A Guide to Writing for the Web

I've been trying to verbalize (or rather, type out) what exactly I've learned in this course, but it has been surprisingly difficult. I first asked myself, "Did I learn anything at all?" but was quick to realize that I certainly did. Why, then, am I having trouble explaining it? This is a writing class, after all!

But, I think I've finally solved this conundrum. As I stated early on in the semester, the internet has been a major component of my life for many years. I play games, do school work, do "real" work, and talk to friends on the internet, so I couldn't imagine my life without it. And, it just so happens that I naturally developed as a writer online as well. Yes, I've been a roleplayer. Yes, I've written fan fiction. But, most importantly, I've worked online. I've written up announcements, descriptions of game mechanics, help wanted ads, and so on - all on the internet. I've had to learn about how to navigate search engines, effectively integrate hyperlinks, manage font, color, and blank space, and encourage audience interaction for years by this point, and I didn't learn any of this formally.

Yes, this means that I had a pretty solid "base" of skills and knowledge going into this class, but it also means that I had missed a lot of gaps along the way. As I worked, I only learned out of necessity. That learning wasn't intensive, and while it covered a fairly good breadth of knowledge, I was lacking depth. This class, I believe, filled in some of those holes in my knowledge, and encouraged me to explore familiar topics more intensively. It is because of this that I struggle articulating what I've learned: it's hard to explain how various, unrelated "holes" of knowledge were filled.

Because of this, I asked myself what the most provocative moments were for me throughout this semester. It was then that I realized I learned the most by analyzing already existing forms of media: the infographics, podcasts, prezis, and so on. Seeing various types of writing in action helped me conceptualize things better, and often times showed me what not to do with my writing. I did a lot of private reflecting on those pieces that I never shared with the class, so I'd like to share some of that information now. Here is my infographic: a guide to writing for the web.


easel.ly

Writing for the Dynamic Online Audience

I joined the Midorea staff team in 2008, which introduced me to online writing. While I was familiar with forums, emails, instant messaging, and so on, I never thought about what it meant to write for a real audience online before. But, that job required me to do everything between writing rule lists to writing site announcements, and I had to change my style if I wanted to perform my job well.

I’ve been writing for an online audience for a long time now, but seeing a writing for the web class inspired me to re-examine the way that I look at it. Now, as we’re reaching the end of the semester, I have the opportunity to reflect upon what I’ve learned.

The first rule of writing for the web that I learned, even before registering for this class, was “keep it simple.” An online audience doesn’t want to read through walls of text, so points need to be made quickly and concisely. While I’ve caught myself rambling a few times in this class (particularly in forum discussions and blog posts), I’ve tried to stick to this rule. In my infographic, I cut main points down to single sentences. I also physically divided them up into separate bubbles, and arranged them in a way to keep the eye flowing from one to the next. In my Prezi, I utilized lists to outline main points that I made, so that viewers could reach over them as they listened to me make the full argument.

When I couldn't keep it simple, I broke things up. As I said before: an online audience will not read a wall of text. Mostly in my blog posts, I made sure to insert images and make plenty of line to break up my writing. This technique is particularly useful when I make forum posts for Midorea.

As we have discussed many times in this class, online writing is multimodal. Size and color are two general concepts that I did not consider before. Specifically with infographics, the size of the text and text boxes, as well as the overall color scheme, were much more important than I had previously thought. I also had to consider the size of infographics in relation to the screens that they were being read on: if they are too large and require a lot of moving and scrolling, then they are less appealing. This is certainly not something that I have to consider in academic writing, where I simple have to follow a very specific outline.

I also learned to consider how wide an online audience is. The audience of an academic paper is quite clear and narrow, but you can never guarantee what the audience of your online writing will be like. You need to consider the many different backgrounds, education levels, and dispositions that are presented by an online audience. While this may seem like a simple thing to consider, it's very important when you're writing about complex subjects, which may include a lot of jargon, or require critical thinking of your audience. "Keep it simple" is applied in a different way here: you need to keep your argument/subject simple, as well as its structure.

Writing for the web is challenging, but it has given me unique learning experiences. More than anything, though, I think I’ve realized how dynamic an online audience is – and how dynamic online writing has to be to accommodate that. Rather than strictly adhering to rules and guidelines, like I do with my academic writing, I think that I’ll continue to look critically at online writing, and adapt my style to the new trends and technologies that I see. While these general rules that I’ve learned will probably always be useful, being dynamic is certainly an important lesson that I will take away from this course.

