My essay essentially focuses on highlighting how the Stephen Colbert has influenced American politics, mostly through his show. Some main topics I discussed included his impact on political legislation and awareness (through his super PAC), his show’s unbiased approach towards ridiculing politicians, and his influence on young voters. In summary, Stephen Colbert should be the fifth face we carve into Mt. Rushmore. I kid, I kid. But in all seriousness, Colbert has done some things for American politics that simply wouldn’t be possible for any other person.

In terms of the conception of the essay, I had a good idea of a number of issues regarding politics that I wanted to write about. Mainly, it was a matter of finding the right videos and creating a structure to all the skits and gimmicks. After I compiled a list of videos and their corresponding topics, I was able to write about how Colbert was affecting American politics in each of those videos.

Using a website as a medium was great for my digital essay. Since a majority of my essay involved referencing the Colbert Report, having high-quality videos was great. In addition, there were a lot of great articles that I was able to hyperlink so that readers with more time could read. Also, making a website allowed me to give the readers flexibility in terms of which topics they read about. Since order didn’t matter, someone could read about Colbert’s effect on young voters if they didn’t care about super PACs.

I did have issues finding and loading videos to my digital essay. Many of the clips that I had in my mind had already been taken down because they were so old. One major problem was the fact that most of my clips were derived from Comedy Central, which was giving me huge problems when I tried to use WordPress (I ultimately switched to Tumblr for these reasons). I spent a lot of time going through code to make sure videos embedded properly. Also, this type of video did not allow me to edit out parts of the video that were less important, meaning that some of my videos were quite lengthy. I tried to reconcile this problem with time benchmarks.

At the end of the day, I hope readers laugh at some of the clips, but also see a different side of Stephen Colbert. He is first and foremost a comedian, but that doesn’t mean he can’t whip out a few words of wisdom from time to time.

This 2010 New York Times article notes how easily and unexpectedly memes are developed, and the impact they have on society. The best part of memes is the fact that it’s made popular by the masses. Popular memes become so because they are entertaining or applicable to a wide segment of our population, not because some important figure said so. The people have spoken, and what they are saying now is that some guys are just ridiculously photogenic.

Internet memes are really a testament to how our digital culture has sped up the process through which good ideas single themselves out and are then spread. Memes are so popular because: (a) anyone can make or participate in a meme (b) so many people can relate to the issues they address and (c) the popularity of memes is constantly evolving. Digital media has allowed humans to be more social, meaning that our culture evolves quicker and more dynamically. Memes help facilitate this process.

Eat handfuls of chocolate chips straight out of the bag, accidentally rip the bag down the middle, get up to transfer the chocolate chips into a Ziploc, pour them in while walking toward the cabinet where they live, decide halfway there that I’m not done eating, and walk back in the bedroom – bag in hand – to consume another 500 calories.

I’m not saying that I’ve ever done that, but I have ripped many bags of various sizes and shapes down the middle, and that situation always ends poorly. If you don’t open certain bags on the ends, then the ripped middle slowly expands downwards until you have a massive leakage problem. And I instantly thought of this frustrating and somewhat hilarious scenario when I read Lindsay’s post. A lot of her material resonates particularly well with me.

Another one of my favorite blogs was Emily Shiau’s Bigger Fish to Fry, which addressed a number of interesting topics centering around food. It might be because I enjoy food so much, but I also found Emily’s work to be thought-provoking and entertaining to read. In some ways, she is using similar techniques as Lindsay to invoke comparable real-life situations that we’ve all experienced.

Well it seems as though I should not be so judgmental of the Ancient Greek civilizations. To this day, people tell lies or tales or whatever you want to call them all the time. All it takes is a talented, charismatic speaker or a handful of easily manipulated people to turn a couple of lies into a truth. For example, have you ever collected those Tootsie-Roll lollipop wrappers that have a star and a Native American shooting at it? Well I did–as did a ton of kids in my city. We were all told if we collected a bag of them, we could exchange them for free tootsie pops. I don’t remember if any of us actually ever did this, but we would always try to save a bag full and then lose them all. Either way, cashed prize or not, there was no prize! Tootsie never made the competition as 1/3 of their lollipops have that design. Apparently it was something created by local stores to promote sales of tootsie pops. I am quite distressed to discover this….

