Goons and Griefers: A cry for attention?

     While looking for a video on goons and griefing to analyze on Youtube, I had somewhat of an epiphany. While our class discussions talked about those who griefed for laughs or those who had some other agenda, I have found something that they both share in common: they both do it for attention.

     According to a statement given to Julian Dibbell for his article Mutilated Furries, Flying Phalluses: Put the Blame on Griefers, the Sociopaths of the Virtual World, the interviewee known as ^ban^ says "We do it for the lulz...for laughs...most of us are psychotic." But I don’t think that this is solely the case.

As I looked through the various videos on Youtube for griefers and goons, I found that all the videos were of either acts of griefing such as this video named THE GREATEST GRIEFING VIDEO EVER MADE, or people trying to show how to get rid of griefers. What caught my attention were the comments on the various videos that mostly sound like this one: “HAHA this video is so great. I've watched it so many times. =)”

It was at this point that I came to the realization that goons and griefers are no different than that annoying kid that sat behind you in high school throwing paper balls or poking you with a pencil until you jumped out of your seat screaming at them. They just want attention. And they’ll get it, either through your attempts to get them to stop or the chuckles and approvals they get from their friends. The question is how do you stop them? You cannot simply ignore them because they will not go away, they will just get worse to try and get the attention they want, and if you try to out-grief them, they will come back with friends and grief you worse. I ask again, what do you do?

Potter and Media Violence: What are we watching?

     In chapter nineteen of James Potter’s Media Literacy, he talks about violence in the media as well as the audience’s view on what violence is. On page 321, he says that the public conception of violence is tied into three factors. Of those three, there is one in which he says “the seriousness of the action itself and the way the act is portrayed are more influential in the decision of violence than the portrayal of harm to the victim.” Basically, if an act of violence is portrayed by a “good guy” onto a “bad guy” then the act of violence may not be seen as violent as if a “bad guy” used the same violent act on an innocent person.

     It is as if the audience is saying that a violent act is not really violence if it is good punishing evil. This is exactly what the people at ChallengingMedia are saying in their segment Beyond Good and Evil: Children, Media & Violent Times. Throughout the segment, they show media images of soldiers, secret agents, and superheroes using violent acts to punish the “bad guys.” They say that this kind of media is teaching children at a very young age that violent acts are okay as long as they are being used to punish bad people. They also say that the media is teaching children that a “bad guy” is anyone who is different from the stereotypical hero character who is generally a white male.

So the media is not only telling children that certain violent acts are okay, but also that racism is alright as well. I feel that this is a horrible system that we have come to accept and that something needs to be done. We as a people cannot teach our children that violence is acceptable on any level, especially if that level carries with it a high level of racial undertones.

Boyd, Shirky, and Privacy

     Is privacy dead? There are many who believe that privacy isn’t dead, but has just become more involved to maintain. But isn’t it all about how “privacy” is defined?

     According to Danah Boyd, “Privacy is not simply about the state of an inanimate object or set of bytes; it is about the sense of vulnerability that an individual experiences. When people feel exposed or invaded, there's a privacy issue.”

     It is in this sense that Clay Shirky feels that privacy is dead. In an interview with the Switched Show, Shirky says that when someone such as a potential employer is able to find and use information that they have found on someone’s Facebook page, it is very problematic. He goes on to speak of the oddity in searching for information on someone’s postings. He says that if there was a group of teenagers in a food court and you listened in on their conversations, you were being weird and socially unacceptable. He goes on to say that it is the same if you were to record people’s conversations in a public setting: you are being socially unacceptable and weird. However, this for some reason does not apply online which is also a public setting. Bottom line: peoples’ privacy is being invaded in ways on the internet that would be unacceptable and weird in any other public setting.

     I for one concur with the idea that privacy is dead from an experience one of my sisters had with Facebook. As the story goes, she posted something along the lines of “I hate my job” on her Facebook page. Her employers got wind of this posting and fired her because of it. Now, in any other setting if a person were to say that they hated their job there would be no consequence; but in the online world, my sister was chastised. Obviously she felt exposed and vulnerable for what her employer had done which is the basis of what Danah Boyd and Clay Shirky were speaking about in terms of privacy.  

