The Effects of Video Games

This week I am going to discuss the effects of video games on me or anyone else. Does playing my Playstation 3 make me violent, or make me want to go out and do something crazy? To me playing violent games or a sport game makes me excited and energetic. But playing a game like that doesn’t make me want to go out and do the same thing, I mean it’s just a game. A game is a game because that’s all they are supposed to be, they don’t make the game to encourage people to go out and run somebody over with a car like on Grand Theft Auto. Games like that Grand Theft Auto are meant to be a strategy game, you have to go around and complete missions and sometimes bloodshed is a must. You know, maybe they make games like this that you can go kill people and stuff like that because they want to try to keep kids from doing it in the real world and just do it in the game. Games like Madden or NHL are games to inspire you and to have you get excited about sports. People live to play sport games on a video game. I have played football since I was really little up in Rolla ND, and football is a very big party of my life and I love to play football games on my Playstation. For me I think when I grow older and have a family with kids I don’t think I am going to let them play violent games until they get older and realize what the difference is between a violent video game and a violent real life. People die in a video game and it doesn’t matter it’s not real. But people die in real life and it is very real, people don’t come back to life. As we speak my friends are playing the new UFC Fight Night game and it is a very fun game. If you have ever watched a UFC fight you know how much fun it is to be playing this game. You can just tell by their ‘game faces’ that they are into the game. You asked them a question and they have no idea that anybody else is in the room. I asked them if a game like this is going to make difference of what they do after they finish the game, like if they are going to want to go out and fight someone. They said no, they don’t want to fight like that and get hurt and maybe get hurt very bad. All in all I don’t think video games make a difference in what people do after they play it. Most of the time people just don’t have the courage to do it. Or the fear of going to jail or worse scars them so much they will never going to do it.

Animated Movies

This week I am going to talk about animated movies and the message they leave. Animated movies are for the most part directed towards children so it would be expected for them to send a message across that would be positive and appropriate. The only animated movie that comes to my mind that might not be directed only towards young children would be The Incredibles. This movie is for the most part a children's movie but it has some humorous parts in it that adults would catch but probably not young children. This could be to encourage more parents take their children to the movies or for parents to want to go along more often. Either way animated movies have the best messages in them. Today I watched a movie called Surf's Up. This is a movie about a penguin who has a dream to be a surfer like his idol Big Z. He travels all the way from Antarctica to Pen Gu Island where this really big surfer tournament is held. At first he is way out of his league and takes a nasty spill that no one thought he would come back from, but after hanging out with his surfer idol buddy who was supposedly dead, he learns a few life lessons and how to surf. He ends up with a chance to win the whole thing but instead he helps give his buddy Chicken Joe the chance to win and he does. The message that comes from this movie is that winning is not everything and that it is more important to have fun than to win. Two other movies I can recall that I like to watch, in fact I might consider them my favorite two movies, are Cars and Meet the Robinsons. Both of these movies send out a great message. Cars is a movie about a race car with an ego that is way to big. He ends up in a small town that is definitely not growing and he learns a lot about himself and about not forgetting the small people and where you came from. Meet the Robinsons is a movie about a crazy family with a dad being a very intelligent inventor who creates a time machine and it ends up helping a young orphan boy not give up on his dreams and the chance of finding a family. You can learn a lot from watching animated films such as these so I suggest you watch a few, especially these ones. It will definitely be worth your time, trust me.

Country Music

This week I am going to talk about music and the message in the songs. Specifically, I am going to talk about country music. Many people say that country music is depressing. They say that country music artists only sing about heart ache and their dogs passing away. They say that it is depressing to listen to and it makes them want to commit suicide. Now of course they are exaggerating, a lot, because they are more than likely just saying that because they do not like listening to country music for whatever reason it may be and they would never go commit suicide just because of the lyrics of a song. Anyways, people who do not like country music are of course going to talk bad about it because it is not their favorite and it is competition for the type of music they like to listen to. Now, they do make a slight point when saying country music lyrics talk a lot about heart ache and dogs passing away, I Hate Everything by George Strait is an example, but that is definitely not the only thing country music artists sing about. In my opinion, if that is all they sang about, they would not have a very big audience if they had an audience at all. Just like all other styles of music out there, the artists who write country songs often write about things that are happening in the world, things that are happening in their life, and things that they wish would happen or not happen. For example, Courtesy of the Red, White, and Blue by Toby Keith is a song that talks about the 9/11 tourist attack. Toby Keith took an event that was on everyone’s hearts and turned it into a hit. Even though country music has a few depressing songs does not mean that it does not have some other great “happy” songs. What I ask is that you do not judge everyone in a specific group based off of one of the other people in the group. Each person is an individual just as every song is individually different from another song.

Search Engines

Well this week, since we are free to talk about any subject in media we desire, I will be talking about search engines. Today there are many choices to pick from when choosing the right search engine for you. Some are more reliable than others, and some are more reliable when searching for something in particular to that sight. The most reliable in my opinion and I would think most people’s opinions would be Google. You can find pretty much anything you want on Google. Often you hear teachers say, “Google it.” On the show, House, you notice that when they are trying to figure out what their patient has that is making them sick, Dr. House often goes on the Google website and searches the symptoms to determine what the possibilities could be. Google is not only a search engine sight for content, you also have the ability to search for specific images, videos, news, maps, shopping, finance, and books. Although the Google website has mainly good sources and uses, parents be aware. Violence and Adult Sexual Content are also very easily accessible through Google. For this reason, there is a parental control setting on this site. It has three settings, do not filter results, moderately filter results, or strictly filter results. The default setting is the moderate filter and I believe this does a decent job.
Other search engines include MSN, Yahoo, Ask, and Dogpile. These sites all have similar features as the Google site but do not always have the same quality results for you search. Often, each site comes up with different results than the next site so it often becomes useful to use more than one search engine when researching a topic. Sites that may be more helpful for the specific search you are doing would be the Internet Movie Database when searching for movies and WebMD when searching for medical issues. My point of all this is to know the sight you are using, know the source you have picked, and use multiple sources when doing research.

