The first and last days of going into Writing 102 are kind of opposite for me. On day one, I walked in imagining a class that was pretty boring and useless: a waste of my time. What I got instead was a fun and diverse class that actually helped my writing. In the past, my experience with English and Writing classes has always been to write on specific things which I have no interest. This led to me not really learning how to write in a general sense, but rather a specific, more unnatural way. Due to this robotic way of writing, I began to despise writing as a boring and useless regurgitation of ideas that did not need to be said. By the end of this semester, though, I learned that not all writing is like that. I learned that writing can be fun and relevant.

Although this may not have been my goal in the beginning, as I did not really have any set-in-stone goals for the class but just to get through it, I’d like to say that I did accomplish the goal that materialized as I accomplished it: learning to write in my own way and enjoy it. Once I got the hang of writing in a “casual-conversational” style, it became much easier and fun to do. I began to enjoy most, if not all the assignments. I did enjoy the Blog Posts and Rhetorical Analysis the most, though, as I just like more informal writing and analyzing things. There really weren’t any assignments that I didn’t enjoy, other than maybe the readings in the book. Though this is only due to them being so long and me waiting till the last second to read them.

Throughout the course, I gained many of skills that don’t only tailor to writing. This is probably why I enjoyed the course so much too. I learned how to write a cover-letter, analyze what things are trying to say, and, most importantly, how to express myself better. Going into the class, I could not get my ideas out onto paper very well at all, but by the end of the class I am able to express my ideas well enough for people to understand them when they read them (sometimes). Although I still have this problem, as well as the problem that I always repeat how I start my sentences (ALTHOUGH), it has gotten better in my writing when I noticed it happening and how to fix it. I hope to keep working on this in not only my writing, but also my speech. These are skills which I learned in actually a pretty short amount of time which I will use for the rest of my life. I guess Writing 102 isn’t really as useless as most people make it out to be.

Hopefully I don’t have to though 😀

https://stonybrook.digication.com/james_samonas/WRT_102.72/published

Dear Gene I. Usse,

I thoroughly enjoyed reading through your research paper on automation and how it will affect society, mostly being through unemployment. As a whole, I believe you used a lot of very relevant sources, convincing evidence, and thought out reasoning to drive home your point that automation will drastically increase the number of unemployed citizens. The addition of how it specifically affects many people as well as a way to fix the unemployment were also parts that I felt were necessary in a paper like this and further gave you credibility by solidifying your depth of research and strengthened your argument. The sources were well introduced in the beginning of the sentences, giving almost every quote or paraphrase a proper introduction that made the paper overall flow better. On top of this, you also introduced most of your sources with their credentials before the quote or paraphrase as well. This further built upon their credibility to be truthful sources and thus made your paper more credible as well. These characteristics of thought out uses of sources, well worked reasoning, and good credibility work together to make for an excellent research paper.

Although, this does not mean that it is perfect; there are still a few critiques that can be made about the paper. The thesis, for example, can be more specific about what the paper deals with, being mostly about unemployment. This would allow the reader to better expect what is to come in this paper. Also, the introduction paragraph seems a tad long, being a full-page long. Although, this can also be justified by the amount of background information needed on this topic. This also can help to describe why the thesis was short and general rather than long and more specific.

All together though, this was a well put together and thought out paper that did great on getting its point across credibly while informing the reader all the way. You did a totally radical job! 10/10!

Sincerely,

James Sam

They’ve already started by taking jobs from Ice Cream Men

James Samonas

Professor Seri

WRT 102.72

10 April 2018

Research Paper

            YouTube has been around for many years, although recently it has been making a lot of changes in the ways it pays its creators and how they can present their content. Most of these changes have to do with the ‘demonetization’, or removal of ads and thus their ad revenue, of certain channels on YouTube. The content that usually gets demonetized is such that is deemed ‘inappropriate’ by YouTube because of its guidelines for having ads. These guidelines describe ‘inappropriate’ videos as ones that have too much profane language, violence, drugs, content on a recent controversial topic and etc. (Google). Policies already changed once in late 2016, although they were again changed recently in early 2018. This further affects the creators, outside companies and the people which watch the videos in ways that a lot of people deem negative and criticize. To fully understand how these policies will affect YouTube’s users and outside companies, we should further our knowledge of their previous policies, procedures, and history.

