Final reflection

Personally, I really liked the post on violence influenced by video games, partially because it was related to something that I enjoyed the most out of all digital media and one which has more references to external sources (i.e. a larger amount of hypertext and links being employed). Originally, blogs are meant to be for providing critical comments and highlighting information of interest. Thus this would mean a secondary analysis of an issue in concern, so in a way we are already displaying a relationship between our opinions and those of the primary source. Since the text is essentially a derived subjective comment, it is vital to support it with existing data or at least with interesting facts or pictures that catches others’ attention, facilitating your persuasion.

In this particular blog post, I first showed the audience a comic strip to exemplify how addicted gamers can be with the video graphics. Here, the comic told a story of a very real situation where most people can relate too if they have had serious gamers around them. Furthermore, it saliently demonstrates how video games infiltrates not just the lives of people when they are younger (which is what gaming is always associated to) but this phenomenon may follow them even until they are grown up. So the message of “no one is spared or warranted from addiction” may ring in the readers’ ears through a less explicit yet impressionable manner.

 

Next, I illustrated how dangerous video games can be by first including a cartoon picture of a real gun embedded within. This sends a powerful message to the readers as they can clearly see and possibly feel the threat of the situation. Words accompanied by corresponding pictures always serve as significant enhancers since it directly appeals to the emotions of the audience and leaves a lingering impact that probes them to ponder upon further. 

Apart from the use of pictures and comic strips, I included a Youtube video as well. This wasn’t any other video but specifically a news report. People may be more convinced to believe in “professional” opinions and facts rather than mere claims of my own. Additionally, there is no need for more reading, all they need to do is passively absorb the information with less efforts. Therefore, by applying a multimodal approach in structuring my post, it sums up and accentuates my ideas in varying forms. Effectively, this is creating and making sense of meaning in an all rounded manner, by combining multiple semiotic modes and visual elements. This as we know is the present practice of most websites and popular blogs. People are no longer interested in wordiness anymore, we need to include colours and life in our texts.

 

All in all, blogging was a really fruitful experience for me as it opened my eyes to what I never could comprehend in the past. How certain blogs can become so famous that even advertisers highly regarded. Why do some people like to tell the world their minutely actions and experience in school etc? What made certain websites more attractive than others? How did technology became such an integral part of our being? Whether it is even healthy this way..

To be honest, my past opinions have been altered quite a bit since the time I first started this blog. Before, I was more like a traditionalist in terms of digital media. I never liked the idea of the thriving digital world nearly dictating or taking over our lives.  It contradicts the rawness of mankind, appeals to our addiction and causes over-reliance. Somehow I viewed this as a form of intrusion, the man made entity threatening to invade our privacy and steal our intelligence. If you were to put on the same pair of glasses I had, you would be able to empathize with the mild technophobia I had. I am human and it is only natural for all humans alike to identify closely with the recent past than the uncertain future or freshly introduced concepts.  

But to move forward, I can’t possibly be stuck in my cocoon and hope for a time machine invention to transport myself back in time. Gradually I tried to notice the benefits of having technology’s help around, in one way or another life in its current state is not feasible with total eradication of these digital gadgets. The fact that I am happy and satisfied with my present living is good evidence and motivation for me to simply accept them. Not until last week did I set up an Instagram and LinkedIn account (although I still haven’t had a twitter), but huge improvement from my sole semi-active Facebook (FB) social network before this. Primarily because I realize that even future employers and professors are most likely using these avenues to search for potential candidates or work. I definitely do not want to be categorized as an antisocial country bumpkin, who refuses to accommodate to the masses and learn how to interact on such platforms. It would be absolutely disastrous to my future career progression wouldn’t it? 

However, that doesn’t mean to say I am thoroughly removing the negative stigmas I used to have towards digital media. In particular relation to the higher risks of increasing myopia correlated to the use of computers. Yeah indeed, medical technology is not lagging behind at all and has caught up with their fair share of Lasik eye surgery. Yet who can prove that this merely 10-year-old form of remedial has absolutely no side effects on other aspects of our health? Scientists have time and again warned us against the underlying perilous consequences of too much exposure to direct radiation. So despite Lasik being a viable solution, we are still uncertain if it is 100% safe for treatment. Being the usual skeptic, my mother is perpetually reminding me to switch off my mobile and laptop before sleeping, or putting them as far away when not in use. Her paranoia could be a result of excessive medical news consumption that has been infiltrating the local news back at home. 

Perhaps my latest change in attitude could be due to distance from a warning constantly ringing in the kitchen. Or it may be attributed to the digital classes I have been taking this semester. Either way, it serves as a perfect balance from the over-suspicious dogma to extreme digitalized lifestyle.
 

I admit the previous post on social media being fake could be a little too harsh and orthodoxy. Although some are still adding people on FB for the sake of boosting their friends list and displaying how popular they are. Yet it is rather childish to restrict everyone who has a large number of FB friends to be one of these kinds. After being across the globe to a few of the biggest influential nations, I realized that one can indeed obtain at least five hundred friends in the short run. Peeps you meet at work, introduced to friends or colleagues during parties and meet ups; basically in today’s diverse world it is almost impossible to not meet new people every day! Just in Hong Kong alone, I’ve gained a total of 80 friends in the past 4 months! It is natural to keep these valuable contacts just in case you might need a lift in Israel, Belgium or Taiwan one day. In fact, one of the closest friends I made during my long trip was a Russian girl who turned out to be so inspiring. With the invention of devices such as Skype and Whatssap, it facilitated and got rid of the prior barriers causing inconsistent communication. Apart from the disparity in time zones, nothing else was stopping us from updating each other about our daily lives. We typed how we talk and employed emoticons when there’s an urge to convey a facial expression.  It was convenient and best part of all everything was recorded so that I can refer to past conversations again when there is a need to.

Retrospectively, the course’s project was a huge help in alleviating my original stance on social media’s formation of weak and unreliable ties. It just didn’t seem as authentic as it should or use to be. However, the forum that we looked into illustrated the opposite. We mainly examined the ideology that a particular dieting forum had and how it was displayed via their discourses. No doubt forum users do provide encouragement to one another and inevitably reinforcing similar beliefs that existed right from the start, thus online communities like this can help to strengthen bonds. Plausibly more than verbal conversations since anything written in the threads are going to be there for a long time (unlike face to face conversations where nothing said is documented). People are free to go back and read them, thereby strengthening their sense of belonging and affiliation to the group. With this heightened sense of affiliation, forum members may want to further extend their relationships to personal friends. Patently, birds of the same feathers flock together just like how Morry (2007) purported in his attraction-similarity model. Their analogous intentions of wanting to slim down had drawn them to the forum in the first place, thus similarity is a given already. It wouldn’t be too hard for a physical meet up to be initiated and carried out.

I haven’t yet entirely plunged into the digital world, but at least this is a great step forward from the past. But don’t mistake me for being a technological advocate now, because honestly, I am still on a journey of convincing myself its goodness and to accept advancements for real. Not that it’s going to be very difficult, especially with such a resourceful internet. Only time will tell I guess :)