Brin: Privacy and Surveillance

     Privacy and Surveillance is a touchy subject for most. On one hand, people want to feel safe while they go about their daily lives. On the other hand, people want their privacy. There has always been a thin, constantly shifting line between the two, but there may be a time very soon when there will no longer be a debate.

     According to David Brin, “In the information age to come, cameras and databases will sprout like poppies-or weeds-whether we like it or not.” This is exactly what has happened in Chicago. In this segment by The Associated Press they speak about how the city of Chicago now hosts an estimated 10,000 cameras whose feed is monitored at all times. Though the segment reports that the system has caught a wide variety of criminals, from drug dealers to pick-pockets, the main issue is that the citizens of Chicago were not even able to vote on these cameras before they were implemented. Also according to the report, law enforcement is going to be adding more cameras even though they do not even have consent from the citizens of Chicago.

     What this says to me is that big brother does not really care what John Q. Public thinks about surveillance in regard to their privacy. It seems as though that they have seen a decrease in crime with the surveillance system and that is all that matters as long as they claim that they don’t spy on people, which is what they said in the report segment. I for one don’t have a clear opinion about surveillance because honestly, in an age with pinhead sized cameras and cameras in the hands of most everyone through their phones, I don’t think there is such a thing as privacy anymore anyway.   

Boyd:social networks.

In chapter five on Danah Boyd’s Taken Out of Context, she says “For many of the teens whom I met, participating on social network sites is a necessary part of participation in peer culture. Social network sites are one of the many forms of social media that fill in social gaps by allowing teens to connect when getting together is not possible.”

     The people at Socialnomics parallel this idea in their segment Social Media Revolution. In the segment, they make claims that “By 2010 Gen Y will outnumber baby boomers,” and that “96% of them have joined a social network.” This resonates with the student Boyd interviewed who said “If you’re not on MySpace, you don’t exist.”

     If this doesn’t sound like a lot, read on. Socialnomics goes on to say that although it took newspapers, radio, and television a varying number of years to reach a 50 million users, Facebook had double that number in a period of less than nine months.

     What this says to me is that social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook have become a main staple in the average teenage life. It is clear that peer to peer interactions have shifted into cyberspace to fill in the interactions that are being missed by a lack of social gatherings that were commonplace years earlier. At any rate, it seems that social networking has become the new peer world.

ARGs

This week’s blog concerns ARGs or alternate reality games. ARGs are games that take place in a setting that dissolves the boundaries of traditional games.

     According to Jane McGonigal, one of the problems associated with traditional games is that “players are prone to falling for the games’ dissimulative rhetoric. The gamers, in other words, are too easily persuaded by the games’ realistic aesthetics and aspirations. They wind up believing in their play too much for their own good. (pg. 3)” In short, people play their games to the ending and realize that they have nothing to show for it and may even find their actual lives in disarray due to their constant game play. This is not true of ARGs.

     In an interview with Steve Paikin on The Agenda, McGonigal further explains the benefits of ARGs. She says that, unlike more traditional games, ARGs allow players to play as themselves solving real world problems such as the case with A World without Oil. In this game, players simulate what a world would be like during an oil shortage. With players playing as themselves working on real life problems, players can take away from the game a sense of accomplishment they could not get in more traditional games.

     Another benefit that McGonigal mentions is that with ARGs, once the original goal is accomplished, the community does not go away. She says that often times players come up with new problems to solve and continue their play. This in turn leads to a higher level of satisfaction from playing because the game becomes more about the process than an end goal.

     It looks as though ARGs are the next step in gaming. With its realistic problem solving scenarios and actual identity gaming, it is certain that ARGs will keep gamers engaged and may also lead to real solutions to real world problems. My question is this: where will games go from here?

Fans, vandals, or both?

This week, we are discussing Wikipedia which is a user generated online encyclopedia that can be used as a very reliable research tool. The reason Wikipedia can be used to research reliably despite many criticisms is because users are willing to post accurate information and defend articles from vandals. As Clay Shirky (pgs.136-137) said “Evidence that enough people care about an article, and that they have both the will and the tools to defend it, has proven enough to demoralize most vandals.” But what if those who care for an article are also the vandals? This is just the case for Daniel Tosh.

