Homework #25 - Story Comments and Analysis

KATHERINE!!!
I really enjoyed reading your short story, i got the sense that you were trying to portray a girl in high school that fit the "cool" status by acting like a bitch, she took advantage of a boy that was struck by her good looks and charm, he himself was trying to fit the "cool" status by being the lucky one to get with her. Although he was also trying to up his "cool" status he played the innocent victim who got tricked by being too nice. He was very emotional towards her and didn't play a dominant role letting her use him. I really liked your story and it stuck out to me more than the other ones because it was very relatable, we all know that trick and many of us have probably used it before for some reason or another. GOOD WORK!

Leahhh!!!
Good job nice story! Its interesting how people have very different ideas of what it means to be "cool" like some of the other stories i have read your is very relatable, i think everyone has at a point in like where they felt like a loser when next to someone that exuded wealth and beauty. Although many think being rich is cool, there are many cases where overcoming a struggle is cooler why do you think that is? Btw thanks for leaving a comment on my story! :D

Good story kareem, it was very straight to the point. Sounded like the boys liked all the attention it was new feeling therefore it was exciting and easy to fall into. Sounded like the type of character to get a little too confident for his own good, if the story continued i bet he would be the one to lose all his popularity because people just got sick of him. Id this story supposed to be about you? lol do you consider your self to be "cool"?

Steph!
I thought your story represented you very well. cause u like sneakers and talk about them a lot, plus you wrote in complete dialogue with one of your best friends. good job i liked it a lot. :D

Sarah,
Your character was in her owns ways different from the other characters i have read so far. At first she seemed intimidated to enter a new school (but who wouldn't be) but i admire her for that fact that she still was able to stay true to the person she was back in California. The fact that she was the "new girl" alone probably intrigued the students but the fact that she seemed straight up and interesting helped also. :)

While reading the stories there were overall similarities in most of them, they were either very predictable (including mine) or Cliche. Most of us associate being "cool" with popularity the more friends, the more parties, the more boys, the more gossip...To me it almost seems that we want to be talked about whether its good or bad its still attention. Many of the characters seem to enjoy keeping up with their reputation; the loser that turns cool, the rich kid, from struggle to success these were all common repeating characters each stories situation was just a little different. I am wondering how we got to the point where this is our definition of cool? what does cool matter? why do we care so much about what people think? I don't remember every being told this is what is "cool" and this is what's "not cool" and somehow i seem to be just as bad and judgemental as everyone else. weird how things work out...

Homework #24 - Short story

I woke up that morning to start my senior year, not sure if i was excited or more nervous. Summer of 09 was a crazy one, maybe a little more than I bargained for. Mom and dad had been on business trips all summer leaving my brother and I home alone. I never thought i would be saying this, but i feel like we might have had a little too much freedom, partying every night having no one to tell me "no". I had already had the reputation of being the "rich girl' attending public school i stuck out a little bit, my clothes were nicer, nails always polished, i guess you could just tell. Something seemed to attract all the attention, although i liked all the attention, it was beginning to become a hard job. I was constantly the source of gossip, it felt as if i was always being followed by eyes i barley knew. I didn't know how much more or this i was willing to take.

My parents had never really been on my ass about anything, i have always been a good student so u guess they thought they had nothing to worry about. I opened up the double doors of school took a deep breath and braced myself for the year to come, it was senior year! i was supposed to be excited but something in my heart changed, i was greeted by everyone, my pack of friends automatically followed behind me offering to hold my bag while i walked the halls greeting everyone all the boys lined up in from of their lockers waiting for out cheeks to touch, I could here freshman whispering about "that girl" i guess they were talking about me. I tried to keep a smile on my face the whole time, but i was finding it harder than usual.

The first week of school everyone was exchanging stories of their crazy summer, what they did, where they went, hookups, the basics. Everyone had heard of the numerous parties that had happened at my house they were excited for what was to come. a few more weeks had gone by everyone was talking about college, i was trying to juggle my social life as well as my school work it was more important than ever to keep up all the work i had put in during my high school years, i had my college list final, i had just begun writing my essays and all of my teachers were in the process of writing recommendations letters for me.

I had to make a choice between what I knew was right and the reputation i felt i had to withhold, being cool, being popular was to what seemed like the whole world the most important thing. Why is it that the one person, me who didn't want all this fame got it. Weeks had gone by my friends seemed to be drifting away i didn't feel like the life of the party anymore, which was a good this. The only parties at my house were my brothers, all his upper east sider friends would come over, i guess they expected to see me but i spend most of my time in my room by myself. The group of friends that used to trail behind me began to dwindle down. For the first time i felt truly free, i realized that the past three years my "friends" didn't even know much about the person behind the good looks, money and partying ways. I felt a sense of disappointment from not only the people i went to school with but from all of my other friends. I finally realized that all this was not worth it. I am finally happy with the person i am because its not all an act.

HOMEWORK #23 - 1st Constructivist Exploration of Cool

What does it really mean to be "cool"....
I don't think anyone can really define what it means to "be cool" or "act cool". Being considered cool is a very case specific thing, one persons "cool" might be another persons "lame". Are being popular and cool the same thing? I think the line between the two is very small. I feel that being cool depends on a persons personal interests and they are judged by the people that they surround them selves by. In school although many claim "SOF is different, and that we are all friends and there and no cliques" when you break it down maybe will come to realize everyone belongs with some "known for" group, with in those "know for" groups different things are "cool" because they all like similar things. Some pride them self's on the way they dress, just this year many of the boys are starting to wear coin purses from their belt, they are smaller than the size of an average persons palm but cost almost 200 dollars (cause they are brand name) Other like to collect sneakers, they are obsessed with keeping them fresh. People who worry about how they are dressed tend to gravitate to people who look similar, they all have one thing in common which is enough to become friends. Other kids find groups where doing extremely well in school and spend most of their time doing extra curricular activities and love to draw anime. These groups are very stereotypical and i want to make sure that my points are not taken the wrong way there are many exceptions to what i am saying but from being at SOF for 7 years this is what i have noticed.

The most popular people seem to be the loudest, everyone knows who they are. Although it might be faltering for the time being, its a hard job to accept. Because they are popular its "cool" to talk about them, gossip spreads very quickly and if something happens inside or outside the school people will talk. I believe everyone had things they are unhappy about with themselves, we all strive for perfection whether we admit it or not we admire people who are looked up to, we want to be just like them. If we see that they make something "hot" than that quickly becomes the new trend that everyone wants to follow. Celebrities play a large role in what it means to be "cool",but really it is all a trick because we try so hard to be just like them but untimely its a chase that will never be won. Its all really an illusion, tabloids new Chanel's, TV shoes constantly show these perfect people advertise you things to buy in hopes to look as good as them but the reality is we will never look like them. so why do we try? The society we live in today is so superficial that when it come down to it, cool is about looks, most of the time we will judge from how that person looks rather than what their personalities and minds has to offer.

When we are younger, fitting in is not as big a priority as it is now. Little kids just want to play with anyone they can find in their eyes everything is "cool". As I have gotten older I have come to realize that the older we get the more judgemental we become. Teenage years are particularly hard (not that i have experienced adult life) but we all care what other people think of us, many of us try to play the "I'm different" role but in the end isn't it really to be perceived as cool? Even if they don't admit it they are looking for attention and a group of followers so they can feel original. Now a days it is very hard to be perceived as an individual, if you feel piercings and tattoos is your way of self expression you automatically get associated with all the other people that have piercings and tattoos. If you shop at flee markets in downtown Brooklyn and listen to alternative music you are put into the "hipster" category. There is some sort of label and group for almost every kind of person. This leaves me thinking that there is no real definition of what it means to be "cool" i am excited to explore the meaning hopefully our class will come to some sort of conclusion.

1ST Draft Big Paper: The digital world (ideas that will be included in the final draft) VERY UNORGANIZED!

When I think about the term "digital" many thoughts come to mine, I think; computers (facebook, myspace and AIM), cell phones, television and just about everything we come across in our everyday lives. To be honest I never questioned how the digital media effected my life, I never thought much of it and just accepted it for what it was. Every since I was little I always had some sort of new "gadget" that was the new and hot thing, 10 years ago it was the huge and heavy black and white game boys or the classic CD player. Today i can safely say we have come a long way! Just 24 hour later of being introduced to the topic in class, i was able to make a embarrassing yet very relevant connection to how the overwhelming influence of "everything digital" had directly effected my life. In Emily Birdens room Binta and I discovered it was not as easy to set a clock as we expected. I was the first to take it off the wall before i realized i did not actually know what i was doing. It took about 7 trys, 15 minutes, Ms. Cole and Emily trying to explain to us how to operate this thing, and countless laughs and looks of astonishment to set the clock to exactly 2:57. I don't remember being taught how to tell time in first grade and the only watch i ever owned was a Baby-G which was digital as well. This really made me pause and think! How is the digital world effecting our education, and how bad is it gonna get? Seems like technology is being more and more advanced every second of everyday. Most of us feel lost and just panic if they forget the cell at home or god-forbid the cable box is out! We freak because we have not been trained to adapt any differently. we wonder how people were able to survive with out any of those crucial items, but the truth is we did it and not even that many years ago (computers were just becoming a hot item on the market in the 90's, you used to be able to pick from a variety of bubble-gum colored I Macs that weighed about 50 pounds.)

On a personal note cell phones have become an obsession of mime. It goes with me EVERYWHERE, im not proud of it but i will admitt we have been through lots of hards times together and i try and take as good care of it as possible. Just a month ago it took a nasty fall in the toliet bowl (clean water... well as clean as it can be considering everything) and got stuck in the bottom for what felt like 20 minutes. My first instinct was to reach down and pull it out, so i did, after my many failed attempts it was my mom turn next. Luckily she got it out but it seemed to be completly ruined. I panicked and did everything to save it, i tried to get all the water out of the screens sticking it in a bowl of dry rice. Nothing was working and i convinved my mom after hours of harassing her that i needed a phone. 2:00 the same day i was in line paying for the same phone i already had as soon as the new phone was activated an incomnig flow of 19 new txt messages popped up in my outbox and my life seemed back to normal.

As much time as i am on the phone most of it is having multiple conversations over txt messaging or AIM conversations, not even actually being surved for its main purpose. My parents have discovered that if they ever want to get in contact with me and i am not answering my phone know to send me a txt and i respond almost everytime 5 mintues later. They don't even bother to leave voicemails cause i never check it. People have converations through screens and keyboreds cause they are places that being on the phone is not accebtable (school and office enviornments), Students can normally pull off txting through a teachers lecture of lesson but would not beable to pull off talking in front of them.

I read the excerpt written by Steven Johnson about how he feels reading is better for you then video games, but he did not completely put video games to shame. For me this brought up the idea, are reading and playing video games (screens) any different? They both instill a sense of disembodiment. When you read a book that you enjoy, your eyes become attached to the page and you get involved in the story being told, you lose your sense of self and your sense of surroundings. When we play video games we become part of the game, we are literally "in control" which makes it seem even more like real. I have never been any good at them but whenever i watch someone else play, the game seems to toy with their emotions, if they are playing a game where zombies are jumping out or they are a solider fighting in WWI they flinch or shrike, games that are more calm and relaxing just make the player look possessed. People always assume that one person spending 4 straight hours reading is more intelligent than the one who sits a just play video games.

Johnson made it clear that he did not think it was fair for people to judge people who play them or generalize the games them self. He stated that video games actually involve thinking (more than some might think). One of the last questions he asked was why are video games fun? The consumer spends a ridiculous amount of money on not only the game system itself but the games which sell on average for at least 60 bucks (this is where the companies make all their money!) To try and solve complicated puzzles that most of the time we look at cheat sheets and manuals to get to the very end of the game.


