parrish – Gender, Race, and Labor in the Digital World

Final Reflective Statement

I came into this class as a very close minded person who believed that there was a right answer to everything. I enjoy when topics are black and white; thus the reason I am majoring in a technical field where there is always an answer to questions that are asked. After going through this course my perspective is changed and I am now more open minded than I was entering the course. I was able to relate to a large majority of the issues that we discussed in class on a personal level and as a result of that I was able to form connections and change the way that I viewed the world.

In the first unit “Play, Privilege, and Power” we discussed video games, and the social environment that exists within that form of social media. Specifically we talked in depth about how women were treated when they used video games. Video games are predominantly dominated by males and use it as a form of “escape” from the real world. As a result of this, female interaction in the video game realm is often met with scorn and distaste. We discussed Gamergate including Zoe Quinn’s video game and Anita Sarkeesian’s criticism of the male dominance of this medium. For most people in the class this was not new information but I hate playing video games and as a result had no personal experience with this topic. Because of this, everything that we discussed was new to me and I was able to view it all for the first time with a fresh perspective. However I did find it difficult to sympathize with the struggle due to my lack of a connection and personal experience. After making my own Twine game I did in fact gain a newfound respect for both those that create and play videogames after observing the difficulty and creativity required.

During the “Social Media and Social Justice” unit I was able to interact with the class in a manner that was the complete opposite of how I had interacted with the first unit. As we discussed different mediums of social media I had been very actively using Twitter and Facebook for many years and had an unbelievable amount of personal experience with this topic. As a result of my connection with the material I found it extremely interesting and took great enjoyment in discussing my personal experiences in using social media. This unit allowed me to take a look at my own actions from an academic viewpoint. For example I was a part of the transition from Myspace to Facebook and then the transition from Facebook to Twitter. I had just thought that I was following my friends to the new cool thing I didn’t understand that there were serious social implications behind each of these actions. Now as I casually utilize social media for fun I am looking at what I do from an analytical standpoint.

Throughout the “#HashtagsMatter: Digital Activism” unit we continued discussing social media, specifically Twitter and how it had become a platform for social activists. My personal experience once again provided me with a unique perspective. We talked extensively about Ferguson and how Twitter had been the most effective form of spreading information. It was difficult for reporters to get up close and get meaningful information. Regular civilians however, had full access and were able to immediately update the world on what was going on. It was all organized through the #Ferguson hashtag. This allowed people from around the world to see what was going on. During the time that this was going on I was a very active Twitter user. Because of this fact I found it extremely interesting to be studying a social phenomenon that I had personally contributed to.

Our final unit was called “Imagining Transformations” where we speculated on potential future technologies and their effects on social life. We watched the movie “Sleep Dealer” as an example of how technology could create a change in the social climate of the world. During this unit we practiced using various technologies in order to solve social problems and were required to each speculate on technology that we believed may soon exist. I noticed while doing this project that the large majority of the class has a very optimistic view of the future. Almost everybody predicted a future where all social issues were nearly completely solved as a result of technology.

Overall this class made me analyze my own actions and way of thinking. What I will take from this class more than anything is a change in perspective. Now when I look at social issues in the world I will examine it from a point of view that is different than mine as well as my own.

Design Camp on Photoshop

What I learned how to do at the Photoshop Design Camp was how to use intermediate level skills in the Adobe Photoshop program. Specifically we were taught how to make a person “disappear” as we manipulated the clothes, shadows, and background to erase the skin of the person.

I will use these skills to help me specifically in classes as I need to use Photoshop to create visual enhancement for projects. I will also use it for personal matters such as touching up photos and making a poster for myself.

I believe that the project we did was entirely related to this class. We were utilizing digital media to create symbolic representations of people that ignored gender, race, or any other form of discrimination and focused solely on the actions of an individual. While still celebrating the uniqueness of every human being it is important to realize that we are all in fact the same creatures. I also believe that this is incredibly symbolic of the fact that people should not be judged based off of identifying features, but rather on the content of their character and the actions that they choose to engage in.

