Goldfarming...

Gold farming to me is wrong. I think it is cheating and I don't really believe it is healthy for the people on the other side of it. I mean the actual workers in Gold farming. Gold farming from what I got from it is paying money to get along in video games. I am personally not a big video game fan, I was always a sports person. The one game I did play as a kid was Zelda on Nintendo 64, which is the best game ever, and I found myself playing it for hours upon hours. I would sit in front of the TV constantly playing this game even at night at times I wouldn't go to bed because I wanted to keep playing this game. It is a one player game and you keep advancing through the levels until your character, Link, would grow up. I would consider Link the avatar of the game which you control. The outcome of the game is making him stronger and completing tasks or levels to advance and finally you come to the end and beat it. When I think about it I wouldn't use gold farming to help me out in this game at all really. I don't think that I would personally want to. I am just one of those people that likes to take the task at hand and do whatever I can to accomplish the task. I don't think that at the end of game I would feel that I would accomplish that much from the game if I paid some one in like Europe or Asia to help me advance in the game. Maybe it just depends on the game but I think most video game users play to feel a sense of accomplishment. I don't know I think its almost desperate to pay someone to help you advance in the game. I thought that the last tech talk when they used clips from south park was genius but at the same time when you saw that, what if the south park characters had used gold farming to help them advance in world of war craft? Would this have been as great of an episode, would cartman and the crew have felt a sense of accomplishment? I really don't think so.
I think that gold farming is a lot like sweatshops almost. The sweatshops have unfit conditions and the workers do not get paid enough for their work. In the clips that Annie showed I felt the same way about them because the conditions were crammed and they literally would be working all day and all night to meet the buyers demand. I mean the workers may seem like they are having fun for playing games but at the end the only one who gets any benefit from it is the boss of the gold farm. From watching the video's that Annie showed us I don't think that the workers seemed very happy and I don't think I would be either playing a game for someone else that I know I could win in my sleep. Goldfarming according to the readings and the video's that we watched in class and some that I watched on my own time, have many social and ethical issues. One the social issue that I find the most with the research that I've done is in direct relation to sweat shops. Now sweat shops are working long days getting paid way under minimum balance and being forced to work basically. Goldfarming involves workers playing video games for money to help out these goldfarmers who pay them to advance the goldfarmers character on an MMOG. After seeing these viedo's I couldn't believe that these workers had worked under some of the conditions that they did. I'm sure that the work was fun but obviously the only one who was benefiting from this at all was the boss who mangaged the goldfarming operation. The boss can call it quits whenever he wants and leave all of his workers without jobs. Some of the shots from the videos I've seen seemed like the workers were working all day and were either in a cramped appartment or a cramped office space like cubicals that they just grinded on playing games and making money for the boss. I find it very similar to sweat shops in that the workers are getting paid unfairly and the work conditions in which they work in. 
How does this relate to personal relationships? Well obviously the gold farmer's workers don't really get out that much and they live in the game day to day. They are different people and different avatar's all the time. I think it would be extremely hard to have a social life when you are sitting at a computer all the time. For some people their lives are embezzled in their avatar's and to me I think that you should be happy with who you are, but whatever floats your boat I guess. I don't really see the value in trying to be some one your not. As for gold farmer's I don't really see the value for you getting paid horribly for playing video games all day everyday. No wonder there are so many exercise commercials on TV for people not to be lazy anymore, because obviously media is trying to tell you not to consume so much.

Interpersonal Relationships...

Interpersonal relationships to me are being ruined by some new media. From the personal conversation that people used to have with each other is being overtaken by such things as text messages and internet chatting. I think the lately ever since text messaging came out it has been the worst. I don't think many use the phone or in person communication as much anymore at all. I can see the use in the feature on your phones but now people don't talk on the phone or in person as much. I guess in some ways if you have something to get across to another person really quick and straight to the point that text messaging would be useful. Also if someone was deaf or blind that text messages would be the way to communicate. I think personally that text messaging is a great invention I mean I do like person to person communication but text messaging takes the 4 hour long conversations out of the mix when you just want to get something across. According to Bujega, inter personal relationships are being ruined by new media technology. New media technology according to Bujega's piece in the reading comes from not being able to see the emotion and character of a person when they are saying something or trying to express something to the person inside the conversation. Bugeja argued that social networking sites are almost like death to interpersonal communication. He also stated that people are so engulfed in new media and web2.0 that they begin to confuse it with real life. For Bujega, face to face interaction in place-based community is the source of individual moral development and social well-being. 
The other thing is chatting online either in chat rooms or in instant messages. I am not gonna lie I use facebook chat a lot and agree that it is pretty useful ever since they added it to there site but I find now that I'm sitting at the computer on facebook twice as long as I should be. I think that this is useful to people with disabilities. I think that Americans or even people around the world now since facebook has expanded are taking too much time to communicate through new media rather than face to face or even letters anymore. I think that new media is making it almost easier for people to communicate but it does take away from personal communication between people. It might be easier with people who have social skills to communicate and get their feelings and emotions out from new media such as chat rooms,text messaging, blogging or even instant messanger, but the emotion sometimes is almost unrecognizable. Sure you can put little emoticon's and stuff but sometimes your feelings and emotions can be misread through the new media. I mean can honestly anyone say that they can tell someone's emotion at the time through a screen? Maybe its just me but I honestly can't and thats when personal communication can be better than just something you read from a screen.