YouTube has recently become an actual career choice for many people of the new generations, with more and more people even studying the economics of it and how to make more money off of it. With many creators, from wildly popular channels based off of criticizing news and other content for entertainment like H3H3 Productions (5.6 million subscribers) to not as popular channels that make short animations like Gregzilla (170 thousand subscribers), getting demonetized or not being able to monetize nearly as much because of length, creators started to struggle to get by. Many of them had previously made most of their income from YouTube and its ads, although now they must rely on third party support from fans and outside companies. One great example of this is presented in the New York Times article in which Amanda Hess explained how a young man, David Pakman, had originally started a radio talk program on not only some public radio stations, but also on YouTube and made enough money to support it (Hess 2017). This continued until YouTube changed its policies and thus demonetized most of his channel, making him lose most of his income and resulted in Pakman having to resort to making a crowdfunding page to keep his small business and workers working (Hess 2017). This leaves Pakman without concrete revenue and a possibility that if crowdfunding doesn’t go well, his channel could fail. Another criticism creators have with the new change is the fact that the thing that checks videos for violations of the new guidelines is not originally a person, but rather a robot. This allows for a lot content that shouldn’t be demonetized to be demonetized anyways (Kian). In order for this ‘ban from ads’ to be removed, the creator needs to appeal it. Although only appeals dealing with videos which have obtained over 1000 views in the past week actually get reviewed by people. Also, if your channel has more than 10,000 subscribers, they will review an appeal without a need of the 1000 views (Kian). By doing this, YouTube is choking out smaller channels allowing for only small slow growth, if any growth at all, monetarily. More importantly though, creators that base their income off of YouTube also have their videos originally demonetized by a bot, only to have it remonetized later by a real person because the bot did not correctly identify a guideline being broken. This creator then loses all the revenue that they originally would have gotten from the ads for the views they received while it was demonetized. This means they are losing out on money for every one of their videos which gets wrongly demonetized, even if it does get remonetized later.

These new policies of ad restriction don’t only affect the content creators, they also have a massive effect on companies outside of YouTube. When a creator get demonetized, they often must turn to other ways to get an income by still creating videos. The two most popular ways of doing this is making a Patreon or by doing sponsorships. Patreon is a website which allows for fans to donate money to the content creators of their liking, although the website also takes a portion of the donation money as well. When YouTube’s new policies came out in 2016, a lot of creators turned to Patreon as a secondary source of income. This can be seen by the graph of statistics of individual pledges that Graphtreon made. It clearly shows that the number of individual pledges went up a lot more during the time period of February of 2017 to April of 2017 (Graphtreon). This is soon after the time when YouTube started its new policies (late 2016) and thus the creators turned to new platforms to get their income from fans, meanwhile using YouTube still as a way to put out their videos and try to monetize their videos. These new YouTube policies therefore helped the outside company of Patreon grow a lot as the more people that donate to people on Patreon, the more money Patreon also makes. This isn’t the only company which has been positively affected by this change though. A lot of companies have been getting more and more sponsorships on YouTube since the addition of the new policies. One of the most prevalent of these companies which use sponsorships is Crunchyroll. A company that streamed Japanese animation shows, Crunchyroll started becoming especially prevalent as a sponsor on YouTube soon after their new policies came into effect (late 2016) and even showed for it by finally reaching one million paid subscribers of their streaming service in February 2017 (Crunchyroll 2017). This shows that the incentive for creators to accept their sponsorships increased after the policy change in 2016 and thus also gave the creators’ followers more incentive to join the sponsors. After they did, the sponsor grows monetarily, even reaching new heights in popularity such as Crunchyroll. These companies then grew in popularity and monetarily soon after these policies were enacted, although the policy was also affected by them and the creators as well.