I also included the specific picture that I created in the design camp using my newly obtained skills. It is a picture of a human being and you have a near full understanding of the situation with no idea as to the race or gender of the individual. This further reinforces the idea that discrimination based on race and gender is ridiculous and unwarranted.

Digital DNA

The new technology that I have thought up is called “Digital DNA”. What this technology allows for is genetic plastic surgery. This is done through a computer program that is able to mirror the DNA replication process that naturally occurs in the human body. The computer program itself would utilize the knowledge of nucleotide base pairs gained through the human genome project to write out the sequences necessary to exemplify specific traits. The required nucleotide base pairs would then be ordered so that a full strand of DNA would be created. This process would be replicated hundreds of thousands of times until enough DNA had been created to evoke a reaction from the human body. The next step in the process would be DNA extraction where the existing DNA would be removed from the body to allow the new DNA to create a change. This artificial DNA would then be introduced into the cells of the human where it would begin the protein synthesis process until enough proteins had been created that the traits would be expressed by the individual. Basically, the human body uses DNA as a manual on how to create new cells and Digital DNA would replace this manual to allow for changes in traits like skin color, eye color, or even traits such as height and weight. Even further it could be used to change the gender of an individual.

This would be initially designed by geneticists for the purpose of reversing genetically inherited traits such as deformation, heart projects, or some other birth defect. However as with all technology, it will be abused by the wealthy elite in order to change their physical appearance to be more like that of what is considered “perfect”. I believe that it would then transition into the LGBT community as people would be able to instantly and completely change their sex to whatever gender they identify with. After this I believe that the technology would become more widespread allowing other wealth brackets to access it. In this instance it would be used both in the way that the creators intended as well as being misused. The creators would be playing God as they are literally changing the code that determines the physical makeup of people.

The most obvious problem that would be associated with this product would be a severe increase in the division of classes as the wealthy elite would take on an entirely different appearance than that of the poorer class. It’s not too far of a stretch to assume that there would be an attempt at creating a new Aryan race as people would be able to pick and choose their physical traits making poor and wealthy easily distinguishable. However, as this process becomes cheaper and more accessible to the common person I believe that people will at first change to all mirror the same image of perfection until people inevitably become bored of seeing the same look everywhere. I believe it will be at this point that true social change will take hold. People will start celebrating uniqueness as gender, race, and ethnicity would cease to be an issue of discrimination. At this point the choice of physical appearance would belong entirely to every individual person. This would challenge every social standard that we as a human race have created up until this point in history. All discrimination and stereotypes that we have as a culture would be shattered. Granted, there is still a possibility that cultural differences that currently exist would translate to this new world in a way very similar to the transition that occurred when the internet was first introduced to civilians. In this case many professionals believed that the anonymity of the internet would have the effect of erasing all racial tensions. This proved to be untrue as cultural differences translated onto the internet due to differences in which websites people visited, subject matter of conversations, and the manner in which people communicated.

Another major problem that may arise would be a forensic issue as criminals would be able to change their physical appearance as well as the genetic makeup of their DNA making it impossible to identify said criminals. Laws will have to be passed in order to counteract the actions of these criminals. This will cost both governments as well as law enforcers money as they attempt to put a stop to these actions. The standards that would have to be set in order to effectively integrate this technology into the lives of the everyday civilian would create severe issues in terms of making accessibility.

Overall it is impossible to make an accurate prediction as to the actual social effects of introducing this technology into the world due to the fact that it is impossible to predict the actions of human beings. I think it is safe to say that it would however completely destroy the existing social standards that the human race has created through this point in history. I personally believe that we should each be proud of who we are and the way that we were born so I would not be particularly happy if this technology became mainstream. Unfortunately, this technology is already nearing completion as humans already have the option to pick and choose traits that their children will have. There is a social change coming as these genetically engineered children are born and inherit the Earth. The extent of the change belongs to them.