Again, I’ve never participated in this particular wrapper scheme, but I do fondly remember being manipulated as a child to perform equally stupid menial tasks for a prize that was never won. And afterwards, Emily rattles of 5 food myths that are not only extremely informative, but also entertaining. I mean she made use of a Calvin and Hobbes comic strip. Game over.

Format: My digital essay will probably be in either Tumblr or PowerPoint form, whichever allows me to embed and include media clips and news articles the easiest.

Materials: My research and material will primarily come from clips of the Colbert Report and possibly the Daily Show. I will also want to include links to articles discussing points raised in these shows. I might also include some interviews on how peers see these shows as.

Questions: Should I focus specifically on the Colbert Report, or should I include the Daily Show as well? Also, I know we talked about certain copyright issues, but do you think these will likely be pressing concerns?

Keen is scared that having more democratized content will dilute our standards. But if anything, the abundance of content is only allowing for people to cater closer towards their tastes. To me, it seems as if Keen is arguing that people deserve less choices. He would argue that there shouldn’t be seven different styles of peanut butter, that there should be chunky and smooth. But I don’t see the issue in having extra choices. It doesn’t matter how diluted any pool of products, ideas, or people is—the best of each respective group will find a way to rise up and differentiate itself. If we have a million weblogs dedicated to origami, it is fair to assume the best ones will be referred to by their readers to their peers and circulate to the point where they are more well-known. Having extra blogs doesn’t hurt this process at all. Bad blogs remain un-followed and unread, while good blogs spread quickly. So the consumers of origami will still have access to the best blogs, but they will also have the ability to cater towards the blog that most aligns with their other interests. Perhaps one blog focuses more on animal figures, while another focuses on floral figures. This option of customization is not hurt by the addition of more blogs, only by the imposition of barriers to entry for authors of prospective blogs.

Furthermore, Keen’s prediction of a future where “everyone is an author, while there is no longer any audience” sounds borderline insane. Just because Tom made a Youtube video of himself singing Party in the USA doesn’t mean he would never watch any other videos but his own. There will never be a point where people only consume their own material. There will always be an audience, and the highest quality or most appealing material will find a way to percolate through the population.

The world thinks of America as the epitome of meritocracy. If Keen had his way, how many talented people would be squashed because they never had a chance to shine? Maybe even Justin Bieber.

First of all, the reason why most corporations weren’t successful during the initial Internet craze was because they hadn’t discovered where and how to make money. Back then, it was all about shifting goods and services to the Internet and trying to grow by reaching untapped markets. However, the Internet wasn’t saturated enough with the population and the demand for products really wasn’t there. But nowadays, the next wave of Internet companies has learned where all the money is at: information. Companies like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Google are sitting on a treasure trove of user data, and that sort of information is invaluable to commercial companies that are trying to reach the right group of consumers. Furthermore, the more and more functions like television and books move towards electronic or Internet related sources, the more market power tech companies are able to command.

And to Rushkoff’s second point, it seems that there are just as many people pursuing hurtful and unproductive motives on the Internet. There are 262 billion spam emails sent every day and a number of different viruses are trojans have wreaked billions of dollars of damages. Sure, “the experienced user is delighted in setting up a newbie’s connection,” but only because he can steal network information and later infiltrate the newbie’s computer and take whatever important information he wants. Maybe at one point in time, everyone enjoyed bettering the Internet for the sake of everyone else. But in this day and age, most people are only concerned finding ways to help themselves, directly or indirectly. Any benefit to the popular masses seems to be coincidental.

The website was called The Crisis of Credit, and it explained the most recent financial crisis using easy-to-understand graphics and very simplistic examples. I thought it was amazing how this video dissected an number of complicated terms and concepts into a form that normal people could read and understand. The content emulated that of numerous articles or books written since the Financial Crisis, but the addition of animation and other digital tools really helped maintain interest and increase the amount of information absorbed.

