kenzie1603

  Thank you so much for keeping up with my blog posts and reading them. This will be my last one, and I just want to say how much I’ve enjoyed the experience. I know it’s probably just my professor reading these (so, hello professor!), but I still had a lot of fun making them. It was great getting to choose the images that went along with my posts, and I liked being able to take what I learned in class and apply it to my writing. Writing out these last two blogs for the week gave me a chance to think more deeply about the topics, and I really enjoyed that. Each class was interesting in its own way, and the assignments felt different from what I’m used to in my other classes, but in a good way. It’s nice when the work feels fresh and engaging instead of just the same old routine. I appreciate that these assignments allowed me to explore topics I might not have thought about otherwise. Overall, I’ve had a great time working on these blog posts, and it’s definitely been a positive exp...

  This fallacy occurs when someone dismisses another person’s argument by focusing on something personal about them instead of addressing the actual point they are making. For example, imagine someone who has smoked for many years tells someone else that smoking is bad for their health and they shouldn’t do it. The person being told not to smoke might respond by saying, “Yeah, well, you smoke, so why should I listen to you?” In this case, they are not responding to the actual argument about the harms of smoking. Instead, they are attacking the person who made the argument, pointing out their smoking habit as if it makes their advice less valid. By doing this, the person avoids the real issue and shifts the focus to the other person’s behavior. This type of argument doesn't actually address whether smoking is harmful or whether the advice given is good; it just tries to discredit the speaker based on their actions. It's a way to distract from the main point by turning the argume...

  In my class, we talked about how people can use the internet to cancel people. We discussed the action of a professor (Professor M) at my university, who emailed a student inappropriately. I know Professor M as I was in his class, and hearing the version that my other professor (Professor J) was told (from a faculty point), it was very different from what I knew. I am a friend of the girl who got the inappropriate email, and I got to see how the school handled it from her perspective. I also had issues with this professor, but had been ignored by the school. My friend wasn’t satisfied with the school’s handling of the problem, so she took to social media. Making tiktoks and facebooks posts. These got a lot of attention, and the school reached out to her after seeing the post. They stopped the class from meeting and just told us that we would either get to take the exam or keep our current mark. The emails we got from the dean didn’t address the situation at all. If I hadn’t known...

  The slippery slope fallacy happens when someone argues that a small action will inevitably lead to a series of worse events later on. This type of argument doesn’t consider that the future might not always unfold in such an extreme way. One example of this fallacy that I’ve heard often in my life is when a teacher or parent would say something like, “If you miss one day of school, it will lead to you dropping out because you won’t be able to commit to your education.” At the time, I didn’t really think much of it, but now I see that this is a clear example of the slippery slope fallacy. The people saying this were trying to convince me that skipping even one day of school would set me on a path to eventually leaving school for good, which is an exaggerated claim. Missing one day doesn’t automatically mean you’ll stop going to school forever, and while staying committed to school is important, their argument took it to an extreme level to scare me into avoiding it. This kind of re...

Pessimism bias can be kind of contribute to anxiety a lot, since it’s the tendency to overestimate a negative thing happening in a scenario and underestimate a positive thing happening. So my personal example is I wanted to join a cosplay contest but I truly thought it was a bad idea, I came up with all these awful scenarios about what would happen. It wasnt the normal thought of I’m not gonna win because I did think that but it went further. I thought “I’m gonna fall on stage”, “people are gonna boo at me or no one gonna cheer” and “My whole cosplay will fall apart on stage and everyone will laugh”. I only started thinking positively when a cosplay influencer reached out and gave me some encouragement. I had met them at a convention and they saw my story about thinking about doing the contest and they encouraged me to do it. I did end up doing it and I got first in horror but I never thought that because of my pessimism bias. So has pessimism bias ever affected you?  

Do you produce as much as you consume online? I know that depending on the platform I definitely consume more than I produce. I can say that for this platform (the one you are reading this post on) I definitely produce more than I observe. I only post on here, I don’t really look at other people’s blogs. But I can say on Instagram I’m kind of equal I’ll go on to post about a cosplay or something but then I’ll scroll for a bit. And on TikTok I definitely doom scroll all the time, I rarely post on TikTok, I will post a completed cosplay but that’s about it. I also just don’t have the time to constantly post things on social media. It’s very time-consuming and I have to think about what I’m posting and how people will react to it. Even doing these blog posts can be exhausting to me, I feel like I have to meet a certain word count or it has to look good and have to mean something.  

