Bonus Post for the week of 2/1-2/8

Beautiful Souls:

Everyone can get a bonus point on the last quiz this week. Please write a review of the first three assignments in 250-500 words. This will also count as a regular blog post and will be available for commenting. Do not comment on this post, rather, make one of your own.

Good luck, and I hope your assignments this weekend go well. Don't forget to finish the TED talk by Monday.

Best,

Mr. S.

Video for Monday

http://www.ted.com/talks/rory_sutherland_life_lessons_from_an_ad_man?language=en#t-545958

The Angry in Gaming

Blog- http://metro.co.uk/2013/08/16/bioware-writer-quits-after-death-threats-to-family-3925970/

This is a link to an example of the angry environment in video games community. This is a disturbing trend that I began to notice to occur in the past few years. Our class talks about conveying messages to people. The article is about a Bioware writer, Jennifer Hepler, who help writer the story of Dragon Age 2. She received death threats from internet forums and twitter to her and her family life after leaving Bioware in 2013 to become a freelancer. This situation and several others are great examples of cyberbullying and creating a toxic environment for creators in the video games company. The gamer audience is becoming a big nest of angry that misusing its power and violently attack people. The gamer audience punishes creators for making minor to insignificants changes in the game. This conveys a strong message to any writer or creator who is interested in joining the business to be prepared to receive harassments and death threats from self-entitlement people if they step out of line.

Criticism is an important thing. It is needed in every type of medium to point out problems and to help the creator to improve their future work. The angry is the gamer audience is a good and powerful tool if used properly. The many companies that support and produce game for the video game indusial have a history of trying to take vantage the average gamer by release incomplete game, Digital Right Management, and by using false advertising. I believe there the angry in the gamer audience is reasonable and should be calling out real problem, but they should be threaten people’s life

Draco and Solon

Draco was a lawgiver in Ancient Athens who was ultimately known for the extremely harsh nature he created and condoned for the punishment for crimes.  No matter theft or murder, nearly any law broken resulted in death.  Mere debt was punishable with enslavement-- I imagine we’d all be in pretty deep trouble in Athens. This legal code was referred to as Draconian and it is still used today to describe the most oppressive and harsh of law systems.  This code is said to be one of the most comprehensive original sets of written laws, in spite of its cruel nature.  

Luckily for the Athenians, when Solon became a part of office he repealed Draco’s sadistic laws and created his own that more appropriately matched each crime.  This statute of law was long standing, lasting well into the 5^th century and serving as a foundation for all the laws that followed.

In the article I read, it claimed that Draco’s laws were so severe that some claimed it was written in blood.  I find this extremely intriguing.  While it’s highly unlikely the man literally wrote the code of laws in some poor citizens blood (although I’m not sure I’d put it past him), I think that this is more a representation of what these laws meant for and did to the people of Athens.  They were written in the blood of the people and were created to draw more.  Generally writing in blood is associated with dark, demonic behavior and I’m sure this was not the prettiest of times in Athens.

In relation to class right now, I think that this could abstractly relate to reacting appropriately to your audience.  Draco went completely overboard, giving every crime no matter the severity an equal punishment, when it would’ve been far more intuitive to understand and match each crime with a punishment that was equal.  Understanding is vitally important in all forms of writing.

Key and Peele- Text Message Confusion

Key and Peele video


When we were talking in class about conveying a message without offending anyone, this video came to mind. In any type of writing,in this case texting  it is easy for someone to take offense to what you are saying, because they cannot hear how you are saying your message.  Tone can often be misinterpreted by the reader. In this case, Jordan Peele wants to convey a friendly tone, while Key interprets his tone as annoyed and uncaring.  I know that scenarios similar to this have happens to me because I misinterpreted tone in text messages, and comment replies on Facebook. This video shows that one sentence can be interpreted a bunch of different ways. It can be interpreted as a kind message, or a threat. For example, Key texts Jordan" You wanna go right now?" . Key wants to come off as threatening, and aggressive, because he wants to fight Jordan. Jordan interprets this an entirely different way. Jordan thinks that Key just wants to hang out at the bar right now so he responds " Okay let's go.". This comes off as aggressive to Key which leads him to think he's going to fight Jordan at the bar.