Infographics on Trans Issues

Lately, I've been doing some research on the treatment of depressed transgender and gender-nonconforming individuals in a therapeutic setting. With the topic still fresh in my mind, I decided to search for infographics on trans issues.

This first infographic is essentially a brief overview of terms. I'm decently familiar with trans issues, but my recent research has shown me that even the most "basic" terms are often unknown or misunderstood, so I think that this is an effective educational infographic. It's very simple both in content and design, and the title is very effective at communicating that. This infographic would be easy for anyone to read and understand because of the simplistic images, chunky design, and easy language.

Although this infographic comes from the same place as the last one, it carries a very different message. While the last image could basically be a reference sheet for definitions, this one very clearly addresses the argument that trans people regret transitioning. It presents a factually and logically sound argument through the use of statistics, which are clearly displayed in pie charts and bars. This infographic is also busier than the last, but it isn't overwhelming. The use of contrasting colors and quote bubbles breaks the image up nicely and makes it easy to read and understand each point made.

The final infographic here is busier than the other two, and its message is broader in scope. This is because, as the title denotes, this infographic was made for transgender awareness week. At first glance, this infographic doesn't seem to make a linear argument, but if you follow the messages of each section of statistics - first with harassment in public, then discrimination in the health field, then the lack of health care, then the unique health issues, and finally to the issue of HIV in this population, it seems that an inferential argument is made. That argument coincides with the title and reasoning for making the infographic, so it seems fairly effective in all - but I'm wondering if people in general think about this as an argument. It may not be very effective if they don't.

My Experience with Dissociation and Gaming

February 4, 2015
Time spent texting: 10 minutes
Time spent on Facebook: 5 minutes
Time spent on Skype: 40 minutes
Time spent on school work: 80 minutes (1 hour, 20 minutes)
Time spent watching videos: 60 minutes
Time spent playing games: 20 minutes

"Not too bad," I thought, "but today was an exception." I was instructed to track the ways that I use technology over the span of three days, and I chose to start on a Wednesday, which is a day that I spend at school. A more accurate representation would come tomorrow, when I would spend all day at home.

February 5, 2015
Time spent texting: 5 minutes
Time spent on Facebook: 10 minutes
Time spent on Skype: 80 minutes (1 hour, 20 minutes)
Time spent doing school work: 30 minutes
Time spent watching videos: 250 minutes (4 hours, 10 minutes)
Time spent gaming: 140 minutes (2 hours, 20 minutes)

I couldn't help but to laugh as I logged my time gaming. Despite being an avid gamer, I hadn't spent much time playing games that week. Instead, as we can easily see here, I was marathoning a show. Still, my technology use didn't look too shameful yet.

February 6, 2015
Time spent texting: 5 minutes
Time spent on Facebook: 5 minutes
Time spent on Skype: 60 minutes (1 hour)
Time spent doing school work: 20 minutes
Time spent watching videos: 480 minutes (8 hours)
Time spent gaming: 0 minutes

By the end of the day on Friday, I was shocked to see that I had spent 8 hours watching (and finishing) my show. I watched an entire season in just two days, which is admittedly common for me, and probably a bit common among other people as well.

Working past that mild embarrassment, I quickly realized that I'm not much of a social technology user. People always talk about how they see others ignoring their friends for their cellphones, but I never understood those stories because 1) I don't do that, and 2) I don't think I've ever seen anyone do that. But, the narrative is so common that authors like Nicolas Carrr and speakers like Sherry Turkle use them in their criticisms of frequent web-use, so I suppose that there's no sense in me arguing against it. For now, I'll assume that I'm an exception to the rule.

What I do spend my web-time on, though, is gaming and watching shows - and I do a lot of that. (Because the lifetime stats of gaming are more readily available to me than the lifetime stats of watching shows, I'll focus on that in this post.) In fact, I could accurately tell you how many hours I've spent in most games because those games actually keep the records for me.  These logs can even be a point of pride for gamers. I've logged 357 hours on my main character in Guild Wars 2 alone, with the total time spent playing that game nearly reaching 800 hours.

But what have I sacrificed for this? Well, in order to fully address this question, I'll need to get a little personal here. I have a long, difficult history with anxiety and depression. (And yes, these conditions were evident before I became a gamer.) My issues can get so extreme, in fact, that I'm prone to dissociation, which means that under a great deal of emotional stress, I detach myself from my emotions, and sometimes even my current experiences.

