Let's try this again.

Taking a stab at this again, because I was a bit, erm, vague in the first attempt:

For my final paper, I want to take a look at the digital divide w/r/t gender and access, specifically being female and how this may or may not impact one's use and access (and perhaps gender dominance) of digital and social media.

An article I found recently asks, essentially, do ladies dominate Twitter? And the blog writeup that accompanied the link argued, "No, they don't. But they dominate other sites." How is this so? And how, exactly, is this accounted for? If not Twitter, where do women dominate? What about ChatRoulette? It's a social medium (ladies!) with a gambling- and voyeur-type preface (dudes!), so who are you most likely to "next" upon? Early statistics show it's more likely to be a guy, but why?

Do societal expectations of domesticity hurt or help women in the digital divide? Does it depend on the area of technology that determines how adept (or inept) women may be? Does it depend on cultural values and where they live? Do women see less of a divide in social media, but more of a divide when it comes to video games or programming? If so, why? Where do forums, generally social in nature but more text based in execution, fall along the social media spectrum, and does this affect how many users are of the female persuasion?

These are all topics that I hope to address in my paper, and perhaps a few more that I haven't touched on that may come to me in a "Eureka"-type moment.

I anticipate that research on ChatRoulette will be sparse because of how new it is, but I also imagine that what I do find with be pretty helpful in the long run. Though limited in number, amounts of data and reports I've seen so far seem to be surprisingly in depth.

Suggestions? Tips? Questions I maybe haven't considered that I should? Leave it in the comments.

Feminism and games: A paper topic (or, My black and blue pony)

Sorry for spacing the Friday at 5 p.m. goal. I even had my topic picked out! I was just busy getting ready for a weekend at Emerald City Comic Con, which was sadly a bust because I didn't get to see Stan Lee OR Leonard Nimoy. But I got a neat shirt and some cool prints out of it, so it wasn't so bad.

But more on to the topic: what is my paper topic? I've decided to revisit a subject I wrote about for a 500-level class last semester: video games and gender. I enjoyed this topic quite a bit, and feel like I may even have some new views to throw into my paper blender thanks to another semester of theory education. I have new material (thanks, FF13 and Bayonetta!) to use, new studies to pull from, and new lessons on a "feministic" approach to digital media with respect to video games.

I'll probably end up pulling from my original paper (but not the entire thing, because that's academic dishonesty right there) and using The Big Pink Reader, as well as a couple of other books I have scattered around my house, for my academic sources.

Moreover, this topic will be a challenge to address again because it has been such a short period of time between papers. But I also remember finding great new studies literally the same day I'd turned in my paper and being so frustrated that I couldn't include that data, and also feeling like I hit the page limit on that term paper before I'd even really begun to get into my arguments. I may have some material I'll be able to sweep up from the cutting room floor, polish up and present as new-new.

We'll see how it goes. I may even end up trashing the original topic and going for race and video games, which should present a fantastic challenge thanks to my Wonderbread upbringing and, thus, perspective on games.

SHOULD BE EXCITING. I can't wait to start writing this the weekend before my presentation! (I won't, really, but procrastination is how I roll more often than not.)

Happy spring break, digital savants!

Nerd spiker

Lori Kendall's "Oh no! I'm a nerd!" really resonated with me, and perhaps it's most because the subjects of her study reminded me so much of myself and my group of dude friends in high school.

Kendall studied men, specifically nerdy men, as they formed a community in the online forum called BlueSky. There is a lot of self-deprecating nerd humor ("HOW DID I GET SO NERDY?"); "didja spike her?" is a common joke when meeting a female is brought up in conversation, meaning did the guy have sex with her, but because these guys are self-identified nerds they never sincerely mean this question -- they admit as much when questioned by Kendall. There is a lot of discussion regarding "jerks always get the ladies but nice guys never do" and a lot of what could be seen as color-blindness, where a nerdy Asian gentleman identifies as not being traditionally "Chinese American," but aligns more with a color-free nerd-like Americanness that seems to be addressed often in forum discussions.

It also struck me as a, perhaps unintended, commentary on "guys will be guys," even in the digital realm.

I saw BlueSky as an extension of my high school group, where it was a bunch of nerdy/stoner/skater dudes and me, the token chick. I felt like I was reading transcripts of our conversations from way-back-when. I think, even with the hegemonic masculinity and semi-misogynistic attitude toward nerd women (see the section on convention/gamer chicks), I would have felt safe and welcome in BlueSky because these are "my people".

Yes, even with the objectification. I was also one of those self-deprecating nerds in high school; it added to the bond I had with those guys. And yes, there were jokes about spikin' her or spikin' him, but to be included in that line of joking is to be part of that crowd.

But I think that that's what makes up a key component of guys being guys; objectification isn't limited to the jerks. The nice guys do it too.

I really do feel that the argument Kendall was going for was guys will be guys, and even the "nerdy but nice" guys are still guys who resort to making crude, self-deprecating jokes about spikin' females and blubbery whales in chain mail. But this is part of male bonding, on- and off-line. This is how men distance themselves from women (while sometimes even including women, in my experience) and establish dominance (even if not the alpha male), thus continuing the hegemonic masculinity so often ascribed to in American society. Or, in this case, online society. What we may see in BlueSky we now see in 4chan and Kotaku, among others, and will see in future dude forums yet to come. As long as nerds are commiserating, there will always be dudes talkin' about spikin', even if it doesn't really happen outside of the digital realm.

