My Most Memorable Slasher

I am a connoisseur of horror movies and especially of the ever popular "slasher" genre. I have seen cheesy slashers, funny slashers, gratuitous slashers and everything in between. After a while, they begin to follow the same format and become predictable and eventually lose their power to induce fear in me. These days, I view slashers in a clinical sense, dissecting the onscreen dissections with a removed attitude. The characters are so two-dimensional that their deaths are nothing more than the vehicle that drives the story forward. The killers are almost one-dimensional, giving us these soulless killing machines that may or may not have a snappy one-liner before they dispatch another "good guy". To truly be memorable, a slasher must be innovative and break this tried and true mold. There must be a human element added to the characters to make it so that the limit is reached. My desensitized heart strings must be revitalized and tugged to their breaking points. My blood should boil and my hair should stand on end. And at the end of such a film, I should be left wanting to close my curtains and sleep with my sister that night. The last slasher I saw to give me a semblance of those feelings was Michael Haneke's 2007 movie, "Funny Games". The movie made me uncomfortable. I didn't enjoy watching it. I wanted to turn it off. And I remember it to this day even though I only watched it once. "Funny Games" spent its time making you grow to enjoy a small family's quirks and habits, only to bring two sadistic killers in to ruin it. There was no final girl and there were no rules. No one was safe. And when I turned it off, I didn't feel safe. This is what horror is supposed to do. It should pull you in and force you to confront the things that scare you the most.

We Now Take A Break From Our Commercials For Your Show

The biggest problem with using mass media as a forum for artistic ventures is the constant struggle between the capitalistic nature of media and the integrity of artistic freedom. Television is one of the clearest examples of this struggle. There are thousands upon thousands of shows each year that are produced and optioned and generally put through the motions of the business. A very small percentage of these shows are ever seen by the general populace because television stations are essentially businesses. They calculate the probability of the success of a show and rarely take chances on experimental ideas. Why, you may ask, don't these stations invite new and different ideas? Why don't they thrive on programming a variety of shows that help generate artistic development? The answer is advertising.

Advertising is the life blood of television as we know it. Advertisers pay to have their commercials up on certain channels and this money accounts for a lot of the expenses that a television station must pay to remain afloat. Commercials take away from the airtime of a show and interrupt at different intervals within the show to try to get people to pay attention so they won't miss anything.

Television is so dependent on advertising that the executives at these stations mold the types of shows to work with the advertisers. This leads to many bottled and packaged type of shows that are clearly formulated to hook a certain demographic. Variety exists, but within strict constraints of formulaic television shows. This allows the advertisers to neatly package their products and place them with an easily classified companion that shares its demographic. But the audience suffers. The audience is not given a choice of a multi-layered or experimental show because it's hard to sell things when there is no one group that you can sell to. And so, we are at the mercy of commercials and the shows are easily identifiable, making television less of an art and more of a business.

Stalking Made Easy: Facebook's Live News Feed

Any casual Facebook user could tell you that the news feed in Facebook makes it exceedingly difficult to not snoop in your friends' business. The news feed is in real time, updating a user on each new development of their friend's online lives. This news feed wasn't always on Facebook and its introduction was initially to a resistant and hostile public. Facebook users described the news feed as "creepy" and complained about their lack of privacy. The nature of the news feed is a completely observable environment in which all of someone's friends are easily monitored. None of their actions are hidden, but online there would always be a log of their activity.

The main issue that many people had with the news feed was that it brought their activity to the forefront of other people's Facebook experiences. As a person goes about their normal Facebook activities, the live news feed informs them of every move that their friends are making. That caused some alarmist cries of "Big Brother!" and an Orwellian fear of being monitored by the mysterious and illusive "them". But these reactions to what was perceived as such a radical shift in the way Facebook operates were overblown and had little legitimate foundation. Parallels can be drawn between these ill-advised cries about the "radical" change in Facebook's functions and Winston's theory of evolution versus revolution in the progress of technology.