  I will admit I am biased about this movie, I find it creepy. It also reminds me of a story I read in high school, I could not find the name but it was a guy who had a machine write love letters for him and the machine fell in love with the man’s wife and the man tricked it into writing until it died. Essentially the machine killed itself because it couldn’t be with the man’s wife. That’s all I could think of when I was watching this movie. I also thought of the video game Detroit Become Human, which is an amazing game. But I personally think that we should not be working towards humanoid robots that people could potentially fall in love with. I think that we should be working of aking animals so we don’t have to keep real live animals in captivity. I also would just like a robot polar bear cub that would be like a pet. I could see wanting a pet that would never die and live with you till the end but I find falling in love with an unaging robot very odd. I just wouldnt be able to ...

  Since chatgpt has become more popular I’ve seen more and more people use it for school and now it is usually the first thing to pop up when you search for something. It seems like it could be helpful if it wasnt used in a negative way. Like I will admit I use it for spell check, I cannot spell for the life of me, it’s where I lose points in all of my homework. I have dyslexia so there is very little I can do to fix my spelling issues. I use something that only fixes the word because when I was looking into AI I learned that if you put a paragraph into an AI thing it will just add words that make sense to the word before not enhancing the sentence or paragraph. It goes line by line so I had many issues with it changing my words and it not making sense in the end. That is something that will probably be fixed but it is another reason I don’t like certain AI. I can also see how AI can be bad in a broader way that affects more people than me. I love drawing, I post art on my Tumblr a...

I have been a part of a lot of online communities, it was how i could connect to people that had similar interests to me. So like this blog is kind of an online community since online communities are virtual spaces where people with shared interests, goals, or values can connect, collaborate, and communicate, no matter where they are. These communities can take many forms, such as forums, social media groups, or specialized platforms, where people engage in discussions, share resources, or support/one another. It can be negative though, some people misuse these spaces and hurt people. Online communities often provide a sense of belonging and can become powerful networks for personal and professional growth, education, and activism. However, they can also face challenges like misinformation, trolling, and conflicts over differing opinions, which can cause some negative interactions. So online communities can be very helpful and welcoming but there can be people who are only there to do ...

How safe do you feel online and not in a general like “don’t put your private info online” kind of way but in smaller spaces? I mean for example games that allow you to play with other real people and how much do you think the game company cares about its users? For example, Club Penguin was a game from my childhood that was shut down because people kept going on in groups to do inappropriate things. Even though that game had very limited options for what you could do and say to other players, people went into the game (which reminder was meant for little kids) and started doing inappropriate things just to be awful people I guess. But the company saw this and decided to shut it down because they didn’t want to support the people who were doing that and they couldn’t limit their game more without making it not online. I don’t know of other companies that would do this just to protect people since they just seem to care about money and how it can benefit them.   

How are things in your life preserved? It is mostly digital now, I remember being able to go through many picture books that my nan made of her kids and grandkids. That is how she preserved her memories, she wanted my mom to have those pictures and memories in a physical way. Now it just seems like everything is online. Like if I wanted to show my friend an old picture of me I would just have to go on my mom’s Facebook and scroll through her photos and find a digital picture. I have printed a few photos and I have one of those cameras that prints the photo right there but I don’t do it consistently. I could easily lose all of it but I just don’t really do anything about it, I’ll feel bad if I do lose it but I also just don’t have the time or money to go printing everything out.  

  What kind of story are you trying to tell online and who are you expecting or wanting to see your story? On spaces where people can easily find me like my Facebook which my Instagram is linked to so you would be able to see my Instagram as well. Because of that, I put on my best self because I know that when I start working if my employer looks me up they will see what I have posted. It’s not like before technology when it was just word of mouth, where your employer would only know your story based on what you say about yourself and maybe what your past employer said. Now, it’s all about the digital footprint you leave behind. That means every post, photo, and comment contributes to the way others, especially potential employers, perceive you. So I make sure to carefully watch what I post online, if I’m not sure that a post will put me in a good light I won’t post it.