The new policies that YouTube enacted in 2016 and 2018 not only affected the users and outside companies, but it was also affected by them as well. This is especially prevalent with the 2018 policy change which made putting ads on videos much stricter as per content. The reasoning YouTube has for this change has its beginnings from both the creators’ and outside businesses’ sides. As Hess explains in her article, before the 2016 incident a lot of companies like Johnson & Johnson and AT&T pulled their advertisements from YouTube after a lot of journals like The Wall Street Journal criticized their advertisements being before content which the journal deemed ‘hateful’ and ‘inappropriate’ (Hess 2017). YouTube then changed its policies as to which videos could be monetized because it was losing ad revenue when companies started to pull their ads from the site. A conclusion can be made that the creators caused the companies to pull their ads, which caused YouTube to change its ad policies originally in 2016. The same could be said about the 2018 incident as well, as a Google (which owns YouTube) Vice President said that the new policies were being enacted due to ‘Bad Actors’ in YouTube’s community in a blog post during the time which the changes were being made (Wakabayashi 2018). Many inferred that this was specifically due to the recent event of Logan Paul, a very popular YouTube content creator, posting a video showing a dead body of someone whom committed suicide in a Japanese forest (Wakabayashi 2018). Between the two changes to policies and what YouTube claims were their reasons for doing so, the conclusion can be drawn that the policies that now harm most of the content creators on YouTube can also be followed back to show that some of the content creators themselves are to blame for it. Although, in the end, many argue that YouTube just needs to get more specific with its ways of how ads are presented to specific viewers. They say that YouTube should guide more adult oriented ads toward adult content and child-friendly ads toward child friendly content, similar to how sponsors agree to be associated with the specific content they are presented with. Basically, YouTube should separate and filter between its user-base and the content they see better.

Works Cited

“Advertiser-Friendly Content Guidelines – YouTube Help.” Google, Google, support.google.com/youtube/answer/6162278.

Hess, Amanda. “How YouTube’s Shifting Algorithms Hurt Independent Media.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 17 Apr. 2017, www.nytimes.com/2017/04/17/arts/youtube-broadcasters-algorithm-ads.html?mcubz=0.

Kain, Erik. “YouTube Wants Content Creators To Appeal Demonetization, But It’s Not Always That Easy.” Forbes, Forbes Magazine, 19 Sept. 2017, www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2017/09/18/adpocalypse-2017-heres-what-you-need-to-know-about-youtubes-demonetization-troubles/#2ec5a87e6c26.

“Largest Anime Streaming Service Crunchyroll Surpasses One Million Paid Subscribers.” Crunchyroll, Crunchyroll, 9 Feb. 2017, www.crunchyroll.com/anime-press-release/2017/02/09-1/largest-anime-streaming-service-crunchyroll-surpasses-one-million-paid-subscribers.

“Patreon Statistics: Graphs Analysis.” Graphtreon, graphtreon.com/patreon-stats

WAKABAYASHI, By DAISUKE. “YouTube Updates Rule For Ads as It Promises More Scrutiny of Videos.” The New York Times. (January 17, 2018 Wednesday ): 578 words. LexisNexis Academic. Web. Date Accessed: 2018/04/12

I chose an Instagram post of mine to analyze. It is from way back when I was a sophomore in high school since I don’t really post on social media much at all. It is a picture of me after I won a kayak race at the beach during the summer of 2015 with the caption of “Twining Ftw!” (the caption is because I put seaweed on the trophy I was holding to make it have hair and it looked like me). I posted it because I was proud of myself and I thought I looked rad in it. I was hoping my classmates, more specifically the girl I was into at the time, saw it. I was hoping to impress them and make people think I am actually athletic, meanwhile I am the opposite. Along the same lines, there really isn’t anyone that I didn’t want to see it. If there was, then I wouldn’t post it because I was always terrified that if something could go wrong, it would for me. If there was someone that I didn’t want to see a picture, my luck would be that they would see that exact picture. Also, there wasn’t anything that I had to hide from anyone anyways, so it didn’t really matter.

I posted on Instagram because, other than Facebook, it was the only social media platform I was part of at the time. I didn’t post it on Facebook because by this time I had stopped using Facebook, using it mostly during middle school just to text people. Instagram was also popular at the time with most people using it over Facebook, so it was more prevalent. Instagram allows you to put filters over pictures as well, so you can make them look better so that was also a factor. I used the hashtags #twinning #kayaking #beach day (yes, I put a space between because I didn’t know what I was doing). Hashtags are used more on Instagram than Facebook, which is another reason I used it over Facebook. I put these in to label what the picture was while trying to be cool too.

