These visions...

One day I was traveling down the freeway north of 880 and it was around night time. It was my brother, my cousin, my cousin’s girlfriend and I and we were going to a birthday dinner for my cousin’s cousin. At the time, my cousin was playing some old school hip hop songs from about ten years ago. The windows in the car were rolled down since it was a nice temperature outside. As we got around the Oakland area on the freeway there was some traffic since road construction was going on. With the traffic flow at a slow pace, windows rolled down with a nice temperature outside, and old school hip hop music playing in the car I started to get memories of when I was in the Philippines. This wasn’t the first flashback that happened to me since I had several of them happen to me in the past. When the flashback happened I had a happy, warm, joyful feeling when I had that scenario set around me. I just had the feeling of wanting to go back to the Philippines and just enjoy the carelessness of being there. The more I thought about it, the more I wondered why these little scenario setups would give me flashbacks of being in the Philippines.

Then it occurred to me, the reason why I have these flashbacks is because I’m afraid that I won’t be able to visit the Philippines again. Now when I say visit I don’t mean visiting the country, what I mean is having family visit me and seeing how things are going. The times I went back to the Philippines, I went with my mom who would mostly translate for me and do everything that would make my visit there worthwhile. Every time we went back family would visit us and see how much my brother and I have grown or receive the gifts that we brought them from the family back home. As I thought more and more into the future, I became more afraid since I might not have my mom with me the next time I go back to the Philippines. I’m afraid that my family in the Philippines and my family here won’t be as close as they are right now. My generation barely speaks Tagalog and we really aren’t that close with the family in the Philippines. I’m fear that identity of being Filipino American will mostly be dominated by my American living.

Now every time I get these flashbacks, I’ll have this fear of losing a big part of my family. I’m thankful that my family extends and lives in the Philippines, but what will happen to that once my grandparents or even my mom pass away? I always wonder how my generation will keep in contact or even that closeness that my family has right now, intact. To me, this a really big worry since I’m the oldest out of my generation and I don’t want future generations to forgot where they come from.

image culture of girl gamers

Over the break, I thought over and over on what image I should cover for this essay. I wanted to stick to a topic or rather an image that I would not lose interest in. if I were to stick to this topic, it would be too broad to cover and ideas would be everywhere. I want to stick to the genre of gaming, so to narrow my down my topic even more I’ve decided to cover my image essay on girl gamers. This topic would be interesting to cover since not a lot of guys give credit to girl that are gamers or better yet competitive girl gamers.

It’s a topic that isn’t really popular but people do know that girl gamers exist. Society has a fixed idea that girls don’t play games at all and only stick with girlish hobbies like shopping, fashion, make-up, etc. What people don’t know is that not all girls are alike, in fact certain girls can surprise you when they beat you in a fighting game and then you find yourself crying in the corner in a fetal position. I, myself, have seen some girl gamers on television or over the internet and it still surprises me that the type of girl who seem girly actually play games as a hobby.

When guys see girls in general, they still have that idea that girls can’t really do what guys can. The girl gamers I’ve seen have appeared on television and a few on Youtube. I really think I can do an essay on girl gamers because it’s something that people really judge solely on the sex of the human. Guys can really give girls a hard time and it’s a rare occasion to see a girl gamer or gamers appear in competitive gaming to just casual gaming online. I also believe that there are some images of girl gamers online and would have some reputation in the gaming community. I could do a coverage on games itself or the covers they are enclosed in but anyone can talk about that any time. When will anybody ever cover a topic such as girl gamers? I really feel like it’s something that needs to have a little mentioning in society.

I know there is a group of competitive girl gamers that play a game called “Counter-Stike” and the team was actually featured in MTV’s show “True Life”. Society has a disbelief of girl gamers since there hasn’t been a girl gamer declared as a champion in competitions or a very well known girl gamer for that matter. I want to let the reader know that girls can play video games and that they can be as good as any guy gamer out there. Let the reader know that in the world of gaming, girls aren’t these fine beings that dress in skirts or wake fancy make-up to get guys, no they are there to own other gamers and make them cry. Girl gamers want to show what they have to compete with the big boys.

