Sometimes Umass makes questionable decisions. These decisions cause one to wonder if anyone really thought deeply on the resulting impacts, or if we as a university are being used as a big guess and check problem solving testing area. Decisions such as was assigning Orange is the New Black for the common read then not inviting the author to do a talk since they felt a prior convict was not a good role model for the students of Umass. Or, deciding to preach sustainability while contributing vast amounts to food waste in order to beat a Guinness world record. I honestly feel Umass’s decision to partner up with Amazon is another questionable decisions.

I have a few questions. Does UMass honestly believe the deal will result in less costs to the students? Are they really just profiting from this deal and hoping the students don’t catch on? Did they put any thought or research into how this deal would actually affect the students and the community?

I honestly don’t know which I would prefer, if UMass didn’t think about all these things or if they did and decided the deal would be more profitable for them in the end.

Since this is a subject that particularly bothers me, I did a small survey of students and their textbook expenses and usages as well as a separate one for faculty on how they make their textbooks available to students.

The links to each survey can be found at the bottom.

From these surveys I was able to see that students pay huge amounts of money for their textbooks but rarely use them.

In the readings and from the podcast that my peers made for their final project it is clear that the Amazon deal will not be helping students cut down on their costs. However teachers do not need to limit themselves to what Amazon intends to limit them to. I was in a number of classes this year in particular including Race, Gender & New Media that bypassed this system to allow their students more accessible reading or listening material. Between making the readings articles online, taking advantage of free online textbooks, and putting textbooks on reserve for students to use teachers can really cut down on costs for students. It also helps to increase how often the readings will get done. If for say you can’t afford to buy the textbook, you will not be able to do the readings. However if the material is readily available online for free, there is no financial barriers preventing you. Teachers need not bow to the Amazon deal, there are still other options that will promote learning without breaking student’s banks. Hopefully Umass will see that this deal with Amazon is unhealthy and decide instead to put their money towards promoting more efficient reading material models.

Faculty

http://goo.gl/forms/ClBZU4tfet
Student

http://goo.gl/forms/YJL14Zws5Y

I personally don’t know why this can even be a comparison. But if I was forced to choose one, it would hands down be youtube. People who stream on twitch, in my opinion, aren’t as entertaining as people who post on youtube.

My first big issue is the slowness twitch brings. Twitch is a live stream, so every second of gameplay is featured. This may seem great for someone else, but for me, I kinda feel like it’s a waste of time. I watch play throughs very often on youtube. The benefit of watching them on youtube is if the player finds themselves dying a lot in order to understand the fundamentals of the game, they do not include all those deaths in the video. For example, I am going to talk about markiplier again. He is famous for his Five Nights at Freddy’s videos. Each one of those games is very very different, and each “round” of that game can be very long. Mark often dies in the middle-end of the night, especially in the beginning of the game. If he featured every single death in his videos, they have the potential to go on for hours. He talks about how the hardest mode on the first game took him 7 hours. Nobody is going to watch a video for that long, no one has the time. So instead, he features a few of the deaths he had throughout his playtime and then the victory round. If he were to play this on twitch, it would have to drag out over the course of a couple days. Viewers would get busy and lose interest after so many deaths. And on top of it, the content seems to be gone after you stop streaming.

The beauty of youtube is you can go back and watch videos days after they’re released, if you didn’t have time to watch it at first. Twitch users have schedules, but so does everyone else in the world. Viewers could potentially lose out on an entertaining live stream because they had a final that day. With youtube, you can save it for after your final and you didn’t miss anything.

There are also a huge variety of gamers and I think youtube better exemplifies that. Many of the users on twitch mainly play moba games, like league of legends. And from what I’ve seen, they take their games very seriously. There are so many players on youtube who are good at the games they play, but are also entertaining. The big ones have a schedule and stick with it. They also stick to their unique style of playing which is really pleasing for viewers. Another example, Critical, he plays videos half seriously and his videos are shorter. He doesn’t do full play throughs on youtube. But his videos are hilarious. That’s something I feel you don’t see on twitch so much. There’s a good deal of comedy youtube brings that I haven’t really seen on twitch. Plus, I’m not a big fan of the chat box. I personally don’t care for random internet people’s opinions and twitch forces me to read them. No thanks.

So I am team youtube. I will continue to be team youtube. As a gamer, I always wanted to post my gaming online. I will feature them on youtube and not twitch.

