Journal 10/20-10/27 by Lindsay

   These past couple of weeks have been pretty boring as far as Facebook goes. Also, I've been really busy and haven't been able to spend a lot of time on Facebook. I've noticed though that when I leave FB open and leave the room or go to class someone always IMs me. I feel bad because they probably thought I was ignoring them. I think Facebook should allow you to set your IM status to 'away.' 

   Even though the majority of college students don't use Myspace anymore, I still do. I really enjoy posting bulletins with random videos, surveys, pictures and other things. Yesterday I posted a bulletin about Allen Hall's Zombie Mob that's coming up. I posted a video I found from last year's Zombie Mob and wrote in the bulletin "Jealous? You should be." It was meant to be funny and attract attention. A friend of mine from back home even responded and said how awesome the video looked and what not. A girl from my high school responded and simply said, "Lindsay...you're a fucking dumbass. See you on campus next year." I have no idea why I deserved a message like that and I'm not sure if that is some sort of threat. After reading that message I felt sick. Do people seriously have to act like that? If my bulletin offended you or was annoying I might be able to understand. I told my roommate and she said that even made her uncomfortable. For the following two hours I felt sick to my stomach and nervous about what could happen next. Before I could delete and block her from my Myspace she had already deleted me. This has made me want to re-evaluate my so called 'friends' on Facebook and especially Myspace. I've begun deleting people from my Myspace that I never talk to anymore and that aren't really my friends. It's pretty ridiculous how people can technically bully others through this form of communication. I didn't realize how bad it can really make you feel too. I could barely sleep last night because I kept thinking about that message. 

   From now on I'm going to really pay attention to my 'friends' on Facebook and Myspace. If they aren't really my friend I am going to delete them. 

Journal 10/27

Yesterday and the rest of the week i spent some time with the fake account just adding people and surprisingly almost everyone i added confirmed me. This just makes proves my point that the number of friends people have is quite irrelevant. Well, at first i thought that people would add those that they barely even knew and never talked to but they are also willing to add people they never heard of. Its crazy, how most of the people just added me and moved on. A few people did bother to ask how they knew me but that was actually quite rare. My imaginary character is now up to about forty. As for my account, i have been using it less and less of late. Last year i used it a lot more but i am just getting tired of facebook.

Journal 10/27 Gedion

This week was probably the week that I used facebook the least since the semester began. Some of my friends were mad at me for not responding to their messages, wall posts, and invitations. I barely logged on to my facebook account because when I got the notifications through my email, I was like whatever. I felt lazy to log in and respond to peoples messages. I guess one of the reasons I did not spend much time on facebook this week is because I was not as board as I was last week. For me personally, getting on facebook is one of those things I do when I have nothing better to do and I need to kill some time. The only time I logged on to facebook this week was on Sunday night for a couple of minutes to accept friendship request from an old friend and to clear my notifications. While I was online Danny Favela tried to chat with me but instead I ignored him, logged out and went to his room to chat in person!!!

Privacy prompt

Hey
Don't worry about the prompt for today. We are going to do an in-class writing assignment that will act as this weeks prompt. Please continue your "journal" per usual!

CLASS IS CANCELED TODAY

Today (Oct 20) class is canceled. Sorry for the last minute notification.

Prompt 10/20 Gedion

As I was reading this speech, I was thinking to myself, we are well past this vision Al Gore had and was talking about. In my opinion I think he did a great job of painting the future. Former vice president Al Gore mentioned that their plan was based on five principals saying,
“Our plan is based on five principles: First, encourage private
investment; Second, promote competition; Third, create a flexible
regulatory framework that can keep pace with rapid technological and
market changes; Fourth, provide open access to the network for all
information providers; and Fifth, ensure universal service.”
An example of this would be, currently we have private companies like Google and YouTube and an example of some of their competitors are yahoo and Microsoft and we have an agency like the FCC monitoring things.
It was a very realistic and achievable vision at the time because currently we have managed to accomplish almost everything he talked about in his speech and we have advance even more because now we have things like cell phones with videos, global positioning systems, email, internet connections, text messaging, chatting and cameras on them helping us share information instantly. Not only have we created some crazy information exchanging gadgets like the super cell phones, but we now have social networking websites like Facebook and MySpace. I think the existence of the social networking websites will assist us tremendously in sharing information and staying connected to a larger network of friends compared to a situation where we did not have social networking websites.