What my dissociation means in the context of gaming is that, if I'm not careful, I can truly lose myself in a game. This means that I'm more prone to running to games when I get depressed or anxious, rather than addressing the feelings head-on. Rather than providing me relief though, this only serves to "bottle up" my emotions until they eventually force their way out. Technology on the whole is actually great for these avoidance tactics: it's always available to us, the internet is nearly endless, and we can control a great deal of what we're exposed to.

In her TED Talk addressing avid technology use, Turkle asserted that one reason that we're so attracted to communicating online is that we can do so on our own terms. We can edit our messages with ease, sometimes even after being sent. On a social level, that means that we can edit our self-presentations, and this sense of control is comforting. But, what Turkle argues is that feeding into this desire can be dangerous to us because it can inhibit our face-to-face communication skills.

Because my personal experiences with internet use so strongly favor non-social activities, I may not have the best insight here, but I can relate to its theme through my experiences with dissociation. Once a habit is developed, it can be hard to break, and that becomes especially true when that habit comes more easily through the use of technology. I'm not always thinking about what I'm doing when I'm loading up a game rather than dealing with my emotions, and I don't need to think much to double-click an icon and launch myself into a different world. Because these habits - both dissociating and gaming - have been developed over time, I can just function on auto-pilot before even processing that I'm upset. This becomes very toxic for me because my negative feelings only continue to fester until they finally explode, and I'm left feeling even worse than before.

Let me remind you here that I'm not speaking theoretically. I know this from personal experience: technology helps enable my unhealthy habits. But, I want you to absorb this statement carefully. It does not mean that my habits are caused by my technology use. It does not mean that my technology use is a negative thing. It simply means that one of the many ways that I dissociate is made easier through my use of technology. In this way, technology use is no different from sleeping (another thing I do in excess when I dissociate). Technology use and sleep are not bad things because they can be associated with a bad thing: they are in fact very good on their own. This is very important to understand.

When I was seeing one of my therapists, I tearfully said, "I love playing games. I don't want to use them to dissociate, but I still want to be able to play them." Because dissociation and gaming seemed so closely related in that moment, it seemed impossible for me to separate them. My therapist replied, "You can do that. You just have to re-learn how." I learned, even unconsciously, how to dissociate through gaming, so that meant that I could learn how to separate the two things as well. It would take bravery, introspection, and dedication - but it was possible. It seems to me that other habits made easier through technology could be untangled in the same way.

While my dissociation habits are different from communication habits, I think that the process of habituation and learning works in the same way, regardless. I certainly agree with the sentiment that heavy technology use can be harmful. Just as I can't control the world around me like I prefer to in a game, people can't control the people around them like they prefer to on Facebook. Allowing ourselves to get lost in these simulations can indeed be very harmful to us. But, that doesn't mean that the simulations themselves are strictly bad or harmful. Rather, I think that it means that our next challenge is to be mindful of our technology use, and to teach ourselves about how much is too much. If I learned how to work around my tendency to dissociate when playing games, then I have full confidence that others can work around their tendency to forgo face-to-face communication for texting.

Rhetorical Analysis: YouTube

The description of my personal Tumblr blog reads, "Social issues, video games, and animals." So, it is perhaps fitting that the first official post on this blog contains those three things in some way.

Because those three things occupy my mind throughout at least 80% of the day, you'd expect that my YouTube history would reflect that. And, you would be right. As vast as YouTube is, my history is really quite predictable - not to mention, simple. But, in an attempt to make myself look more interesting than I am (and to meet the standards for my first blogging assignment for class), I will perform a rhetorical analysis on the three particular videos from my YouTube history.


To This Day Project - Shane Koyczan
Disclaimer: This video is about bullying. It uses emotional language and mentions things such as depression and suicide to deliver its message.

To This Day is a collaborative project that seems to have begun with the writing of Shane Koyczan. You can see a variety of animation styles in the video, and in fact, many animators were credited both in the video (and its description), as well as on this page of a website devoted to the project. It is clear that this project goes far beyond one video, but here, I will focus on the video alone.

The purpose and audience of this video are two-pronged. First, the video is meant to reach victims of bullying and provide them a sense of understanding a solidarity. Second, the video is meant to reach everyone else, so to speak, in order to raise awareness on the life-long effects of bullying and, hopefully, inspire societal change.

The first prong described above was clearly the most significant to the video creators, and if that wasn't clear in the beginning, it was made clear around the 5:30 mark when the speaker sends a message to victims of bullying, saying that they are beautiful and worthy of life, and that those who bullied them were wrong. In particular, the parts where the narrator said, "they were wrong" were given emphasis through the use of tone, volume, and repetition. Solidarity from not only the poet, but also other collaborators was made clear in the design choices as well. Because multiple animators worked collaboratively to deliver the visuals of this piece, the sense of solidarity inspired by the script is enhanced, and this sort of message is carried over to the website that viewers are directed to in the video description.

