Author: denisearevalo

When browsing the internet, I never really noticed if I was being totally secure or not. I mean I’m still as secure as I can get when I log into my bank accounts, and I make sure I’m using a secure connection whenever applicable, but I mostly trust the websites that I’m using to make sure my information is handled with care. One of the bigger problems I have with the Internet is that it’s convenient. Too convenient. Honestly, and I feel like a fool so you don’t have to scold me for this one, I’ve just gotten so lazy and comfortable with the internet. I’m definitely inviting some bad vibes in here, but I’ve never been hacked, my password has never been stolen, I’ve never lost any data that was unrecoverable, and I’ve never been catfished or had my identity stolen. So sometimes I see the Internet through rose-colored glasses. Excuse me while I go knock on wood.

Before this course, I cruised through the Internet without a care in the world, and now I can’t stop thinking about all those pages that I gave permission to on Facebook and how vulnerable I might be right now. One of the articles in this week’s reading definitely gave me pause: of the top 10 security basics, I think I was following maybe half of them. To be fair, part of my rent includes WiFi, so my wireless router is as secure as my landlady wants it to be. But I forget to back up my computer, and I definitely need to brush up on cleaning out my permissions.

It’s extremely convenient having the “Sign In with Facebook” button right there, so I use it pretty much every time. It saves me all of ten, maybe twenty seconds, but until now I was apparently too impatient to wait. I followed the Lifehacker article through to another one of theirs, which was a guide on how to clean out your permissions. It was a little dated, and Facebook has moved things around a little bit since the article was written, so the steps to getting to the same page were slightly different but not hard to navigate. That’s actually the first thing I’m going to do after this. Clean up all my permissions on Facebook, because I know it’s a lot. To be exact, I have 18 active apps, and a whopping 260 inactive apps. Some of them are old pages that no longer exist, but a lot of them are still active. And even though it says the permission has expired, this week has me paranoid times 100, so I’m planning an immense clean up.

I need to be more secure in how I browse the internet. With the way I use the internet right now, I’d have no one to blame but myself for any breaches of my personal data. Just because I haven’t had a bad experience yet doesn’t mean it’s never going to happen, and I’ve taken for granted the fact that I’ve been lucky thus far. This course has been amazing, and I’m grateful for everything I’ve learned these past 6 weeks. Thanks for everything!

Like most girls who’ve seen the greatest movie of all time Legally Blonde, it was a dream of mine once upon a time to grow up and become Elle Woods. The way she could dress in a hot pink suit but also kick ass in a courtroom is admirable, inspiring. But alas, I did not get bit by the Law bug, and my lawyer dreams died the second I realized how much brain numbing reading that’s involved with law. So when this assignment finally came around, I knew I was going to have trouble with it. When it comes to the law, unless it’s directly affecting me, I tend not to research too much into, something that after this week I need to readjust. I lose focus reading about the law, I just get bored. The readings this week have definitely helped me open my eyes a bit, but now I have really mixed feelings about how the law affects the media. It doesn’t do nearly enough but they overstep all at the same time.

In one of this week’s readings, they mentioned the case of Nikki Catsouras. Luckily, when I googled her name afterwards, there were no immediate images of her accident, and I didn’t go searching any deeper. But where was the law here? The fact that those images circled around for as long as they did, and her father had to fight as hard as he did just to get some dignity for his dead daughter is outrageous. It makes me think that maybe we need to adopt some European principles about the right to privacy. There’s no reason why we couldn’t give that family peace of mind sooner than they got it.

On the other hand, the fact that the Internet is no longer going to be the same for everyone is tough to swallow. The more we let the government regulate the media, the closer we get to censorship. Maybe it’s just me and I’m traumatized by our current administration, but I’m skeptical that a government body is ever going to act in my best interest and is instead going to do whatever it can to make itself look good. We already have so much division, is that something that we want to bring to the internet as well? Me and a guy in Spain might not have much in common but we should still have access to the same information on the Internet. 

I don’t really plan on changing how I use social media. I don’t post much anyway, just memes (always memes). But I’m trying to be more responsible with my media consumption, a theme for this semester for me apparently. What can I say, I have a lot to learn.