As seen in this link to the Tosh.0 blog (Warning: video clip and hyperlinks to wiki page edits contain vulgar language, view at your own risk), Daniel Tosh told his audience to go online and edit his Wikipedia page much like Stephen Colbert instructed his audience to edit various Wikipedia pages. Unfortunately for Tosh, his followers are not quite as devout as Colbert’s followers. Instead of positively contributing to his Wikipedia article, his fans thought it would be more fun to vandalize his article by inserting a wide array of jabs, bashes, flames, and their own brand of humor. The end result? Wikipedia was forced to lock the article down and fix what had been done.

Although this might be an isolated case, what if this became a reoccurring trend on Wikipedia? Although Tosh’s article was vandalized, it was done by his fans which shows that those who care about a subject will not necessarily have its best interests at heart when editing its Wikipedia article. In short, what this all means is that although Wikipedia is generally a reliable source of information, viewers must be very careful of the information they see and still further research their subjects.

Youtube Video Compensation?

Youtube is an interesting platform as it promotes free media. As Jean Burgess and Joshua Green said “Youtube is not in the video business-its business, rather, is the provision of a convenient and usable form for online video sharing (pg. 4).” The key component of this statement would be that of “sharing” as in no monetary exchange. But should people who post have some right to monetary compensation if they draw in a massive viewing audience? In any other media, the answer would be yes, but does the fact that it on the internet via Youtube make a difference?

In this clip from South Park, the boys are poised to have been the creators of the “What? What?” Youtube video sensation and try to collect monetary compensation for their following. They then are made to sit in a waiting room with an array of other Youtube video sensations who also want to collect money for their videos. The funny part is that they all refer to all the “theoretical” dollars that their videos are worth. The video itself is funny because the actual clips of these videos have been spliced into the scene. But it does raise the question, are these videos worth money?

All of these videos have brought in a vast amount of online views who have all been subjected to the ads that Youtube posts with each video and on each page, shouldn’t the original poster get a small percentage? If it where any other media, the answer as I said would be yes, but I think that things are different with Youtube videos due to several facts. First, they posted on a site that they know and have agreed to as a share site. Second, Youtube videos can be easily copied and edited into a different media which would cause a large copyright issue in the event of monetary compensation. Not to mention that the material that becomes a sensation may itself be tied to another established franchise such as the case with the Tron guy using the Tron franchise property. In short, I do not think that we will be seeing monetary compensation for Youtube videos anytime soon.

Blog 9: Do our Social Networking Sites Own Us?

According to James Potter, “Social networking web sites are designed to give all kinds of people the means to connect with others for all sorts of reasons (pg. 214).” Some use it to chat with friends, post pictures or comments, even share ideas and videos. But do the social networks own everything we post?

     In a video posted by MoneyTalksNews entitled Social Networking Sites Own You, they have found just that. By reading the user agreements of social networking sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter, They have found that almost all of the sites have some sort of ownership clause in their user agreement. LinkedIn had the worst by far, claiming any and all things posted on their site belonged to them despite whether or not an account has been deleted. Twitter on the other hand, took no ownership of anything posted on their site. While on the surface this may seem like a potential user may just have to be more selective of which site they use, in actuality things are worse than that. What makes things worse is the fact that any social networking site has the ability to change its user agreements anytime they want which means that they can take ownership at any time.

     Let’s think about this, people post all kinds of things on their respective social networking sites. We post pictures, conversations, videos, songs, everything important to us. Most of us also do not read the user agreements before we sign up, which means that we are practically giving away everything about ourselves that we post to the site we post it on. This makes me think; maybe these “free” sites are not as free as we are led to believe. I mean, at what price do we value ourselves?

Blog 8

The topic of today’s blog is that of branding. The company brand has nothing to do with the product, but rather the image or message a company wishes to convey about itself.

     Naomi Klein says in regard to companies and branding is that “What these companies produced primarily were not things, they said, but images of their brands. Their real work lay not in manufacturing but marketing (pg. 4).”  Many would confuse this in thinking that branding is little more than advertising, but this is not the case. On page five of Klein’s No Logo, she says “Advertising any given product is only one part of branding’s grand plan, as are sponsorship and logo licensing.” This clearly conveys that advertising is only a part of the branding picture and that there are many other factors that contribute to the overall company brand.

The people at Thunder Tech would agree with Klein. In their segment of Good Morning Marketers: Your Logo Is Not Your Brand, they talk about the various things that do contribute to a brand. They believe that just about everything a company does will contribute to the brand image. From naming of the company and products, to the services offered, affiliations, staff interactions with customers, even how the company interacts with the community; all of this conveys to the consumer a message about the company itself.

