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Week Eleven: Cryptic Crypto

Cryptocurrency - the digital currency that’s garnered so much hype (yet not much at all), and that everyone adores (for memes or for actually using it) while also being very, very confused and/or frustrated by it. That last bit (the confusion and frustration) can either come from the most recent explosion of NFTs, the act of purchasing the owners rights to creative properties online via blockchain technology akin to that of cryptocurrency, and how stupid it is through how very environmentally unfriendly / energy wasteful the whole process of their blockchains are (better explanations of NFTs here; statements about NFTs’ wastefulness here). Or you are still just as confused and skeptical as I am about how exactly cryptocurrency and blockchains work (and, if you think about it, if cryptocurrency blockchains as just as energy-consuming as NFTs’ blockchains and, if so, the environmental impact that these digital coins have had on or environment for nearly two decades...someone should write articles about this, or maybe they have and I’ve just never seen them).

From my readings today, it seems that the people of today still need help learning and remembering all the terms for cryptocurrency stuff, so at least I’m not alone in my confusion. Though watching Last Week Tonight’s segment on it always helps jog my mind a little (if not to remind me that this show still exists; I haven’t been keeping up since last summer). But basically, cryptocurrency is a digital currency that works akin too (but not exactly like, in a definition sense) stocks or regular money, where you would exchange your money for crypto and then hopefully either sell your crypto for profit on the market or use the crypto to pay for online items or services. You purchase this crypto on a blockchain, that is a decentralized (meaning not tied to one bank or authority, but rather a digitally spread out server system) public database for the crypto you’re using, that is both protected through it’s decentralization and encryptions, and can be viewed by all cryptoholders. Though it’s not as secure as you may think, both in terms of keeping up with your crypto (which seems you need to be constant on) or else it could get lost and then not backed up since it’s basically in the void, and in terms of the volatility of the crypto market, wherein online currencies can crash or rise all the time and you could lose your money that way as well. 

So...It makes more sense, but it still leaves me confused and frustrated. More in the sense of how did the first person who did it (Bitcoin in 2009) made it so valuable in the first place, will the profitability of crypto ever calm down or will the whole idea of it crash and burn, and is crypto also like NFTs in which it may literally set fire to the world (or at least sap all our resources like the richest people alive are still doing; the gulf was literally on fire and I saw on the news Jeff Bezo is planning space joyride flights at $250,000 a ticket right now; these are some of the things that make me very tired). I can’t answer any of these questions; only time (and plenty of research into the last thought) can tell me one day.

[kgclasswork]

Week Ten: GDPR on Tumblr and Privacy With Me

As we all know, this is the blog I use for recording my thoughts on my readings for my New Media Technologies class. Most (if not all) of my other peers in my class are using Wix and blogs they made on there (as recommended by our professor), while I’ve chosen to stick with a blog platform that I’ve used for around a decade now. The difference in that wasn’t really that obvious to me until this lesson, whereupon our blog posts for the week were to be about the steps we took to make our blogs GDPR compliant. Wix has a whole article laid out about how to make your Wix site GDPR, but Tumblr (like I’ve mentioned in past posts), while being a blog site, is moreover a social media website. And although I could maybe speedrun learning code so I could program my blog to be more GDPR compliant and show anyone who finds this blog everything they need to know about what I do with their privacy information, the truth is that my blog is just simply a blog that can’t and hasn’t been collecting any data like that.

An excerpt of Tumblr’s European Privacy Policy (updated with regards to the GDPR) reads as follows:

This Privacy Policy covers our treatment of information gathered when you are using or accessing the Services. This Privacy Policy also covers our treatment of any information about you that our partners share with us or that we share with our partners.

This Privacy Policy does not apply to the practices of third parties that we do not own, control, or manage, including but not limited to any third party websites, services, applications, or businesses (“Third Party Services”). While we try to work only with those Third Party Services that share our respect for your privacy, we don't take responsibility for the content or privacy policies of those Third Party Services. We encourage you to carefully review the privacy policies of all Third Party Services you access.

Also: this Privacy Policy doesn’t govern what our users do on their Tumblr blogs and we aren’t responsible for the information collection and use practices of our individual blogs and bloggers. One of the great features of Tumblr’s products is customizability, and bloggers have a lot of flexibility in how their blogs behave. When you visit a blog in our network, that blog may collect more information than we do, and may provide information to third parties that we have no relationship with, including to advertisers.

