I'm a firm believer in the statement that you are responsible for your own actions. Regardless if these culprits acted bases on influence of whatever TV show they orginally saw the "fire in the hole" prank on, one has to believe that they were predetermined to act in a way that's detrimental to society with or without any so called influence.

In response to the ethics of posting of the video on Youtube, this is where the free speech blurs the line. I believe the victim in the video is somewhat in the same situation as many celebrities. They are always in the publics eye with negative images by paparazzi. It's the same with the victim. If the images are public and available, there really isn't much the victim can do to remove himself from the public's eye.

The last thing I would like to respond to is the question of:

Is the media hyping the prank excessively, or is the media making the public aware of a disturbing prank?

The media serves only one purpose and that purpose is profit. It doesn't matter if the news meaningful, all that matters is if the news will interest people enough to get viewers and ratings. In this case, all that matters is if the public is interested. It's cynical but it's the American way.

So it seems like Youtube seems to be the hot topic for blogging lately, and I unfortunately will attempt to contribute to this flavor of the month.

I was lying in bed talking to my girlfriend about her work, she mentioned that she had to grow some bacteria for a microbiology class that she TAs. Well this got me started on recalling my sixth grade biology class. Our semester long project was to raise and observe seamonkeys. Now if you've never heard of these fascinating little creatures before, they're pretty much brill shrimp. Creatures that seem to only exist in large quantities to feed the giant whales who roam the vast oceans. Back to what I was saying, I had a sudden urge to read/look up seamonkies. As my girlfriend pointed out, I was extremely excited about these little things. The first thing I did, somewhat similar to what I would do with a research paper, I wiki'd seamonkies. I read a little background on the creatures and even got a little insight on how they actually manage to spring to life after you open a packet of powder which contains their eggs and food. So from there I decided to see what Youtube had to offer on the subject. It seems like there's actually a commercial specifically designed for Youtube viewing published by the company that sells and manufactures seamonkies. This wasn't a TV ad ported over to an internet video, this was actually an ad specifically made for youtube.

That really blew me away, and in retrospect it really hit hard on how much the internet affects our lives. While it makes everything so much easier, I begin to feel that I'm almost on life support. Without the internet I would quite possibly go mad of boredom. Fascinating!

Welcome

My very first post on my very first blog.


This will be my space to share my ramblings regarding the various occurences that happen throughout the course of this semester.

To start things off I'll share my first assignment.

New Media for me is a love hate situation. The concept itself absolutely revolts me, however the lure of its simplicity and ease makes it hard to resist. Coming from an international school in China, communication with old classmates has always been difficult. My high school career was during the major rise of New Media. Websites like Xanga, Livejournal and Myspace were just starting to skyrocket in their popularity. While most of my friends jumped onto this bandwagon, I myself was more reserved, preferring to keep myself and my thoughts offline as much as possible. My beliefs were always that one day, something I wrote online will come back to haunt me. I played it as safely as possible., a stealthy stalking predator if you will; carefully eyeing other people's online adventures while silently concealing my own. Recently I've been more accepting of this form of media, as I've become more accustomed to receiving instant messages in strange hours from friends in foreign places. While I still prefer to actually talk to someone in person, the benefits of New Media has caught up with me, and I myself have succomed to this dominant form of communication.