Of course, the larger audience was addressed as well: the potential bullies, and individuals who were/are neither bullies nor victims. The collaborative efforts of multiple artists and the inclusion of not just one personal story about bullying, but three, both sent the larger audience the message that bullying is not a rare occurrence, and it is not insignificant in people’s lives. The second message in particular was repeated in the title and in the personal stories shared in the beginning of the video as well. In addition to this, the powerful language used throughout the poem and the emotional delivery by the poet were both meant to lead the audience to connect with these stories and, by extension, the people who lived them. The animation style changed all throughout the video, and it consistently illustrated the emotional stories being told. The isolation felt by bullied kids was emphasized multiple times, and in multiple ways through the animation, and this was all meant to build up the audience’s emotional response to it.

STAR_ Channel Trailer

For those of you unaware, YouTube channel owners can choose to put a certain video on their YouTube profiles that autoplays when you visit it. While the creator of this video doesn't use this as his homepage trailer anymore, his original intent, of course, was to attract an audience enough to get them to watch his videos and subscribe. He chose specific clips from pre-existing videos in order to display the skill and the silliness that you would expect to see on his channel. While the last example and this one are both videos from the same website, they serve very different purposes: the last was meant to serve a more broad purpose of raising awareness and building solidarity, while this one is merely an advertisement for a YouTube channel.

This video begins with what the Team Fortress 2 community calls a rollout, which is a display of skill requiring the player to get from one part of the map to another in as little time as possible. The rollout is finished with a player kill, which is another example of STAR_'s skill as a TF2 player. This clip sets the tone for the rest of the video, and the following clips keep that momentum going with other displays of STAR_'s skill and general silliness in games. The music played in the background of these clips compliments this fun energy.

The design of this video is arguably less artistic than the last. For the most part, STAR_ simply records gameplay and adds his own commentary to it to make videos. Sometimes, he'll edit in certain images or text (usually for comedic effect), but his editing is rather basic because the subject of his videos is the gameplay itself. In fact, the editing he does usually serves the purpose of giving emphasis what is occurring in the gameplay, and the text and images are usually aligned with the subject of the clips in order to draw emphasis to them. In this trailer, we see examples of that, which means that he is producing a fairly accurate representation of his channel.

Cat Jump Fail with Music: Sail by AWOLNATION

This final video is the shortest and simplest of the three examples I have. I included this short video, however, to illustrate how videos can be effective in design and delivery without being incredibly long. I can't be sure that this is the original video because I've seen it in so many places, so I won't say anything about who the author is. Even still, the audience and the purpose are rather clear. The video is only 35 seconds long, and it doesn't really make references to a specific niche community, so I believe that the video's target audience is simple anyone and everyone. Short videos (under 1 minute) are generally very good at attracting attention from a wide array of people. The purpose was simply to share a funny clip of a cat in a more interesting way than it may otherwise be shared.

The video begins with rather dramatic music, which compliments the cat's mood of concentration as it sneaks around and prepares to jump from a window sill. The comedic factor of this video is enhanced by the timing of the clip and the video: the music matches up perfectly as the cat hides, peeks over the clothes, and then finally jumps. The single word sung in the video - "SAIL" - fits the theme and contrasts the clumsiness of the cat to further add to the comedic value. This brief, simple video is actually quite effective because its purpose and design are both consistent and clear.

Origins

I've been an internet addict since I discovered Neopets in the early 2000s. From there, I spread out to many forums, avatar sites, game sites, and blog sites; but I found my long-term home on Midorea in 2008. Since then, I've gone from average user to Forum Moderator to Assistant Administrator, and now, I'm collaborating with the rest of the staff to push out the release of Midorea v3.

My work on Midorea has been an amazing learning process, and I'm eager to continue moving forward with it. But, I won't be satisfied with my work until I make some vital changes to how I interact on the internet in general. While I don't have many problems with tact or responsiveness, I can be quite long-winded (as you can probably tell already). I never really got the whole Twitter thing, and I'm known for my outrageous walls of text.

Here, my progress toward becoming a more succinct and efficient writer will be outlined. I will be making some required blog posts for an online class that I am taking now (in the Spring of 2015), and I will likely continue my growth for a while after that, until I am satisfied with what I have learned. If you're interested in this journey for some reason or another, then feel free to follow this blog and watch me become a new Chu.