  I know that when I was younger and YouTube was becoming a thing, I wanted to be a YouTuber and make videos doing stuff I love. I even tried to do that through Tiktok, I wanted to be one of those few cosplayers who made it and that inspired other people but I couldn’t get on through the algorithm. While I didn't make it as a big influencer, the connections I made online led to me winning an award in a cosplay contest and I only did that because of the friends I made while trying to be an influencer. So if you wanted to be an influencer how would you go about it? There are many websites that will tell you how to do it. You can even get an agent to help you make it as an influencer. I think it originally had to do with luck, When YouTube first started, there weren’t ads and a lot of people just posted videos for fun but now people get paid a lot of money to post videos. So did you at any point want to be an influencer or make content on the internet?

  This docudrama is a dramatic reenactment of how online is affecting people. It does have a very serious message about how addicting social media can be. It shows how a lot of the issue is how the platform is set up. In my class, we discussed this film and a point was made that was the opposite of what the docudrama was trying to say. That just because there are social media platforms available doesn’t mean people are forced to use it, this was compared to other addictions like smoking or drinking, so whose fault is it? The film puts most of the blame on the platform even saying “We need to change the way everything is designed” referring to how platforms are set up. So what about you, how do you feel about the addiction to social media?

  How do you look for accurate information online, anyone can post anything online so how do you know if it is true? I have to go through my school library to look for peer-reviewed stuff because I know if I use anything else I will lose points on my assignments. When you search for anything usually the first thing is Wikipedia but now it’s an AI answer. How accurate is that AI suggestion, i would love to be able to just use the first thing I see and move one but what if it is wrong?

  How much do you rely on your technology, I know I rely on it a lot, I can barely go an hour without having to check my phone. I’m always worried about missing something, like a call, text or email. My whole life is connected to my phone now, I can go days without touching my computer or iPad but when it comes to my phone I know that I have people relying on me to answer. It is also part of my job, I have a team of people I need to communicate with each person so we don’t mess up or get lost. So how much of your life is linked to your access to technology?

  Searching for something online is made for you to look at what they deem important first. When you look at anything your eyes have to start somewhere, people have studied where you look and put that into how websites are designed. This is to maximize profit for the website I looked up the Odyssey because I like the book and the first thing that comes up is the sponsor, which is Amazon trying to sell me 3 different versions of the book. Then it has a blurb about the book and the author. But why wasnt the information about the book first, it’s because since Amazon is a sponsor they pay to have their stuff pushed first. And now we have AI, i looked up a question about the book, what was the name of the son of the king of Troy and the first thing I got was an AI response. That would save me time from clicking on websites and putting in effort to find the answer. but even though I asked a pointed question I still had an ad on the side to buy the book. And of course, I looked at it bec...

  When you use any social app that uses an algorithm to show you what it thinks you will like do you ever feel like you see stuff that you don’t like or some of the ads seem kind of random? It’s because, for a lot of things, it is more pay-to-play, if you want something and you search it up on Google you are most likely going to get Amazon as your first option. It’s because Amazon is a big company that can afford to pay to have their ads pushed and shown to people. But smaller businesses that can’t afford to do that aren’t shown, so when you look something up it does not show you the best result based on what you wanted it shows you the brand that paid the most to be there. It can also be the same with what you see on your social media, people who get more likes and shares get pushed more and people can pay to be pushed and shown to others. Like if you’re looking on Facebook for a dog groomer, the first person you see most likely paid Facebook to push their ad and make sure it was ...

  I have bought many games digitally, it’s just easier and usually cheaper. I love having a physical copy of the game but if it’s going to cost way more then I just can’t justify it. But when you buy online do you really own what you bought? If you have a physical copy of a game then you can use that in any device it will work with. But online games, what’s stopping someone from just taking it down, like with Steem, you don’t own those games. At any point, they can just take it away. It is like owning a movie versus watching it on a subscription, I know I have that movie it’s physically there but if I log into Netflix I don’t know what I’ll find, they add and take away things all the time. It’s less clutter to have a subscription and easier than looking for a specific game or show that’s on a disc or card but is the worry of losing your favourite game because it got removed really worth it?

  When I was growing up my mom was a big Facebook person, she still is. Honestly, if I lost my memory I could just go on her Facebook and know my whole life. But that’s a lot different on my social media, I don’t post much about myself, I post more artwork on my socials just because I don’t feel the need to post other stuff. That is how I feel about my privacy, unless it’s something I want everyone to know then I won’t post it. Some people post everything and that’s also fine, they are less private. Now that is just online, I’m not as private if I am friends with someone. What about you, are you more private online or just as outgoing?