Response to “Race and Labor Unplugged”

This is an article written in 2011 by Dale Hudson of NYU Abu Dhabi and posted on the website Flowtv.org, a television and movie journalism website. The intended audience for this piece is people that have seen the movie “Sleep Dealer” and wish to further their understanding of the racial comments that are being made by the producers of the film. This article also delves into the works “Why Braceros?”, a domestically made propaganda video from 1959 by the California Growers and “Why Cybraceros?”, a satirical critique of “Why Braceros?” by Alex Rivera in 1997.

The main idea that this text is expressing relates to the portraying the struggles of Mexican migrant workers illegally crossing the border into the US through comparison to the “nodes” that allow migrant workers to continue with their labor. Hudson goes through various aspects of the movie and compares them to the modern day relations with the US border control and the problems that modern braceros experience. Specifically the “sleep dealers” themselves, which are factories where digital labor is outsourced to the US, are being compared to modern migrant workers that cross the border to find employment in manual labor. Having nodes implanted becomes the equivalent of traveling to the US in this comparison. By associations the coyotes which usually transport people across the border are replaced by “coyoteks” that are tech savvy smugglers which actually perform the operation of implanting nodes into the workers illegally. Once the workers have the nodes implanted they are able to begin working at the sleep dealers and make money for their family.

The goal that Hudson had in writing this article was to inform the reader of the cultural and racial statements that Rivera was making in “Sleep Dealer”. I believe that it was also Hudson’s intention to make sure that the persuasive intention of Rivera in convincing viewers of his views on immigration and migrant workers would be passed on to the readers of this article.

I appreciated how Hudson was very thorough in his analysis of the movie and how he also drew in other examples of Rivera’s work in order to provide context for his ideas and comments developed in the movie. I appreciated the explanation of symbols with context that I otherwise did not pick up on and wouldn’t have understood. I can connect this to my own experience because I watched the movie and made many of the same conclusions that Hudson did. A question that I am left with after reading this article is: how does race affect the opportunities that individuals experience in seeking employment and growth in the real world?

#IfTheyGunnedMeDown

My storify is at

https://storify.com/HDCC106/iftheygunnedmedown

The hashtag that I am exploring in this project is #IfTheyGunnedMeDown. This hashtag originated after the death of Mike Brown and the following events that occurred in Ferguson, Missouri. Michael Brown was an unarmed African American teenager that was killed by a police officer which then sparked riots causing media to flock to the city of Ferguson. As the media reported on this issue viewers began taking note of how Mike Brown and others involved in this issue were represented. Specifically, African Americans were being portrayed as thugs through the use of informal pictures usually posing at a party, holding up alcohol, explicit hand signs or wearing baggy or sagging clothing. Whites on the other hand, were generally portrayed as innocent bystanders through the use of portraits that are very formal, specifically of them wearing their graduation caps and gowns. What happened next is that Twitter users noticed the sharp contrast between how blacks and whites were portrayed by the media. This is what actually spurred the use of the hashtag as the hashtag activists attempted to spread awareness about this issue.

This hashtag was first utilized by the twitter user @CJ_musick_lawya on august 10^th 2014 and contrasted a black male posing with a bottle of alcohol with a picture of him speaking at graduation with the caption “Yes let’s do that: Which photo does the media use if the police shot me down? #IfTheyGunnedMeDown”. This hashtag gained a huge following as hundreds of thousands of people began retweeting and responding to it. The group of people that actually contributed to posting on it however was mostly comprised of black males. After some time white males also began posting under the same tag with the purpose of spreading the same message. However, when utilized by white Twitter users it was meant to highlight the fact that whites were also in disagreement with how the media portrayed the majority of white criminals as “mentally ill” and as victims of circumstance. I did notice that there was a severe lack of women, black or white, that posted including this hashtag. The tweets that I opted to include had a mixture of serious activist tweets with a clear message as well as some tweets that satirized the hashtag because I believed that these provided an accurate summary as to what was represented by the tag as a whole.

