Be A Hero

Dear Diary,

Last week in class was quite exciting! Everyone presented their single story of a person from another country or culture. I was absolutely pumped for this assignment! The whole classroom looked like a rainbow piñata of countries, colours, and paper. And while I didn’t get around to enough projects as I would have liked to, I was fascinated by the many things my classmates had to share. It was a unique experience to put a more personal telling to the projects. Instead of just researching about a country, we shared the experience and memories of single person or family. I loved it!

I also was a little surprised at myself. I found that as each groups turn came around and they introduced their person and where they were from, I found my mind going to all the information I thought I knew about that country. For example, one group had interviewed a young person from Germany. Since it was October at the time, I immediately though of Oktoberfest. I was humbled to hear though, that the young person found it frustrating to always be stereotyped as a culture that were all about beer, because they had so much more to offer within their culture. I took a moment to check myself and try not to assume so that I could simply take in the experience. A fresh slate if you will.

 

Hearing that young person’s story reminded me how it feels to be stereotyped. I mentioned it in an older blog, but the video gaming community received a lot of prejudice because of its central interest in electronic entertainment. Many other groups of people think we are lazy, rude, really aggressive, and that we all live with our parents because we spend all our money on video games. I certainly not going to stand up on a pedestal and claim it all untrue, but everyone is different. Here I was lumping all Germans into one category, when I hate it being done to me. I enjoyed hearing about Germany so much I’ve decided that my next trip is going to be there. (When I’m done play Batman Arkham Origins that is!)

 One stereotype that I hate hearing about the gaming community is that everyone in it is selfish and doesn’t care about others. It couldn’t be farther from the truth. I took part in a really cool event I thought I would share called Extra Life. It’s a web based charity where certain groups get together like Reddit, and Roosterteeth and they stream live for 24 hours to raise money for the Children’s Miracle Hospital network. It’s a lot of fun, you can donate to your favorite group or internet celebrity but it all goes to the same place. During the 24 hour stream you can game with your favorite groups online or with Xbox live, win cool prizes and see your favorite host do crazy things like shave all their hair for charity. And all of it happens in real time, no prerecording. It was hard to stay up for so long but it was so worth it to see the gaming community come together for such a good cause! So far extra life and its partners have raised over 3 million! And not only is the gaming community involved but so are the game developers like Sony and Microsoft, who normally get a bad rap to for only caring about their profit margins! Overall it’s a great experience, and I think it goes to show that the community does have a heart and that the culture is not all violence and hatred.

Here is the extra life website, they are still taking donations! - http://www.extra-life.org/index.cfm?