Wikipedia is VAST. I guess that’s a given, but in the same way it’s hard to picture how big the number 1,000,000,000 can be, it blew my mind how many little corners of Wikipedia had so much going on. It made finding an article to edit extremely intimidating; depending on the article, whatever I’d eventually choose to edit and publish has the potential to reach literally the entire world. It’s different than social media, in that when I post on Facebook and Instagram,  it’s usually just my family and friends watching, maybe a couple of randoms here and there. Other than shooting my anxiety levels through the roof, this assignment (and this course in general, really) is teaching me that it’s not just important to be honest on the internet, it’s our RESPONSIBILITY, especially with a place as great as Wikipedia.

When I started looking for articles, I searched through things that I was already interested in; favorite video games, an online RPG that still gets lots of love almost 20 years later. Turns out those talk pages are LOUD and sometimes hostile and it immediately made me stress out a bit. The things I loved and am well versed on are things that a lot of a certain kind of people are into as well (gamer dudes are not the friendliest). How was I going to participate in such a loud conversation? I was listening to music when a new song by my favorite artist, Darren Criss, and Steve Aoki started playing: a cover of “Crash Into Me” by The Dave Matthews Band, but make it EDM. I’ve been recently obsessed with it so I checked out the Wikipedia page for the song. Stevie Nicks also recorded a cover of the song in 2009 in her “Soundstage Sessions” album, but her cover was given it’s own section. Their was no mention of the Darren Criss/Steve Aoki cover, so I got to work.

The first thing I did was head to the talk page, where literally nothing was happening. The last time someone had said something was in 2009 when they added the Stevie Nicks version of the song. So I quickly summarized what I planned to do in the talk page, which was create a “Covers” section, with Stevie Nicks and Darren Criss/Steve Aoki becoming subcategories for that section. Whoever added the Stevie Nicks section also added the track listing for her album, which I’m still not sure is necessary on this specific page, but the album itself doesn’t have a page and the Stevie Nicks page is obviously flooded with information, so I left it alone. I might change my mind and try and edit it later, but as of now, it’s there.

I spoke into the void, mostly. It’s an old song and no one’s updated it in years, so it wasn’t surprising, and after a day I posted the changes from my sandbox. I think they look good, and legitimate. The only thing I feel needs some work is the sources While I used a legitimate source (Billboard), it was still the only source that covered the song that I felt was legitimate enough to use in this article. I made sure to keep my snippet small, and cited my sources and added Wikilinks as needed.

This assignment, more than anything, taught me to be very careful and critical in choosing my words. Usually when writing papers, or blog posts like this one, it’s you and your professor, maybe a handful of TAs. And when I post on social media it’s more personal (not graded) and there’s no pressure. But with Wikipedia, where so many people come for information, literally the whole world is watching. “Think before you speak” takes on a whole new meaning.

“The Grandmother Problem.” It’s an issue that as a Millennial, I deal with a lot in my own family, from both sides of the political spectrum. I used to keep my tios in check, but it’s gotten to the point now in my life that I just don’t even fight it anymore; I block or hide it and move on. Sometimes I’ll find myself in comment wars on the original post, but I won’t respond to the person-in-question sharing the questionable content ( a bad habit I’m trying to break).  I know I should be more responsible, and this course is showing me more and more why it’s important to stay in the conversation, and be a voice backed with fact and reputable sources.

The first thing I do when I see my loved ones sharing misinformation on social media: I take a deep breath. Next, I’ll ask for a source, if there isn’t one, or if it’s a sketchy source, I’ll try to find a source that’s reputable and also backing their claims. If and when I don’t find one, I’ll try to stay calm but neutral (and by neutral I mean an “lol” buffer at the end of the sentence), and in as few words possible, explain why the post is wrong.

