race of Draenei to the alliance, and blood-elf to the horde.
Wrath --- short for "Wrath of the Lich King", the latest expansion. it brought the game's action back to azeroth, opening the northern continent for play as well as opening the character class of death knight. There is also a new expansion, titled "Cataclysm" due to be released at the end of this month.
Shaman --- a multi-ability class in the game. they rely on totems to support magic abilities.
Hunter --- a damage-dealing class in the game. they rely on ranged weaponry (bows or guns) and a pet for support damage.
dps --- Damage Per Second --- the damage-dealing character in any group. Other class options are tank (the character taking damage to protect other party members) and healer.
spec --- specialization. a character has three trees to put talent points into (available at every level) and the place more points are placed into is the "spec" of the character.
Server --- self-explanatory --- some servers have a higher population than others. the higher your population, the bigger your economy and the easier it is to get a group.
It's "server" that provides the biggest crux to understanding warcraft: the sense of isolated community and fracturings within. your server is your world. your character is an extension of you. your ABILITIES in the game determine your stature in your server-world, and you are referred to as your character and defined by your talent spec.
The game as a whole, regardless of server, has a basic vocabulary based upon the lore of the game and the mechanics of playing. Entire websites (elitistjerks.com being the most significant) are built upon understanding the actual mechanics of how a character class works and how to play to the limits of its ability. Other websites (such as wowwiki.com) are constructed around understanding the lore. We're not talking about isolated areas. We're talking an entire list of jargon that can approach its own language, based entire on lore understanding, character mechanics, and more generalized uses of net-based abbreviations. For example:
"WTB 200 Sar Ore, PST" --- translation --- "Want to buy 200 saronite ore, please send tell"
--- even TRANSLATING this opens up another questioning --- what the hell is saronite ore? it's a mineral, mined by characters with the mining profession throughout the world, and used for a variety of other professions. Each profession has its own created jargon to simplify communication.
ON TOP of this is the game-specific memes which open up. My favourite of which is, "you are made of win because you are made of nature". Shamans use "nature spells", and since I successfully ran raids, I was therefore made of win. This is just one example, it can go forever.
Anyway, I played from release until last year. When I quit, I did so out of pure boredom. A new Wrath dungeon was released the week before (called Ulduar), and when I started playing it, I realized I couldn't get into it...I was done. Between that and a higher demand on my time due to tutoring, teaching college classes, and taking licensure courses, I couldn't do it.
For the purposes of this assignment, though, I bit the bullet. I re-activated my dormant account and installed the game again.
I was still in my guild, a high-end raiding guild called "Spite and Malice". There are hundreds of guilds on any given server, all devoted to different tasks. Some are together for group pvp (player-vs-player gaming), some exist purely for levelling, some are just groups of rl (real-life) friends who screw around. The biggest set, though, are the raiding guilds devoted to pve (player vs. environment) in terms of 25-man dungeon raids. I'd been moved from my guild officer position to a new rank called "Retired Heroes", but when I logged on, it was as if i'd never left. The entire guild immediately started harassing me to go on dungeon runs with them. Never mind that I am now WOEFULLY undergeared compared to them: they still remember my status as a healer, they still wanted to bring me in.
In addition to this, I'd logged out in a major city: Dalaran, the capital of "Northrend", which was the northern continent opened up by the release of Wrath. Now, the cities are all connected via chat channels: trade chats, general chats, looking-for-group chats, etc. So I was immediately inundated by trade chats of people looking to buy, looking to sell, looking for runs, or just screwing around. Chuck Norris is still a meme in the game, unfortunately.
And then there were the tells. As part of gaming in WoW, you're rarely just going places with your guild. people log off, people can't go, and you need to find some random stranger. Hence friending...and if you do a good job, they stick you on their friend's list and get a notification when you log on.
I had fifty fuckers I'd never heard of telling me to they needed ME AND ME ALONE to come with them and heal some dungeon i'd never heard of. A year. And they still want me with 'em...
There's one major point to be made within this, and it's one I alluded to above: community. You create your own community based upon your character. It's within a guild, within a server, within individuals. It's not solely performance-based, despite my above claim: it's also attitude-based.