Facebook's news feed was treated as a revolutionary idea in social networking and communication as if it had come out of nowhere. This is, of course, not true. The idea of communication with people outside of your immediate physical realm is a relatively new one. Communication for decades had been inextricably intertwined with technological advances in travel. Messengers on horses turned into messages sent by trains. Travel was eventually cut out of the evolution when the telegraph and, subsequently, the telephone were created. Information began to move faster and cost less to obtain. Communication shifted from a luxury to a staple of modern society. People began to expect faster ways to connect and more accessibility. This led to the cell phone, instant messaging and social networks like Facebook, which had to keep up with the world obsessed with instantaneous results by providing instantaneous results. And so, dear readers, it is the "victims" themselves who have created the monster we all know and love : The Live News Feed.

Manners In The Digital World

One of the most prevalent issues in the world of digital interaction is the decline of civilized discourse. Whether it be in the comments section of a website, an instant message or even over the phone, people have become less concerned with being polite as the physical consequences have beeen eliminated. Meyrowitz talks about the formation of para-social relationships within the digitized global community, but one of the most destructive forms that can occur is a group of Internet "trolls".

"Trolling" is the act of posting controversial, inflammatory, irrelevant, or off-topic messages in an online community. It detracts from the work of the website and becomes a spectacle that can cause people to stop coming to certain websites. "Trolling" is not a concept that is new to the Internet. Prank calls can be considered a form of "trolling" on the phone. In times before the social space became something that was intangible, people were held accountable for their actions in a physical state. Now, phones and to a much larger extent, the Internet provide people with anonymity and the ability to say whatever they want without the fear of reprecussions and, and this is what I think makes it so prevalent, because they don't see a real life effect to what they are doing. The Internet has become a free for all forum of depravity, obscenity and ill-mannered ruffians who would do well with some finishing school.

The problem is and always will be : How can you police the Internet? The answer is that it is not possible to do a widespread solution to "trolling" without having a completely censored version of the Internet. And really, do we want to trade the purest form of free speech just so that mean people will stop saying mean things?

Here's a taste of what manners were in the late 90's for phones. Imagine what this lady would have to say about the Internet.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xbMBWWff4Jc

Facebook: Social Destruction or Enhancment?

Facebook, Facebook, Facebook. It's a popular culture phenomenon we hear about in an alarmingly increasing rate. Is Facebook the new way to network? Will Facebook become a business tool? What makes Facebook different from Myspace?

What is it about Facebook that makes it so prevalent while other social media websites die? Well, first we must define Facebook and its functions. We all know Facebook is a "hot" medium. There are text, pictures and videos. But for what? Why even use a social networking site? Many people comment on the apparent triviality of Facebook as its downfall. I find it to be one of its biggest strengths. Why use a social networking site to communicate with friends who live in your dorm? Its frivolous. No matter how "hot" the medium, nothing can be more engaging than face to face physical interaction. However, a quick check of most college students' Internet tabs would show that this frivolity is widespread. Facebook is something to click on when blocked on a paper. Facebook is something to check in between classes. Facebook is something to go on when there's nothing else to do. And sometimes that's all you need.

Some people say that this rampant misuse of the website for insignificant interface with easily accessible real-life friends is a negative thing. They say that it makes people lazy and errodes actual interaction. I find this to be false. In all of my obeservations of Facebook and real life interactions, I have found that Facebook cuts down on the exposition of life. If you want to know how yesterday was for me overall, check my status. Tracy McClendon had a crappy day. Now there's a topic of discussion that didn't need to be dragged out. Facebook highlights the major events - someone entering a relationship, a birthday, a party - and allows the user to be more up to date on their friend's lives. And there are some of you Orwellian fear-mongers out there who may say, "Well that sounds creepy." And to you I say, don't update your Facebook every five seconds.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FtPb8g8Jl6I