There has definitely been a media response to this issue as they reversed how perpetrators of crimes were presented. As police brutality gained mass media attention black youths transformed into having a more innocent image as different media outlets began placing their graduation pictures on news broadcasts. White police officers on the other hand began to lose sympathy from the media and began having their mugshots or other unflattering images used on these broadcasts. This stimulated a response from the masses of Twitter users that fell into two major categories; those that sided with the police officers and those that sided with the black youths. The group of people that sided with the police officers cited that many of the blacks that had become victims of police brutality had in fact committed a crime giving members of the police force the right to protect their own lives through the use of force. The other side of this argument noted that the victims were unarmed and had not provoked violence thus the police officers had no right at all to use lethal force to deal with these issues. The hashtag itself developed as all popular memes do as it gained popularity many began satirizing the action providing images such as photoshopped images of themselves that had nothing to do with the activist movement itself. I feel that it is important to note the extremely large amount of sexual content that was posted with the same satirical intent as the photoshopped images (which I elected not to include in my 40 tweets). Overall the response to these purposefully comedic images has been surprisingly positive consisting mostly of laughing emojis and very rarely there would be an individual that felt offended mixed in.

This hashtag exists to try to destroy the cultural bias that exists within the media as they generally attempt to create sympathy for whites involved in any dispute while blacks are given almost the entirety of the blame. It was very encouraging to see that while the majority of these tweets were from black individuals, there was still a significant number of whites that had decided to stop being silent and had actually spoken up in favor of racial equality. This has been an extremely effective means of both provoking discussion and creating thought. I know that I personally experienced a change as this tag gained traction. As an active Twitter user at the same time that this first developed I was able to watch as this tag grew and gained in popularity. I know that I personally had never thought about how criminals were portrayed by the media or the implications behind it until after this specific hashtag. It made me notice more than just the pictures that were used now whenever a tragedy occurs that is reported on I definitely analyze the message that they are sending out and attempt to make my own judgment of a situation based on the facts and events. In conclusion I am very thankful to have come across this hashtag as it helped me to personally grow more aware and develop more understanding of the world around me.

Response to #Ferguson

The Ferguson hashtag tweets are a collection of tweets which contain the phrase “#Ferguson”. This hashtag began trending after the death of unarmed black child Michael Brown at the hands of an armed, white police officer. Riots broke out as people stormed to Ferguson, Missouri as people wanted to bring attention to the issue of police brutality; specifically brutality of white police officers on black citizens. When the riots broke out police responded by bringing in very serious support to the point that the issue of police militarization began to be discussed. The police force had brought tanks, assault rifles, tear gas, and a number of other military grade weaponry. While the riots were going on reporters flocked to the area and many were arrested trying to capture news of the incident. During this whole ordeal the hashtag #ferguson took off and became the number one trending topic on twitter nationwide. People were able to keep up to date by the thousands of people in the city that were live tweeting events as they occurred. These were mixed in with people that felt the need to give their opinions on the events as they had unfolded.

There appeared to be a pretty even split as to those that agreed with the police officers in regards to self preservation and trying to quell the violence and rioting and those that believed that the officer had acted too far in taking the life of an unarmed black boy. This stemmed another disagreement which was how blacks vs whites are portrayed by the media. Some stations made Mike Brown appear to be a thug and a criminal mainly noting the fact that he had just robbed a convenience store prior to being killed by the police officer. Yet still other stations posted the image of Mike Browns high school graduation photo and mainly noted how he was shot six times when he was dead after the first shot. This lead to the creation of another hashtag; #IfTheyGunnedMeDown. Under this hashtag people of all races posted a picture of themselves looking successful and professional (usually a graduation picture) next to a picture of them posing in an unprofessional manner such as drinking, smoking, holding up their middle finger, or at a party. The purpose of this was to emphasize that when whites are killed or even kill others they generally had positive pictures shown and are described as “mentally disturbed” while black people that are killed are made out to look like thugs.

