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52% of video game playersare female. Does that surprise you? The video game industry is a booming business and one of the largest media outlets in society, influencing everyone in some shape or form. We have all played some sort of video game, whether online or on our phones. However, just like in real life, gender roles and stereotypes are still prevalent in the video game community. How does it affect the individual experience when playing? How do video games affect our perception of gender? Video Game Characters Any great game has decent, relatable characters that capture the audience. However, when it comes to male or female characters, our social perceptions of gender come into play as well. An anthropological study from the University of Amsterdam analyzed the difference between male and female characters from a variety of games and has concluded that media can influence social perception of gender. Video games are seen as a predominately male activityand are advertised for a male audience....

If you are reading this, take out your cellular device and check how many photos you have. Now count how many of them are selfies. You probably know that a “selfie” is a photograph of yourself, taken by yourself. It's the self-portrait of the digital age. Many people take selfies in their spare time, me being one of them. Justin Denison, senior vice president of product strategy and marketing for Samsung, stated that people take an average of 25,000 selfies during their lifetime. Another cool fact is that the word "selfie" was named Word of the Year in 2013 by Oxford Dictionaries, beating "twerk" and "binge-watch." The picture to your left is the famous Ellen Degeneres Oscar selfiethat was retweeted more than 1 million times on Twitter, breaking the previous record set by former president Barack Obama after his re-election. You can see A-list celebrities such as Jared Leto, Jennifer Lawrence, Channing Tatum, Meryl Streep, Julia Roberts, Kevin Spacey, Bradley Cooper, Brad Pitt, Lupita Nyong'o, Peter Nyong'o,...

On the night of February 23, 2001 a horrific incident arose in the streets of Isla Vista. A UCSB student named David Attias was driving under the influence, ran over, and killed 4 students. To remember these 4 victims a small memorial was built on the side of Little Acorn Park, on Sabado Tarde Road, closest to where this incident occurred. If you were to just be walking by it, you would not notice that it was a memorial. For example, UCSB student, Gaby Islas, said she "never noticed this thing until today." Once walking up to it and seeing the names of the victims and their timelines, she recognized that it was a memorial. The memorial is in the shape of a circle with a mosaic rock right in the middle, surrounded by blue broken bits of plastic. There are plaques for each of the victims around the outside of the circle. The names of the students who were killed...