I love my netflix account. I use it almost everyday. I marathon so many of my favorite shows and am a big fan on the original content that’s posted on there. Do I think it’s going to replace TV? Not specifically. Netflix does have it’s downfalls. One of which is, the shows aren’t up to date with the current season. I often have to wait months after a season ends to find it on netflix. But I do wait the months to see it because I do not have time to watch TV.

I believe that’s what it all comes down to. In our lives today, we are used to having anything we want in the palms of our hands. Laptops, mobile devices, kindles, etc all have access to the wonderful thing we call the internet. I personally have a very busy schedule. Between working and school, I am normally to consumed with it all to schedule a time to watch a show week to week. A lot of the shows air too early for me. I am not settled into my room until much later at night. I can’t get myself in early enough to catch a show. So yes, I do wait for it to come up on netflix. I think patience is also a big reason why I can’t watch shows week to week. I hate cliffhangers, I personally hate surprises in general. I don’t like being in the dark with anything. With netflix, I only have to wait for as long as it takes me to press the “next episode” button. I never watched TV before I got my netflix account. The main thing I use my TV for is to watch my disney tapes through my VCR. Otherwise, I turn to netflix.

I think Netflix and other providers like that are the future of how we watch TV, but I don’t think it will make TVs vanish from people’s homes. TV is a lot of personal interaction, but it has more functions. Like hooking up to game consoles, for instance. At the very least, TV will stick around for that. Yes, virtual reality is very excitingly in the near future, but that isn’t something everyone will enjoy. It might feel too real for some, or making others motion sick. (A concern of mine, I cannot be in a car too long) But TV also brings people together. I think there are a lot of families out there who still enjoy gathering around a TV to watch a movie. That shared experience you can’t get through your tiny phone screen.

Cable will shortly phase away, I believe. With amazon and netflix ready and available on the firestick now and other things like that, there will be no more use for cable. I find myself worried though if netflix will significantly increase it’s price if it becomes the main way people watch television. Cable can be pricy, but there was a time people had no problem paying for entertainment. I find myself wondering if netflix will take advantage of it’s popularity and increase it’s price significantly to match that popularity. It already had gone up in price this year, how far might it go?

There is a lot of people talking about google’s pros and cons. Google has become highly advanced throughout the years, that now they’re even discussing putting medical records on it. This proves to be a concern for most people, and I can definitely see why. Medical advice through the internet is hardly ever a good idea. There have been multiple occasions where my chest pains from sternum inflammation were made out to be a stroke. But what would it mean to have personal medical records put through google?

I am not entirely sure where I stand on this issue. Personally, I am under the belief that no piece of technology is private. I am always concerned someone is watching me through the camera on my laptop, or my phone. So personally, having my medical records on google somewhere is a little bit concerning. But at the same time, aren’t all our medical records kept on file digitally anyway? It’s easy to say it’s a personal software program that holds all the data, but what were to happen if any of that data was compromised in some way? It’s easy to say no one would want to look at others medical records. It’s really none of anyone’s business. But my biggest concern is employment discrimination.

Medical records not only contain our physical health, but also our mental health. There are many people throughout the world that suffer from mental illness that can make every tasks very difficult. I don’t believe employers think about this when considering hiring someone, but with personal information on that matter ready and available through google to SOME degree, it can give someone who may care the opportunity to refuse employment to someone with mental illness. I don’t think this idea is too far fetched. As someone who suffers from mental illness, my day to day state can affect my performance at school and at work. Though I work to get through it, some days I a unable to. Those days, I normally use an excuse of being physically ill to stay home and care for myself. Unfortunately, though, not everyone believes mental illness is enough of an excuse to call out of work. It’s often seen as a controllable problem. You’re told at every job to leave your feelings at the door. So if the employer is aware of someone being treated for mental illness, they could be hesitant to hire them at the risk of poor performance and “bad” excuses to miss work.

If there records are kept on file at my doctors office, there’s no way my employer could ever know about my personal problems unless I told her. Google is huge and contains links to millions of websites. I find this information being put on google a risk on our privacy. Because of mental health stigmas, I have to say no to holding medical records on there. Google has control of so many companies, our doctors do not need to be apart of their empire. Some things in life deserve to feel safe and private, and personally I would be concerned if my information was on the internet.