When it’s family, it almost always ends in an argument. My uncles don’t know how to keep their ignorant comments to themselves sometimes; I think it’s the toxic masculinity/racism that stems from traditional Hispanic households, but that’s a whole other topic. I have a pretty huge extended family but we’re not that close (spread out across the whole country), so a lot of the times I don’t have a problem blocking or unfollowing people that create a hostile debate space. I try not to cause bad blood, though, so I’ll stick it out for as long as I can out of respect for family. Old friends don’t have as many chances; If you’re around my age, you know how to work the internet, and you know how to use Google. I’ll try and reason with my friends once or twice, being as calm as possible (I stress this because I am QUITE a hothead in real life and online). If with all of that, you’re still sharing misinformation and being irresponsible, then I unfollow and move on. Again, a bad habit. But my mental health comes first, and after a while these things start to drive me crazy. I can’t be responsible for everyone, right?

I don’t know that I believe that’s true anymore; this course has helped me see that. I need to be more conscious of what I post, and I also need to play my part and educate those around me.

I didn’t think putting together this list was going to be as hard as it was, but I wanted to make sure all the articles  somehow explain, in their own ways, how Disney and Marvel turned the Marvel Cinematic Universe into the massive franchise that it is today. Each one goes into something a little different, but overall they help get the point across: the MCU has changed the game forever. Here’s what I got!

• • Other companies have tried and some have failed at creating the success of a shared universe franchise. This article from The Hollywood Reporter goes into some detail as to why other shared universe franchises couldn’t reach the success of the MCU:

” [Iron Man] itself was aimed at being an enjoyable stand-alone experience, not as an overall advertisement for 17 subsequent movies. That mentality has persisted through most of the MCU films over the past decade, which is all the more impressive as its roster of heroes now exceeds the two-dozen mark.”

• • This piece from DigitalSpy goes into detail about how the MCU has influenced standards in Hollywood. One of the reasons: the template for a big name leading man/lady is out, and you don’t need an A-list star to head a movie to guarantee success:

“…thanks to the strength of its brand (if you’ll pardon the marketing speak), the MCU has shown that it can launch incredibly successful films starring lesser-known actors (sometimes with lesser-known characters too – just look at Guardians of the Galaxy).”

• • This article from Business Insider highlights some of the groundbreaking releases in the MCU, from Captain America: Winter Soldier to Black Panther to Infinity War, and how they helped lead the MCU to greatness:

“By seeing what works — and what doesn’t — the movies have become something more than a studio blockbuster made to draw people in. “

• • This article from the New Yorker explains the “narrative experiment” of the MCU, and explains how the movies have a non-traditional narrative. It also explains how the anticipation of seeing the movies come together is an experience in itself:

“The narrative worth caring about becomes the story of one’s own interaction with the M.C.U. Just as people ask, about historical events, “Where were you when it happened?,” so fans ask where they were when “Iron Man” came out, when the Avengers first assembled, when heroes and villains battled in Wakanda. “

• • This list from Screen Rant shows 10 movies in the MCU that pass the Bechdel test. The rating gets better as new movies are released, showing that Disney and Marvel are committed to inclusivity in the MCU:

“Marvel is ahead of the curve and there are many films in the franchise that pass. Not all of them pass with a clean 3 out of 3, but it is worth noting the rating gets progressively stronger with more recent films.”

One of the main things going on right now in the MCU world is the “divorce” between Sony and Disney. There’s a bit of worry amongst fans that the movies on both sides will be hurt by this split, so most of what you find online covering the topic is on the hopeful side of things. The article I chose to pick apart was this one from Vox about how Spider-man’s future “isn’t as bleak as it seems.”

They provide links to a few sources, but they also have a lot of their own articles, which then have sources, so I ended up doing a decent amount of browsing on Vox, trying to piece together as much information as they could provide. They do provide links for the Deadline report in the article, but it came later, after the link for the Vox report covering the Deadline report. It didn’t make the process of verifying the sources any easier, but it also wasn’t annoying. The author of the piece didn’t seem biased towards one company or the other; he provided situations in which both Sony and Marvel could benefit from the split, and spoke with a neutral tone throughout. The sources he used were the same sources a lot of websites are using for information about the split: Deadline (who were the first to report the news) and two articles from The Hollywood Reporter. It was fairly easy navigating the site, and the articles in the links were easy reads, so I wasn’t lingering on any one page for too long before I was back to my original article.

