Starting the Discussion

This post is a quick announcement post letting you all know that I'm doing some research before I start up the next little series of posts.  To get your mind juices flowing, I'll give you a brief 'teaser' paragraph. Think of it as a movie trailer for the next few weeks of posts.

What if companies acted as governments?  I'm not talking about lobbying or bribing, I mean direct control.  Sierra Leone's operating budget is somewhere around 340 million USD. Walmart's is well over 25 billion USD, according to their sales report last year.  What would happen if Walmart took over control of the governance of Sierra Leone, moving all manufacturing there instead of to China and India?  I posit that if Walmart was given this opportunity, Sierra Leone would become the richest nation in the region within 50 years, if not sooner.

Let the discussion begin! 

How One Generation Destroys the Next

This post might will be a bit different than what you've been reading thus far.  Unlike the recent series about online societies which was an objective academic paper, this is going to be....what some might call a rant.

I work at an elementary school for an organization that runs afterschool programs for kids.  It's a great way to meet kids and to be a friend to those who might have few others.  On Friday, the school put on a dance for the kids after the school day.  There was dancing, food, games, etc. The music, however, is what really irked me.  The first song they played was "Like a G6" by Far East Movement. If you aren't familiar with the song, the basic theme is that going to the club, getting drunk, and finding a hookup is a great way to spend your time.

Remember, this is an elementary school dance.

The songs continued with the following:

Blow Me by P!NK
Call Me Maybe by Carly Rae Jepsen
Teenage Dream by Katy Perry
Tik Tok by Ke$ha
...and the list goes on....

Now, I realize that I come from a fairly conservative background and my morality is pretty grounded in my faith, but the question should still stand....HOW IS THIS OKAY?

Every one of these songs has a set of common themes. They all glorify sex, alcohol, partying, and "getting wild".  If you're an adult and want to listen to this stuff when you go out, then that's fine. It's your life.  But DO NOT allow elementary school kids do the same, especially not at a school function!  People talk all the time about the rate of teenage pregnancy and underage drinking and how today's youth have lost any kind of moral center.  Why are we surprised that these things happen after we expose them to music and the parts of culture that say that those kid of things are what makes you socially acceptable?!

In essence, don't blame your daughter for having regular sex with her boyfriend at age 13 if you let her listen to songs that constantly bring up sex and alcohol. You may not think kids understand,  but I work with them; believe me, they no exactly what those songs are about.  If your daughter gets pregnant because of living a promiscuous lifestyle, don't wonder where she got the idea, and don't blame it on anyone but yourself.

 Yes, the music is out there.
 No, you shouldn't let your kid listen to it.

 Yes, it is your fault.

The Effect of Online Societies IRL, Part Five (and Bibliography)

Entertainment

            We’ve already touched on the issue of online societies that revolve around internet gaming, but because of its popularity, it deserves its own section in this paper.  Online gaming is a multi-billion dollar industry that caters to almost every demographic in some respect.  For the sake of this paper, I will be examining the more addictive and more societal MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Game) and other “hardcore” gaming societies rather than the millions of casual players who tend not to be as involved in their games.       

            To start, the MMORPG is arguably the most prevalent and most societal genre of game in existence today.  This genre is defined by games with high production value, hundreds of hours of gameplay, and massive player bases.  One of the most popular MMORPGs is Blizzard Entertainment’s World Of Warcraft, which at its peak had over 12 million players (forbes.com). This game sparked controversy due to reports that many players were becoming addicted to the game and were sacrificing their real lives to spend time win the game. More on that later.

            As a former player of World of Warcraft, I can attest to the fact that the online society of the game is extremely prevalent.  WoW players have their own language, customs, social norms, rules, and hierarchy.  Because of the hundreds or sometimes thousands of hours that players spend in the game world, the umbrella society of WoW is also paired with dozens and dozens of sub societies that have their own rules and systems of interaction.  Within the game, there are three major types of player societies; Player versus Player (PvP), Player versus Environment (PvE), and Roleplayers (RP).  Once a player has chosen which of these three groups they want to be a part of, they then have to decide what class to play.  Each class is different and determines how one can play the game.  After this, players split up into guilds that are groups of players who bond together to achieve common goals and spend a lot of time together in game.  There are further sub societies within guilds as well.  Do you get the point?  Online games like this create extremely complex societies within them. Without these societies, the game world would likely crumble and descend into anarchy, but because players arrange themselves into these online societies, order is maintained. 

            Now, if you’ve never played a game like this before, you may be unfamiliar with how in-depth the life of a guild member is.  For this example, I’ll be using my current experience in a guild for the upcoming MMORPG entitled Guild Wars 2.  Yes, I said upcoming.  The game hasn’t even released yet and I am already well embedded in my guild.  We have weekly meetings to discuss new members, most of who have to endure a rigorous interview process.  There is a forum in which we are expected to post at least twice a day and there are regular times that we are strongly encouraged to take place in guild activates in other games and occasionally offline events as well.  Once the game launches, I’ll be responsible for numerous in-game duties such as gathering materials for my guild, participating in scheduled events, and of course keeping up with everything that I currently do on our website.  This is why many people can easily become addicted to these games.  They are so involved that many people find more satisfaction in these online societies than they do in their offline ones.  These games can eventually completely change someone.  They become confused about which “reality” is more important and that leads to addiction. 