Journal 10/20 by Justin

So my fake persona has been racking up the friends lately. This past week was the first time I'd ever seen Facebook tell me that I was adding too many friends and that if I didn't slow down, I would be blocked. BLOCKED...bring it on FB!
I think that I will somehow use this fake persona in my course project, but I don't exactly know how yet.
Oh, I have also been checking my "wall" via the fake persona and residents of Allen have been asking me to put a "real" picture up, not just some photograph. While I have not done so yet, any suggestions? Also, I took the liberty of responding to a girl who wrote on the wall asking if I was a friend of another resident, since that it how we might "know" each other. So, I took the easy way and just replied yeah, and that was that. Any suggestions for a picture? I obviously don't want to use mine, but I think that it would be a breach of morality to use another resident's picture, plus that's just plain creepy. Any help here would be much appreciated.

Reaction to Article by Justin

While ignoring the fact that many claim Al Gore stated once before that he created the internet, I found this article to be inspiring for the times. He opens with Americanized ideals by quoting authors and then goes on to develop five reasons why the Global Information Infrastructure (GII) needs to be created. It is clear that with the creation if a more globalized interweb, competition has spiked. However, I now see the two main competitors, Google and Yahoo!, almost metaphorically fighting each other. Which one will be the new AT&T or MicroSoft? Regardless, will we, the consumers, have to break up another monopoly in the future?
Gore's speech, clearly not written by merely himself, is both realistic and rosy. It is realistic in the case that yes, it is possible to create such an infrastructure but when he speaks of a boost in healthcare, I feel that such a crucial aspect has yet to be reached. Sure, we may be closer to developing/finding a better treatment for AIDS, but we are probably not close in finding a cure for it; and no, $183,000 injected into your bloodstream will not cure you from AIDS (all you South Park viewers understand what I'm talking about).
The fact that former VP Gore addressed the ITU alomost 15 years ago goes to show how much America had invested in the internet. Since its conception as a tool of military use, the interwebs have greatly expanded and taken over. Honestly, could any of us go a month without using the internet? I think not.
Social networking probably helps the GII because more people are able to communicate to others they never would have met otherwise. Through the GII, individuals can meet over the internet and discover things they never could have found in a book or on television. While I don't read any with the exception of this one, blogs have come to the forefront as a news-leaking source. Sure, not all blogs are legitimate and many, if not all, are biased, but individuals can still communicate on a global scale, which, if I'm not mistaken, is the goal of the GII.

Gedion 10/19

This week was a crazy week because I kept on logging in and out of facebook randomly for no reason. Now that I think about it, I must have been really, really, bored. I would just log into facebook and then go through the profiles, wall posts and pictures of some of my good friends who live in Chicago just because I was board and had nothing better to do (I was basically stalking them). This week I spent more time on facebook compared to other weeks because, other than the stalking I did over the week, I had a couple of wall posts from some of my friends and I was also tagged in a picture. I was also added as a friend by some random people I had never met before. Since the people who requested my friendship never sent me any messages telling me where or how they met me, I just ignored their request for friendship. I also requested my friend Lins roommate Junping as a friend. But the thing that took the most time for me on facebook this week was that I chatted with a friend of mine from Chicago for more than an hour. She saw that I was online and started chatting with me then from there, we went on and on until I had to go down for dinner. That about summarizes my activity on facebook for the entire week. Oh, yeah I almost forgot to mention that I ignored a lot of invitations to events and clubs I am not even a part of or don’t want to be a part of.