To analyze the idea of branding as the overall message or image, I will use The Home Depot as an example because of my personal dealings with the company both as a customer and employee. The advertisements present the idea of the do-it-yourselfer with the mantra “You can do it, we can help” which empowers the consumer with a sense of self reliance and ability. Next, the products themselves are of very high quality and most have a warranty; this, coupled with a very easy going return policy in the store, gives the consumer the peace of mind that if something is wrong with a product or it is the wrong product, The Home Depot will fix it. Then there are community-build programs which employees volunteer to help build playgrounds for the community using materials that are all donated by the company. These are just a few examples which all contribute to a helpful, trustworthy, and community-friendly image about The Home Depot.

Blog 7

For my seventh blog, I wish to discuss convergence within transmedia storytelling using synergy. According to Henry Jenkins, synergy is important to a given story through different media platforms to convey a complete story. On page 107 of his chapter Searching for the Origami Unicorn, he says “While the technological infrastructure is ready, the economic prospects sweet, and the audience primed, the media industries haven’t done a very good job of collaborating to produce compelling transmedia experiences.” This is very true to my favorite franchise: Resident Evil.

For a quick overview, Resident Evil is a story about a virus that was created by the Umbrella Corporation that created horrible monsters and ravenous zombies. Main characters were made to survive in situations where enemy numbers were high, ammunition was low, and the characters had to uncover the truth about the evil Umbrella Corporation. Although most of the video games and all of the movies have been touted as huge successes, there were many examples of how these two Medias as well as other Medias did not contribute to the overall storyline with much of the franchise becoming non-canon.

Starting with games themselves, there was not a great deal of corroboration for synergy within the games themselves, let alone each other. In this list of canon inconsistencies on the Resident Evil Wikipedia, there are discrepancies even within the games themselves. For example, in the first game there are two playable storylines based on which character was chosen. The stories themselves do not contribute to one another so both stories are considered non-canon. In the third game, the player makes decisions in the game that affect the story significantly, which renders it non-canon. Then there are spin-offs whose storylines do not agree with the main story of the main games.

If you think the games are bad, the movies and books are worse. The movies make no attempt to follow the storyline set in place by the original games; instead, they create their own storyline that is completely independent and use characters differently or creates entirely new characters. Same for the books, they are regarded as highly non-canon because they alter the storyline with events that are never mentioned in the main story and make connections between characters that resemble more fan fiction than actual franchise storytelling.

Although Resident Evil is one of my all time favorite stories, I would have to admit it is a poor transmedia convergence. I do believe it is still a great story and if there would have been better corroboration between the Medias to create a more complete story like in The Matrix; Resident Evil could have been an even better franchise with a lot stronger following.      

Blog 6

This blog is actually regarding last week’s blog topic of the news since I used the wrong subject matter last week. In chapter ten of James Potter’s Media Literacy, he talks about the news and how it is constructed. More importantly, he talks about the effects of fabrication in the news and its harmful effects.

On page 149, Potter states that “sometimes journalists are tempted to tell a good story and ignore facts that get in the way of telling that story.” But what about journalists that fabricate a good story, but still use accurate facts? What if a journalist fabricates a story that uses facts that are common sense?

In the story Multiple Stab Wounds May Be Harmful To Monkeys produced by The Onion News, they have done just that. Despite being an entirely fictional story for entertainment purposes only, the facts that they give are in fact accurate, although common sense. They give facts such as multiple stabbings affected the monkey’s health despite what instrument was used to stab; or the stabbings themselves were none the less damaging based on what the species of monkey or whether the monkey was young, old, or pregnant.

Many would laugh at this analysis saying that these are common sense facts that everyone knows and that it is because of these “no duh” facts, this story would not be newsworthy. But think about it, how many times has a so-called credible news group regurgitated facts that would be considered common knowledge? The difference would be that the onion is blatantly fictional and does not try to spin what they are broadcasting as anything else. The credible news sources on the other hand do present even common sense material in a way that makes them appear to have some sort of newsworthy claim. It reminds me of the last quote on page 138 in the introduction of the chapter regarding fabricated news, “Yes they do. But I can always tell when they are making something up. With the so-called real news shows, I am never sure what they are making up.”    