Rosen's Image

After reading Rosen’s Image Culture, I’m shocked and amazed as to how the media has altered pictures of models or president only to make them look better than before. How the media uses Photoshop so much just to create phony pictures that we see in magazines or on the internet. I could see politics making false campaign pictures just to harass the other opponent so they will get the edge, but knowing that magazine covers or the picture they include are Photoshopped is just wrong. I do indeed love the piece that Rosen wrote about and is telling society how far we have come in the image culture and how much it has changed in the years.

How to: Tumblr

Continuing on the topic that I talked about last week, Tumblr is a somewhat small community in comparison to Facebook. Tumblr is a site where you can choose to be a follower or a person who wants to be followed, kind of like Youtube. To narrow my description of Tumblr, will discuss the terms on how people can follow you.

Extend:

- In a way, Tumblr can be used to expand your well being. Show off your work to people who may not live near you or are interested in your work. It’s kind of like an expansion of a museum or radio.

- Another way to be well known on Tumblr is to have blogs that will make people want to reblog your post. That way people will know who posted it in the first place and may want to follow you. In a way this is like an extension for media, how one famous song can interest a person to buying an album.

Reverse:

- Aside of having many people following you on Tumblr, there will be those that will talk smack about you. They wouldn’t even have to follow you just to say bad things about you. They can make posts about you on Tumblr and it could be spread all over Tumblr itself.

- Another thing to Tumblr is that it can take up a lot of your personal time. When you think you spent about 5 minutes on Tumblr looking at posts from people you follow, you will see that you spent about an hour just by scrolling and laughing at things you see one Tumblr.

Retrieve:

- Since Tumblr is a blogging site, sites like Blogger.com or Kotaku.com is the kind of like the father of Tumblr. Instead of getting information on separate site, Tumblr enhances the form of gathering information.

- Meeting new people is another way people can Tumblr. Since people follow others because of interests, it is just like meeting people at a record store or at the arcade.

Obsolesce:

- In a way, Tumblr replaces diaries or logs. Tumblr can be used to write up someone’s daily life or their feelings. With addition to writing up one’s feeling, it can be shared with followers and get support or share stories with the followers.

- Music is another way Tumblr replaces Youtube, radio, or Music channels. For people who want to get known faster than Youtube, Tumblr is the perfect way to do that since there are many people who listen to music and need a better way to find that music.

Social Connection

"Too many people know too much about each other."
-Marshall McLuhan

Social media sites like Facebook, Myspace, Friendster, and Blogspot are all ways society uses to connect to a bigger community that’s out of their reach. One particular social site I want to talk about is Tumblr. Tumblr is also another blog site, but is seen for a newer generation. This newer generation using Tumblr could be ranged from thirteen year olds to early twenties. It allows this group of people to blog anything they want from written text as if it was a diary to videos to music and to pictures. With the type of blogs I’ve seen on Tumblr, which are called posts, it could reflect to the personality of a person or how the person is feeling at that moment. Tumblr is a unique compared to other blog sites because when people decide to follow you, you have the option to follow them back if you really want to see what type of posts they will make. Meaning they can see what type of posts you make, yet you won’t be able to wee what type of posts they make unless you follow them back. Also, the people you decide to follow is all up to what you see is amusing or which tumbr heads have the same personality as you.

A down side to this all is when someone you don’t like follows you, you can’t take them out of your follower list. Another down side I see is that if you follow hundreds or thousands of people, you will tend to see the same post over and over again which will seem redundant. Also, if you do follow many people, it’s kind of hard to see posts from people you would really want to see posts from like friends or certain tumblr heads.

In a way, I see Tumblr as another great way to keep people connected outside of the walls they live in. in addition, it is a better way to make yourself known without having to seem really annoying.