The picture was warranted, I believed, because I had worked hard and won a contest, so I thought it was cool. I also wanted other people to know this almost to show off using ethos to show that I can win a contest and be good at something.

March 27, 2018                                                                                                                                            Re: Teacher Assistant Job

To Whom It May Concern:

I am contacting you in response of your search for a Teacher Assistant which you posted on Indeed.com. I not only have a high school diploma but also a lot of experience with young children from working at the beach as well as babysitting. I am currently attending Stony Brook for Health Sciences to gain a better understanding of people and how they act so as I can help them. My extensive experience with children and unhappy adults has given me the communication, teaching, and caring skills that would allow me to perform this job the best.

In working at the beach for 3 years, I have gained the ability to handle children and deal with people. As most of the families that come down have young children, I see and care for the children a lot. Many times, the parents will go down on the beach with the children, although the children will come back up to hang out with the “cool” looking beach guard. This gave me the chance to get experience handling children and their habits. I also must deal with many adults whom are unhappy that they are unable to use the private beach as they do not belong. In talking to these sometimes-emotional people, I have gained the ability to handle emotional and irrational people and children. My babysitting experience is also irreplaceable. Being 19 years old while my older siblings are in their mid to late thirties, I babysit their children often. I watch two of my nephews, ages two and four, every Friday, and sometimes even more, every week. This has given me the ability to care for young children even when their parents aren’t around. I understand how to deal with everything from a rowdy eight-year-old to a pooped and crying one-year-old. I am sure that I can handle anything the children at The Learning Academy will throw at me.

I can’t wait for the opportunity to help positively shape and influence the next generation and teach them while I learn from them. I am determined to use the techniques and experience which I’ve learned over my lifetime to positively impact and influence these young children and the other workers at the Academy. You will find my resume enclosed as well. Thank you for the opportunity. I look forward to hearing from you in the future.

Sincerely,

James Samonas

Neal Stephenson, a science fiction game designer and writer, wrote the article “Its All Geek To Me”. In the article Stephenson talks about how nerd culture is oftentimes criticized. Although, his main point is how this criticism has now made nerd culture almost immune criticism and has brought the culture into the mainstream. This is especially apparent today with a lot of superhero movies being the main blockbusters of the year and video games perforating most users’ feeds on social media.

Stephenson uses mainly ethos and logos to get these points across. I feel as if he very well knows his audience and who is going to be reading his article as he gears it a lot towards geeks themselves. This is seen throughout his article where he tells relatable stories which have occurred in the past such as when “Galaxy Quest” won the Hugo award by being voted on by “Trekkies” even though it made fun of them (Stephenson). This goes to show the reader, whom is most likely a geek, that the author knows what he is talking about and builds ethos for him. He also uses pathos by calling people whom read, watch, and play anything geeky cool. “…the fact that geeks can make lots of money now, have given creators and fans of this kind of art a confidence… is kind of cool now” (Stephenson). Here Stephenson uses logos to try to get the point that geek culture is cool and part of the mainstream now by reasoning that people involved in it make a lot of money and are confident. This goes back to the reader to also affect them with pathos, as if they identify as a geek, then they themselves will feel cool and trust the article more because of it.

Although the article is old, from 2007, it is still extremely prevalent and applicable today. Such phenomena can be seen rampantly today with the game Fortnite going into the mainstream and being played by people who’ve never played video games before as well as the same being done with superhero blockbuster films like Black Panther. The article also realized that the criticism of the genre also doesn’t affect it very much anymore, which is also very apparent today with many self-deprecating memes, jokes, and videos appearing all over the internet having to do with a lot of fans of a lot of geeky subcultures.

Works Cited:

Stephenson, Neal. “It’s All Geek to Me.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 18 Mar. 2007, www.nytimes.com/2007/03/18/opinion/18stephenson.html?rref=collection/sectioncollection/opinion-contributors&action=click&contentCollection=contributors®ion=stream&module=stream_unit&version=search&contentPlacement=6&pgtype=sectionfront.

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I am taking a stand, I will protect my land! My argument is that beaches are land that should be able to be owned. It is land after all. I chose this topic because I work at the beach during the summer. During my shifts, people whom do not belong to the beach club trespass onto the beach and argue with me that they are able to. It is important to discuss as, especially with Long Island, some people own beaches and other people want to use them. This often causes a predicament between the two parties that usually sends both home angry and frustrated. It also comes into play whilst buying beach front property and should affect the pricing appropriately.