Just like reality: if you act like a dick, you don't have friends. you can be the best healer on the server, but if you kill-steal and steal loot from your groups, you won't go to any raids.
This is something ingrained to the gamer mentality: we're not NICE to each other when we know each other, not by a long shot. But we'll treat each other fairly and help out where we can. We've been playing these games since we were kids, our sense of net-etiquette is no different from our etiquette IRL.
This is NOT something ingrained to the casual or new-comer gamer. In the last decade, gaming has risen in terms of sheer numbers. the best way i can put it is this: when we were kids, we were ostracized or beaten up because we played these games. now the kids who used to beat us up are playing games. They treat the world differently, they take the sense of anonymity as an excuse to behave like an asshole without consequence. They also look at gaming differently, which has led a lot of game publishers to alter what they release: 15 years ago, a game like "Halo" would have been unheard of. No real gamer wants a blind first-person-shooter with no story. we want character customization, we want lore, we want elaborate game-play. but we're now the minority.
I tested this, upon logging back into my account. I ran two dungeons. The first was with four other people in my guild, and the second was a pure pug (pick-up group). the former run went just fine, and the only real hiccups came in me refusing loot they kept trying to make me take...see, i'm not logging back in. i can't take that stuff. it needs to go to someone who will use it.
the second group was with people who play very few other games and haven't played many video games at all in their lifetime. their life is not tied to gaming. let's start at the problems:
1. group fell apart at the start because the tank decided he was going to go with a different pug
2. on getting a new tank, the mage (dps class) informed everyone that the only reason he was there was for a piece of loot off of the first boss, and he'd be leaving right after.
3. on prodding, the mage revealed that he, as the leader of the group, planned to master-loot the item to himself without letting anyone else roll on it.
4. on reforming the group, sans mage, we went in. things went chaotically, but progressed, until the end of the first boss. the tank had been keeping track of dps throughout the fight and decided the warlock hadn't done enough damage. he decided to yell at the warlock, calling him, to quote, "fucking newb-ass cunt".
5. warlock left. i found a member of the guild to come in. we went on ventrilo (a voice chat program) and proceeded to make fun of the tank.
6. final boss. a mount drops...now, a mount is an animal that the character rides. it increases movement speed and overall just looks hella-cool. turns out, the leader (now the tank) knew it'd be dropping. he set the loot to master loot (meaning he decides who gets what). he immediately takes the mount and leaves the group.
7. everyone else is pissed.
I managed to talk to each of the group members for a few minutes, letting them know i'd be writing about their reactions. the tank stated, "it's just a game, i can do what i want." on further interview, i learned that this was his first game. he was 23 years old, he had only played a series of very short first-person shooters in his past, and considered gaming to be something given to him, not an extension of community where policies of common sense, values, or politeness come into play.
This is the changing face of gaming. Entire populations of people with no comprehension of how to behave in game and how it'll effect others.
Thursday, October 28, 2010
Sunday, October 17, 2010
MOAR!
I should point out, too, that I'm also addicted to wikipedia, torrents of pretty much any tv show or movie I happen to desire, and music-stealing programs such as soulseek. I have about 150 gigs of music...two external hd's and an internal hd of 1.5 tb means LOTS of shit on my computer.
And facebook...god...daily with the facebook...
and the ipod. Yep. Love my ipod.
I'd love to see a secondary instructional method utilizing facebook or twitter. I've been keeping it in mind for the future.
And facebook...god...daily with the facebook...
and the ipod. Yep. Love my ipod.
I'd love to see a secondary instructional method utilizing facebook or twitter. I've been keeping it in mind for the future.
my previous post had a purpose (10/21 digital media practices assignment)
It's really hard to think of these things as "new digital media" or anything like that. To me they're just tools. I use them, I like some of them. I'm well-versed in them. They're not really *new*. They've just always been there for me, and attaching a label on the whole she-bang makes me feel like I'm being overly formal...so I guess that's my attitude and why I'm good with "them".
Of the list provided on Ning, I use them all. I've always used them all. If I don't CURRENTLY use a web-based program that's listed, I either use something better or I've used something software-based that did the same thing, but better. It's really nothing new to me. I still remember first grade...that year, my school was in its first year of having their own computer lab. that was my first experience with any of it and I didn't (and still don't) treat it the way most people do: as something that can be broken, or has to be handled with any kind of special care. It's just a tool. Can't break it unless you put a hammer to it...and I've done that. I've seen the results. My temper is not to be trifled with. If you're an object don't ever cross me.