One thing that I don’t feel the author did was report on why this could be a bad thing for the two companies. There’s a future somewhere where everything works out between the two studios and Spiderman lives harmoniously at both Sony and Disney, but I would’ve liked to see the downsides of a deal not working out on the same page. However, it’s a popular opinion around the internet that somehow, a deal is going to have to work out, so I can understand why the author chose to stick to that tone.

The tone of the piece stayed pretty neutral and used logic and facts to back up the possibilities he laid out for the future of the two studios. The sources were clearly provided. In my opinion, I don’t think the author showed much bias in favor or against any particular party involved. All in all it was an easy-to-read piece, and if I had to grade it (which I do) I’d probably give it a A-. They lost points for not going deeper into why Spider-man’s future IS as bleak as it seems.

This week was a tough one. It was hard to find articles on the MCU that I didn’t feel were too opinionated or too irrelevant to the topic I wanted to get at. In my opinion, all of these articles definitely show ways in which the MCU has changed the game.

This interview with the writers of Avengers: Endgame from CNN with the writers (Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely) described what helped make Endgame the success that it is without too much embellishment in between. This movie is a culmination of over a decade of piecing together 22 movies. And they let Markus and McFeely do the talking, which gives me an insight to how they put the movie together. They reported honestly, letting the words of the writers set the tone for the article.

This list from ScreenRant shows 10 Marvel heroes that had their own shows or movies before the MCU came along, and is my second news source. A few off the list include Captain America (had a TV show, then some TV movies that weren’t well received), Doctor Strange (had a TV movie in 1978 that had low ratings and bad reviews), and even Daredevil. Charlie Cox may not have gotten a movie, but his performance as Matt Murdock in the Netflix TV series was leagues above Ben Affleck’s in the 2003 Daredevil movie, which is known for being terrible.

I know ScreenRant is a reliable source; they’ve been a source I use often when trying to find my nerd news, and the list describes the movies only as they were received from the audience. It also shows how much Disney and the MCU have changed at least how the world sees Marvel movies.

I found another source that I couldn’t be sure if I could call it a “news” source. It’s an article on CinemaBlend that describes a Vanity Fair interview in which the writers of Endgame described the challenges that Thor: Ragnarok created for Endgame’s Thor. The way Thor was reworked in Ragnarok to take advantage of Chris Hemsworth’s funny side changed the way he had to be perceived in Endgame. Thor: Ragnarok is one of, if not the funniest movie in the MCU. But that’s also my opinion, and while most people would agree, it’s something that the author doesn’t really keep out of the tone of his article, which I feel gives him some bias. CinemaBlend has a much smaller audience than ScreenRant and an obviously considerable smaller one than CNN. But I figured I should mention it anyway.

I got my two opinionated articles from the New York Times. They both got me a little heated, but that’s because I’m an insane fan of the MCU, so I had to remind myself to keep my bias aside.

The first one I disagree with pretty strongly. The writer, Mark Bowden is 68 years old, so I’m not surprised that we have pretty different opinions. But boy, does he oversimplify some of the greatest movies of all time, and it shows all over in his words and tone. He describes Avengers: Infinity War as “the best argument for meaningless.” He then goes on to imply that Trump got elected because we as a society are into superhero movies:

The superhero is an alien or outcast who possesses unique powers acquired either at birth or through some accident or gift. You can imagine the avid consumers of such films electing a president who boasts “I alone” can solve the nation’s problems, and who delights in tagging his domestic and foreign opponents with villainous, comic book monikers — “Crooked Hillary,” “Rocket Man.”

That’s a stretch. But hey, to each his own I guess? The article felt like it was instigating a conversation that most people disagree with. AKA: it felt kind of troll-y. Not something I want in an opinion piece.

The second article was an easier read, and definitely gave me a lot to think about in regards to how the MCU produces their films. The author brought up a lot of good points without downplaying the successes of the movies, and brought up how, because it’s Disney and because they’re making movies for a mass audience, they’re pretty cookie-cutter. Like in Black Panther’s case, it was “less a Ryan Coogler movie made under Marvel than a Marvel movie made by Ryan Coogler.” Definitely gave me a lot to think about, but I didn’t want to send an angry email to this author.