Journal 10/19

I have been spending less and less time on facebook recently. Facebook has become something that I do when i have nothing to do on the internet or once in a while check and see if anything important happened. Recently, I have just spent more time away from the computer but i really have not missed facebook at all. Because i talk to my closest friends in person or text. I am not like some people, i can go without facebook for a while. You can keep up with people by checking every couple of days but people have been taking it to extreme when they are spending hours a day. I know my sister would do that for some time and i found it ridiculous that people would spend so much time in the computer. I think facebook is a great tool for keeping in touch but you cannot become so dependent on it.

Global Information Infrastructure prompt

For this week's prompt please read the following speech presented by Al Gore:

http://w2.eff.org/Infrastructure/Govt_docs/gii_gore_buenos_aires.speech

Please review your initial reactions about the speech. Do you think he has a valid point? Is it realistic or too rosy? How do you feel about our progress as a globe knowing this speech was delivered almost 15 years ago? Do you think that social networking helps or hinders a "global information infrastructure?"

If this concept interests you, feel free to find out more information at:
http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue5_8/borgman/#b12

Do note this is the first time all semester I have assigned reading and it is a speech - please spend the 20 minutes reading it and reflecting upon it as we will be discussing your reactions in class.

Journal 10/16 (quite a rant)

I'm getting so sick of facebook...and it's all your fault Rebecca! I defriended my ex two days ago because I was sick of my unrelenting stalking. I would stalk her profile to see who left her comments (figure out who they were if I could), see who she was talking to...what her status was...did it apply to me? I mean really, it's ridiculous. So I defriended her. Now I can't see her her wall, but I do still have access to her page. (so just the regular updates...status...and pictures) Though, this is better. I also found myself setting my status and making posts/changes to my profile/making comments on other people's pages with the thought in the back of my mind..that of course my ex would see this. The world revolves around me after all, right? WRONG! That is clearly the point. Facebook makes you feel so important...validates your every whim. Want to feel like someone cares? Check your wall...no comments? Write on someone elses wall (write something that will make them respond, such as a compliment...they'll be sure to compliment you back) within minutes you'll have a response. Just keep checking! Want to play a board game? No one to play with? No worries...get the scrabble application..and play away....only one move at a time..this game will never end! Want to feel beautiful? Browse through your pictures..and all the comments people have left you...or even better...browse through everyone elses ugly ones...that'll do the trick. Hungry? Play food frenzy and save some cash. Horny? message that hook up from last weekend...flirt a bit with the hottie who you met over the weekend (she just accepted your friend request....obviously she likes you...I mean you're the best of friends now right?) You're the best of friends...because you went one second from seeing just her picture (hoping you remembered the right name when you friend requested her) to now knowing various pieces of information ranging from what high school she attended to what her favorite musician is. Such information...once upon a time...was what you figured out when you really invested time in people...invested time to get to know them. Our generation is quite a lazy one. Prime example: not only do we have cell phones (rather than rotary or land lines) we have voice dial. Rather than spending time to get to know the intricate details of someone's life...you have your work cut out for you. Memorize their profile...and hope it was real...better yet...hope that they're really who they claim to be in that profile...

I hope some of that made sense....

Journal 10/13

My Facebook experiences lately have been kind of crazy. Without going into details of my dramatic life I'll just say that Facebook could have definitely caused a lot more drama. To sum it up a girl could have sent me really nasty messages through Facebook and I'm surprised she didn't. On Facebook you can view other people's profiles if you have a couple friends in common sometimes. Well I was interested in someone who's ex was being a complete psycho. I could view her page so I'm sure she could view mine. I'm just glad lots of drama didn't start because of the ability to stalk other people's Facebooks.

Through the past week I've found myself checking a certain someone's Facebook multiple times during the day just to see what's going on with him. The ending result was generally nothing.