Hollywood's mojo no-no?

HOLY CRAP.

Let me just say: I love this week's blog topic BECAUSE I was just talking about exactly this in class yesterday. But only Julie heard me. SO, this will be new to everyone else.

Granted, I'm probably not the first to bring this up in the history of race and Hollywood, BUT I DIGRESS.

[Caps are cruise control for excited, btw.]

In chapter three of "Digitizing Race," Lisa Nakamura addresses several topics, particularly with emphasis on people of color (POC) and lending their "mojo" to a film. The films she taps in this discussion (with regard to mojo) are "The Matrix" trilogy.

Her argument, as I saw it, can be summed up as this:
POC represent the human, the organic, the steampunk, the uprising against a machine-ruled world. They represent the connection to the spiritual side, to a more analog time. (Neo, for those curious, qualifies as a POC, having claimed an Asian heritage early in the film.)
White can be summed up as "the man," oppression, nonhuman (Agent Smith = virus; The Architect = Program 0), Utopian sci-fi (which, in my mind, is worlds apart from steampunk), a pristine, ultra-sanitized sort of cleanliness. They represent a more secular existence, and have more intuitive connection to computers (gesture-based, rather than analog inputs through a mouse and keyboard).

BUT, more importantly is this distinction: White equals uncool. POC equals cool.

Think about it: Morpheus, Niobe, Neo, Trinity (who, though not a POC, dresses in black in her Matrix existence), Link, Zee, Chara: ALL KICK-ASS.

Agent Smith, The Architect: "old, white pricks," a bit on the nerdy side. (In part, both characters remind me of the head game developer in "Grandma's Boy," but that's neither here nor there.)

So let's bring this analysis into something new, something fresh.

I present, for your consideration, "District 9".

[SPOILERS AHEAD. IF YOU HAVE NOT SEEN "DISTRICT 9" (and shame on you if you haven't) PLEASE SKIP THE FOLLOWING. YOU'VE BEEN WARNED.]

We start out with Wikus, your atypical sci-fi hero. He's a bit nerdy, works for his father-in-law, and doesn't command much respect from the military rangers he's been placed in charge of for the Prawn (the aliens of this film) eviction operation.

In fact, you kind of spend the first 30 minutes of the film laughing at this bumbling protagonist. What kind of sci-fi hero is this??

Well, he's the kind who gets sprayed in the face with a liquid from the alien technology while looking through an alien shack for contraband weapons.

AND THAT'S WHEN SHIT GETS CRAZY. :0!!

In short, his DNA begins to mutate and splice with the alien DNA found in the liquid. Throughout the course of the film, the viewer sees him slowly change from all human to a hybrid to, eventually, a Prawn. (Or so it is implied. The film never says outright that it's actually him at the end.)

During this transformation, he's tortured by the government company he works for (his FIL leads the experiments), he breaks out of his laboratory prison environment, and makes a break for District 9 to hide among the Prawns. The rangers try to find him, the Nigerian gangs try to take his transformed arm for their witchcraft purposes (which is another level of POC mojo altogether) and gunfights with aliens and Gundam mecha and Wikus and rangers ensue.

And by the end of the film, our former sweater-vest-wearing nerd is a complete, legitimate bad-ass. And he gets progressively cooler from the first exposure to the last firefight.

But during all this, he gets progressively closer to this film's version of "POC/other" and further away from white. Or closer to "cool mojo" and further away from "nerd."

The viewer sees the transformation, too. First a hand turns into an alien appendage, he loses finger nails, his skin comes off in chunks to reveal the new alien body beneath the surface, he loses teeth, hair, and one of his eyes changes size and color.

We are actively engaged in his transformation from nerd to mojo. And it is visually thrown in our face. It's not something like in Steve Martin's "Bringing Down the House" where we sort of see this white guy go from acting white to acting "black," and we have to make the correlation ourselves ("Oh, he's wearing baggy pants and a beanie and saying "yo," I guess that means he's black-ish?").

And we are made to feel uncomfortable for the way he is treated. The government doesn't try to save him, they try to harvest him so they can use his DNA to utilize the alien weaponry. Steve Martin's "transformation" is more for laughs; Wikus makes you pity him, want to cry for him (he is made to shoot another Prawn during the government's testing), cheer for him, and hope that he'll overcome the rangers and the government (mostly portrayed by white actors, it is worth mentioning).

[OK, SPOILERS ARE DONE.]

The Prawns are wild, they scavenge, they eat cat food (...what??) and cow heads, they are tricked and cheated, they speak in their own clicks and trills (but can understand the Johannesburg English spoken by the white characters; the white characters can understand the Prawn language as well). Their shacks are thrown together with what they can find, but they still manage to be technologically advanced as a race. But even in their advanced airship, which has gesture-based interface, they still have to "plug in" to a gelatinous operating device to get the bird going. (Also, to an extent, they remind me of the Troll race in "World of Warcraft," who are said to sterotype from Caribbean POC.)

