Analysis of “We Boys Together: Teenagers in Love Before Girl Craziness.”

The article starts off the same way the book does, talking about the “Unconditional Surrender” kiss; a photograph of two strangers kissing in Times Square after the announcement of Japan’s surrender to the United States. In a way, that seems like a very romantic gesture that two people could be so happy about the end of a war that the would lock lips even though they had never met before that moment. Based on the tone of the article, this is probably not quite the way that the book depicted the situation.

Instead of the “Unconditional Surrender” kiss being a romantic thing, it seems to have been looked at from a more sinister angle. I wouldn’t go so far as to say rape, but there was still an assumed unsolicited physical interaction between the two, which may have been made possible by the more aggressive way that teenage boys pursued teenage girls at the time. The article hints that the more aggressive mindset was nurtured by a very homophobic and male dominated society.

Moving on only slightly from the “Unconditional Surrender” kiss, the author offers the suggestion that the reason for the more aggressive behavior is that it allowed a very un-accepting society to stamp a label on itself proclaiming a heterosexual predominance. In addition to that, it allowed that society to look to its past and make the claim that everyone starts out straight and if a person is homosexual, it is because they decided to be so later in life.

Then, somewhere between then and present day a more toned down version of male dating practices emerged wherein a male teenager would basically be so infatuated with the opposite sex that he would forego the rest of his social life for her. This seems to be a turning point for male aggressiveness. Instead of being somewhat predatory, boys became a little more like servants who were completely enamored with the object of their desire. This is a gentler view, but it is still showing how much boys tend to get a little girl-crazy.

The author of the article goes on to fill us in about present day teenage boys by using her own son and his friends as examples. While there are still many variations of personalities out there, I feel that her sons are fair representations of present-day boys. They spend most of their time playing video games and playing together, and very little time pursuing the opposite sex. It’s easy to speculate that these boys may just be geeks or social outcasts of some kind, but based on the author’s description it does not seem likely that there are homosexual tendencies among the boys. Rather, they just simply don’t have the kind of interest in girls that society a few decades ago felt that they should.

So now let’s move on to talk about the biases that the article has identified in the book. The most obvious to me is that the author believes that teenage boys have been more or less pushed into what is described as “twitterpation” in the Disney movie “Bambi”. The author also seems to hint that the push is caused by a homophobic society. My personal view is that boy’s intentions lie somewhere between girl-crazy and a lack of interest for the opposite sex.

There are enough boys of both types these days that I believe our society has started to balance out a bit in it’s opinion of how boys act towards girls. I don’t believe that boys who have little to no interest in girls during their teenage years have homosexual tendencies anymore than I believe that boys who are girl-crazy have a tendency towards predatory behavior.

There exists a term today that did not exist when the “Unconditional Surrender” photograph was taken that further describes how much our society has normalized a bit between the homophobic and the homocentric ideologies. That term is “Metrosexual”. This term describes men who are sexually straight, but have interests and tastes that are not the popular consensus of what ‘masculine’ really is. Men who are metrosexual are basically those who live somewhere between homosexuality and heterosexuality. They do not have a strong need to prove themselves to either extreme, and to me, that says something has changed in our society. We live in a society that for the most part, seems to be more accepting of a more toned down definition of masculine.

Of course, I’m drawing my own conclusions here, and one could make the counter argument that there are still plenty of hate crimes, but there always will be. Unless hate crimes become close to being the norm, those won’t define our society. To me, this is a very good thing. Even the more masculine men in our society don’t really compare to the level of masculinity that existed in the days when everyone had rough hands from working on farms. Perhaps this means that our society is becoming more advanced in some ways, maybe it means that we’re becoming weaker, I’m really not sure. But what I feel is that through education we have become a more understanding and accepting society. To me, that sounds like advancement.

Software in Popular Culture

Ars Technica has an interesting piece that they've just posted that touches on the way that Microsoft Word (amongst other Microsoft titles, in my own opinion) has become more of a 'way things have always been done' than a 'this is the best way' kind of tool. The article makes some comparisons between Microsoft Office and the free alternative from Sun Microsystems, Open Office. Yet there are many other alternatives out there beyond the two mentioned in that article.

For instance, Google has Google Docs which does simple word processing very well and costs nothing to use. Apple has their own office suite called iWork which costs $79 when purchased directly from Apple, and its MS Word competitor simply titled "Pages" is very intuitive and produces some very nice looking documents suited for printing, emailing, posting on web pages, you name it.

So let's review. Microsoft Word costs more ($100 according to microsoft.com), is generally more difficult to use than its competitors, produces proprietary output (although they are starting to finally incorporate PDF output years after all of their competitors decided to make the move), yet for some reason it is still the most popular product on the market. Why?

Simply put, it's a popular culture thing. Just like "kleenex" is synonymous with "tissue", "Word" is synonymous with "word processor". We've all grown up technologically using Word for our document authoring and for so many years that went without any competition. Now, Microsoft doesn't even really have to make any major improvements to the software or fix any bugs or even make it easier to use in order to keep customers. They keep customers because they've been engrained into our way of thinking so much that their only competition is one that comes from within. That is, they'd have to try in order to lose the market for office document authoring software. At least that's the way it stands right now. But let's me honest, this is technology we're talking about. Who knows what the future holds?

http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2009/08/microsoft-word-1983---2009-rest-in-peace.ars

Announcement: Tron Legacy (4-1)

This week it was announced at ComicCon that Disney is releasing a movie called “Tron Legacy”. Some people may not remember the original Tron movie, but it was basically a virtual ride through the pieces and parts of a computer where time is slowed down enough that we can see what’s happening, whereas it would otherwise fly by in an instant due to the speed of electricity.

