Greeting fellow students and Professor my name is William Brownlee. I am an engineering student and all though i’m a tech person I much prefer personal classes in fact i postponed taking classes last semester due to my dislike of online classes. I find them to be for more inferior to regular classes to so the lack of interaction. However I can can’t make my education wait forever and this pandemic doesn’t show clear sighs of waning anytime soon. So here I am.
Author: William
Youth Mode Response
In the article youth mode by Nijhuis and K-Hole claims there to be problems in both the Millennial and Generation X communities definition of identity and the internet. However the authors focuses more on the Millennials. Miss Nijhuis begins by pointing out that identity has been cheapened and corrupted to the point that it can even be forced upon you without your wanting. An example of this that Miss Nijhuis gives is they Horoscope explaining that “you’re a scorpio wither if you believe astrology or not” showing how even regardless of your view of act of star charting personalities (Astrology) it can be force on your social personality. Miss Nijhuis go on to explain how even companies that purposefully change and alter there public appearance don’t even know how to appeal to consumers to the vast different forms of social identities there are and how they all enevidably clash. But personally I don’t necessarily believe that is is even a problem. Of course to be this is quite normal being a Millennial myself. However i see it more of a positive effect of the Cultural diffusion that breeds from the popularization of the internet. Witch bring us to the core of the point that I believe Nijhuis and K-Hole are trying to make and that is the the internet itself is the main reason why the world or the culture has changing so much between the generation. Nor for the better but most definitely not for the worst.
Don’t Be A Stranger Conflict
In the article “Don’t BE A Stranger” one of them most immediate conflicts you notice is that the author find people look down on internet friendship. This is partly due to the negative stigma attached to the internet’s person to person experience back in the days of myspace in the early 2000s. When the news was pledged by stories of sexual predators and murderers finding easy pray vea the internet/myspace. Later claiming that there are even worst methods of tricking people. Referring to CatFishing, with is the act of purposely lying to other pretending to be older or younger than they are and to be more sexully and finatually mor attractive than try really are in hope to get someone to spend money on them or meet them to get a shot at them they would normally otherwise not get. This leads to relasonships being seen as sacams because of this. With the world of socal networking exploding due to the rise of Facebook and a world where you can always be can be logged in all the time. As well as all the sexual online application. All this has servearlly damges the image of the internet to outsides however tivieal it may be.
The Failing of GameStops Sale Model
http://fortune.com/2018/06/19/gamestop-seeking-buyer/
As seen in the chart and article link GameStop has been plummeting in value lately and even have been trying to sell itself to gain financial stability from there rapidly declining popularity and sales. GameStop seems to be in great trouble do to losing close it $105.9 million dollars in the year if 2017 during the period which they were trying to get backers this all but dried up there market for buyers who now see them as a risk.
At first this seem especially strange due to the GameStop being the number one physical game retailer in the world beating out companies like Target and Best Buy. However, It all come into perspective when you realize that physical games are quickly being less and less desirable even for console gamers due to digital game stores streamlining the process. Companies like Steam, Epic Games, Microsoft and more have been eating into the market greatly. Couple this reality with the fact that GameStop’s customer service is renowned atrocious not to mention there anti-consumer policies like the terrible retuinse and high prices for preorder games. Mix this all together and the result is a volatile mess of and unnecessary and unliked story trying to stay relevant in a market that nobody need.
Using the photograph above we can the true decline started in September of 2018. However this is unsurprising due to september being the time when students go back to school and during that time a large portion of the Gamestop demographic is not focused on recreational activities, in this case video games. But, the truly damning thing we realize is that instead of being a flat drop like most stores would experience in various point if the year it seems to be a decline. This leads me to believe it’s more than just an off-season for the company but more of a fet up consumer base leaving. Even more proof of this is show in the period between late December of 2018 and late January of 2019 when a spike appeared. This sale spike secured solely because January is always the period where the most game release at once so it was almost a guarantee that anyone who sold game would make money during this time. But the most notable part is that we see an immediate drop right back back to negative slope as if the spike have never happened indicating that people really are done with this company Because if the only time you can make money is the time when you were guaranteed to make money then you are not a good business.
It not all bad though GameStop’s quite liked for there gaming accessories in there ThinkGeek branch. So the question is there do they go from here? Is this sustainable? Would it be more beneficial to rebrand as ThinkGeek and make their main income from game related accessories? Can they even sell? Or will they be delved doom to join the countless casualties of time in the Ather?