In conclusion, I’ve been reading MCU news all week, which is how I’d prefer to spend all my time anyway (like I said, I’m an insane fan). See y’all next week!

Yup. That’s it.

Just kidding! But yes, the Marvel Cinematic Universe is something that has held my attention ever since I saw Iron Man back in high school with my friends in 2008. Fast forward to 2019, I’ve obsessively watched all the movies multiple times, I research the comics on my downtime, and I try to stay caught up on the latest news. Things can change at any moment; Tom Holland’s sudden departure from the MCU is exhibit A (my heart is BROKEN, but let’s move on). The second the news came out that Sony and Disney had cut their deal, I saw at least 10 different articles from a couple of my MCU-obsessed mutuals on Facebook, and yes I read them all, because they couldn’t all hurt me and tell me the same thing, right? Yes, yes they can. The facts don’t lie.

The MCU is a broad topic, so more specifically my topic is going to be how the MCU has changed the “superhero movie” genre. When The Avengers came out, it changed the course of superhero movie history. DC has tried replicating their success with little results; Batman v Superman did decently even though no one was really impressed by the script, but Justice League was not as successful. It did well…but it was a flop. This article from Business Insider goes in to a bit of detail about it. To this day I still haven’t seen it, but to be fair I am a bit of a bandwagon fan, not so much a huge comic book nerd (hence all the research on the MCU comics I do). The MCU definitely gets a bit more love than that from the media, but it took literally a decade to get to where Endgame got. There’s an article from The Playlist that was really skeptical of where the MCU would end up (it’s actually a pretty funny read). Nowadays, coverage about the MCU is everywhere, and Disney vs. Sony is pretty much anyone can talk about. There’s an article on We Got This Covered claiming that there may be a chance Spidey’s back, and while this brings me LOTS of joy, I kind of wish they hadn’t posted anything. There’s nothing official and no other sources have reported anything, so all this does is get my hopes up for no reason.

I’m excited to start researching more into the MCU! I don’t need an excuse, but I’m stoked to have one anyway.

I use social media a lot to get my news. So, as usual, first thing I did when I woke up was log onto Facebook and check my feed. I get a lot of the same news sources this way, but it’s easy on my mind when it’s the first thing I read when I wake up. I try to double and triple check my sources before sharing something, because I’ve been reckless before and it’s unfair to everyone if we spread misinformation.

This weekend was a rough one for me, as I caught a pretty bad cold on Friday that had me shivering and at a 104 degree fever. So, my media usage was pretty light. One of the first videos I watch is from The Young Turks channel, specifically an episode of “The Breakdown with Hasan Piker.” Very opinionated source, so I try to focus of the facts, even though I tend to agree with a lot of the opinions anyway.

I don’t know how sick I am at this point so I begin to head to work at around 1 o’clock, listening to the Rock Classics playlist on Spotify while on the train to work. When they send me home three hours later on account of my sickness, I listen to the same playlist and play some Archero on my phone.

I was home by 6:30 PM, and I again started scrolling through Facebook, second time that day. Mostly I’m just sharing memes, but I came across a couple of LADBible videos talking about the split between Sony and Disney and how it’s going to affect the MCU. This isn’t world breaking news, but it’s super important to me that these movies do well so I spent some time doing some research on that, looking up articles from Complex to IGN.

7PM: still on  Facebook. There was quite a bit of content that my friends had shared about the fires in the Amazon that I saw but only a couple that I clicked through to; an article from CNN that pointed out human involvement in the fires, and another from National Geographic that spelled out what the fires meant for the animals that live there. The articles were honestly depressing me so much that I needed to steer away from that content for my mental health, and started watching The Dodo videos (huge animal lover!) while The Office played on Netflix in the background in an attempt to get myself off my phone. 

I switched off to Instagram at about 9PM, and start catching up on the stories of my friends. I use Instagram a lot more to stay connected to my friends rather than to catch up on the news, so there wasn’t much here as far as news content. I read a couple posts from Humans of New York, some more of The Dodo’s short videos. Went on Snapchat after and caught a snippet of a Stay Tuned story, about the President raising tariffs on China even higher, and at that point I put my phone down.