WHOA DREAM BIG!

Glenn Son
Youtube Videos
So what are some different reasons people upload videos on YouTube? The hardest thing was trying to find out why people do it. I went to Yahoo Answers, and posted the question why do you or someone you know upload videos on YouTube? I got several different reasons why people upload videos. The main answers I got were people were bored, and they want to be famous.
C.D Fisher defined the term boredom “as an unpleasant transient affective state in which the individual feels a pervasive lack of interest in and difficulty concentrating on the current activity. This could be caused by a number of different things”. Someone could have done something numerous amounts of times, and it gets old to them. They see the same type of video, so they want to upload something new. There is thousands of the same video on YouTube. After a while it will get old and boring. To cure their boredom they will upload new videos.
Another reason was they want to be famous, they want to be recognized walking down the street. I think most people want to be famous because they think they will make money, and not have to work hard. Who doesn’t want to have to do nothing and get paid for it? You see all these celebs that have been glorified by the media. To the impressionable youth that seems enticing. They hear about some kid uploading videos on YouTube and being able to make a career out of it. People like Andy Milonakis and Bo Durham are just a couple, who I can mention. People think it is an easy way to get there.
According to geekestateblog.com the, age of 45+ accounted for forty four percent of users on YouTube, and only fewer than eighteen to thirty four accounted for thirty six percent of users. The older you get the more you use YouTube. That can tie into boredom. The older people will have more time on their hands. Most of them are retired so this is how they have a lot of free time. When you sit around after a while you get bored, so the use this for a cure for that. The older generation has been around for a while, so they will have seen the same thing over and over again. They will want to create that new video so you won’t have to see the same video over and over.
There are many different reasons people have uploaded videos to YouTube. People upload videos, because they are bored, to become famous, and many other reason. It seems the older people have more time on their hands, so they use YouTube more often.




Rivera, Jeremy. "2008 Stats from YouTube and Why you should use Video Tours". Geek Estate. Augest 14, 2008 <http://www.geekestateblog.com/july-stats-from-youtube-and-why-you-should-use-video-tours/>.
Fisher, C.D. "Boredom". Wikipedia. February 11, 2010 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boredom>.

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Shavonna Arnell
02-17-2010
English 100 12:45

The Connection to Society

There are many different uses of technology in today’s society. Many people connect with each other via internet and technology, and not think to see someone face to face. There are many opinions on how people use Facebook such as to stay connected with family and friends, but it also has its negative opinions. Facebook was created to keep people connected with one another. Our social life expresses how we choose and make our friends. When using facebook we can keep up with all our friends, and see their updates on how they are doing. We can also use facebook to connect with family members we do not even know. On an Opera Winfery show she was asking this couple how they met. The couple responded, “On Facebook.” This couple had the exactly same first and last name. It was really weird but amazing and it is really hard to believe. What I am saying is that facebook can have positive effects on people.
There are plenty of positive things that lean toward facebook. On the news one day this young man had walked in the store after a robbery had happened and the clerk was dead. He was taking to court for murder and the police got on facebook and checked his status that he had been updated before he had went to the store. At that time he was on facebook when the shooting and robbery had accrued. He was found not guilty all because he had updated his status before he went to the store. Facebook saved his butt. Facebook can also be served as a background check up for job. If you have not noticed every time in an interview or filling out an application they always ask for an email address so that they can reach you. People give jobs their facebook address because they can find out everything they need to know about them on their page. Business people normally have two different pages Personal and business. Personal facebook pages are strictly made for their employers and bosses. So they can get a feeling of what their expectations are for that business, get to know that employer or boss on a personal level. Personal pages are for friends and family. Facebook has very positive ways to keep up with what is going on in our social lives.
On the negative side of facebook you can also get to addicted. Every minute you are updated your status. You are expressing what has happen to you that day. Sometimes you can do too much telling about yourself on facebook. The whole world does not need to know your personal life. That is just giving out enough. We have to know when we are allowing everyone to know about us. It is the web and there are really vicious people who are on facebook. There are such things as stalkers once you add them they never stop messaging you or sending you stupid updates always commenting on your stuff. Predators who are waiting for people to add them so they can find out things about you. They will create a profile that is not them. This is why you have to watch out who you add to your facebook. We should pay more attention to what is going on around us. We can get so addicted we cannot even focus on school. We just have to get on facebook to see what everyone is doing. There are lots of nosy people on facebook that only want to be your friend just to be snooping on your page. That is what I dislike about facebook and can also cause people to become addicted. Everyone likes to gossip and here about things that does not even concern them. This why you mark your page as a private page so you can block the nosy people who like snooping and starting things. Then you also have those people who just get on your page just to gossip. I call those the facebook groupies they are just constantly talking about people’s status and trying to get you to respond or agree with what they wrote. My friend well use to be friend always posting status about her and how people always hating on her life. That just gets really old and annoying. Personally I feel that I am not addicted to facebook. I use facebook to keep up with my family and friends. College transition has separated me away from my family and my best friends I have known since middle school. I feel not everyone is addicted to technology. We actually have our own lives and actually try to keep in touch with one another the old fashion way. I feel that facebook was made to be a positive opening to the web for people who have moved far away and the only way they can keep in touch is by the internet or through technology. From my understanding the article “Generation Y Not” she expresses that we cannot live without our technology we can try but we will simply just cannot. We go right back to technology. Technology runs the world. There will always be a facebooks, emails, phones, and MySpace. The author says I dare you to go two months, two weeks and two days without using any type of technology. I most certainly will not.