Overall Facebook has left me un-entertained and unsatisfied. Something else interesting that happened was when a guy in our dorm instant messaged me (through Facebook) AGAIN! I've talked to several female friends of mine and he always tries to start conversations with them too. I've never spoken to him in real life and I kind of thinks it's creepy that he always IMs me when I'm signed into FB. My roommate even completely closed her Facebook window so he would stop trying to talk to her.

Last week I had a friend request from some random guy who was friends with the guy I was interested in (we'll call him "John"). Every time he and I were both online at the same time he would talk to me. I'm sure he was just trying to be nice and make a new friend but I found it somewhat creepy. All in all he invited me to a party that "John" had told me about before. I hadn't intended on going unless "John" made it evident we wanted me to come. Eventually "John" told me he wanted me to come to the party. While I was there I met the creeper dude from Facebook and he came off as kind of creepy at first but turned out to be a pretty cool guy.

Journal 10/13 Gedion

This past week, I did not do much on facebook other than logging in for a minute or two to check if I had any messages, wall posts or to check if I had been requested as a friend by someone I knew. None of these happened so I would just sign out right away. The most I spent on facebook this week was about five minutes on Sunday night looking for a couple of my friends email addresses. I was looking for their email addresses because I had to choose like 10 friends and send them an email for this project I had to do for one of my classes. So I looked for their email addresses on their facebook “info” pages. That’s all the activity I did on facebook this week.

cartoon

Today in class, we will be discussing how relevant this cartoon is to present day.

Journal 10/13

I have been spending less and less time with my facebook account these days. I think because its largely due to the fact that i get email reminders when something happens on facebook, like when someone sent me a message or wrote on my wall. So i just have my gmail open and unless something particularly interesting happens i wont sign on to facebook. I only spent a couple minutes with my real account replying to a friend .

I also spent some time with my fake persona. It was really interesting that my made up persona was added by two people as a friend. My next step will be to send one of my friends a message to see how he responds.

Journal 10/13

So ever since we started creating these new facebook profiles...or rather fake personas, I have felt weird signing on to my account. I feel that (and let's take a more philosophical approach) even though the page I sign onto isn't the one I created for this class, I fear it might be the same falsification in a way. How much of who we are do we create by how we represent ourselves? Isn't facebook just a representation of us on the internet? So really, isn't my facebook account a representation of the creation that I desire to be? Regardless if I have fulfilled that desire in certain departments or not, it nonetheless remains a false construction of me.

As I've said, lately I've spent less time on facebook. This is what happened with myspace too...except at that point, I switched to facebook. With myspace, the final straw was seeing a special on tv about child rapists/molesters who set up meetings with the kids through myspace.

As for an update on my facebook life....I think I found out who the mystery honestybox poster was....yay!

the case of Facebook v. SecondLife by Justin

In my experience, I found it much more entertaining to laugh at all of the people that had agreed to friend me, or rather, my fake persona on Facebook than I did with the SecondLife project. I thoroughly enjoyed the few messages I received asking who I was. I feel like I should tell them when the class is over that the profile is just a fraudulent account created to see how social systems coexist on the world wide interwebs, but then again, I probably will not. I managed to “friend” over a hundred people in the Urbana/Champaign region, most, if not all, of whom attend the university. I know that we were supposed to post about this earlier, but it is still entertaining to write about this fake persona.
As I previously stated, I did not enjoy the SecondLife project as much as the former Facebook persona. This is for several reasons. For one, it seems like I’m playing a video game on my computer and I gave up on video games when I came to college. Sure, if somebody busts out GoldenEye or Mario Kart 64 I’ll play it, but seriously, I gave up on video games, so I was really turned off by it. Also, I understand that users on SecondLife may enjoy creating a fully detailed fake persona via image, but I did not. I just chose a standard male model and that was it; I was not motivated to change it. Another reason I didn’t like it was that when I started to explore the area, the system took too long to load. In fact, it took so long, than when it finally finished, I ended up in a pornographic area, one of which was quite graphic and completely unexpected. So, with all of those negative experiences in one session, you can see why I was so turned off by SecondLife.
I did not communicate at all with other users in either Facebook or SecondLife. That said, there is not much difference in my experience in finding others to “talk” to. I guess a major difference is that with Facebook you can just “add” friends without really needing to “explore” your virtual surroundings.