And so I’d like to state that, again, I don’t collect any personal data on this blog at all. The most information I would collect is if any other blogs liked or reblogged my content (which nobody has, and I doubt anyone outside of the occasional pornbot will find this blog anyways, as I’m not advertising this blog at all either). The reason why I’m not doing any information collecting on here is simply because I’m not a shop or service of any kind, nor do I feel the need to collect clicks to see how many people have visited my blog or to implement ads to earn revenue from this blog at all. I also, for a simpler reason, don’t know how to code such things on my blog, and have no interest to look for codes to implement those kinds of things here. This is a blog simply for engaging with basically my own thoughts over things I’ve learned, taking my own past experiences into account, and then having my professor read it. I’d also like to point out that the only “third-party” service I use on any of my blogs is is “x-kit” (which itself also uses a Tumblr blog as well for updates) which is a plugin for Tumblr run by coders who have been on the site for awhile, that enables me to make editing my posts and viewing things on my dashboard a bit easier. As far as I’m aware of, the only information they collect are the extensions I download and enable, as well as user feedback on what other extensions should be added and if any extensions are broken by Tumblr updates or other issues. And, if they collect any personal information at all, they would only be collecting the information I or others who use their extensions give them, meaning anyone reading this blog who doesn’t have x-kit isn’t affected by this.

All-in-all, I believe my blog is as GDPR compliant as I can make it, both with how the privacy policy on this site works and my own data collection being close to none on here. If there are any ways I can code in being more GDPR compliant on my blogs (for any EU Tumblr users that find this blog) please let me know!!

[kgclasswork]

Week Nine - Viral Violence

All of the widespread and broadcasted violence of last year is ingrained in my heart and mind, especially from all the shared videos and stories of peaceful protestors being arrested, taken, or straight up killed by both the far-right and the law enforcement that’s supposed to protect everyone’s rights. Even though I was never involved with any of it besides donating to sources that allies online told me were reliable, my heart still ached seeing the physical violence caught on camera or the many accounts of people affected by the violence against them.

It was mostly the BLM attacks that caught on my feed, and the main resources that look reliable were the Black Lives Matter website and this carrd filled with other resources, which I’m thankful it’s still up so I can share it. But the bombing of that port in Beirut, the many anti-asian sentiments and crimes that took place (which were more brought to my attention upon looking up articles for a different class, around the time the Capitol Raid took place), the Capitol Raid itself (and how (allegedly; I never knew if it was confirmed) other inside the building were tweeting out the location of Nancy Pelosi and other congress people), the violence of Palestinians and how the Israeli government tried to silence their cries for help online; I could list many examples of how 2020 and 2021 have opened my eyes to so many acts of violence happening on this Earth.

The last thing I talked about is mostly political; a war waged for decades over the ownership of holy land. But all this knowledge that I received about it and these other acts of violence was through twitter. And I know that, to some extent, twitter was also the grounds on which hate groups in all forms laid out their plans and manipulated young minds into similar thoughts of hate towards their fellow man. And, in these instances of hate spread out like wildfire against so many people, it is one of the key stains that can be spotted on twitter and on social media as a whole, and it’s only one of these types of stains that, even with the many friends and great experiences I’ve had, that makes me think that social media is terrible.

[kgclasswork]

Week Eight: Twitter Blue(s)

"Twitter Blue". It's only available in Australia and Canada right now (which could be political in it's own right to not make it readily accessible to all countries the app serves), but it is a paid service to add these additional features to Twitter: Bookmark folders (like bookmarking in Google Chrome, just specifically for tweets), Undoing "mistakes" in tweets like typos or adding on something else (though it has a timer of 30 seconds before it just gets tweeted out as-is), and Reader Mode (a mode that makes words in longer threads easier to see and read through). So an organizing feature, an edit feature, and an accessibility feature, locked behind a paywall of 3.49CAD / 4.49AUD (which calculates to $2.83 / $3.64 USD respectfully, which, even with the differing exchange rates, is also a pay gap that could be very interesting as well).

Yes, I copy/pasted this straight off of the canvas discussion, professor. Please excuse my laziness on this holiday weekend to retype this in a slightly different way onto here. 