In New York, the law is that any land below the high tide line is public land. Other states such as Maine allow public access below the mean low tide, while states like Washington allow for public access to the whole beach. This shows that there really is no solid choice between the states of whether or not beach lands should be able to be owned.

I claim that having the beach as public access lowers beachfront property worth. This would then further lower the worth of the towns near the coast, voiding them of that value. The citizens in these towns already pay higher taxes for living near the coast (helping to keep it clean), they shouldn’t also have to have their property values drop. If there was only public beaches, the coast would also be much more polluted. As most private beaches keep their land clean of trash, it helps to keep the coast and water communities of wildlife clean of harmful garbage. In many places which people violate the laws of private access to beaches, there are also full public access beaches within a couple miles. This in and of itself makes the need to trespass onto a beach owner’s property completely unnecessary as there is a completely public beach down the road.

Using articles from NY Times and documents explaining the laws of public access to coastland, I plan to drive home the claim that people should be able to own the land that they pay for. Although, I would probably get counterclaims that the land is everchanging and that you can’t own the water. I actually agree with these, although only to a certain point. I do not believe that these are enough to say that you can’t own whatever sand is not covered by the tide at the current time. I do believe that one should be able to walk past a beach on foot though as there is no impact of them being there for the small amount of time they are there. If you pay for land, you should be able to own it. Otherwise, no one would buy and own land near the shore and this would cause a massive reduction in the value of all lands near coasts.

You walk into your room stressed and decide you’ll watch one episode of The Office on Netflix before getting ready for bed although, by the time you notice, you are chowing down on some ice cream and halfway through the season you just started. “Us and Them” by David Sedaris may seem like just a story from his past for entertainment, but it plays on this idea heavily. Taking place when the character was only a child, he talked mainly about his neighbors, the Tomkeys. They did not have a television, and this is what the character found curious in his childhood. He thought it was very inhibitory to have this lack of entertainment, although later would show through his actions that it can actually be negative to have television.

The character first takes pity on the Tomkeys thinking that television is extremely important and informative. “What must it be like to be to ignorant and alone?” the young child wondered, “Could a normal person even imagine it?” (1). This shows that he thinks that they are uninformed about the world and a lot that is going on around them. This would turn to make the character a hypocrite later as he would be uninformed and learn nothing from his mistake because of television. This happens when he first refuses to give HIS candy to the Tomkeys’s children. This would lead to him getting punished in his room. Although, briefly after this punishment he went upstairs to watch tv and forgot completely about the ordeal revealing “Were this the only image in the world, you’d be forced to give it your full attention, but fortunately there were others… one picture after another, on and on until the news, and whatever came on after the news” (Sedaris 1). This shows that the character just used the television to numb his mind and not have to think about the wrong he had done, it was escapism. The television made him ignorant of what he had done, and thus made the character a hypocrite by showing that television is actually the thing that does make you ignorant.

I related to this greatly as I often will watch tv whenever I am stressed, whether it be about a test (minimizing the time I actually study) or personal affairs which I put off thinking about how to solve. The story really made me think about how I truly handle stress and that I should do it in more of a healthy way: by fixing the problem which is stressing me. This knowledge and opinion changing outlook that the story gave me, as well as the way it was told, made me greatly appreciate it. Not only did I view the work as art, giving me a new outlook on something, but it also gave me entertainment as of the way it was told. Now if you don’t mind, I am going to go block this out by watching some more television.

Works Cited:
Sedaris, Daivd. “Us and Them.” NPR, NPR, 2004, www.npr.org/programs/morning/features/2004/jun/sedaris/usandthem.html.