Anyway, the only reason I remember that time in first grade was because my mom was brought in as a "special teacher" to oversee us on learning how to use computers.
So, since it's all pretty much a part of my daily life and I don't think about using them, nor do I attach any sort of significance or stigma to using them. I tell ya, it was WEIRD being in class a few weeks ago when Imovie was being presented. I'm 29, so older than half of you...and therefore I didn't *grow up* with it in the same way a lot of you did. Yet I had no problems with it. I'd never used Imovie specifically, but software all has rules...it's all somewhat logical in terms of where the tools are that you need within a given program. It was really weird to be able to use the stuff intuitively and hear everyone around me having problems...it's just a tool, it all is. You just sit down and look for structure within it. Or make it yourself. Whichever. And ok ok, when I lived in Cali I was in film school, and part of this was spending an entire year, five days a week, eight hours a day, using Final Cut...and Final Cut makes any other editing suite look like a baby's toy. The only thing more *real* than final cut is a flatbed and a roll of tape. Still though. I didn't have a lot of problems with final cut either.
So. Two tools. My previous post was on my warcraft use, so let's double-up videogames and virtual worlds. The thing I LOVE about video games in general (at least the real games) is the immersive environment which is customizable by the player's actions. The frustrating part is just the limitations in design: it's always a splash in the face to hit up against an NPC programmed to respond only a half dozen ways to you...that's just a pure limitation in the design of AI. Until a method of heuristic thought is developed for machines, we're always going to hit it. But the PRO - REAL games have REAL stories. They're immersive and interactive, taking place in the context of a game with objectives, but they come with their own expansive lore. The biggest pro to gaming, especially fully-immersive games with their own set of lore and npc's living in the world (final fantasy, star wars old republic, warcraft...and any rpg you can think of) is that it really illustrates how how a story is constructed by placing yourself within it in such a way.
How do I present myself: as me. Random, whimsical, et al. Minus private information like name, address, and that sort of thing.
The norms of the environment: in a normal game there are no "norms", the game creates it on its own, thanks to its developers. in an MMO, that's a little different. norms are defined by terms of service, but most people deviate from them in certain ways. the HICCUP is that many newer players lack the history with gaming in general, and instead treat this anonymous frontier as a way to be the biggest asshole they can possibly be. My theory is that people who started gaming as adults, or people who game in arenas not historically a part of the "video-gaming world" have a different mindset and they treat the worlds differently...and not for the better. Our norms are certainly predatory and we'll pounce on weakness. But we're polite and we'll help out if a fellow-player needs it.
So the second one: let's talk about internet and how it relates to ease-of-theft. God I love it. I wasn't allowed on the net til I was 15, but I've been a daily addict since then. Anything from useless knowledge to gaming to online software. It's all happy-world.
Anything I want. I can find it. If it was on tv and it's not on Hulu, I can find it. If it's software I don't want to pay for, I can crack it.
The PROBLEM is that so much of the internet is pure bullshit. The entirety of print media has gone down the road of the internet - unsubstantiated opinion prettied up as "fact". Opinion is everywhere, and most of it has no basis in any sort of reality. The plus side - it creates guys like me, cynical enough to not trust ANYTHING just because I read it or heard it somewhere. But there's also a million GOOD nuggets of info to find, you just have to be discerning enough to find it. That's how i have a hard drive full of music and videos...
I don't understand any teacher who knee-jerks against using ANY form of technology in the classroom. It's all a part of my daily life and has been as far back as I can remember (even cel phones...dizzamn) so I can't imagine going without it. It's all a tool. It has value and can be used for an educational goal. As often as I vegetate on aqua teen hunger force I also analyze the same show for archetypes.
Of the list provided on Ning, I use them all. I've always used them all. If I don't CURRENTLY use a web-based program that's listed, I either use something better or I've used something software-based that did the same thing, but better. It's really nothing new to me. I still remember first grade...that year, my school was in its first year of having their own computer lab. that was my first experience with any of it and I didn't (and still don't) treat it the way most people do: as something that can be broken, or has to be handled with any kind of special care. It's just a tool. Can't break it unless you put a hammer to it...and I've done that. I've seen the results. My temper is not to be trifled with. If you're an object don't ever cross me.