But they also add Mojo to the film. Would we be as interested in this film if it were a bunch of Steven Spielberg's ETs running around? Perhaps not. But these guys, they are EXOTIC. They add a sense of steampunk and organic otherliness to this film's world of clean labs and white hazmat suits, just as the POC in "The Matrix" do.

Would the films be the same if POC weren't such a major part of the stories? It would seem weird to see a Zion full of white, clean, slicked-back white people; it would be weird to see aliens who looked "like us" taking up residence in dirty shacks and being treated with such hate and anger. Why is it OK for the rangers to shoot the Prawns point-blank? Would we support it if the Prawns looked like white humans instead of land-walking crawdads?

I'm.. not entirely sure where I'm going with this now. I think that using POC (as major characters or to base an alien race upon) is a step in the right direction for Hollywood, but until we start seeing Hollywood take a more active role in portraying POC in ALL aspects of life (and not just the bearers of Mojo for the film's plot devices or to provide a sense of "other"), it will continue to be just another cinematic gimmick.

A quick follow-up

Just to be clear:

No, you didn't miss anything. I didn't do the "theorist article summary" blog.

Last week was hell for me with regard to my schedule, and this weekend wasn't much better with regard to my health. So, no blog.

I'll be back on task this week with blog #5.

Thanks for understanding.

xoxo
K

Hybrid ni kawatte, iinuketa yo!

Or: Someone set us up the blog.

Or: For great hybrid.

(Or, translation: In the name of hybrid, I'll kinda try to explain something!)

Conversely: Kristin didn't understand a lick of this week's readings, and instead will try to ramble in an attempt to "get" hybrid spaces.

So, the bit I think I did get this week was in de Souza e Silva's "From Cyber to Hybrid" essay.

On page 763, dSeS talks about, basically, the shift from static interfaces to mobile interfaces, and how this shift forces us to take a look at what we consider "digital space." Size determines what we see as static and mobile -- do we have to sit at a computer to go online, or can we go online with our pocket PDA and cell phones? Then, perhaps, because of cultural experiences and the way we have grown up with accessing cyberspace, we see "Internet" as something restricted to static interfaces and solitary experiences, as with the home computer. In some cases, such as with Japanese teenagers who only go online with phones, they don't see it as accessing the Internet because it isn't behind a bulky computer (and, conversely, perhaps it isn't through Firefox or IE). In particular, because it is on-the-go and because it is seen as a component of their social spaces. Did digital space used to be only a static experience, once accessed through a desktop computer? Has digital space merged with social space as a result of our use of mobile media to access the Internet during "in-between" time and incorporating it with our day-to-day activities?

(*reads the rest of the prompt* ...ok... and then... ah!)

It's been a long day. My brain is ready to implode.

And I hear my husband playing "CoD: Modern Warfare 2" in the background, which is only wanting to drag me further away from this blog entry.

I support whatever dSeS said above. Or what I think she said. I think that there is a shift from static to mobile interface with regard to Internet access, thanks in no small part to items such as the iPhone. Or with netbooks and wireless cards.

I know I have resorted to neglecting my desktop unit, in part, because it's easier to jump on my laptop or my phone, do whatever Internet business I need to do, and go. Or handle the Internet business on my iPhone while between classes or in the car with Marcus (the aforementioned husband) at the wheel. I think, in part, this is also because my desktop is a 5-year-old beast in serious need of a video card upgrade. And because having the time to sit down at my workhorse and load it up and casually peruse the Intarwebs is something of a luxury for me, for most of us, in this go-go-go society we live in.

Also, because it is easier to incorporate my iPhone and all its handy apps into whatever I'm doing -- getting coffee, checking my bank account, checking in at WSU Tri-Cities -- than it would be to do all the same on my desktop (or, for that matter, on my laptop).

There is something to be said for the convenience that this shift from static to mobile offers us, and as a society that loooooooooooooves its convenience (same with Japan), it's no wonder that we are ever steadily embracing our mobile-social spaces.

That being said, I've been known to hesitate visiting social spaces if I know their 3G service is less-than-great. How else am I supposed to see what my friends are posting on each others walls, upload photos, how my crops are doing in Papaya Farm, read stories that aren't so average, and battle my generic Pokemans against your generic Pokemans???

With that, I'm out. I'm starting to use "their" and "there" interchangeably, which is never a good thing for a former-editor-turned-designer.

And I'm finding this lolcat funnier every time I look at it.

Enjoy.

Whu?

Huh? What happened? I blacked out there for a moment.

*scrolls down to previous blog*

...Ohhh.. right. Long blog is long. Sorry everyone.

The TL;DR version:

I'm a virtual recluse, choosing to extend my meatspace existence into my online communities (see: Facebook, Twitter) because online people are meanies and cliqueish and I don't want to risk rejection by anonymous doodieheads (see: news forums, web comics, Gawker media services, etc). Also, I like donuts. OM NOM NOM.

Making the comment circle tomorrow. Have a good weekend, everyone!