Blog 5

In chapter 11 of James Potter’s Media Literacy he discusses the content of the media. In pages 177-179, he focuses on violence in the media. He says that not only has violence in the media increased over the years, its frequency is portrayed in the media more often than it actually occurs in life. In an example about the television show COPS, he says that “FBI figures for murder, rape, robbery and aggravated assault were 13.2% of all crimes, but in the television world, these four violent crimes accounted for 87.0% of all crimes.(pg. 179)” It sounds like Potter is saying that the audience wants more violence.

     However, according Dr. George Gerbner in ChallengingMedia’s The Killing Screens: Media & the Culture of Violence it is not the audience that is to blame; there are three simple reasons why violence has become so prevalent. First, since the main characters in the programs are usually men in the prime of health, the easiest story to write that suits them is one of conflict and violence. Second, violence is one of the easiest things to market in a global economy because it is understood without translation. Finally, because human beings can adapt to a given stimulus very quickly, they also become bored with a certain level of violence quickly and must be given a higher dose to remain entertained.

     Thinking about what Potter said about violence in contrast with what Gerbner said about violence, it seems to me that the audience is not all to blame. No, the corporations are trying to package something that will appeal to the broadest group of people they can reach and repeatedly advertising that given media until the audience believes that they really want violence to the point of needing it. It makes sense to me; there are a lot of high grossing programs that do not have very much violent content if any at all that do better than violent based programs. The question doesn’t seem to be how much violence should be in the media anymore, but rather, how much violence are you willing to watch?

Fourth Blog

In chapter ten of James Potter’s Media literacy, he discusses how the news is not a reflection of events but is instead a construction that the news broadcasters create. He says that the news is constructed through a variety of constraints and bias’ including time and resource limitation, ownership, use of sources, branding, and even a set story formula.

     One of the news-framing constraints that Potter specifically advises to be cautious of is the use of public opinion. He says that we have the technology to record accurate public opinion, but only if it is there to record. On page 158 he says that “the problem is that often people don’t have an opinion about something, or they are not sure what their opinion is-they are ambivalent.” He then illustrates this point by asking the reader to conduct an informal poll. He assures that most of those polled will have an opinion, but few if any of those will have sound reasoning for having that opinion.

     The views of Potter on public opinion resonate in the youtube video by ChallengingMedia featuring Justin Lewis. Lewis says that public opinion is often guided by the media. One of the ways he says that the opinion of the public can be swayed in is the actual coverage time that is spent on an issue. He illustrates this in two ways.

First, he shows that when environmental threats were highly covered by the media, public opinion on those issues went up. But even when the problems were getting worse, public opinion went down as coverage went down. Next, he spoke about presidential candidates during an election. He showed that even though the candidates were basically the same on all major issues, they were portrayed as being completely different due to their stances on civil liberty issues.

Both of these examples show that not only is Potter right on the issue of poll takers often being undecided and quickly forming opinions during a public opinion poll, but that the news media actually counts on it and does not hesitate to feed on it. This is why public opinion must be very cautiously viewed, because those whose opinions were taken may not have really had an opinion at all, or maybe they just saw something about the issue just a few minutes early in the media and hastily formed an opinion on what they saw covered. The point is that unless the opinions being recorded are well founded with clear reasoning, experiences, or information, the views of those polled may only be of those that are running the news.    

Third Blog

For my third blog, I would like to discuss Deuze’s concept of buying name brand products over generic ones when he says on pg. 47 of how “People seem to be quite comfortable choosing brands, logos, and designs that somehow mean something to them (and their social networks) although without necessarily always choosing to buy the best or most useful product,” and compare his notions with those of Joel Lewis, a quality assurance inspector.

     In Lewis’ article: Is a name brand product always better than a generic, Lewis discusses the act of buying name brand over generic as well as why. Like Deuze, Lewis agrees that there is a compulsion to buy name brand over generic “just because of advertising and fear of being embarrassed by having a "Generic" branded item while their friends enjoy Name Branded items.” Also, like Deuze, Lewis says that people are not always buying the best product, but also believes that it is relative to what is being bought.