This video illustrates why conveying tone is important. It important to  make sure your wording isn't in anyway threatening or offensive to your audience, or else you could end up with them blowing up on you like Key did on Jordan.

Hope you enjoyed the video. I apologize if the harsh language offends anyone .I couldn't find a censored version

Advocating for Change

Attached is a video that speaks to everything this class is about. While it is not necessarily advocating for a change in a local legislation or for a new legislation, it is advocating for change. The boy, Josh, was the victim of bullying at his old high school so he switched schools. At his new high school he wanted to make himself a new person. He changed his status and himself. This video uses pathos to get across a point that anyone can change and overcome adversity. At my high school there was someone who did what Josh did, and everyone knew who he was. He was that smiling, friendly person you would see every day holding the door right before lunch. He also won Prom King because he was such a great person. I understand the act that Josh went through and the relationships, and personal skills it helped him develop. Now he is using those skills for advocating change. Josh uses his personal experiences to change the circumstances that other kids are unknowingly forced into because they are bullied. Josh uses the intrapersonal skills he developed by holding the door every day as a way to interact with victims of bullying. He has become a public speaker on the topic of bullying and travels from school to school advocating for change. The video is an appeal to anyone that watches it. It is not persuasive in nature but has the ability to persuade someone to the consequences of bullying. It is interesting to see how a bullying victim has turned his life around and is now helping others.

McDonald's and Pathos

http://www.today.com/money/new-mcdonalds-signs-ad-draws-heated-reactions-1D80418484

This is the link to that strange and unsettling McDonald's ad. A lot of people were really upset by this. It's a perfect example of pathos gone wrong. Pathos as you may recall, is a way of persuasion by appealing to people's emotions. In the ad, they try to feign a sense of community by using certain signs to appeal the American public. These signs had things on them such as “We believe in you Crystal,” “We remember 9/11,” and even “Boston Strong,” referring to the Boston marathon bombing. Some shots show the restaurant and sign severely damaged or even underwater from floods. I can see what they were trying to do but they just failed horribly. I wonder which genius in the marketing department at McDonald’s came up with this and patted himself on the back for it. When using pathos it is incredibly important to know your audience, really when using any kind of technique to persuade it’s important to know your audience. McDonald’s seriously fell flat when it came to gauging how the American people would feel about seeing such things. This ad also showed how design is so crucial to persuading people and getting them to feel a certain way. This was very poorly designed and executed, therefore, people were not moved by it in the way that McDonald’s meant. They were moved, but to outrage and anger. Hopefully in the future they do a little bit more research about their audience so that they can avoid another blunder like this.

Silva Rhetoricae Review

I just completed a quick once-over of the Silva Rhetoricae webpage and thought it would make a nice start to talk a bit about it as my first post.  I was not entirely certain what to expect from this class (despite the fairly descriptive name) and was relieved to have the opportunity to get a quick preview of the tools and skills we will likely be using and learning.  

It was particularly comforting to see some familiar faces in the form of the persuasive appeals, and they brought back a few speech-composing memories.  While speech-giving itself has never been a strength I possess, I look forward to learning to better my abilities through this course.  Judging by the tools presented on this page, I assume I can count on it.

While I did recognize a few terms, there were far more that I had never before heard of or used.  Upon further reading, though, I determined many of the words were intimidating titles for far simpler ideas.  The canons of rhetoric, as an example, were understandable once I looked into them and discovered that they generally were just names for ideas and tools I have used in the past or at least have heard of.

I look forward to using this page as a supplement to assist my pursuit of knowledge throughout the semester.  Writing of all varieties has always been one of my passions and I am excited for the chance to continue to enhance and feed my abilities.

BYU Rhetoric. So fun.

Hello, class! This is a link to Brigham Young University's site on rhetoric. Since this is a rhetoric class, and you have to comment on some post this week, I thought I'd give you all a website to browse. You may comment on this post about anything on the posted site. Or, you can all get rockin' and rollin' and write your own posts.

Welcome to the internet; welcome to this class!

S.S.