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Nicole Barrett
February 27, 2010
English 100, Jane Fife
Cracked
When you go on the internet how many different websites do you go on? Are any of them educational? Each and every one of us search the web daily whether it is for five minutes or up to three hours. Most teenagers spend most of their day on Facebook unless they are given an online assignment for school. On the other hand some of us do like to surf the web. A lot of websites we find while surfing the internet are educational, whether we notice that or not. One of these websites that seem appealing to the eye but are also educational would be: www.cracked.com. This website displays historical facts, such as coincidences between old writings and more recent events in history, and other interesting facts. The information is presented through lists and videos which are catching to a student’s eye. The facts are not just straight forward information but are also presented in interesting and humorous ways.
There are many ways a person could take something boring, make a complete one eighty, and make it hilarious this website does just that. It shows the humor in things that most people may not find in the situation. It humorously compares ironic coincidences between different author’s writings and actual historical things that happened. There are also videos that bring humor to the website, the videos take actual events such as The Grammys and make fun of the event. They do this by using voiceovers and add in clips to the actual videos. Also they take life lessons and reenact them; they are not appropriate for children but are still very funny.
www.cracked.com also has most of its information presented in lists or videos. This attracts the attention of many ages, it catches the eye of teenagers because it is easy to read and a lot of teenagers or college age students do not have the attention span to read long boring paragraphs. The lists make the page very easy to navigate which attracts people of the older generations who do not fully understand the internet. Also having the videos make the page more interesting for all ages. Most of the videos are inappropriate for younger children, and are more geared towards college aged students or younger adults about.
Most websites cannot keep my attention; the only one that I can sit on for hours is Facebook. Facebook always has something new to look at or search for and I know for a fact this is the same for a lot of my friends as well. When I brought up www.cracked.com they all knew what it was and were as intrigued in it as I was. This website holds my attention almost as long as Facebook does. It always has more information to explore and learn.
When I cannot find an interesting website to occupy my time I surf the web. When I still cannot find an interesting website I settle for Facebook and spend all of my time looking at other peoples pictures from spring break or summer vacation. The one website that caught my attention just as much, maybe even more than Facebook was www.cracked.com. This website brings out the humor yet shows the importance in historical events. The information is presented through lists and videos which are catching to a student’s eye. www.cracked.com is a website I can see myself looking at for many hours to come.

