Celebrities vs. Regular People

We care so much about celebrities because they have symbolic meaning-we attach greater significance to them than we do to a regular person. Having celebrities to follow does the same thing as older forms of media-it can distract us and sensitize us to the human condition. When we are having a bad day, we can look at the newest story about Lindsey Lohan getting arrested, again, and it will make us feel good about ourselves. Also, if our lives are boring and we do the same thing over and over again everyday, we get enjoyment out of watching celebrity drama that lets us escape our boring lives for even just a moment.

Also celebrities provide narrative. Narrative gives us: Verisimilitude (connection to reality), identification (connection with ourselves), stakes (feeling that this matters), and suspense (an unknown ending). We get pleasure from the presence of these narratives, because like I said earlier, it helps us get distracted from our otherwise boring lifestyle. Celebrities are followed and photographed constantly, and by having these celebrities to look after, we are able to see the celebrity lifestyle without having to actually experience all the downfalls, like having to deal with paparazzi or having to deal with your secrets getting out and creating a scandal. In other words, we can experience the drama without having to experience the consequences of the drama. 

Social Currency

Birchbox: I believe birchbox has a way of making people feel like insiders. It is $10 a month and you get beauty samples to try before making any actual purchases. The cool thing is that you can review these samples and rack up points. Also, every time you purchase full size products you get points. When you get 100 points, you get $10 credit to use for buying full size products. Birchbox also has an ACE program, where if you get 500 points within a years time, you get to be an ACE, and you get exclusive offers and free shipping off everything. I have a birchbox, and I found myself spending a little more money every time to achieve this ACE status, which I eventually did. This also relates to the leveraging of game mechanics because it encourages people to spend more to achieve that ACE status. Birchbox also builds a good game. Whenever someone achieves ACE status, they get a little ACE symbol by their name so whenever they review products, people know they are ACEs and they are important. This can encourage people to want to become the ACE status and spend a little more money.

https://www.birchbox.com

Starbucks Rewards Program: Starbucks offers a rewards card to their customers, and after a certain amount of visits or after a certain amount of money spend, you get a free drink, no matter the cost of that drink. I would consider this leveraging game mechanics because the reward that you get after spending a certain amount of money makes you want to spend more money to get that free drink. The Starbucks rewards card also can make people feel like insiders. They offer a Gold level to anyone who has visited Starbucks a certain amount of time in a year (for example it used to be 30 visits), and after you became a Gold member you got more perks than the green level (like free refills on coffee when in store, and double star rewards on certain days). This makes people want to achieve gold status even if the rewards aren't that much different. The rewards program also builds a good game. When you achieve gold status, you get an actual Gold card sent to you in the mail, so when you are buying your drinks, people know that you are a gold status and that you are important. Also they make the color Gold because that color usually resembles rich and powerfulness. This may make more people want to achieve this gold status.

https://www.starbucks.com/card/rewards

“It Works”: I have seen a lot of posts about “It Works” on my timeline on Facebook. I would say that this could be seen as a “remarkable” social currency because it shows before and after pictures of people using their products and it seems pretty amazing what their transformations are. It can also make people feel like insiders because I believe if they become distributers of “It Works” they can get discounts on products and can get money from selling it. I feel like they can definitely leverage game mechanics as well, because sometimes they run deals like “buy 2 get 1 free!” of whatever products they're selling. So if someone only really wanted to buy one of the products, they’ll be more likely to buy a second one if they are getting another one for free.

https://www.myitworks.com

Secret Ink

Many individuals use tattoos for identity expression and formation, and yet a lot of these individuals keep the existence of their tattoos secret from the general public. This is the “mixed message” that the author is talking about. Why do we keep these things hidden from the general public? I think it’s because people still attribute negative consequences with getting tattoos and having the general public see them. For example, if a person has a visible tattoo on their arm, a company may not hire them because they feel this tattoo may interfere with their business. Also people feel a need to justify their tattoos. For example, in the reading it says, “tattooees often feel pressured to give accounts of their tattoos to others in order to justify what is an otherwise ‘socially undesirable’ act”. So while half of all adolescents have seriously considered getting a tattoo, most likely a lot of them will be getting them in places where people won’t see them.

Cultivation Theory and John Oliver

The definition of the Cultivation Theory from Wikipedia is "The more time people spend 'living' in the television world, the more likely they are to believe social reality portrayed on television. This idea is very important because John Oliver was talking about how the idea of torture is influenced by the tv shows/movies that portray torture.

John Oliver talked about how 69% of people think that waterboarding is torture. Then he talked about how 57% of people think that these torture tactics work and help prevent terror attacks, when in reality these torture tactics don't really work as often as we think. The reason we think these tactics work, is because we see on tv shows/movies (like 24, as John Oliver mentioned) where the torture tactics ALWAYS work, and because we see this in this popular culture, we believe it is the same in real life, when it's really not. John Oliver was talking about how when they were torturing people to figure out where Saddam Hussein, the two people who actually gave information, ending up giving either false or ridiculous information and it didn't really help us that much.

Why We Play vs. Jane McGonigal

In "Why We Play", we see a lot of benefits and reasons why we play video games. In the Jane McGonigal Ted Talk, she also talked about some health benefits for playing video games. They do have a few overlaps that I will discuss.

First, in "Why We Play" starting on page 56, the author talks about how playing video games can reduce stress in our lives. It talks about how playing video games make us feel safe because we can explore a whole different world with new experiences, and we don't have to worry about that negatively effecting our actual lives. In Jane McGonigal's Ted Talk, she talks about how people with depression and other disorders often feel like there is nothing they can do to help themselves, but when they play video games, it can make them happy. Jane talks about how it will help them not suffer during their pain.

Second, in "Why We Play", on page 58, the author talks about how video games can help keep social contact between people. Video games have always had some type of social aspect, whether you are playing against another person, playing on the same side with someone, or even just having something mutual to talk about with people if they play the same games. In Jane McGonigal's Ted Talk, she talks about how important our social contact is for living longer. She talks about how games definitely help us stay connected with friends and family. She also talks about how games can help us not have the regret of not spending enough time with people you love, when you're reflecting your life in your final years.