Online me
My online experience began at the age of 10 when my parents after initial skepticism about the Internet decided to include it when they bought an updated computer. Looking back I wasn’t that impressed by the internet at first as there wasn’t a lot of stuff on there that was interesting for someone of my age at the time. As well as the fact that at my age I could not really understand the use of the Internet as my schoolwork back then did not require me to really go on the Internet for work. Another reason is that playing on computer games as well as going out to play football were both high on the list of interests back in those days, so as there wasn’t anything that could compete against those two for my time the web was put to the back of my mind. Leading to me forgetting about the Internet for two years until I went to secondary school at the age of twelve. When there seemed a necessity to constantly be searching the web for some information about one project or another, which showed me that there was more to this surfing the web than people previously had been saying to me.
Later on as my work started to become more difficult my use of the Internet started to increase, this lead to me using the Internet recreationally as well as for finding information for my project work. It was quite a simple progression that changed my outlook on the web that you could play around on the Internet as well as do work.
One of the first websites that got me hooked was one that was based on football, and the premise of this website was quite simple you had some games to play, and the better you did on them the more points you got that you could exchange for better players for your created team. I think it was called
www.footee.net, but the only negative thing I recall about this website is that when it started to become really popular its was bought by an Internet searching website as it disappeared completely from the web being replaced by this search engine.
This website prompted me to look around for some more game based websites to keep me amused now I am not sure if they existed before “footee.net”, but after that disappeared I stumbled upon a plethora of them.
The first one “www.2dplay.com” had a wide range of games ranging across broad genres such as action and puzzles. However it soon became apparent that the games were from another website as displayed on the loading screen was a logo for
www.miniclip.com a larger games based website. Now for a while I regularly used “miniclip.com” to play online games but it seemed to become gradually worse branching off to do some seemingly stupid political games like “dancing bush”, and produced multiple games about the conflict in Afghanistan against the Taliban.
This lead to me turning my back on this website and finding another website that was the complete opposite to the previously talked about website. Now I was starting to get bored of the simple 2 minute games where you just do some simple activity like just shoot at a target whilst being stationary, and there is absolutely no plot to the game at all. Thus in searching for a games website that had plot to its creations I stumbled upon a website that parodies American culture and the current goings on this website was
www.liquidgeneration.com Now the content within this site varies from simple games that mock aspects of American life, to complex games that have plots about weird goings on like “escape from scientology land chapters 1-5”. As well as having a collection of flash movies like “saddam is an outkast” where they use a popular song by outkast called “hey Ya”, and change the lyrics and name of the song to “hey Allah”. Then there are the quiz games that are all based on films, celebrities, and the character out of those two categories that you are. Lastly there is my favourite bit of the website where they have “sabotages” now I should explain that the sabotage bit is anything ranging from an online pregnancy test, to an application form that you have to fill out for the job of being pope. However when you are performing these tasks you have to be wary as they always include an unexpected surprise. The great thing about sabotages is that you are able to share them with people by sending them to their email addresses. Then the beauty of it is that you do not tell them to expect a surprise in effect pranking them. This website was exactly what I was looking for I still use it now and again and it still makes me laugh, but most importantly it led to me finding my favourite all time site.
Clearly after enjoying flash movies and games so much it was obvious that I would somehow find, as is the way with the internet a site that is more specialized towards the use of flash. The website I found out about is
www.newgrounds.com and the greatest thing about this site is that all the games and movies on it are made by actual users. Then reviewed by the users and if they obtain a rating higher than 4 then they are saved, but anything below is “blamed” as the website says. However your rating is based on three things the amount of experience that you deposited to your user by rating other peoples flash. As well as the amount of times you have had a flash file either protected or blamed successfully. Those three factors contribute to your overall rating power. That in turn contributes to whether or not a flash movie or game will make it to front page. That is the aim of all the designers who use newgrounds to get it to the front page so that even more people can see it, rate and review it.
That is the point I am at when going online nowadays apart from checking my emails, instant messaging, or skyping people, or even wasting my time on youtube watching some videos.
Labels: 1st and 2nd year