Anyway, the only reason I remember that time in first grade was because my mom was brought in as a "special teacher" to oversee us on learning how to use computers.
So, since it's all pretty much a part of my daily life and I don't think about using them, nor do I attach any sort of significance or stigma to using them. I tell ya, it was WEIRD being in class a few weeks ago when Imovie was being presented. I'm 29, so older than half of you...and therefore I didn't *grow up* with it in the same way a lot of you did. Yet I had no problems with it. I'd never used Imovie specifically, but software all has rules...it's all somewhat logical in terms of where the tools are that you need within a given program. It was really weird to be able to use the stuff intuitively and hear everyone around me having problems...it's just a tool, it all is. You just sit down and look for structure within it. Or make it yourself. Whichever. And ok ok, when I lived in Cali I was in film school, and part of this was spending an entire year, five days a week, eight hours a day, using Final Cut...and Final Cut makes any other editing suite look like a baby's toy. The only thing more *real* than final cut is a flatbed and a roll of tape. Still though. I didn't have a lot of problems with final cut either.
So. Two tools. My previous post was on my warcraft use, so let's double-up videogames and virtual worlds. The thing I LOVE about video games in general (at least the real games) is the immersive environment which is customizable by the player's actions. The frustrating part is just the limitations in design: it's always a splash in the face to hit up against an NPC programmed to respond only a half dozen ways to you...that's just a pure limitation in the design of AI. Until a method of heuristic thought is developed for machines, we're always going to hit it. But the PRO - REAL games have REAL stories. They're immersive and interactive, taking place in the context of a game with objectives, but they come with their own expansive lore. The biggest pro to gaming, especially fully-immersive games with their own set of lore and npc's living in the world (final fantasy, star wars old republic, warcraft...and any rpg you can think of) is that it really illustrates how how a story is constructed by placing yourself within it in such a way.
How do I present myself: as me. Random, whimsical, et al. Minus private information like name, address, and that sort of thing.
The norms of the environment: in a normal game there are no "norms", the game creates it on its own, thanks to its developers. in an MMO, that's a little different. norms are defined by terms of service, but most people deviate from them in certain ways. the HICCUP is that many newer players lack the history with gaming in general, and instead treat this anonymous frontier as a way to be the biggest asshole they can possibly be. My theory is that people who started gaming as adults, or people who game in arenas not historically a part of the "video-gaming world" have a different mindset and they treat the worlds differently...and not for the better. Our norms are certainly predatory and we'll pounce on weakness. But we're polite and we'll help out if a fellow-player needs it.
So the second one: let's talk about internet and how it relates to ease-of-theft. God I love it. I wasn't allowed on the net til I was 15, but I've been a daily addict since then. Anything from useless knowledge to gaming to online software. It's all happy-world.
Anything I want. I can find it. If it was on tv and it's not on Hulu, I can find it. If it's software I don't want to pay for, I can crack it.
The PROBLEM is that so much of the internet is pure bullshit. The entirety of print media has gone down the road of the internet - unsubstantiated opinion prettied up as "fact". Opinion is everywhere, and most of it has no basis in any sort of reality. The plus side - it creates guys like me, cynical enough to not trust ANYTHING just because I read it or heard it somewhere. But there's also a million GOOD nuggets of info to find, you just have to be discerning enough to find it. That's how i have a hard drive full of music and videos...
I don't understand any teacher who knee-jerks against using ANY form of technology in the classroom. It's all a part of my daily life and has been as far back as I can remember (even cel phones...dizzamn) so I can't imagine going without it. It's all a tool. It has value and can be used for an educational goal. As often as I vegetate on aqua teen hunger force I also analyze the same show for archetypes.