The Future of Society

            The rise of online societies has been extremely fast and seemingly has occurred under most peoples’ nose.  Without knowing it, many of us have become dependent on one or more online societies to augment our offline lives.  This is not always harmful, but it is very necessary to understand the effect that our two types of societies have on one another.  The goal of course, is to balance the influence of each so that we don’t lose ourselves in our onlie activates and forget that it is all virtual. This is becoming more and more difficult as online societies slowly become tangible offline as well.

            Will we eventually reach a point where the line between the virtual and the physical is gone?  Is there a point when our Facebook friends, our gaming habits, and our shopping trends merge with our education, our family, and our careers?  I think is isn’t unreasonable to say that in many ways we have already reached that point.  We like to think that the lives we live offline and the lives we live online are completely separate things, but have we deluded ourselves into thinking this?  Is it possible that we don’t want to accept the truth that we are at a point where one cannot live without the other?  These online societies formed because we couldn’t find something like them offline.  If they were to stripped away suddenly, would we be able to endure?  How would we live without our Facebook profiles? Our Amazon wishlists? Our guilds?  I don’t think we could.

           

Works Cited

"About the USA E-Commerce." About the USA. Web. 22 Apr. 2012. <http://usa.usembassy.de/economy-ecommerce.htm>.

"Ben Huh." 301 Moved Permanently. Web. 22 Apr. 2012. <http://blog.seattlepi.com/benhuh/2012/01/18/why-did-the-anti-sopapipa-movement-go-viral-so-quickly/>.

Chiang, Oliver. "Blizzard On World Of Warcraft's 12 Million Subscribers, And Its Upcoming MMO Successor." Forbes. Forbes Magazine, 08 Oct. 2010. Web. 22 Apr. 2012. <http://www.forbes.com/sites/oliverchiang/2010/10/08/blizzard-on-world-of-warcrafts-12-million-subscribers-and-its-upcoming-mmo-successor/>.

The Economist. The Economist Newspaper. Web. 22 Apr. 2012. <http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2012/02/daily-chart-0>.

"Featured in Social Media." Mashable. Web. <http://mashable.com/2010/07/21/facebook-500-million-2/>.

"Fowl Play." The Angry Birds Videogame Makes Digital History. Web. 22 Apr. 2012. <http://www.adweek.com/news/technology/fowl-play-132086>.

Phillips, Sarah. "A Brief History of Facebook." The Guardian. Guardian News and Media, 24 July 2007. Web. 22 Apr. 2012.   <http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2007/jul/25/media.newmedia>.

"Society." Merriam-Webster. Merriam-Webster. Web. 22 Apr. 2012. <http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/society>.

Web. <http://go.channeladvisor.com/rs/channeladvisor/images/us-wp-consumer-survey-2010.pdf>.

Web. <https://www.facebook.com/about/ads/#click>.

Web. <http://www.yelp.com/>.

"World Internet Usage Statistics News and World PopulationStats." Internet World Stats. Web. 22 Apr. 2012. <http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm>.

The Effect of Online Societies IRL, Part Four

The benefit isn’t one-sided.  With the rise of E-commerce, there have also been major strides in customer service which has led to a new type of online society.  In today’s online market, the customer review is incredibly important, with a product’s success sometimes directly tied to the star rating it receives from customers online.  In the 2010 Christmas Customer Survey, Channeladvisor.com found that 92% of consumers consult customer reviews of a product before they buy, and 46% said that they bought a product based on the ratings and reviews of that product (http://go.channeladvisor.com).  This new society of online consumers goes even farther, with sites like Yelp.com is a site that allows users to log in and find businesses that other users like or dislike and base their actions on those reviews (yelp.com).  This is a direct example of how the web intermingles with our real lives.  My choice of dinner reservation or dry cleaner or dog groomer can actually be affected by a few lines of text on a screen.  Wouldn’t it be a strange feeling to know that by typing a paragraph about slow service and bad fish that you directly changed how someone else acted?  Mindboggling! 

            One of the best examples of how an online business and customer reviews have offline ramifications is the wildly popular game Angry Birds.  In 2009, Finland-based game company Rovio Moblie Ltd. was heading into bankruptcy.  With over 51 games that never took flight, the developer needed a hit.  They took that flightlessness and formed a game around it that has been downloaded over 200 million times, making it the most popular paid application in the United States.  Rovio didn’t end the Angry Birds brand there.  A slew of non-digital merchandise has hit the market, including plush toys, apparel, bags, and even board games!  Rovio took their digital game and has turned it into an offline brand with merchandise now even available in Walmart (adweek.com).  This would not have happened without the existence of an online society of mobile gamers who support the game and clamor for more.

            It’s not really a surprise to see companies taking full advantage of these immensely populous online societies and shaping them to fir their own needs.  In fact, it is very common to see various online societies working together for common purposes.  For example, much of Facebook.com’s revenue is geneterated through selling advertising space on their site.  In fact, Facebook uses complex algorithms to match up their user with advertisements of products that they are likely to be interested in.  If I post a status update about going with my family to see a hockey game, it’s very likely that within 24 hours, there will be at least a half dozen advertisements for tickets and merchandise to show up on my homepage (facebook.com).  This cooperation between these groups indicates not only the existence and influence of online societies; it also suggests that these societies work collectively to accomplish goals that benefit them all.  In this way, online societies are somewhat like individuals with ambitions and intentions.