Click here to visit www.cracked.com.
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Julia Katherine Weis
2/14/10
Dr. Jane Fife
TR 12:45-2:05
Facebook Friend or Facebook Foe?
400 million people use Facebook. 200 million people use Facebook every day. Some use Facebook to keep in touch with out of town relatives and friends or old classmate chums. But others use Facebook to the extreme, spending hours on the site playing pointless games like Farmville, Mafia Wars, and Fish Tank. Facebook can be a very useful social networking tool if it is used in the right way, but overuse can be bad for your mental health.
Aric Sigman, a psychologist, claims that spending too much time on sites like Facebook can lead to “social isolation, loneliness and a negative outlook”. And these psychological symptoms could possibly lead to physical illnesses such as heart disease or cancer. I believe that Sigman’s claim is a little far-fetched, but I do agree that overuse of social networking sites could have serious repercussions.
Facebook has many applications that involve comparing your friends. It is as if it’s the superlatives for the high school yearbook all over again. You can vote to see where you stand in the eyes of others for prettiest, most popular, best dressed, cutest, etc. Some of these ratings are a little deeper and get into discussing personalities, but for the most part, these are all superficial. Some people play this game and think nothing of it, but there are others out there who take it to the extreme and take it personally if they’re towards the bottom of the list on some characteristic or if their best friend beat them out for best dressed. Teenagers can actually go into clinical depression for something as small as this. According to Medical News Today, the current youth suicide rate has jumped 8%, which is the biggest increase in 15 years. I believe that this is linked to so much time spent online and connected to media.
Our generation has climbed backwards on the social ladder. We might have 600 friends on Facebook and we can send them message after message or text after text but when it comes to face-to-face communication, we’re all thumbs. And those thumbs are glued to our cell phones texting someone probably in the next room. It used to be that if a guy liked you, he would drop by the house or say, “I’ll call you tomorrow.” The waiting around by the phone would inevitably commence. Now the typical male teenager will tell you that he’ll text you later or message you on Facebook. This isn’t a big problem for teens in high school, but it starts to be an issue in college once we need to communicate face-to-face with professors and administrators. What’s going to happen to our generation when we’re let out into the real world and need these social skills to communicate with clients and colleagues? Problem, right?
Facebook claims that the average user spends more than 55 minutes a day on their site. An hour doesn’t seem like much time, but what you have to consider is that this is just the average person. Many people spend much, much, much more time than that per day on Facebook. According to a survey done by the Kaiser Family Foundation, 8-18 year olds currently spend an average of seven hours and thirty-eight minutes connected to some form of media each day. That’s over 53 hours a week. What makes this statistic even worse is that many teens don’t just look at one form of media at a time. I can almost guarantee you that while students are typing papers, they have Facebook pulled up and running at the same time. I say this from experience. In fact, I’m on Facebook right now. Because we have mastered the fine art of “media multi-tasking”, as the Kaiser Family Foundation calls it, teens are actually getting a total of ten hours and forty-five minutes packed into that average seven and a half hours a day. When it gets to that degree, it seems like media over-stimulation to me.
Facebook also provides something else for students: an opportunity for procrastination. I can’t tell you how many times I get on my laptop to do homework and end up on Facebook for several minutes to an hour before I even touch my homework.
Sites like Facebook aren’t just accessed from the Internet. With the current technology age, you can use Facebook and other sites straight from your cell phone. This means that we are even more connected than what we realize. The time we spend on Facebook on our phones isn’t included in the average time spent on the site. According to Facebook, more than 100 million users access the site using their cell phones and other devices.
I’m not saying that Facebook is completely a bad thing. I think that it can be a very useful tool, but, like many things in life, we abuse and overuse it. Facebook is a great way to make connections with people, stay in touch with out-of-town relatives and friends, join groups of people that share similar interests, get homework help, etc. The key to all of this is moderation. If we only spent ten or fifteen minutes on Facebook a day, it wouldn’t be a big issue. After doing this research, I plan to make a conscious effort to reduce my time spent on Facebook, and I urge you to do the same. Facebook is a place for friends. Don’t make the website become your enemy.