Confessions of a WoW addict
About a week after Warcraft came out, I'd just moved to California, I was temporarily bored waiting for classes to start, and I needed something to do. Since I'd just moved, my old consoles were out of the question: couldn't bring them with. All I had was clothes and a laptop. So I bought warcraft. The game utilized a lot of features I already have as pre-requisites to loving any game: solid combat, heavy rpg influences, and a fantasy angle. However, being a general misanthrope, the multiplayer aspect took some getting used to. I'd say about a day. Day two of Warcraft was the beginning of addiction. I played with every class and every race trying to find that ONE that I'd like. I finally settled on an Night-Elf Hunter and an Orc Shaman, eventually dumping the Orc in its mid-50's due to the fact that the Horde's character skins are fugly. My elf hunter, though was not. My elf hunter was a female toon because I'm a perv like that: the Alliance characters in the game are generally more aesthetically pleasing, and the Elf female skins had the added bonus of wiggling when they walked. Sold. Played that bitch out. And by "played out" I mean just that. I played that character DAILY from 2004 until 2007. For those first few weeks it was in a horrifying push of psychosis requiring 16-18 hour sittings. Once the novelty of the game wore off, that died down a little and I was playing more like 3-5 hours on weekdays. My weekends were enveloped by it.
Upon hitting level 60 with my hunter, I was content to bounce around and do nothing, occasionally switching over to alternate characters and plaything those. The idea of dungeon-raiding at the time didn't seem very logical to me...do the same dungeon over and over and over for minor upgrades? No thanks. That changed after a while, with the main impetus for the change being my discovery of JUST HOW FREAKING COOL those dungeons were.
Bam. Raiding guilds. 4 hours a night. 4-5 nights a week. Cooperative play with the sole purpose of pimping out my character to look her greatest.
Now, it probably seems like I was a complete addict. I certainly wouldn't disagree. Hiccup there: Never missed school. Never missed work. My homework was done. I was shooting films simultaneously. I DID, to my credit, get my shit done. I just completely avoided any semblance of a social life (for the most part), instead using "socialize" time to play a video game.
2007 was the release of warcraft's first expansion. After nearly 6 months continuing on with my hunter, I switched mains to a recently-levelled Alliance Shaman and went to a new guild. I was heal-bitch until 2009. The addiction got worse: I'd joined a new guild that was a dedicated raiding guild the was FAR more productive than my previous...and they also raided more often than my old guild. By the time I quit playing in May of 2009, I was the best healer on a highly-populated server, and certainly the most pimped-out. I also had almost every bell and whistle you can imagine...mounts, toys, pets. And I was DEVOTED to that character. When the 2008 Expansion was released in in November, the profession of jewelcrafting was introduced, and armour/weapons became customizable --- add new stats to your armor with gems! Huzzah! And some of those gems were EXPENSIVE. But I would spend each day post-raids analyzing my performance and theory-crafting with my gear, seeing how i could eke out just a LITTLE BIT MORE performance. I spent thousands of gold re-gemming my gear...and gold in that game, while not hard to come by, took time to get.
Why did I quit? Not because I wanted to. Although at this point I wouldn't go back...I still have the discs sitting here nearby, I just don't reinstall the game. But I don't have time to do that kind of devotion to a single game anymore. Throwing out the 200 hours needed to play Oblivion (still sitting on my dresser, almost two years after purchase...again, I just don't have time) is a hard enough thing to coordinate.
So. I still love the game. It's a great game, I'd recommend it to everyone. It's a fully-immersive environment with solid gameplay. The only real downside to it is that it's popular...one of the ways I was able to justify to myself the quitting part was the fact that each server had 10,000 pure idiot assholes on them. The popularity of video games has changed their audience: before it was techie-geeks like me playing them. Now they're popular, and the jocks, assholes, hillbillies, and douche-bags that used to hate me for loving them play them.
This explains shit like Halo, of course.
I'm kind of an elitist with gaming. People who say they game and then add up with "I love shooters" or "I love my Xbox" deserve a kick to the crotch.
Upon hitting level 60 with my hunter, I was content to bounce around and do nothing, occasionally switching over to alternate characters and plaything those. The idea of dungeon-raiding at the time didn't seem very logical to me...do the same dungeon over and over and over for minor upgrades? No thanks. That changed after a while, with the main impetus for the change being my discovery of JUST HOW FREAKING COOL those dungeons were.
