The Digital Renaissance Man

[Jeroscope]

Hi. You probably don't know me, but my name is Jeroscope.

 

First I'm gonna catch you up on what my "about me" page doesnt cover. I'm single, I live on a college campus with my roommate, I have no job but a bright future, and my passion for gaming is unparalleled. Next semester, I'll have an apartment and my own room again finally, but for now, life is tough. Call it the gauntlet of college if you will.

 

My first week, Grandaddy died, but my second week I got nothing below a B on assignments. This week, I pretty much failed a test and a quiz. But next week, I'll do better.

 

Life is relative however, as we all know, and in the grand scheme of things I'm pretty well off. I plan to keep it that way as I go on through life, day by day, because life is only as good as you make it.

 

 

UPDATE:

Well, this happened: http://www.nbc12.com/story/24717995/mechanicsville-woman-skis-1-mile-to-grocery-store-for-wine

 

And that's in my hometown.

[Gestalt]

Welcome to the journal zone, fellow college student dude guy.

 

And I know the feel, my hometown only ever makes national headlines for things we're not too proud of.

[Jeroscope]

Actually, I thought it was pretty cool. You dont really see that stuff these days.

 

 

Anyway, Ive managed to make it halfway through Valentine's Day acting like a Borg drone and ignoring anyone irrelevant. I've pretty much told myself not to trust anyone or get involved in anything other than my work because I dont want to be taken for a fool.

 

It happened way too much in middle school and high school. I dont intend to make the same mistake again.

 

UPDATE:

 

Well, it happened, but oddly enough it was from my second cousin who likes to be an ass to me for no reason. I dont understand why he likes to try and be so cryptic and attempt to teach me lessons while pushing my buttons. There's a reason I dont acknowledge him and his wife and it's because they screw with people.

[Jeroscope]

So I woke up at 12 today and immediately started going over my work... I kinda felt intimidated.

 

Then I logged in to SFO, met other people, and recruited for my plot a bit more. Kinda surprised at the results so far.

 

After THAT I went and played racquetball in the gym and worked out some like yesterday.

 

And after THAT I finally started working.

 

Very "productive" day.

[Jeroscope]

I finally managed to wake up before my roommate today. It was a bit of a feat, but I did it. After that I did some work on roleplay stuff, made a floorplan for the carrier I'm going to design soon. First I'll do it on pen and paper then put it through AutoCAD and make the design digital. But that will have to wait until tomorrow. Tonight Im going to do work on some other things.

 

I managed to finish my dynamics work with some help from a friend of mine. I still dont completely understand it, but I understand it better than I did before. Now I can sit back with a cup of coffee and do some creative writing.

 

Next on my to-do list for real things is an interesting project for History. It's not that hard. I just have to get started tomorrow or sacrifice my humanity to finish it. No biggie.

 

I've also noticed I havent done much gaming recently. Planetside has been torture since the World Domination Series so that's out of the question.

[Jeroscope]

Of all things, there's a test in CAD. Freaking CAD, the easiest class to cheat in.

 

 

Whatever. Yesterday was sort of productive. I kept everything in my room rather clean and organized and I also had coffee and doughnuts for breakfast for the first time in a WHILE. If I had my bike, Id bike over to Dunkin Doughnuts every morning for breakfast. If I had a job too... Oh well.

 

Next semester, I can already tell, is going to be a good one. I'll have a bike, an apartment right across from doughnuts, and more choices for food, especially breakfast.

[Jeroscope]

Alright, this is a speech for public speaking about the misrepresentation of gamers in media. I had to squeeze it down to six minutes so some stuff is incomplete or shortened. The biggest thing is I need to get the message across.

 

The Misrepresentation of Gamers and Video Games in Media

 

Let’s start with the definition of a gamer: A gamer, according to Merriam and Webster’s dictionary, is a person who plays a game or games, typically a participant in a computer or role-playing game.

Most of us here are or have been gamers at one point in our life. I know that I currently am and I am proud of it. However, in recent years, video games have been used as the scapegoat in many various incidents, going as far as to convince people to mindlessly shout out to ban video games entirely.