I transferred to UMass from Washington State University two years ago, at the start of my sophomore year. Back then, we still had the textbook annex and I was very comfortable and familiar with that system. As an English major, many of my professors insisted that we take our business to Amherst Books and support them instead, so instead of buying all of my books at the annex I would buy what books were available at Amherst Books and buy the rest at the Annex. At the end of my first semester, I sold my books back to the annex for a reasonable amount of money and thought nothing of it.

The next semester, however, Amazon arrived and replaced the textbook annex. The annex had still been there at the start of the semester, however, at the end Amazon was the one in charge of buying back textbooks. As an English major, a large portion of the books I read for class are novels and small paperbacks, and Amazon typically does not buy these books back, even though they are part of the course curriculum. This was only the start of my dislike of Amazon as the replacement for the textbook annex.

Amazon takes neoliberalism to a whole different level; by becoming the sole on campus textbook provider, it subtly requires students to pay for amazon prime, which is an additional $50 a year to receive the free one day shipping to the amazon pickup center. Without prime, customers can still get their packages delivered to the center but it will not be one day free shipping. As Nat said in the interview, Amazon is using their monopoly on the textbook industry to create new Amazon customers. Not only does Amazon reach its hands into the pockets of students through their reliance on the company for textbooks, by forcing them to buy prime it incentivizes students to shop through Amazon instead of other local stores for other products. Why walk all the way into town to buy books and other school supplies when you can get it all delivered to the center of campus by using your newly purchased Prime membership?

Overall, the transition to Amazon has been a pretty negative experience for me. However, taking this course and getting to explore exactly how Amazon affects the community has been a great learning experience. I know a lot of prominent public figures, such as Obama, support Amazon as a company, seeing it as a success. That is true; as a company in a neoliberal, capitalist society, Amazon is a wildly successful company that has become the number one retailer in the country, replacing Wal-mart. In some ways Amazon has the potential to be much worse than Wal-mart, as they are not limited to dominating the physical market. Amazon is taking a stab at the digital market as well, offering music and video/movie streaming services that are available with a prime membership.

Our discussion of cyber-bullying really shocked me. To begin with when I was doing the readings before class, the links were under the section titled twitch and gaming. I opened the intro to Citron and was completely shocked by the content. I was expecting an article on how twitch changed the world of gaming and instead jumped into a world of sadism and hurt.

Once I got over the initial shock of what I was tasked with reading, I was shocked by at how graphically the author chose to portray the effects of cyber-bullying in the intro of her book. I understand that this catches the attention but it seemed very aggressive to me. This is probably exactly what she was going for since the content of the book is aggressive and deserves attention. Honestly, since I was just so unprepared for the content it may have just thrown me that much off guard. Once past the initial shock I must say that the medium was very successful with relating the message. As a text it sucks you in, the twisted nature of the subject and the author’s gifted writing makes it hard to look away. You feel the need to keep reading just to find out what happened to these people, to find out what we can do to help stand up to their trolls and to ultimately never let this happen to anyone else.

The other link brought me to a podcast from “This American Life”. In class we discussed how the medium in which this topic is presented could help or hurt the message. I really believe the medium of a podcast helped the message. The subject material is so personal, it’s the story of how this woman confronted her troll. It brings you into the mind of the troll when she calls him up and speaks with him directly. I personally listened to the podcast in my apartment while doing housework. It almost felt as though the presenter was sitting at my kitchen table telling me this story of her experiences as I was washing the dishes. I really feel this was presently best in the form of a podcast. Hearing the emotion in her voice when she talked about her father and while she confront her troll is something that could not be captured through text.

I do feel each of these mediums was effective in getting their message through. I personally preferred the podcast for the intimacy but the book did a good job bringing out the aggressiveness of cyber-bullying.

I probably started watching streams on twitch a few years ago when I transitioned from playing Runescape to World of Warcraft and Hearthstone. Although at first I only followed a few streamers who I found through YouTube, Twitch eventually grew on me as a platform and I now find myself tuning into Twitch streams when I multitask; instead of listening to music while I do homework or cook dinner I’ll have a stream playing in the background and occasionally look at the gameplay or interact with chat. I’ve met a lot of online friends in the gaming community through Twitch and I really value it as a platform for allowing members of the community to interact with one another. However, as I spend more time interacting with Twitch, I have slowly started to realize how toxic the community can be. On a small scale, when the streamer is small and pulling in less than 50 viewers, the chat tends to be very nice and, if there is trolling, it is usually light-hearted and is kept in check by the streamer and his mods who can easily keep up with the slow-paced chat. However, in the chatrooms of major streamers, racism and misogyny are everywhere, with many users spamming (usually) mild racist or sexist jokes in chat. I remember watching a vod of Reynad testing out text-to-speech on his channel for the first time, where viewers can donate a minimum of three dollars to have their message read aloud for the whole stream to hear; without the proper filters set up, the level of racism in the messages was obscene.