But, upon thinking more about it, I did just want to reiterate how dumb this paid service might actually be. That even just adding editing as a feature on the app almost feels wrong in a way, even if it has such a short timing window on when you can decide to do an edit. That anyone who wants to pay probably $3.15 (if they cut the difference between the Canadian and Australian prices like that) for the service just has the power to change what they said at all, and that people will probably use that for bad things somehow. And how this opens the window to push the time further to a minute; five minutes; just make tweets fully editable, and whatever someone said in the past could just be edited like it never happened. And that, more importantly to me, these other two features are locked behind a paywall at all. The bookmarks being there kind of makes sense, since it’s practically it’s own new section of Twitter. But the Reader Mode feels like something that should just be added into the app for everyone, especially those who have a hard time reading Twitter on their phones in general. The whole idea of “Twitter Blue” almost feels taboo, but I certainly know it’s just a mere cash grab for the company.

[kgclasswork]

Week Seven - Presenting Your Presence

This week’s readings were both studies on how trying to perfect your presence on websites (one featuring teens on social media and the other featuring presentation on dating sites) can effect your mental health and your views on both yourself and the world around you.

I’ve touched on this topic briefly in a couple of my discussion board posts, and have hinted at both my personal thoughts on technological relationships and how they’ve linked with aspects of our lives (link here and link here). But I believe that the pressure online media has given people of all ages has effected how they see both the world and themselves. They way that some believe that they must go above and beyond, whatever that may entail, to be “presentable” online is disheartening. 

I, myself, have have only fallen into the pressure of being readily available online; of being there to talk to my friends whenever they needed it, even if it was typed-out conversations late into the night (I think even to 4am at one point). In a way it felt fulfilling; I loved helping out my friends and being an ear or a voice of reason, or just someone to dish out kindness and compliments (which is why I believe, both online and offline, people have felt comfortable telling me things). And although being empathetic like this can be good, it can lead to overstretching yourself and not taking care of yourself properly, instead only caring about what the others want or need. And, in online circumstances, that overstretching (combined with an offline loneliness from falling out with most of my irl friends come sophmore year) can lead to a dependence onto the people you talk to behind the screen. A dependence on their feelings, on their thoughts of anything around them, and their acceptance at your words through either positive reactions or understanding acknowledgements. Even my own advice could morph into just advice or words that I thought the other person would want to hear, which was not always the best thing to tell them. And each of their messages eventually felt like they were vibrating in my very core (since I keep my phone on vibrate usually), going off nonstop, to the point where, even after I ended my friendship with them, my phone vibrating gave me anxiety and a bit of fright.

The relationship I refer to in this was, of course, just one relationship. It changed my worldview on online friendships, and yet even then I still stick by the friends I do have online now. Though that’s also because the friends I have don’t take control of my kind nature, nor do I give all of myself so readily nowadays. But it’s important to remember the damage that social media relationships can have on you (and the details I haven’t shared of it); on how they can effect anyone and everyone.

[kgclasswork]

Week Six - Social MediAnxiety

(I tried to be cheeky with my title, but I know it’s also a bit tacky, but whatever~)

(Also titled “A Brief Look Into Tumblr RP” because that’s where my mind went for this blog post)

Our readings in class this week touched on the effects social media has had on our society, mostly for the bad but a bit for the good as well. It feels pretty ironic, then, that I’m using a social-media platform myself for my blog posts (for anyone outside of class who finds this blog, everyone else made a free wix site for their school blogs). But, technically, if also grown up with this social media website, and so of course I would feel more comfortable using it. Though I’ve used this platform less so for blogging about daily life, but rather through meeting people (sometimes older, sometimes younger) who had similar interests as me, and interacting through “Tumblr RP”.

Be rest assured, rp or roleplay isn’t a sex thing in this case (though you could certainly write it that way; I’ve just never felt comfortable writing smut, or “lemons” as people older than me had referred to it). It’s basically a part of the Tumblr community where you play a character (original or, more likely, a character you like from a show/movie/book) and you just write back and forth with another person (who is also playing a character) and you basically make a little story interaction between your two characters. I started trying it out with original characters (one I have actually kept up with~) through anonymous asks (because this was a Big Kid website that could talk about sex; I only allowed myself to make a blog when I was older so I could see Everything the website had to offer), and now 9+ years later I’m still doing it.