 

One particular incident involved the game Mass Effect. When the first title in the Mass Effect series was released, it was immediately met with criticism by “Psychology Specialist†Cooper Lawrence. Lawrence was featured on a Fox News report where she claimed that there was full nudity and sex scenes and that you had full control over the women in the game as though you were leading a harem. Geoff Keighly, a representative from Electronic Arts responded by asking if she played the game. Lawrence revealed that she had not played it at all and was only told rumors. Although it was proven that her claims were all false, Fox News still took the original argument and pulled it out of context. Audiences were believing gamers to be irresponsible, violent, and sexually abusive due to a self-proclaimed expert’s false statement.

 

It has also been debated that video games influenced cases such as the Columbine Massacre, the Sandy Hook shooting and the Virginia Tech Massacre, saying that violent video games were to blame. In the case of Columbine, it is still not clear if violent games were the predominant stimuli that caused the trigger of violent reactions, mainly because both boys were showing signs of severe mental illness before said games were put into play. In the cases of the Sandy Hook and VT Massacres the shooter wasn’t even playing the violent titles as much as more innocent titles such as Dance Dance Revolution or Mario. Audiences take this information out of context, immediately blaming the violent titles and saying they are the only reason that these crimes were committed, not even taking into account that the gunmen in these cases were showing signs of mental illness. Because of this, audiences and politicians reading these articles start to label gamers as mentally unstable individuals, capable of turning violent at any time. Jounralists who seek to create controversy over this will often time use these cases out of context to further their claims, resulting in the stereotype being circulated today. I can tell you from experience that this is not the case.

 

Audiences fail to understand that there are gamers out there who do so much good in the world, whether it be donating to charity, trying to send a good message to people, or even performing community projects. A few notable individuals/organizations are Markiplier, Pewdiepie, the Extra Life organization, and Child’s Play. Mark Fischbach, aka Markiplier, is a biomedical engineering student from Cincinnati, Ohio who hosts charity events once a month, donating to different charities for noble causes such as cancer research and organ donations.  His largest contribution in a small period of time was over $20,000 to the American Cancer Society in under nine hours. In all, Mark and his supporters have raised a total of over $100,000 since his last charity event. Pewdiepie, otherwise known as Felix Arvid Ulf Kjellberg, has been involved in charity work for the World Wildlife Foundation and St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, also hosting a Water Campaign charity to bring clean water to nations without drinkable water all around the world. The goal for that charity was $250,000, but his supporters raised over $450,000.

 

Extra Life and Child's Play both work hand in hand to make the lives of sick children better. They are massive organizations with hundreds of thousands of gamers supporting their efforts, donating millions of dollars to children's hospitals world wide. Extra Life is a charity event holder, hosting let's plays and gaming livestreams to raise awareness for their cause and accept donations from followers. All proceeds go directly to the Children's Miracle Network hospitals, working to give children who are terminally ill a chance of survival. Child's Play works with various companies such as Electronic Arts and other game developers to take a portion of the earnings from their titles and use them to buy games for children in hospitals to make life easier for them. It is proven by the University of Utah that video games actually help patients and health care providers, often being used in therapy or keeping spirits high, leading to a faster recovery time and a higher survival rate. This makes Child's Play one of the leading contributors to preserving childhood.

 

In addition, there are regular people who play games. I can probably count at least people ten in this room who are gamers, and they aren't killing machines or sexual predators. There are sports athletes who are gamers. There are famous actors like Robin Williams (who named his own daughter after a video game) who have been avid gamers for decades. Many of our men and women in the military are hardcore gamers, and we trust them to defend our country. I have been a gamer since the day I was born and I have not touched a firearm once in my life. (this is actually true)

 

The point I am trying to make is that you can’t label all gamers as violent, sex crazed, or insane people who dwell in their mothers’ basement. Gamers are all kinds of people, but they are rarely violent. They're students, scientists, engineers, artists, entertainers, law enforcement officers, firefighters, and great people like Mark and Felix who want to make a difference in the world for an absolute good. It’s these people who are misrepresented because the media blindly attacks what they think is a danger to society without digging deeper. Good organizations like Extra Life and Child's Play are overshadowed by stories of killers who play video games or gamers that become famous for overreacting. The truth, as I have explained, is that gamers are like any other group of people. They are a diverse group of people and there are a lot more of them than you expect.

 

Sources (these will be organized later):

 

http://www.nbcnews.com/id/18220228/ns/technology_and_science-games/t/were-video-games-blame-massacre/#.UwkKvvldUQU

http://kotaku.com/sandy-hook-killers-video-gaming-obsession-not-what-yo-1471421158