Tron has created a small cult following among geeks since its release in 1982. Games have been created mimicking the riding style of the light bikes in the movie, which have been ported from Linux to Windows and Mac OS X alike. But the movie itself had a rather fascinating story for the time.

In this story, programs are sentient beings and have only heard rumors of “Users”. Each program that exists within the system have facial features that are similar to the programmer that created them. Users are very much treated like gods in this movie, and the battle between the believers and the non-believers makes many parallels to the many religious battles that occur in reality.

I for one am incredibly excited about this movie coming out in 2010, and I’m sure that many other people will be as well. There will be many more, however, who will view this movie and wonder what the appeal might be. Well, if you haven’t seen the original, and you haven’t spent the last 17 years playing Tron-esque games in your very bored free time, then you’re probably among those who will be underwhelmed. For the rest of us, it’s a bit like a surprise party. People of like mind can once again get together and watch a movie that the rest of the world doesn’t seem to care about, and there will be much rejoicing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tron_(film)

Apple Blocks Palm Pre Syncing (Assignment 2-1)

Apple has a controversial philosophy about their public image, and recently, the controversy has become a little stronger. The philosophy that they have is that it’s better to be viewed as the strict grandma as long as they can provide the best cookies for their grandkids. This means that as long as everyone plays by the rules and none of the pesky neighbor kids come over and start touching all of the nice things, grandma is happy; and when grandma is happy, the grandkids are happy too.

In the past, Palm’s Pre (a competitor to Apple’s iPod / iPhone line) has been able to sync via iTunes. This was done with some creative engineering by Palm and without Apple’s blessing. Why is it so important to get Apple’s blessing? Well, in this case it was because Palm had actually designed the Pre to trick iTunes into thinking it was really an Apple product.

The overwhelming majority of responses to this move seem to indicate that people are very upset by this claiming that Apple is more concerned about hardware lock in than customer satisfaction. Some people have even gone so far as to say that they have created a monopoly with the iTunes Music Store. While all of this may have some merit, I tend to see it a different way.

Many of the moves that Apple makes that are viewed by the masses as “lock-in” have a common underlying thread. That goes back to the philosophy I mentioned earlier, but it’s actually bigger than that. Apple is simply not interested in supporting products that it has not control over. What if Apple decides to make a massive change to iTunes that is well tested with all of their iPods and iPhones, but completely destroys the Palm Pre when it’s connected? Will Palm’s customers get angry with Palm or will they see that the smoldering pile of crap that used to be their Pre was rendered so by Apple’s changes? Will Palm try to sue Apple to help offset the cost of having to replace the broken devices? Sure Apple might make some extra money off of the deal, but they lose the absolute freedom that they have by keeping other kids off their lawn.References

Zeman, Eric Apple Kills Palm Pre’s Ability to Sync With iTunes, retrieved July 16, 2009 from http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2009/07/apple_kills_pal.html

Weekly written analysis (Assignment 1-4)

Gizmodo has a very positive write up on the new iPhone 3GS, and indicates that the new features are interesting, but the "S" for "Speed" is very appropriate. What's interesting about this write up is that it shows how the iPhone has become a very large part of popular culture. So much so, that the author makes the comparison between upgrading from the 3G to the 3GS to upgrading to a faster car; there is no real reason for the upgrade, but it feels good to have the extra boost in performance.

The author never really gets into the religious followings that Apple seems to have with its products, but that is also another indication that they have managed to land themselves in the popular culture spotlight. They have a following of people referred to as "Apple Fanboys" that await every new announcement from Apple with great anticipation. In many ways, Apple Inc, or perhaps more specifically Steve Jobs, can be compared to many rock stars. People have camped outside of their stores waiting to be able to purchase the latest products just like people have camped out waiting for tickets to go on sale for their favorite rock concert.

If the iPhone could play guitar, I wonder how many hits it would have right now.

http://gizmodo.com/5293388/iphone-3gs-review

Popular Culture Blog - Assignment 1-2

Popular culture, to me, is the exact opposite of "cult classics". Instead of a few people following a piece of media religiously, masses of people follow that piece of media, what ever it may be. As an example, there are many musicians that never make it to the status of household name, yet the ones who do make it to that status frequently cite those musicians as major influences.

Mr. Bungle is one of those bands that never made it to the same level of fame as the bands that they influenced. They remained "cult classics", while the bands they influenced rose to a pop culture-level of fame. Korn is one of the bigger bands that has openly cited Mr. Bungle as a heavy influence, and though Korn's popularity has declined over the years, they were still very much on top of the scene in their prime.

This brings up another point about pop culture, that being that there appear to be two different types of pop culture. One type is the "what's popular right now", and the other is "Who do you think of when you think of the great musicians of all time?". Nirvana is one instance of a band that made it to the status of being remembered as a large contributor to music history, while Soundgarden enjoyed a very close level of fame but will not be as recognizable of a name as Nirvana will be through the ages.

So to me, pop culture is quite literally the culture revolving around what's popular for the time and for the ages. When Nirvana was actively on top of the scene, everyone who followed them, and even some who didn't, wore raggedy jeans and flannel shirts. Advertisers quickly saw this and adjusted their ads to make them more relatable to the "popular culture" of the time. Obviously, popular culture affects more than just the entertainment industry. It trickles through and touches a wide variety of areas of culture.

In my opinion, there is a very easy way to identify a pop culture icon....by its icon. There are a few pictures and symbols that when you see them, you can't think of anything but Nirvana. Those artifacts are below: