Final Project

Hello Fellow Classmates,

If you can spare a little time, we could use your help for our final project. Just watch this short video at youtub and post a comment. If you want to be especially helpful feel free to share the link with your friends and families. We would like to offer any help with your projects as a thank you.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xDhvAUvTP8

The Mute Button

As an avid gamer I am familiar with the abusive speech that can saturate the online community. For the most part this hate speech is a result of the competitive nature of gaming. The hate speech also seems to take on a competitive nature, as if participants feel the need to one up each other. What it really comes down to is the attention that people think they are receiving for using derogatory language. When I encounter these kind of players my almost automatic reaction is to find the mute button, silencing their individual comments from my television.

This ability to silence an individual player while still being able to hear the others is on e of the best innovation in gaming. For many people the idea of being able to silence abusive talk from their internet experience would be a relief. Those that are affected by cyber bullying may feel like there is no escaping the hateful speech they dread. For these people one has to ask themselves where is their mute button.

Death and the Internet

For the assignment concerning cyber bullying, I submitted an article about a teenaged girl who was bullied into committing suicide. As a response to the suicide, two other teenagers created a Facebook page as a memorial to her. The page quickly added over seven thousand friends, posting both positive and negative comments. The story brought up the little discussed phenomenon of death and the internet.

There has been instances when an online gaming community will stage virtual funerals for their fellow players. There are now websites that specialized in funeral services such as obituaries and guest books for sending condolences. Youtube can be used to make tributes to the deceased, letting viewers share their memories as they would in a wake.

As is in all things, the way death is experienced is changing through the use of the internet. In many cases deceased is celebrated by a community that has never met them in person. The internet allows friends and family separated by great distances to participate in a funeral they may have other wised would be forced to miss. As a video showed in an earlier assignment explained, the internet can also be used for coping after the passing of a loved one. As a large community the experience of death has a widespread impact, and they way the this community chooses to respond to death reflects this.