Who are you...REALLY?! (prompt)

I hope you have had a lot of fun with your fake Facebook personas and creating your avatar on SecondLife. So for your prompt today, take a screen shot of both your fake Facebook persona and your SecondLife avatar and include it in your response. Compare and contrast your experiences with the fake Facebook persona, or fake group and the SecondLife avatar. How were the experiences the same? Different? What shocked you? What happened that you didn't expect to happen? What were you expecting to happen that didn't happen? Have any crazy stories you want to share?

(I am expecting this post to be a little bit longer than previous ones because I am sure you have a lot to talk about!)

Journal 10/13 by Justin

So I signed on to Facebook today to work on our "fake account" projects. I first went on my personal fake persona, Andrew Carnegy, and to my surprise, many people I asked to "friend" me did so. In my opinion, this is quite comical. For one, they have no idea who I actually am. Also, I think due to my "profile picture" they are oblivious to who this person could possibly be. I believe I made close to 60 "friends" in less than two days of this project, so I think I'm off to a pretty good start.
As for the fake group account we (Lihy, Jay, and myself) created in class, it is also going well. It is awkward reading the messages that ask who I/we/she is. Since we created a female from LA who currently is in the Urbana/Champaign network, I think that more people are screening the account. Several users refused to friend this fake person and instead asked me via a message, “Hey, do I know you?” or “Hey sorry, but did we take a class together or something?” It actually makes me feel a little better about Facebook users, because some people have proven that not all college students are naive.
Has anyone else experienced similar messages? Has anybody had really random things sent to them that are funny? If so, I would love to hear them.

Second Life

Hello my fake personas,

Go play:

www.secondlife.com

Keep notes (mental or not) as to what goes on. You will be writing a prompt response to it.

Journal 10/6 by Justin

So nothing really exciting seems to be happening on Facebook anymore, anyone else notice that? I mean really, I don't know what else the ole'FB really has to offer that none of us have seen before. I log in, check my notifications and various requests, respond to a few wall posts, and then aimlessly keep checking back and forth between my homepage and profile page. Anyone else in this same boat?
I don't really notice the advertisements anymore, which could be either a good thing or a bad thing. It could be good because it means that I've been able to ignore them, but it could be bad if it means that I've become conditioned to them already. Either way, I don't think they contribute much to my overall "facebooking" experience.
Oh, and did you all notice that nobody is really complaining about the new layout? Yeah, like we, the consumers, are really ever going to have a say in anything that ever changes online; fat chance. It's true that we can always demand products that we pay for, i.e., hybrid and fuel efficient vehicles, but as for FB and other commodities that are currently free, really the consumers that pay nothing won't be able to change the system.
Call me a geek, but does anybody else remember SKYNET, the computer system that becomes self-aware and creates the robots in the Terminator movies? How far away are we from that? We have all this code that can relate ads to us, so how long from now will they, the codes, be able to guess what we're going to do, or worse yet, counter what we decide? Crazy right?