When i first started reading the book i was a little lost about what was really going on, i am not a very strong reader in fact it is one of my weaknesses so it helped to have many class discussions about it. One connection i made quite fast was how his friend had a overbearing attitude that reminded me of some of the people i go to school with. It is natural for all of us to find a group and we tend to stick together, at this age we all want to fit in and do what we think will qualify us to be accepted. we go to parties, experiment with drinking and drugs, most of us want to be dressed in the latest fashions and will drop ridiculous amounts of money to do so. We are"tend" followers... just to "fit in". From Titus especially i got the sense that his look on the ordinary life was that it was uneventful and pretty much all the same, he was looking for new things to do with his time. In our generation teenagers think the same thing, we are active creatures and having a limited amount of things to do gets boring, but i think for us it is more doing something that breaks the rules that excites us rather than finding a new museum or movie to go to.

Someone is always gonna copy someone else. No matter how different you are trying to be, your fitting someone else's stereotype, we are all followers. That idea was represented a few times in feed, one that came to mind was when Quendy wanted to fit in so badly that she got lesions all over her body because they were cool. Essentially they were open sores eatting away at her flesh. I can make two connections to that, our version of lesions are marking our bodies with tattoos that are almost impossible to remove or getting obscene body percings in places that our bodies should not have holes in. But i also think there is a deeper meaning that Anderson was trying to express that is not as obvious as other connections made, we are living in a world that is becoming less and less natural everyday. A lot of what we used to do by hand can be done with machines and technology. The natural way of life in a sense is being sucked out of us, we are losing the ability to be able to distinguish between our imagination and reality, similar to the lesions on their bodies eating away at there sucking the life out of them.

There are also a few ideas in the book that are not necessary possible yet in our generation but have been in the talks. The feed was able to design people personalities, programming them to like and dislike certain things. I have seem movies and watched shows on TV about how couples will eventually be able to monitor the gender of their baby and ultimately design the genes of their children. Not only does this relate to our digital unit but also to the unit which we covered last year about the American way of birth, on top of how unnatural most American births are (using unnecessary medicines that can negatively effect the babies) eventually we will be able to in a way "build-a-baby".

We no longer have to depend on out memory for much anymore, most everything is done on a computer or over the internet. we even have website to record our thoughts now (blogger.com) this is all information that we will have access to in the future.

Comments:

Jacara!
Your arguments are super clear and i think you have a very spot on sense of direction, sounds like you know exactly what you wanna include in you paper. However i am in the same boat as Ian and am confused by your thesis. Who is making theses expectations and what do they mean by better? Do you feel out dependence on digitalization is becoming better? From the sound of your arguments which is what i think you should base your paper on, things seem to be getting worse. My suggestion is that you switch up your thesis a little to make it flow with your arguments. Your four arguments seem to sum up the major areas of discussion talked about in class. Your evidence seems to be coming from many different sources.

Looking forward to reading the rest of your paper!


Ian,
Your thesis really drew me in and the connection you made was not an obvious one but that was very original, you compared our dependence on digitalization to cattle being hereded. Almost as if we are trapped and have no choice or say in our ability to be free. Your arguments are very strong and use very unique ideas ones that we did not discuss so much in class! good work! can't wait to read the rest!

#16 BIG PAPER OUTLINE

Thesis:
Digitization creates a complete sense of disembodiment, we have become so reliant on "everything digital" we don't know how to do things the hands on way. We have become brainwashed by large corporations and companies to keep up with the latest and greatest. the digital world is becoming bigger than us, whether that is acceptable is up for discussion and proves to be very controversial.

Argument 1:
Digital media is becoming limiting to our social interactions. (communication is less personal)
Evidence:
Texting, Sexting, Email, Facebook, Myspace.... addiction to the unnecessary.


Argument 2:
Technology can be deceiving, they are very unreliable and have many imperfections.
Evidence:
Extremely large amounts of money are spent on devices that are not perfect. Often times they are emotionally distressing and cause lots of frustration... Does it cause unhappiness that could be avoided?


Argument 3:
Become unaware of out sense of self and have lost a sense of our evniornment (what we are surrounded by)
Evidence:
We act like zombies


Argument 4:
With all the good there is some good, the Internet allows us to a wealth of knowledge and certain experiences that requires digitization.
Evidence:
Traveling