Bam. Raiding guilds. 4 hours a night. 4-5 nights a week. Cooperative play with the sole purpose of pimping out my character to look her greatest.
Now, it probably seems like I was a complete addict. I certainly wouldn't disagree. Hiccup there: Never missed school. Never missed work. My homework was done. I was shooting films simultaneously. I DID, to my credit, get my shit done. I just completely avoided any semblance of a social life (for the most part), instead using "socialize" time to play a video game.
2007 was the release of warcraft's first expansion. After nearly 6 months continuing on with my hunter, I switched mains to a recently-levelled Alliance Shaman and went to a new guild. I was heal-bitch until 2009. The addiction got worse: I'd joined a new guild that was a dedicated raiding guild the was FAR more productive than my previous...and they also raided more often than my old guild. By the time I quit playing in May of 2009, I was the best healer on a highly-populated server, and certainly the most pimped-out. I also had almost every bell and whistle you can imagine...mounts, toys, pets. And I was DEVOTED to that character. When the 2008 Expansion was released in in November, the profession of jewelcrafting was introduced, and armour/weapons became customizable --- add new stats to your armor with gems! Huzzah! And some of those gems were EXPENSIVE. But I would spend each day post-raids analyzing my performance and theory-crafting with my gear, seeing how i could eke out just a LITTLE BIT MORE performance. I spent thousands of gold re-gemming my gear...and gold in that game, while not hard to come by, took time to get.
Why did I quit? Not because I wanted to. Although at this point I wouldn't go back...I still have the discs sitting here nearby, I just don't reinstall the game. But I don't have time to do that kind of devotion to a single game anymore. Throwing out the 200 hours needed to play Oblivion (still sitting on my dresser, almost two years after purchase...again, I just don't have time) is a hard enough thing to coordinate.
So. I still love the game. It's a great game, I'd recommend it to everyone. It's a fully-immersive environment with solid gameplay. The only real downside to it is that it's popular...one of the ways I was able to justify to myself the quitting part was the fact that each server had 10,000 pure idiot assholes on them. The popularity of video games has changed their audience: before it was techie-geeks like me playing them. Now they're popular, and the jocks, assholes, hillbillies, and douche-bags that used to hate me for loving them play them.
This explains shit like Halo, of course.
I'm kind of an elitist with gaming. People who say they game and then add up with "I love shooters" or "I love my Xbox" deserve a kick to the crotch.
Thursday, October 14, 2010
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
the one-paragraph activity
voicethread is giving me BS so I haven't posted there yet, I'm not sure if I'll be able to or if I'll just jury rig something else to do the same thing. But here's my activity:
My slides were beer ads in the 20th/21st century, predominantly American. their primary purpose is to sell beer by equating it with sexuality. To quote Bill Maher, "if you drink our beer hot women WILL want to fuck you."
In addition to this, there's the aspect of belonging, being part of something special, and bettering yourself.
All of this to fool people that what they're seeing an ad for is more than cheap swill.
Based on this, my activity would be an examination of cheap product (in this case, beer) and examining what TIES are being made between the cheap product and some sort of lifestyle alteration. Look at the beer ads, what do the ads suggest you will be, be part of, or obtain by buying their product?
Directions: in groups of three look at an ad. Brainstorm three underlying messages being given. Example, "buying this product will make me look like a supermodel".
--- Obviously, this activity can be done with a variety of ad-types, not just beer. I simply chose beer because of how horrifyingly idiotic they are compared to the monopolistic nonsense they're actually selling.
Second part of the activity: share with the large group what three BIG messages you found. As a large group, we look at the trends. What messages are most common? What does this say about us as consumers?
Final part of the activity: a simple product search. How well do these products sell. How much of this success can we attribute to the ads? What does it say about US as consumers (again) if we're willing to pay for a mediocre product?
My slides were beer ads in the 20th/21st century, predominantly American. their primary purpose is to sell beer by equating it with sexuality. To quote Bill Maher, "if you drink our beer hot women WILL want to fuck you."
In addition to this, there's the aspect of belonging, being part of something special, and bettering yourself.
All of this to fool people that what they're seeing an ad for is more than cheap swill.
Based on this, my activity would be an examination of cheap product (in this case, beer) and examining what TIES are being made between the cheap product and some sort of lifestyle alteration. Look at the beer ads, what do the ads suggest you will be, be part of, or obtain by buying their product?