Fake Account

Okay, so I wasn't all too sure how I felt about creating a fake Facebook account for class. Sure, I have made a few in the past to troll crazy political and religious Facebook groups, but that's just in my own personal free time, something I lack right now. As I created my character, Andrew Carnegy (because the jerks at FB caught on to "Andrew Carnegie" and wouldn't allow me to register as that name), I had to do all this g-mail crap. First off, who needs three gmail accounts anyway? Well apparently, the answer is anyone that's trying to make multiple fake FB user accounts, that's who!
So I started by friending some people and obtaining a discrete profile picture, one that wouldn't show my face, but one that looked like a college student might have taken it. After that, I joined an Allen Hall student group or two and continued on friendind.
One piece of advice, the more people you friend with a fake account, the more "fill in the blank" boxes you have to fill out. What a bunch of crap. FB really is trying hard to stop us from having fun. I hope that part wears off soon, so I can just click "ADD FRIEND" and call it a day.

Prompt 4 Gedion

I first created a Google email account with the name Claire Baker. Then I signed up on facebook with that email and name. I created her because my roommate speaks French and likes French girls so I wanted to do a prank on him. so I created a girl that is 20 years old and has a French name and goes to U of I. I added Danny’s fake persona Lizi and you our instructor Kristin as my friends. I haven’t done much with this persona yet, but I noticed the ads I get are for weight loss and super model ads.

10/6 by Jay

To be honest, I was kind of sad this week because absolutely nothing happened on my facebook. No one left me any comments or anything and I didn't get invited to any events; pretty much a stale e-week. The question is, why does this upset me? Have I gotten to the point where my life is so saturated by technology that I expect something to happen in my e-life every day? For instance, I have facebook alerts on three different applications - Digsby (IM), my cell phone, AND Firefox. So every time someone leaves me a wall comment, three things pop up to tell me! Plus, I feel kind of nerdy when someone sends me a message and I reply within like a minute or two. Sometimes I feel like I should wait a couple days on purpose just to pretend like I have more important things to do (this week, playing the Sims 2 for like 6 hours). Anyway, apparently my idea of a relatively low amount of facebook activity is less than like, 3 comments a day. And Friday and Saturday I got no comments at all. HOW VERY DISAPPOINTING.

Journal 4 Gedion

This week I did not do much on facebook. I had some late birthday wishers who wrote on my wall wishing me a happy birthday. I responded to them saying thank you. I got a message from a group of my friends asking me to go out to get dinner on Thursday. I sent them back a message declining the offer because I had a meeting go to. The main facebook activity I did this week was creating another facebook account. I created another email then used that email to create a fake persona on facebook.

Journal 10/6

Nothing interesting on Facebook lately. I barely have any comments. I found myself forgetting to check facebook during the day. It's not something I cling to as much anymore. I will admit that when I do go online, I stalk my (recent) ex. I'm trying to see what she's up to...if she's posting anything that suggests she misses me. I know...it's beyond ridiculous. I did figure out who my honesty box person was...or at least I'm pretty sure I figured it out. I sent her another comment, and from her reply, I was able to narrow it down. I did leave a comment on the suspected honesty-boxers profile, I'll keep you posted about that...

I got an event invitation from Rabbi Dovid for Yom Kippur at the Union. I keep getting those kinds of invites for Hillel functions. I just wish I could somehow let them know that I'm simply not interested in getting involved.

This is weekend number three for me of staying in. Though, this is the first time I really had to. I was in too much pain (I'm getting better, but I was really sick last week). So yet again, Monday has arrived, and people have posted pictures from the weekend. That is always annoying for me...I can't figure out if the annoyance is because I stayed in and didn't party...or because they're just stupid for posting such incriminating pictures.

Journal 10/6

I logged on to facebook and glanced over the news feed and then quickly checked my profile. Someone had superpoked me so i took the time to reply. An old friend had sent me a message on facebook so i took the time to reply to him. I didnt have much time to spend because of all the work that i had to do sunday night. So i logged off pretty happy that i only spent ten minutes on facebook.

New FB Identity

So I asked you on Monday to create a fake persona and mess around on Facebook with him/her/it. How did that go? Who did you create and why? How was/is that person different than you? What did you do with this new persona? Did you get anyone to friend you? Answer these questions and detail any other funny/interesting/scary stories about your new persona.