Writer’s Memo
My thesis in this essay is that Facebook can be a very useful tool when used properly, but our generation overuses the site, which can cause harmful effects. I would say that my draft is pretty well done, or at least I hope so. I think I came up with a lot of downsides or negative effects of Facebook. I’m not sure what can be improved on right now; maybe the organization or making sure that my thesis is clear to the audience. I just want to make sure that the readers understand my thesis and I haven’t confused them. The only change that I made was adding a works cited page, because it’s necessary. Through peer critiques, I didn’t find changes to make to my paper itself.

Works Cited
Facebook. “Press Room.” http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics.
14 Feb. 2010. Web. 14 Feb 2010.

Kaiser Family Foundation. “Generation M2: Media in the lives of 8-18-year-olds.”
http://www.kff.org/entmedia/entmedia030905pkg.cfm. 20 Jan. 2010. Web.
16 Feb. 2010

Medical News Today. “Youth Suicide Rate Rises 8% In USA, Biggest Climb in 15
Years.” http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/81868.php.
07 Sept. 2007. Web. 14 Feb. 2010.

Mental Health Blog. “Is Facebook Really Bad For Your Health?”
http://www.mentalhealthblog.com/is-facebook-really-bad-for-your-
health.html. 25 Feb. 2009. Web. 16 Feb. 2010.

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Sarah Blair
English 100
12:45-2:05

Computer aka the “machine”: a programmable machine that can store, retrieve, and process data. That was the definition that appeared on my 15” screen when I typed it into Google (one of the many websites on the internet) that you look up by logging into a computer. It’s now that easy to find a definition for a word. Instead of trying to find a dictionary, flip back and forth between pages, and looking for that one little word. You can now go online, type the word in, and BAM there it is. Just like that. Let’s just say the “machine” IS changing us. From Google to my main topic, YouTube, the machine is a worldwide international engine that keeps expanding and affecting our lives every day.
Michael Wesch’s video lecture on “The Machine is Changing Us”, talks about many different aspects of how the machine has changed us. One particular thing he talked about was YouTube; how it is a positive site for people all over the universe. As soon as he started speaking about YouTube, it caught my attention immediately. I am one of those people who will get on YouTube when I’m bored and try to find some of the funniest videos that will make my day. Yet, never in my whole life would I have ever thought that YouTube could change the world for the better. If you go on YouTube and type in “Free Hugs”, you will find a video featuring a guy holding a sign that says “FREE HUGS”. At first I thought, this man is crazy. But then, when you think about it, he just wants to show people, throughout the world, that if we do one small thing, like holding a sign up, it could change someone’s life. If you think hard enough about it, you know that there was someone walking by him that didn’t want to feel lonely anymore, and with his hug, I’m sure it turned his or her day around.
Crazy, right? How a sign like that can bring us all together. After watching further into Wesch’s lecture he talks about another video. This video spoke to me in many ways. The video was of a guy hiding behind this creepy looking mask, but he wrote one world on his hand and held it up to the webcam. He was sending a message to people that we are one world, so why so much hatred? Since he did his first video, he has had thousands of people respond back to the video by writing something positive on their hand. This became one of the world’s largest online community projects. I know that if I had something not going just right in my life and I knew about this video, everyone who responded back would have been my hero. Now I know that one little word such as, “love,” “respect,” or two words, “one world,” can help someone get through a day/week/month/year. Messages like these on YouTube show that we are all here for each other in some little way, near or far, together or apart.
YouTube can also bring people together. Some people have posted a video of them talking to a family member and once that family member sees what they put on there they get back in contact with their relative. For some people, that is the way they apologize, because to me if you apologize to someone and post it on the Internet for everyone to see, you know they are sincere.
Although I know that I keep talking about the positive side of YouTube, I’m not blind and I do see that there is a negative side. For example, I found the video of the girl who received the swine flu shot and it disabled her lifestyle. Somebody else found her story and video. They took it and put the “Walk it out” song to her video. If you watch it, you can see that the shot made her walk differently, but that did not give someone the right to edit her video and post it back on YouTube. That would be like a slap in the face if I saw someone making fun of the way I walked. One other negative quality about YouTube is that if you just go on there and type the word “Porn” you will come up with about 349,000 videos related to porn. These are topics that Wesch never did bring up, because he was only focusing on the better aspects about how the machine is changing us. He may mention a few negative thoughts of YouTube, but they aren’t the truly negative ones. I am focusing on the positive because I enjoy seeing everyone come together through all the war and pain. But we still have to realize that YouTube can have its side effects.
Maybe YouTube should be monitored. Maybe someone should be able go on and delete the negative videos. I am aware that they remove some videos and that is a pretty powerful job, but like I said before, I can type in the word “Porn” and thousands of videos pop up. Now do you really want your 10 year old child/grandchild or any 10 year old looking up videos like that? They can keep all the funny, goofy, educational and what I would like to call “hero” videos on there, so we can show everyone that we can come together and become “one world.” Wesch’s lecture is called “The Machine is Changing Us.” I believe that we should reinstate his title and call is “The Internet is Changing Us.” You can find anything you want on the Internet. Just Google it. Better yet, you can find videos on YouTube that can be life changing and inspire you to put something on there that you know can have a powerful affect on someone’s life. If we only believe that we can completely change YouTube for the better, then we can.
Wesch, Michael. "YouTube.com". Politics of Authenticity . July 16, 2009 <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09gR6VPVrpw>.