Directions: in groups of three look at an ad. Brainstorm three underlying messages being given. Example, "buying this product will make me look like a supermodel".
--- Obviously, this activity can be done with a variety of ad-types, not just beer. I simply chose beer because of how horrifyingly idiotic they are compared to the monopolistic nonsense they're actually selling.
Second part of the activity: share with the large group what three BIG messages you found. As a large group, we look at the trends. What messages are most common? What does this say about us as consumers?
Final part of the activity: a simple product search. How well do these products sell. How much of this success can we attribute to the ads? What does it say about US as consumers (again) if we're willing to pay for a mediocre product?
Sunday, October 3, 2010
Terminator 2 clip.
the clip itself I analyzed in several terms: it was primarily response theory/rhetorical analysis, with some narrative, feminist, post-colonial, post-structural, and postmodern analysis.
In terms of how I would have students approach this:
Technology --- in my annotations I touched on Prometheus, and this can be considered the first technology parable we have on record. The lesson we get from this story is that technology is something to be wary of. This idea continues all the way up til the 20th century, which we can see VERY strongly in Frankenstein --- the action of invention and creating technology is quite literally playing god, something which can burn us badly. In the 20th century to present, this idea has flipped over. No longer are we as a culture wary of new things and seeking to understand them before using them, we now see all technology as the future, a solution to all of our problems. The Terminator deconstructs this idea, making technology not only something to be wary of, but something which will kill us. So I would use this clip as part of a lesson plan examining the use of technology and our views of it in narratives.
Action/Violence --- Again, I touched on it briefly in my annotation, but this film was created on the tail-end of a decade-long series of films showcasing big muscles and big guns. They made the careers of people such as Schwarzenegger, Stallone, Jean-Claude Van Damme, or Steven Seagal. In almost all of these movies, there would be giant sequences of nothing but gunplay, with entire cities being destroyed in a hail of fire. The Terminator again deconstructs this by bringing our gun-use into a very real and chaotic form, showing the repercussions of relying on violence.
I would also love to spend a lot of time on gender/ethnic stereotyping, using this film clip as a sort of illustration of both of these ideas on their heads. Dyson the good man, compared to a lot of other films, tv shows, and novels which showcase minorities as being thugs or worse. Sarah the machine, an active agent seeking to change the world, contrasted with the passive, purely maternal figures in many other films and television shows which place the agents of action in masculine hands.
the clip itself I analyzed in several terms: it was primarily response theory/rhetorical analysis, with some narrative, feminist, post-colonial, post-structural, and postmodern analysis.
In terms of how I would have students approach this:
Technology --- in my annotations I touched on Prometheus, and this can be considered the first technology parable we have on record. The lesson we get from this story is that technology is something to be wary of. This idea continues all the way up til the 20th century, which we can see VERY strongly in Frankenstein --- the action of invention and creating technology is quite literally playing god, something which can burn us badly. In the 20th century to present, this idea has flipped over. No longer are we as a culture wary of new things and seeking to understand them before using them, we now see all technology as the future, a solution to all of our problems. The Terminator deconstructs this idea, making technology not only something to be wary of, but something which will kill us. So I would use this clip as part of a lesson plan examining the use of technology and our views of it in narratives.
Action/Violence --- Again, I touched on it briefly in my annotation, but this film was created on the tail-end of a decade-long series of films showcasing big muscles and big guns. They made the careers of people such as Schwarzenegger, Stallone, Jean-Claude Van Damme, or Steven Seagal. In almost all of these movies, there would be giant sequences of nothing but gunplay, with entire cities being destroyed in a hail of fire. The Terminator again deconstructs this by bringing our gun-use into a very real and chaotic form, showing the repercussions of relying on violence.
I would also love to spend a lot of time on gender/ethnic stereotyping, using this film clip as a sort of illustration of both of these ideas on their heads. Dyson the good man, compared to a lot of other films, tv shows, and novels which showcase minorities as being thugs or worse. Sarah the machine, an active agent seeking to change the world, contrasted with the passive, purely maternal figures in many other films and television shows which place the agents of action in masculine hands.
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