James Samonas

Professor Seri

WRT 102.72

2/13/18

Arguing About the Nature of Being Neutral

The grey area of morality is confusing and arguable in and of itself. More importantly though, it represents one of humanity’s biggest fears: the unknown. The manga comic written by Kohei Horikoshi, My Hero Academia, emphasized this greatly in one of its villain characters, Stain. It was soon transformed into an anime show with director Kenji Nagasaki and writer Yosuke Kuroda. It is an animation about superheroes with unnatural superpowers that was quickly gaining traction among a bigger western fanbase, the show and its unique villain also becoming a very popular topic. In one scene in particular, the character Stain makes an incredible impact on both those in the show and the audience watching it as well. The scene starts with the villain being tied up and knocked out after almost killing several people. This calm is suddenly shattered though when he wakes up and saves the main protagonist and hero of the show, Midoriya, from another villain, killing the other villain in the process. Finally, turning around in a bout of power, he makes a speech to some of the most powerful people in this fantasy world, freezing them in terror with his sense of morality. When Kohei Horikoshi, Yosuke Kuroda, and Kenji Nagasaki worked together to piece together the dialogue, coloring, and character actions of this scene, they really drove home the idea of how terrifying a grey sense of morality can be.

This scene used a lot of what the character, Stain, actually said to try to convince the audience of his grey morality and the terror it brings with it. This acts as the logos, or logical persuading, of the scene. Trying to reason with the heroes of the scene, Stain states “If I don’t fix it… if someone isn’t… stained with blood…! If heroes aren’t restored…!! Come! Just try me… you fakes! The only one allowed to kill me is… All Might, a true hero!!”. In saying this statement during this scene he is trying to reason that if someone doesn’t do something, nothing will be fixed, so he will do whatever it takes whether it be dying or killing to fix it himself. This also goes outside the screen to affect those watching it by reasoning that they should do anything they can, even to kill, to change the world’s problems rather than just sit idly by, cementing his flawed morality as a thing of contradiction to fear. Earlier on in the show, Stain also had tiny snippets of dialogue which pushed this same idea. When he was given the dialogue “To truly accomplish anything… one needs will and conviction. Those without it… the weak ones… They’ll be weeded out. It’s only natural. That’s why you’re about to die.”, it really pushed how scary his ‘in the middle’ ethics were. It went to show both the characters in the show, who react appropriately, and the physical audience watching the show his true philosophy and thus his morality. It reasoned that he didn’t care what it took to teach society to change and that he was willing to kill those who didn’t agree with him. This ideal is one that many people fear as the past experiences humanity has had with this has led to wars and even a holocaust.

The coloring of this dynamic animated scene also has a great impact on the viewers. Through the brilliant shades of color and pathos, the director tries to convince the audience how horrifying the character Stain, and more importantly, his grey morality really is. Kenji Nagasaki used mostly intense shades of reds and blacks to cause a sense of fear in his audience. As with many colors, both red and black have connotations and symbolism to them. The reds in the scene are more congruent with the character Stain and the pure rage he has. Meanwhile, the stark black background and lines over the red contrast it, not only making the reds brighter and more powerful, but also mixing the aura of uncertainty that black represents with it. This causes an emotional response within the viewer, causing their fear to be amplified due to the rage and uncertainty of the coloring of the scene. This scene is also very abrupt and goes to contrast the show itself as the show is usually very colorful and hopeful. This scene goes to juxtapose that as it show a complete lack of color other than red and black, thus showcasing the hopelessness and fear the audience watching should feel. Greatly complimenting the coloring, the music during this scene also had a great impact. Also using pathos to affect the viewer’s emotion, the music (done by Yuki Hayashi) is very vocal based music, similar to what you’d find in an opera. The notes sung are with a lot of dissonance between them, causing what is often perceived as a scary or unpleasant sound. This helps to add to the pathos of the scene as when the audience hears the music in the background, most will react with an amplification of their fear. The music and color almost add an aura and symbolic environment of the physical manifestation of something to be feared in the scene.

In the present day, many people are very stressed about the state of our politics as well as the morality of the world as a whole. Almost like the civil rights era back in the 1950s and 60s, many are looking at the society around them terrified and wanting change, but also being scared of what the change may bring with it. The scene from My Hero Academia takes a lot of influence from this modern thinking of wanting change again. It further stirred up debate among people about modern problems and how they are being solved. Almost akin to Malcolm X during the civil rights era, Stain would rather get violent and die for his cause than let it continue. Opposed to this, today many still try to stay like Martin Luther King and keep the peace by using (mostly) peaceful protests and walks.  Bringing up how scary this unknown thinking brings awareness to the causes it represents and helps to enact change in these causes.