     Lewis says that when you are buying groceries, it’s better to buy generic because it all comes from the same farm or factories. If the product is clothing, Lewis says that name brand is the way to go because even though sometimes you are just paying for the label on the clothing, most times the name brand clothes are more durable and last longer than a generic counterpart. Same goes with electronics. Lewis says that the name brand products are generally more durable and last longer than the generics, but also points out that the price difference in electronics between name brand and generic will usually mean that the price that you pay will often be the same in the long run.

     What all this says to me is that although sometimes consumers are led to a purchase based solely on the name brand, it is not without merit. It is true that name brand products are more expensive than the generics, but because they are more expensive, they generate more money in sales. This higher revenue can then be used to buy better materials and higher quality control which will ultimately lead to a better, more durable product. Then there are the companies who own the name brand. That name brand is bringing the company a great deal of profit and the companies do not want to hurt the reputation of the name brand which would hurt sales. This is why they generally strive to have a product that lives up to the reputation of the brand name.

So, just because a product is name brand does not mean it is not just an overpriced label; it is more than likely an overall better product because it will have more invested in it.

Second Blog

For my second blog, I would like to discuss direct/indirect costs in the media using James Potter’s Media Literacy and Media and Advertising by Anup Shah. I want to contrast the idea of the costs the consumer pays for a media product against the idea that the media is selling the consumer as a product.


Anup Shah’s article Media and Advertising is a compilation of various authors that critique the way in which products are being presented to a given audience via advertising. The different authors present many different ideas about advertising such as advertisements disguised as news or as entertainment, product placement in the movies, or even political influence. The part of the article that speaks to me, however, is the section that talks about the consumer as the product.

In this section, Shah quotes Noam Chomsky as saying “[T]he New York Times [is] a corporation and sells a product. The product is audiences. They don’t make money when you buy the newspaper. They are happy to put it on the worldwide web for free. They actually lose money when you buy the newspaper. But the audience is the product. … You have to sell a product to a market, and the market is, of course, advertisers (that is, other businesses). Whether it is television or newspapers, or whatever, they are selling audiences. Corporations sell audiences to other corporations.” This idea is interesting to me because according to our book (pg. 98), “The media of books, films, and recordings are supported almost entirely by direct costs to the consumer. With broadcast television and radio, there is no direct cost for exposure to a program, but there is a high cost for purchasing the means to receive a program.”

If we break these two quotes down, we can see that we are paying the media companies to sell us to corporations! To see the grand scope of this revelation of mine, you have to see that the media essentially does not see the viewing audience as living, breathing people; we are property. We are media slaves, and we pay to be so! I think this is why we enjoyed video sites like Hulu and YouTube when they first came out. You know, before the advertisers found out about them and there were no commercials. I think they gained so much popularity back then because we knew in some way, even if it was only subconsciously, that we were free.

First Blog Revised

For my first blog, I would like to compare Anya Kamenetz’s article The Real Smart Phone Revolution with Cara Bafile’s article Fifth Graders Soar into the Blogosphere. The focus I would like to discuss is the idea of students interacting with each other as well as their teacher on the internet.


To give a brief overview of Bafile’s article, she explores the effects that blogging some assignments on the internet are having on 5th grade teacher Gillian Ryan's classroom dynamics. In the article, she explains not only how Ryan has implemented blogging into her curriculum, how it has altered the class’ attitude towards assignments as well as how introducing blogging helped turn one student around from doing no work in class to being a productive participant.

The idea from the Smartphone article to which I would like to compare is where Kamenetz quotes Richard Rowe as saying “most communications were hub-and-spoke, one to many. The internet is a many to many environment.” Ryan couldn’t agree more and feels that switching to a many to many environment is a good thing. She says when she asks her class to write a blog that “I’m not simply asking them to write a response to me on a piece of paper, I'm asking them to share what they learn with the world. It makes what I ask them to do a real-world task.” This makes sense to me. I mean, if students didn’t like to share with others, would we have such things as Twitter and Facebook?

Both statements from Ryan and Rowe are go hand in hand in the idea that education is moving from a local one on one with a teacher or with fellow students to becoming a world wide effort and the children couldn’t be happier. It says to me that the children are loving the fact that now their ideas are in a place where they can be viewed by anyone at anytime and because of faceless ability of blogging, more emphasis can be placed on what is being said as opposed to who is saying it. This makes it possible for students who are normally ignored by those older than them to be taken more seriously. Because of this, students are no longer competing for gold stars or smiley faces; they are competing for recognition within the real world.