Even after the anxiety it’s put me through. Which, in hindsight, is the only kind of anxiety I got from social media, and that was through “confrontations” I had through “friends” I had on here. I could list all the messy details (or the cringey details if you’d rather have those), but for now I’ll just say a younger me (15y/o - 19y/o) had been gaslit, overused as an emotional support with no emotional support in return, and semi-betrayed/kind of had rose-colored glasses on over a person (then took off the glasses finally and realized they, in short, sucked). And I met all these people who made me think this or feel very bad about myself or just feel anxiety in general through this website and how I interacted with it. Yet I’ve also met another person who I consider one of my best friends (shoutout to StarWars, if they ever read this~), and I’ve met countless other people in these communities that my writing has interacted with that have made me happy, and that I talk to every other day on other social medias outside of here. So perhaps part of social media is dealing with the bad and the controversies surrounding it, but yet still enjoying what you love about it...Maybe~

I won’t be linking an of my blogs for writing here (because I still have those, but [1] Don’t want to kind of out myself in a way? Because even with the stuff I’ve said about my relationships through it, it still feels weird linking my professor and potential classmates/random on lookers to my blogs; and [2] A consequence could be one of you knows my online persona...And that’d be cool but also awkward...). So for my link in this post, have my AO3 instead~ Enjoy how my creative writing has grown (even though I haven’t posted anything new there in forever~). 

https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kitkattu/works

[kgclasswork]

Week Five - Helpful Editing Software

There’s a lot of software in this day and age that can help you make something you had look even better. From language apps that both help you translate phrases on the fly or help with grammar you write in your own language sound better for what you’re presenting, to photo editing that lets you either change up a photo you already have or collage photos into the perfect presentation piece or the image that truly conveys what you’ve been working on. There’s all types of software out there that can help you advertise or accessorize whatever you write or look at on a screen, and it can be a great tool for marketing and personal projects alike!

This post is a slightly more personal one in that I basically took a Photoshop class I took during my summer term last year! It was a class I had a lot of fun with and (if Adobe didn’t try and sap all my money away every month) made me love using Photoshop and seeing the fun things I could do with it! Of course, like I said, I’ve used other programs outside of it (there was this free website that I loved, but then it turned not-so-free anymore, so now I use Clip Studio Paint when I still feel like editing occasionally in between getting better at drawing; and I’m looking into other free options, especially in the links the professor posted~), but Photoshop was nice in that it very much felt made for editing and exploring that side of art and advertising.

This was a photo I made for our final project in the class, where we were supposed to make a two pictures off of nightmares we’ve had, using all of our skills that we learned in the class or looked up online (and putting in a random saying that’s supposed to contrast the image). This one was to illustrate a devastating storm that went through my school (I’m still really proud of the lightning and the man in the foreground to illustrate the chaos from that moment).

This was the other image I made, where I was crawling up a snowy mountain side to get to my friend, with ice crystal-like butterflies surrounding me. (I loved the effect on the butterflies and how the words were imposed on the snow).

Learning the basics for these tools has really shaped what I thought I could do in editing and in making advertisement-like images in general, and learning about these programs can help shape my online presence in the future~!

[kgclasswork]

Week Four - Privacy Permissions

Looking over both of the readings I had in class this week, I was again reminded of the constant reliance we have on technology, but also reminded of my thoughts on the matter in highschool and how George Orwell is probably rolling in his grave as he sees us glued to our phones and letting all our apps track our locations and information. If you think about it in a really dystopian sense, we ourselves built Big Brother into our society, calling it an innovation for the future (which it is) while also stating that we won’t just let it take over our lives (which, let’s face it, we have). 

But the specific thing we’ve pointed out in class this week is how our apps (not our government; not hackers; not tech geniuses or spies) take so much of our personal data and then use it to improve themselves or to show to third-parties, and how we’re very much blind to how much information and how much sharing of it is taken from us. Target’s Terms Conditions on their website is actually different than the privacy link the app sends you towards (if you have the Target Circle or Target Registry apps, I suggest looking at both), but even though both of them look filled to the brim with information, is it really transparently telling what they’re using all your information for? I work there, and I don’t know what exactly my license is being used for besides buying wine, or what saying I’m a college student in the app does besides give me college student coupons and offers each month. When I hit agree on any terms and services page, I know I just scrolled through everything and didn’t make myself informed, but even when reading through this to make myself informed I still don’t know exactly where all my information is going.