The #Ferguson hashtag was meant to gather all of the tweets about Ferguson in the same place making it easier for people in a different area to follow the events as they unfolded. In addition to this it allowed people to easily spread their opinion on each event in real time. Without Twitter this event would not have gained the same media attention and amount of outrage. People have never been able to react and interact as immediately and effectively as they did during the events at Ferguson.

I appreciated the ease at which everybody’s opinion could be viewed. Also the fact that it allowed for the information to be immediately spread and viewed by everybody changed the way that the events unfolded. I can directly relate to this because I actively use Twitter so when people started using #Ferguson I interacted directly as it happened. The question that I am left with after going through these hashtags and links is: why is violence and hatred so prevalent in our society?

Exploring Anonymity in Social Media

In this class I was required to read part of the book “It’s complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens” by Danah Boyd. This book mentioned that people initially believed that the internet would lead to the end of racism and sexism as a whole citing the fact that people are anonymous online as the reason for its downfall. However this book then explored why researchers didn’t believe that this would be possible, mostly due to the fact that people in essence bring their social circles with them when they interact with others online. It was this book that inspired me to research the concept of racism, sexism, and anonymity in social networks. My research question was: how would people be able to interpret the race and gender of an individual based upon simply reading the raw text of their most recent social media updates without being given any other information.

In order to explore and attempt to answer this question I decided that I would pick Twitter as the social media site that I would use due to the fact that it is the most text based of the current, popular, social media sites as well as the fact that it is one of the more actively used sites among my peers. The method that I chose was to show these different pages of plain text to different people and asked them to determine the race and gender of the individual that the twitter account belonged to. In order to make sure there was an even distribution of race and gender I chose to include 3 twitter accounts each from an Asian male, an Asian female, a black male, a black female, a white male and a white female. These were all randomly chosen from the list of people that followed me on Twitter. I also chose to include the 15 most recent tweets that fit the criteria of being an all text tweet (no pictures included) and does not tag another user in order to avoid including conversations.

FullSizeRender (1)

(Usable) (Not Usable)

I also opted not to include emojis in order to give each page of tweets the same appearance. Once I had picked the tweets that I would show to the guessers I chose to display them on a Word document with plain black text with each tweetappearing on a bulleted list where the only heading is “Twitter Account” and then a randomly selected number that compares to each twitter account.

I selected these numbers by writing each name on a piece of paper and randomly picked each piece to determine the order. When I went to interview the guessers I explained to them that they were looking at the 15 most recent tweets of an individual and they had to select a race from the possibilities of Asian, black, or white, and to guess gender as either male or female. I did not tell the guessers that there was an even number of each race and gender and I didn’t let them see what they had selected after they had made a decision. I then displayed the twitter accounts one at a time and didn’t switch to the next account until after the guesser had finalized an answer as to the race and gender of the individual. I recorded this data in the form of a table where I had the twitter account number down the first column and the race and gender of each guesser along the top row of the table. I then recorded the race and gender that they believed each twitter account to belong to.

I then summed up the amount of correct and incorrect guesses as well as the amount of times that each guesser chose each race and gender. In order to protect everybody’s privacy I only included information relevant to the experiment. I chose to only display each twitter account as a number, race, and, gender instead of their actual name or twitter handle. I also displayed each guesser in terms of their race and gender instead of their name. I also only used Twitter accounts that were already set to private.

My hypothesis was initially that people would have a difficult time differentiating the race and gender of an individual based solely on the text of their tweets but after I had set up the experiment and created the word document I had to change my hypothesis. I noticed that even within only the 15 most recent tweets an overwhelming majority of the 18 twitter accounts that I chose to examine had made explicit references to their own race and gender. My hypothesis directly before beginning the experiment was that the guessers would be fairly successful in determining the race and gender of the individual owners of the twitter accounts.