I didn’t really know too much about gamergate when it was new and relevant, only that it pertained to women in gaming and the prejudices they faced while trying to be part of the gaming community. I have noticed, over my years of gaming and Twitch consumption, that there is a void of women in the gaming community, and most of the only women who are successful on Twitch are very attractive. It’s really unfortunate that it seems like a requirement set for women in the gaming and esports communities is that they must be attractive and appeal to the predominantly male audience. I have made several friends on Twitch over the years who are women and occasionally they will experience more terrifying forms of harassment than online trolling; a couple of them have experienced cyber-stalking, with people going as far as finding their home addresses and personal phone numbers, calling them and breathing heavily into the mouthpiece. Thankfully, they both told me that they resolved their issues safely, but it is terrible that they had to experience something like that simply because they are female gamers.

Not only do women experience hardship when interacting with the Twitch/gaming community, but people of color who are not Asian do as well. Looking at the ESports teams that I know, I do not know of a single one who is neither white nor Asian. I keep fairly up to date with competitive hearthstone, and I don’t think there was a single non-white, non-Asian professional hearthstone player present at the Blizzcon world championships last year. Furthermore, when I look at the over 100 channels that I follow on twitch, I can only find one person who is a non-white, non-asian streamer and he is a Latino man. Much like how the gaming community excludes women, it appears that it has a tendency to exclude minorities who are not Asian.

What does youtube mean to me?

I can say that I watch a video on youtube almost everyday. There are some days I will watch one video if a subscriber I like posted something new, and there are other days where I binge watch an entire channel of videos I just discovered. Most days, it’s the former. It’s true to say I have a very specific taste when it comes to the videos I like to watch on YouTube. For starters, I don’t buy into the very exaggerative, meme filled, sparkles, colors, profanity, etc videos some people post. The over the top attempt to be funny. The videos I imagine only twelve year olds would watch. For example, there’s a weird video where a poorly animated Hagrid tells a poorly animated Harry “You’re a fucking wizard Harry!” to which he replies, “No I’m fucking not.” This repeats far longer than it should and I’m done watching it within the first two minutes.

However, I would not go as far as saying I don’t enjoy the comic side of youtube, because I do. I just like it when it seems organized and professional. I spend a lot of my time on youtube watching gamers play games who have funny commentary added in. An example of a really good person to follow for that purpose is Markiplier. The most popular game on his channel is “Five Nights at Freddys.” He plays through all of them in their entirety, is really good at the game, and the sound is really clear. The picture is also very clear. Sometimes Markiplier’s humor isn’t funny to me, but I always go back to see the newest video because generally, he is very professional and good at what he does. I laugh at most of his videos and he’s dedicated to the games he plays. He often does complete play throughs which isn’t something you always see. But that also isn’t something I always need. Another channel I follow is penguinz08 or Critical as he’s known as. He does shorter videos of games he plays, most of them are very satirical, and his commentary added to it is hilarious. Unlike Markiplier, he doesn’t have a video of himself in the corner while he plays, but his sound is clear and the game he’s playing doesn’t seem to have any delay from what he’s saying. So overall, I’d have to say I like it when videos seem professional, like the person is doing something they care about. Youtube is for everyone, I understand that, but for me, it’s a place people can display their passions and if that’s done the right way, I’m absolutely into it.

I almost always use youtube for gaming videos. There are some occasions I watch music videos, but I primarily listen to music on my spotify account. I prefer youtube to twitch because youtube seems to have a better set up. The advantage of not being live is the player can get rid of a lot of video time that isn’t needed. Like when Markiplier dies and has to restart a night in Freddy’s, he skips the beginning hours which are very slow. You can’t do that on twitch.[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yj4_A97DL9s&list=PLFyyVYEeDfqqClMG5U2UU65tzYTokcYAX[/youtube]