I think this type of digital essay is successful because it conveys the desired information (in this case, very technical information) in a manner that is neither long nor short, while simultaneously providing visual comparisons with which readers can immediately use to supplement what has been said.

Nicholar Carr argues that our brains have changed as a result of the Internet, and that we are gradually losing the ability to reflect and contemplate on issues. This loss of ability stems from our shift away from “deep reading,” which is instead replaced by scanning short articles or headlines.

But why is the loss of “deep” reading a bad thing? I’ve always thought that natural selection could be applied to this principle of what our brain cells are doing and how we are absorbing information. It seems that the ability to read long books or concentrate for extended periods of time is no longer “fit” for our brains. Instead, the ability to multi-task and scan for information has proven to be more important and more beneficial to our wellbeing. Our brains are merely being selected away from the conventional methods of thought processing.

Deep reading is just no longer useful in our society, so why should we emphasize it? Deep reading will benefit certain people, given their environments, and those people will continue to exhibit the ability to do so. But for everyone else, it seems likely that there are fewer and fewer occasions where “intellectual vibrations” are useful.

In a way, Google is the next step in the evolution of our minds. The fact that our brain is so malleable should put us to ease. When the time comes that we, as a society, do in fact need our brains to focus for long periods of time or to self-reflect, I’m sure those characteristics will come back. But until then, all of our old brain cells are dying out because the new ones are making us smarter.

Writing under the pseudonym Jonathan Do, I found myself hard-selling the socks more than I expected. Partially, this is because I just recently spent considerably more money on socks that were only marginally better, so I really wanted to get the word out that this was a great deal.

I used a bit of rhyming in the title to draw some interest. But definitely the most important technique I used was establishing a relationship. I wanted portray myself in a manner that a large audience can relate to: young, on a budget, and with a love of sports. I also tried to tailor my message so that it seems like I am talking at the readers, not just commenting about a product.

And although I can’t take credit for coining the word “terribad,” I think it helps invoke that cringing smell that feet acquire after prolonged activity. By adding two negative adjectives together, I feel that the affect is almost multiplicative. If I save at one least person from having terrible foot odor by buying these socks, I would be extremely happy.

One of the only blogs I follow, Zero Hedge, uses extensive amounts of similes and metaphors to convey a variety of financial concepts to readers. For example, in their piece about the European bailout, they mention “truckloads of cash” given to European banks to provide liquidity and stave off a financial crash. In this day and age, large amounts of money are transferred electronically, literally within milliseconds of pushing a button. However, the visualization of the sheer volume of trucks required to move that magnitude of money really drives home a point to those less familiar with numbers. The word “billion” and “trillion” are tossed around so prevalently by the media that people often forget how large the numbers really are.

So by using a metaphor to describe the amount of money, the writer is able to make us quickly think about how large the amount of money is. I mean the money can be carted off in massive trucks for god’s sake. And by providing actual illustrations and scaled pictures, a degree of accuracy is added to our visualization that further resonates with readers. Although in this case “truckloads of cash” isn’t a financial concept, it does help specify the extent of the bailout and gives question to the strength of the European financial system if this much money is required to keep them afloat.

In terms of applying Microstyles to my own blog, I hope to use figurative language and imagery to describe situations for readers. Fortunately, the use of videos and images will make my job a bit easier and let me focus more on context. You can see my use of metaphors in the title of the blog, “Devil in Clutch City.” Devil is a reference to my association with Duke basketball, but also a devil in the sense that my allegiance isn’t sworn only to the Rockets. Clutch City is a description used to describe Houston, aptly given during the Rockets’ back-to-back championship run in 1994 and 1995.

But another huge factor that I hope to incorporate is the attention to details mentioned my Johnson in his “zooming on the details” chapter. Basketball is a game where even the smallest detail can turn a collapsed play into a well-executed possession. So I think it is important to make sure that my writing focuses considerable attention towards these details.