Social Networking

This I will be discussing the effects of social networking on today’s society. Social networking can have its good effects and its bad effects depending on how people use it and what their source of networking is. Most people use social networking in good ways, like to keep in touch with old friends or converse with new friends. Many times I use social networking to talk to my high school classmates or family members that I do not see very often. This usual occurs on a site called Facebook or on Windows Live Messenger. Facebook is a social networking website that you can post comments on people’s walls, write how you are feeling in your status bar, put up pictures and videos, and even chat to other friends who are online. Messenger is similar in the fact that you are able to chat easily with people who are online anywhere around the world. Some downfalls to being able to have all your friends see your pictures and you page is that some of your pictures may not be work friendly and now days employers search people applying for jobs and see what their social networking page looks like. This could be good or bad in a sense. Social networking can also be used to broadcast a large message to everyone. For example, here is President Barack Obama’s MySpace page. From this page he can put anything that he would like the people to be aware of, have people’s input on, or even have people vote on something. There are many many good things that can come from social networking. Some people even use it to find their soul mate. This more often happens in chatrooms like Chatablanca. In these places, you can find people your age, your type, and even people that have the characteristics you like. This can be good or bad. Some sick people use this as a way to find a person to possibly kidnap, or tell everything they want to hear to coax them into doing something they normally would not do. One of my favorite social networking options is Xbox LIVE. Xbox LIVE is a gaming area where you can play and talk to people anywhere in the world from you console at home. I often get together and play a game with friends from home, other colleges, or just people from the same building I live in. Some use it to find new friends. The other day I was playing a game and this guy was hitting on this lady hardcore, it was very funny. I am pretty sure they made each other friends so they could talk whenever they wanted.
So, as you can see there are many options to use for social networking and there are many ways to use in a good way and some ways to use it wrongly. I believe that the good ways greatly out weigh the bad ways. Social networking can be very addicting and cause you to get off track when doing homework so I ask that people try and set aside the Messenger, Facebook, and Myspace for enough time to get their homework done, then go right back to whatever you were doing.

Sequels and Spin-offs

This week I am going to discuss sequels in reality television shows and other reality television shows being developed from previous ones. This would be something like American Idol or the Real World, where a show appears on television and then a year or so down the road, there is a sequel where the same show appears with different characters or something to that effect. American Idol has aired on television for eight years now and Real World has aired for 22 seasons. Now shows that have been developed from previous shows would be where a new story line is created from the old one or a character from the previous show starts a show similar to that show. The Real World is similar to this having shows called Real World Road Rules.
For this topic I am going to use the show called Flavor of Love as my example to explain this. Flavor of Love is a show where Flavor Flav’, a famous bachelor, is looking for a love in this world through having contestants, all women of course, come onto his show to try to impress him enough to be called his girlfriend. Well, he finds a love but it does not work out for him or her so he has another show called Flavor of Love 2, sequel. This show is the same but with different contestants. Then, once again his relationship does not work so he does Flavor of Love 3. A contestant from this show then creates her own version called I Love New York. The contestant, New York, has guy contestants compete for her love. Like the previous show, her relationship did not last so she had a sequel, I Love New York 2. Now, two contestants, Chance and Real, from the show I Love New York create their own version of the show called Real Chance of Love. This show is similar to both the previous two except it involves two guys, each looking for love.
Like you can see, a famous person starts a show and makes one of his contestants famous by calling him/her boyfriend/girlfriend but someone else even more famous by giving them the opportunity to make their own name on their own show. What a great world we live in!

Reality TV: Categories Four and Five

This week we I will finish my discussion on categorizing reality television shows. In the blog posts I have done in the last few weeks I have talked about game shows, tag along television, and improvement shows. This week I will be doing two categories in one post. My first category will be dating shows. Dating shows are pretty self explanatory, they are shows where a guy or a girl has contestants that go on dates with him or her and he or she chooses the person who they liked best or maybe they will not choose anyone at all. Some examples of these shows would be, The Dating Game, Blind Date, and Room Raiders. Other shows I would include in this category would be Elimidate, Next, and Parental Control.
My second category in this week’s post would be Hidden Camera shows. Hidden camera shows are also pretty self explanatory. They are shows where a hidden camera watches a person or a group of people react to a situation or watches how they act behind closed doors. Some shows I would include in this group would be, Scare Tactics, Candid Camera, Punk'd, and Room 401. Other shows I would include in this category would be Trigger Happy TV, The Jamie Kennedy Experiment, and Howie Do It.
Now like every week, this week I am going to ask that if anyone has any suggestions on how to better my categories whether it be add a show, move a show, get rid of a show, or simply just change the name of a category. I would appreciate any help I can get because I know my categories are definitely not perfect. Also, I do not watch a whole lot of televisions so I do not know each and every reality tv show out there which causes some missing shows in a lot of categories. So once again, I would appreciate anyone’s help.