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Dymphna Nuestro
English 100
Rhetorical Analysis of The Onion.com
Due to the young adults of today’s waning interest in reading, sources of educational information are having to get more creative in order to retain the attention of a very distracted demographic. With cell phones, texting, Facebook, Twitter, iPods, and reality T.V. shows consuming the time and interest of most of today’s youth, there is not much time left in the day left to pursue more intelligent pastimes, or even any other pursuits other than for entertainment purposes. With the limited amount of time in a day to do what one wants to do, choosing to read an educational article over a fashion magazine starring one’s favorite celebrities for instantaneous pleasure, versus a enlightening pages long think-piece seems an impossible task. However, parody newspapers such as ‘The Onion’ are paralleling the traditional newspaper style of news reporting and satirizing editorials, interviews, and stock quotes in order to appeal to the , pathos and logos of readers who are eighteen years of age and older, in an entertaining format.
The Onion’s online domain, The Onion.com greets its visitors with a main page that looks professional and straightforward, with a white background and some green accents with black text. The rather mature-looking interface makes the site seem similar to the web domain of the newsmagazines that The Onion satirizes, such as Time and The Wall Street Journal. However, upon reading the names of the articles and the captions under the pictures provided, it becomes clear that the approach to reporting the news is much different than other newsmagazines. The Onion includes information on current events, however, also attempts to make these events more appealing by using sarcasm that makes the subject more humorous, such as ‘Boy’s Tragic Death Could Have Happened to Any Family With 20-Foot Python’ and using appeals to the vernacular, using hip phrases such as ‘Rise in Teen Pregnancy Proves Teens ‘Still Got It.’’ The Onion’s articles appeal to the pathos of its readers by entertaining its readers and reporting news in a humorous fashion that manages to catch their attention through a comedic title, and continuing to entertain throughout the article, while drawing attention to an issue. For example, with the article about the rise in teen pregnancy, following in the style of the title, the article goes on to make appeals with hip phrases,
“Researchers at the NCHS said the findings demonstrated that teens still have a lot left in the tank. The report stated that, for every 1,000 girls between the ages of 15 and 19, there are 71.5 pregnancies, a figure indicating that teenagers are once again locked, loaded, and ready to roll.”
At the same time that it provides a set of figures that demonstrates that there is a rising trend in teen pregnancy, the use of phrases such as “a lot left in the tank” and “locked, loaded, and ready to roll” makes the article keep its humor while also being informative. The pathos appeals made by The Onion affect the reader by entertaining them at the same time as educating them about a problem that exists among today’s young girls who are barraged by the media that feeds them sensationalized sex, without proper information on the consequences of their actions. What makes The Onion a credible source is that it provides figures and stats, and reports an actual problem under a comedic front.
