My Culture Life...Social Networking.

Majority of the population has two lives. One is the real life and the other is life in media, such as gaming, social networking etc. With high-tech technologies today at our fingertips convinces us to participate in another world, by "world" I mean into another system. I experienced the changes in myself when I came in contact with my computer. Growing up in Brazil and Paraguay, I had no access to internet or cable so, this forces me to go out and explore. Making new friends from my street and playing sports outside was pretty much my life, obviously, it does not include technologies. After I immigrated to Canada, I was educated on many advanced technologies and the functions of all the systems in front of me. My obvious reaction was "Wow, this is so cool!" shortly after, I was hooked.

My main participatory culture is the social networking. I am not in favour of the gaming culture although I do own Nintendo DS and wants to own a Wii but I was never addicted like other gamers. Maybe because I get bored easily, or because I never win.
I personally just different social networking websites for different viewers and I will run down the examples shortly. Social networking is what I am all about right now because I am the type of person who is curious on what others are doing in their life.

MSN is what I use to connect with all my close friends from high school and work. I only talk to certain people on MSN and they are consider the closest to me.

Then there is Facebook, which I have over 1,000 friends on. Not everybody I "befriended" on facebook are actually my friends because I have not met some of them. I put them in the "acquaintances" category. People may be wondering why I accept people I do not know on facebook and allow them to access my personal pictures and information. My answer is I take pictures for a reason, and that is to share it with as many people as I can. Facebook also has events that can inform me on what is happening in my city so it is very useful part of my life right now. And did I mention all the applications facebook has? One of the popular facebook application is "Farmville". This application forces a user to check back frequently because they need to "harvest the crops" daily and if fail to do so will result in dead plants. I feel that Facebook is very intelligent by setting applications like this to attract more users to using Facebook.

Lastly, there is Twitter. I am not ashamed to admit that I do have a Twitter even though I am not an important public figure. People who follows me on twitter are consider "strangers/friends/acquaintances/idols" or just anybody. I don't restrict anyone from viewing my tweets because what I post is what I want to share to the world even though, some posts are quite useless and irrelevant. I follow many celebrities on Twitter and it keeps me updated on their CD release date, Music videos, concerts and contests. Twitter made a lot of people feel closer to somebody because if their 'tweet' is powerful, it can grasp the audience into their life.

“The media environment, which consists of language, numbers, images, holograms, and all of the other symbols, techniques, and machinery that make us what we are" (Postman 1). Basically, I am all over the social networking websites and without it now, I do not know what I will do with my life at this moment. Back then, I would have no problem but I am now trapped in the social networking that I cannot get out of.


Work Cited:

"The Humanism of Media Ecology :: MEA Proceedings." The Media Ecology Association. Web. 23 Nov. 2009. .