Of course, in today’s society, I can’t really think about going off the grid (for all the “technology is kind of scary” things I read for class, I still have to run this blog until August), nor do I really want to. I, like most other people, just use too much technology in my daily life to really go cold turkey so suddenly. But I do hope for a future where companies could at least tell me everything I agree to, and where exactly they plan on taking my information to. (Also I’m still going to do an Order Pickup for my creamer instead of shopping around, because I have a couple long, tiring work weeks ahead of me~)

[kgclasswork]

Week Three - Online Education

With the amount of technology that has entered our lives, it is no wonder that it would essentially take over as our main avenue of learning. From the invention of Smartboards (one from 2007 pictured below), to making most of our state tests in school virtual, to making some of our homework assignments located on separate school websites (mostly in math, but also for some foreign languages, and I even took HOPE online in high school).

svonog. (2007, March 18). Interactive whiteboard at CeBIT 2007 [Photograph]. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Interactive_whiteboard_at_CeBIT_2007.jpg

But the technologies we used, to me, always felt a bit like the separation of church and state in high school; while there were homework assignments that grew a bigger and bigger need for internet usage or research at home, it felt like that the internet at home was leisure while the internet at school was work (though, like office slackers, some of us listened to youtube videos and played games in secret when the teacher wasn’t looking). With college it blurred the lines a little more, my laptop becoming a necessity to my class success, yet always having the library and their computers and staff one step away for me to use. But then, with the pandemic, it had all changed to this:

(Yes, that’s my room in terrible lighting)

Most of the last year (from late spring semester to now) my school life has looked like this and only this. Some professors would have video or voice conferences, but those seemed to peter out once this spring semester had come up, and they weren’t really all that prevalent last fall semester either. It’s all been words on a screen, that screen holding both all my work and all my leisure as I’ve sat semi-motionless on my bed (and I think indented my mattress). And while I think this style of learning is fine - I’ve certainly gotten accustomed to it, and I could even see myself doing it again - I do miss the drive to campus and the extra time to get my sunshine and social interaction. But, even with the pandemic securities being pulled back and campus opening back up, with the many businesses and technologies that formed through this sudden push for learning online, I may be glued to my screen a lot more still in the coming years.

[kgclasswork]

Week Two - Technology

The readings for this week focused on the technological revolution and that, while it may be hard to agree with the Unabomber and a scholar you don’t really remember (two separate people), technology is carving out much more of our futures than we’d like to claim it does. That many new technologies are made everyday, or that things like laptops and smartphones advance at such a promisingly high rate, and both of these are going to help us with our future day-to-day. But, while that may still be true, it’s been pointed out time and time again how dependent we’ve become to technology. How the high speeds of communication that you can receive is both a blessing and a curse, your reachability increasing while your anxiety to respond or keep up with any news or conversation you deem important rises tenfold. How so many apps are being invented to help with everyday life, while at the same time making you both hyper focused on it and not focused at all on the world around you as your life is now glued to a screen; nitpicking everything about ourselves and others when it comes to the socially-acceptable attachment to technology and anything technology deems as “needed”. With where technology advances next, there’s no telling more attached we’ll get to these devices. But what I’ve seen a lot from some accounts - especially directed at those now so attached to their technology that they believe themselves the king of their own universe, while also being so subservient and reactive towards text on a screen - is something that we should all try and do once in awhile: Please go outside. (But also stay safe while going outside)

[kgclasswork]

Week One - Progress

Progress is all at once an awe-inspiring word that can make the mind race and the heart swell with joy at the prospect of a bright future, yet it can also make many uncertain as no two individual visions of progress may be the same. The Good Life that we progress towards can be living independently, finding the love of your life, climbing a social or economical ladder, or all or none of the above. The American Dream works in the same way, in that some see it as simply watching the country expand westward or striking gold a la Manifest Destiny, while others see it as a chance to provide a better life for themselves or their family in countless ways, including in ways where images of having The Good Life and The American Dream meshed together into the same thing. No matter what, the basics of “progress” is true in that “...progress is often used to underscore the belief that humankind, as a whole, moves forward.” (Slater, pg10). Whether progress creates a divide among nations or people, or builds bridges between them. Whether it’s a future where technology rules our worlds, or a healthy balance between man and machine. Whether progress is becoming CEO or simply making better choices to take care of yourself more everyday. Someone’s personal definition of progress can be so different - so small or so vast - but we all strive for that word all the same.

[kgclasswork]

Hello World!

This is going to be my school-only MMC4263 sideblog for the semester, where I’ll be putting blog posts up of my readings for the week! This pinned post will also be here for clickable links for each post that’ll be posted each week, just in case any of you who follow wanna go back to specific post. I hope anyone who sees this has fun reading my thoughts!

Week One - Progress

Week Two - Technology

Week Three - Online Education

Week Four - Privacy Permissions

Week Five - Helpful Editing Software

Week Six - Social MediAnxiety

Week Seven - Presenting Your Presence

Week Eight: Twitter Blue(s)

Week Nine - Viral Violence

Week Ten: GDPR on Tumblr and Privacy With Me

Week Eleven: Cryptic Crypto