The Onion’s articles are separated into various categories: News, News In Brief, Video, Radio, Sunday Magazine, Sports, Politics, World, Economy, Science & Technology, Entertainment, Local, Opinion, American Voices, Statshot, Infographic, In Focus, Slideshow, Editorial Cartoon, and News in Photos, with all the links to each provided on the bottom of the main page, and the links to the main categories on a bar at the top of each page, which has Home, Video, Radio, Sports, Politics, World, Economy, Sci/Tech, Entertainment, Opinion, Local, and News Archive, for easy navigation throughout the entire site. The interface that allows for any page that one desires to be reached whenever one desires makes the reader more prone to spending more time on the site, searching through articles that interest them, and with so many different types of subjects, the reader is sure to find a topic that interests them. The comedic appeal of each article’s title and content makes some subjects that would not normally gain the attention or concern of a reader seem more interesting, and more readable if it provides entertainment value as well as serving to educate. This opens the reader up to more material that could compel them and make them more interested in issues that they were not interested in before, giving them new insight into an issue that they did not have before, and possibly opening them up to more intelligent reading, if its readability can be increased by adding the element of humor.
The logos appeals are made through the content of each article, as there must be an awareness of an issue in order to be aware of why the issue is funny when parodied. For example, under Economy, there is an article titled ‘Man Unable to Wear Nice Clothes Without Everyone Asking Questions,’ highlighting the struggle of the economic recession, and how the average person has had to make adjustments in their money spending, their money focused more on necessities and meeting basic needs rather than on luxuries such as having nice clothes, allowing for the reader to emphasize with the condition of America’s economy. Under World, the article titled ‘Massive Earthquake Reveals Entire Island Civilization Called ‘Haiti,’ makes the reader think of how despite how Haiti has been an impoverished country needing aid from outside countries for years, it took a natural disaster for Haiti to finally gain the notoriety that it needed in order for people to not be ignorant to the dire conditions of its inhabitants, who struggle just to survive through the day. The logical appeal of The Onion is apparent in these articles, as the reader’s initial attention is captured by the article’s funny title, then after their attention is captured, the article keeps it by providing more entertaining sarcasm, while informing the reader of an issue or the implications of a current event in a way that consistently holds their attention.
The Onion is a recommended reading for the demographic of young adults who would not normally be interested in news or current events unless they found it entertaining and deemed it worthy of their limited time. The Onion appeals to younger as well as to older generations because it is entertaining at the same time it provides educational information, satisfying the needs both logos and pathos appeals. Although it is satirical, it still manages to make a clear point of an issue. The site itself is straightforward and easy to navigate, providing a large variety of different subjects that may interest the reader, and makes each topic seem appealing by giving each an attention-getting title, and including humor and sarcasm throughout the actual content of the articles. The humor of every article on the site could lead to the reader being open to and interested in topics that did not interest them originally, and could raise points that leaving them thinking even after the laughs are over. The Onion is a read that is good for not only a quick laugh, but also continual laughs as the reader navigates throughout the site, and returns to it many times after, to keep up with current events and all news in an entertaining format. Parody newspapers such as The Onion may be one of the only ways to keep the media-addicted young adults of today aware of issues in the world that have an effect that lasts longer than the battery of their Blackberry.

Click to review The Onion.