What I found was similar to my hypothesis but with some very notable differences. Among my responses there were 107 guesses that correctly identified race and gender out of 180 total guesses. That correlates to a 59% success rate. However, it is interesting to note that the success was not due to direct statements that identified race as I had assumed would be the case but rather due to “dialect” and “use of certain words” as one white male guesser noted. He noted that this also held true for gender, specifically he said he identified males if they discussed a topic such as sports or females if they discussed a topic such as dancing or makeup. Also nearly every single guesser identified that they went into the survey with a belief that they would be able to distinguish between white and black very easily but would struggle between Asian and white. This means that among the people that I surveyed there was a belief that there existed a very serious cultural divide between black and white yet very minimal differences between Asian and white. However there was no comment made about gender and when I asked one Asian male why, he responded with “I don’t know that just seemed like it would be easy”. Not only do preconceived cultural differences exist between races but they exist even between people of the same race with different genders! One white male noted something very important midway through his survey as he stated “when I can’t decide which answer it is my default is white male” and a black male said something similar as he stated that “when a tweet looks like something that I would think I assume it’s a black male”. This resulted in skewed results across the board as white males generally had more male guesses than female guesses and more white guesses than Asian or black guesses. This same pattern held true for the races and genders of the other guessers. There was no clear distinction between the race or gender of an individual and the percentage of correct guesses. In terms of answering my initial research question I believe that people are able to successfully distinguish the race and gender of an individual based solely on the raw text of their social media updates. Relating this topic back to the initial Boyd reading that discussed anonymity my results provide evidence for the fact that individuals do, in fact, bring their social network with them when they go online resulting in a difference not only in who people communicate with but also in how they communicate with each other.

Response to “The Laborers”

The article “The Laborers Who Keep Dick Pics and Beheadings Out of Your Facebook Feed” was written by Adrian Chen and published on wired.com in October of 2014. This piece was written with the intended audience of any person that uses the internet on a regular basis with the intended purpose of making them think about the amount of effort that is put into filtering what they see on social media sites on a daily basis. A lot of the work that is completed by these people goes entirely unnoticed as not only are the results difficult to visualize, but it is also generally completed in another country entirely.

The main idea of this text is that the labor that is done by large tech companies is not necessarily completed in the well publicized great conditions of the headquarters of these companies in silicon valley, but rather for very poor pay with tremendous adverse side effects. Much of this filtering labor is completed in the Philippines as they have a culture that is very similar to the culture of the US due to the fact that they used to be a colony of the US. These laborers are very poorly compensated and work under terrible conditions. However, sometimes this filtering process takes place on American soil in the nice offices that people generally hear about. There are still terrible side effects. The psychological effects of looking at such dark imagery for such extended periods of time are not exactly known and vary from person to person, but can be similar to PTSD in there severity.

Something that I enjoyed from this article was how they included information about the terrible physical conditions of workers in other countries as well as information about the terrible mental conditions of workers in the US that have desirable physical conditions. The reason that I enjoyed this was because it made me think of my own experience using social media. Around two years ago I noticed a severe increase in the amount of gore and pornography that appeared on my Facebook feed whether it was due to somebody being hacked and accidentally sharing said videos or others actually sharing them. Then after a few months there was almost a complete disappearance of these severe videos. After reading this article it made sense to me as I began to realize and appreciate the effort that had gone into completing such a tremendous task. In the past I had simply assumed either people had stopped posting them or a computer was going through posts and automatically tagging and deleting sensitive posts.

One question that I am left with after reading this article is how can we find a way to filter this dark imagery without subjecting the human mind to what basically qualifies as mental torture?

