Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Small and Vorgan argues that technology has altered our brains,
increased our social isolation, and reduced our social skills (96).
Social media does not come without any disadvantage for the
users. Rosen says that to become part of a social media circle, you give
up personal information and time to upload, edit, and organize content.
This information can be taken advantage of by companies and hackers
that could use it without the uploaders consent. There is also the
threat of lessening social skills for each generation that becomes
accustomed to this technology. We also have to differentiate between
the anonymous social circles brought together by a similar interest,
and social circles with our real identities. Regardless if these personas
are from websites in use of a username, or social media sites with
peoples real name in it, complements and likes received are both
valued by the user. Caveneys video entitled, Moral Boosting Through
Complements critiques this thought as he goes on complementing the
viewer of the video. This makes us think about the difference of getting
online complements and real life complements. In social media,
however, Rosen adds that it is creating relationships built on weak
social activities such as rumors, gossips, and sometimes stalking (180).
Our need for online social approval and likes is shown through
the interactive game created by Jason Nelson. Even the title of this
game tells you exactly what you will gain from playing it. It is called
Nothing You Have Done Deserves Such Praise and unending praise is
indeed what you will get. It is a flash animation game that looks simple
at first, but it delivers a message behind its humor and satire.
According to the site, it aims to satisfy your complement addiction in
both digital and breathing life. It makes fun of how people live for the
applause, the likes, the scores, awards, and views of their online
identities. Complements given to the digital self are also valued by the
real self. The game is simple; you control a little stick figure through
the world that seemingly goes nowhere and win at the end no matter
what. You score, gain points, and are greeted with explosions and rays
of awesomeness just for passing by. This game represents and mocks
what the Internet is for many individuals.
The plot in the gameif there is even one aside from praising
you is to go through each level, pass by some explosions, and win all
the time. This is similar to the plot of many popular movies we have
today. Michael Bay, the director of the Transformers movie franchise,
often relies on massive explosions as part of his movies. The
protagonist always wins at the end too. These explosions are
unnecessary at times and yet the audience is thrilled because they are
loud, bright, and flashy; seemingly announcing the stick figures
magnificent presence. This game makes you aware that you are being
made fun of as you are constantly bombarded with complements and
showered with bright flashy things.
the game are: Your brain, your fingers are so damn rare and
alarmingly amazing, yer falling so well, so well, your victorious
movements win a sea of dismembered applause and pretend to be
alive in digits. These texts clearly criticize how important we want to
feel when playing a game or even regarding our online identities. It
does not matter if they are complementing how well the little stick
figure is falling in space because a complement given to your persona
reflects back to you. This is the same for sports games. These games
enable us to play the sport without actually breaking a sweat and then
enjoying the same victory of winning against an opposing team.
In conclusion, our social identities are fueled by the need to
receive acknowledgement, praise, and importance. Artists like Jason
Nelson were able to critique how our social identities are dependent on
complements by giving the players of his game too much of it. He
approached this in a humorous way, mimicking the senseless text,
wrong grammar and spellings of some Internet comments. One of the
relevant text in the game is We are hollow and rushing back. The
stick figure is the game seems like he is moving forward but is actually
moving backwards. Technology has definitely connected the world,
however, we pay for this connection with our social skills and
relationships on the line.
CITATION
Batelle, John and OReilley, Tim. Web Squared: Web 2.0 Five Years
On. Digital Divide. Ed. Mark Bauerlein. New York: Penguin Group,
2011. 230-241. Print.
Caveney, Larry. Moral Boosting Through Complements. Youtube.
2010. Video.
Manovich, Lev. The Practice of Everyday (Media) Life Mass
Consumption to Mass <Cultural> Production. 2008. Web.
Nelson, Jason. Nothing You Have Done Deserves Such Praise.
Turbulence. 2013. Online Game.
Pensky, Marc. "Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants." Digital Divide. Ed.
Mark Bauerlein. New York: Penguin Group, 2011. 3-25. Print.
Rosen, Christine. Virtual Frienship and the New Narcissism. Digitl
Divide. Ed. Mark Bauerlein. New York: Penguin Group, 2011. 172188. Print.