I still don't know what I'm going to do for project 5. At all. The frogger idea is the only one I've had so far. This is the sort of thing that takes just planting it in the back of my head for a while and letting the ideas come to me over time.

When I was dredging forums for the last project, I came across some comments from people who apparently thought Barack Obama was the antichrist. That was pretty interesting, and it mixes with real life. I'm not sure how that could be made into a project, either.

I personally try to avoid reading blogs when it comes to any information that's really relevant to my life. I read sports blogs from time to time, because they usually have people on location that are privy to some stories before all the other sportswriters are, but it isn't necessarily important information, even when the reporters make it out to be.

Blogs just aren't held to as high a standard as printed material, and because of that I question the quality of the information that I get from them, even if it's through a reputable source. They're certainly more participatory and democratic than printed news, since comments can usually be added underneath the stories, but I don't feel like that really enhances it for the most part. The people who comment usually don't have much to add, and when they do, it usually either isn't correct, or it is articulated horribly.

I'm not really into reading blogs.

5th Project Idea

The first thing that comes to mind about this project, since we were discussing gaming again today, is frogger. I'm always surprised at how daring people in Morgantown are about crossing the roads, especially when there isn't a crosswalk. Coupled with game days, when probably 1/3 of the people driving are drunk, and there are so many people are walking around with no regard for traffic laws, I'm pretty surprised more people don't get hit by cars.

That said, I wouldn't want to actually try to do a live-action version of frogger. That's pretty dangerous.

Project 4

For my project, my main purpose was to find examples of people acting differently than they normally might, assumingly because they can enjoy the distance afforded them by an online identity. The main settings for the project are online forums, also called message boards, where people typically post items related to a main topic. These message boards require membership, which allows the people who use them to assume online personas, which may or may not be similar to their actual, real world personas. In some cases, like MySpace or Facebook, the users’ online identities can be very intricate. Pictures, contact information, and biographical information very often give other users a more realistic idea of what somebody’s actual identity is. These types of “profiles” are usually legitimated through contact with other users through the ubiquitous “comment” or “message” sections that are typical of those particular interfaces.

In other cases, message boards are more anonymous, requiring only a valid e-mail address to confirm membership. While there is still a rudimentary template in place for users to post pictures and personal information, these users do not typically represent themselves as realistically as they would through an interface like Facebook. Real names are rarely used, and pictures are typically less personal, giving way to animations and other types of artwork to make the user’s template more distinct. These are the forums through which I assumed people would argue more aggressively. In these types of forums I included the comment sections often found at the bottom of the page in online news articles.

I only considered trolling as a method of last resort, since almost everyone who regularly uses the message boards is familiar with the practice, and in most cases either do not respond to the instigation, or report it to forum moderators. On sites where trolling was not well-moderated, the volume of posts was not substantial enough to generate the long, multi-party arguments that I had in mind. Instead of actively manifesting arguments, I first tried to locate forums where the members were likely to be aggressive and/or the subject matter was controversial. I thought this would increase the likelihood of finding some good material for the assignment.

What started as an effort to satisfy the elements of “unspeakable” and “scandalous,” however, turned out to be much more forgettable than I would have liked. Of course, the other avenue was to do the assignment on the “everyday” and “forgotten.” Particularly in the well-moderated, large-volume forums, scandalous posts are removed within minutes or seconds. Left behind, however, are literally miles of text consisting of opinions, and arguments, both logically supported and not, that are of virtually no consequence, even to the people who wrote them.

Some of them, I thought, were pretty funny:













Others were more typical of the type of dialogue I expected to find:














On the whole, I was surprised to find that my assumptions weren't clearly correct. The amount of anonymity didn't seem to matter much to the people posting, although I still think the factor of distance emboldens people to say things they wouldn't say to someone on the street.

Project 4 draft

So my first idea, about anthrax and the dollar bills, I've scrapped that. As it turns out, that's really time-consuming and hard to record. Plus, it's gotten pretty cold over the last few days, and I don't want to wait, shivering, for someone to pick up one of my obnoxious messages. I want to work with something that I can control a little better, and doesn't require enduring any kind of bad weather if I can help it.

This weekend, people at the game were being assholes. There's something about game time and being fairly anonymous in the stadium crowd that has that specific effect on some people. That got me thinking.

The way people are emboldened by anonymity seems like a good starting point for another idea for this project. Have you ever read an online news story with a comment section at the bottom? Gone to a message board to try to find some piece of information, and instead found pages of inconsequential tit-for-tat? It doesn't take much to instigate a cyber-quarrel, and people usually aren't as reserved as they would be otherwise.

I think there is also some inherent comedic value in seeing a discussion escalate to the point of a shouting match once all the logic has been bled from it. I don't have any immediate examples to post here for the draft, but there are online forums for virtually every topic. Most of them have no bearing at all on the tangible world, but posters still find enough meaning to bicker.

This project's success probably depends on both the content of the forums I use and my own ability to focus participants on arguing with each other. I have this cutting tool on my computer that can capture screenshots, so I'll be able to show forum avatars and signatures to give some visual representation of what's going on. Some people really take forums and online message boards seriously, and they display really elaborate artwork on their postings to identify their profiles/usernames.

I'm considering the role of instigator wherever necessary. And since it's a graded assignment, the unabridged opinions of some of these online rabble-rousers may finally count for something.