Response to “it’s complicated”

Danah Boyd’s book “it’s complicated” discusses the current conditions of modern social networking and the resulting implications that the implementation of technology has on teens. This book was written so that teenagers, parents, teachers, or anybody that interacts with teenagers and social media on a regular basis would have insight and further knowledge as to what they actually see on social media as opposed to what it looks like on the surface. The main idea that Boyd was trying to express in writing this piece was that prejudice still exists even with the implementation of social media. The “techno-utopians” as he calls them, were wrong about technology being able to completely eradicate prejudice. Many had believed that the internet and anonymity would make racism, sexism, and prejudice a thing of the past because these things would not be viewable online. However, people still brought their same networks with them online and true anonymity proved to be very difficult to find. Teens wanted to maintain the same social standing they had worked for in person when they went online, so as a result this same system transitioned onto the online world. The internet ended up being just as segregated as the real world except magnified due to the fact that it exists publicly for all to see. In writing this Boyd was hoping to make the reader aware of both the presence of prejudice that still exists in the world contrary to what some may claim.

I thought this piece was very good as it was a very accurate portrayal of the social media world that I have grown accustomed to and took into account what other actual teens were experiencing as opposed to simply trying to understand what was happening without actually asking the people using it. What I enjoyed in this reading was seeing how every teen didn’t believe that they were prejudiced personally and then when they looked at the details of their social media lives they were actually interacting almost exclusively with peers that were members of similar socioeconomic status. I find this interesting because I immediately thought of myself and went to examine my own social media accounts to determine if I had a similar subconscious discrimination. What I found was that I was closer to the exception than the rule. I played football in high school, a sport that was predominantly considered a “black sport” considering that I was one of 6 white kids on the team. As a result of this I interact with members of other socioeconomic classes more than some of my other peers. However, it was still noticeable that I did in fact interact with other white males more than any other group of people. So, while I still somewhat interact with members of other classes I have mainly interacted with members of a similar class.

The major question that I am left with at the conclusion of this article is, with the tremendous potential that social media has for the eradication of prejudice what can we as teens who primarily inhabit this medium due to assist the process?

Strange Crash

My game is titled “Strange Crash” and can be found at http://philome.la/chanman_80/strange-crash

When I was creating this game I was simply trying to create a game that had a large entertainment value. My first idea in regards to creating a game that would be entertaining was a mixture of action, drama, and a little bit of comedy. I was attempting to make sure that whoever played the game would have a good experience. The method that I chose to use in order to accomplish this goal was by adding a significant amount of plot twists and surprises that would be otherwise completely unexpected if the player hadn’t already experienced the gameplay previously.

During the design process I had nothing in mind in terms of meaning or connecting the subject matter to what we had read about and discussed in class; I simply wished to create something that I would find enjoyable. However, after I had designed it, I realized that it did in fact relate to topics that we had discussed in class. In creating a game that was appealing to myself, a white teenage male, I had created a game where a male character partakes in gender typical activities such as shooting a gun and killing people. In addition to this I had failed to include any female characters in my game. So, without even realizing it, I had participated in this gender excluding world that gaming has turned into. I didn’t even realize that I had done this until another person pointed it out to me. I can now see firsthand how easy it was for the gaming industry to end up in the place it is in today. With the deficit of females in technical fields it isn’t hard to believe that big gaming companies make the same mistakes that I made as the predominantly straight white males are designing games that they believe that they will also enjoy. So not only did my project end up directly connecting to the class discussion and readings, but I was also able to experience firsthand the experiences that we discussed.

As I had previously noted, my goal in creating this game was to develop an enjoyable experience that would provide excitement to those that play it. In that aspect I believe that I was successful. In terms of tying it into what we had talked about in class initially I had believed that I was unsuccessful however after discussion with others and some personal reflection I was able to determine that I had unknowingly interwoven class topics into this experience. Also I believe that I was very successful from a technical aspect because everything worked and I was able to implement both HTML and CSS additions as I included the links from page to page, images, and changed the background and text color. All of this technical addendums worked to enhance the overall experience.