Good evening to all fans and followers of the Dragon Ball Den. The journey of creating and maintaining an online blog for my favorite television series has truly been remarkable. Not only was I able to teach a new audience about the significance of the Dragon Ball series, I was also able to learn more about the series myself. From this entire process, then have been several memorable take-aways that will last with me for a long time
The most prominent take-away would be the satisfaction of being able to influence another person into a new hobby. Through my video tutorial on how to stream the entire Dragon Ball series for free on any computer or smartphone, I was able to teach new fans of Dragon Ball on the most convenient method of diving into the franchise. Another big take-away for me would be my page on Dragon Ball memes. Exploring the vast history of internet memes based on the Dragon Ball series taught me more about the cultural impact of the Dragon Ball anime that I wasn’t aware of before.
Additionally, working with my group to explore the non-profit of the Lebron James Family Foundation was a great experience in educating myself on the philanthropy of one of my favorite athletes. Being able to then advertise Lebron James’s remarkable service project via podcasts allowed me to experience the role of an activist online. Working with my group on the final paper taught us the importance of non-profits such as the Lebron James Family Foundation and the iPromise School, reminding us to always pay respect to service leaders, volunteer organizations, and our local community. Overall, the experience of this blog and the final project have been a positive one, and I hope to apply these new skills and experiences in the near future.

Examples of popular Dragon Ball Z memes:

1. How does each meme relate to your topic and target audience?

Each meme I have presented above come from the original Dragonball Z anime series. Throughout the first decade of the 2000’s, the Dragonball Z anime series has been the source of countless memes in the first wave of internet memes from around 2006-2012. Each of the three memes presented from above come from specific frames and scenes of Dragonball Z, where a specific dialogue or action from an actor has been used as a template for multiple different jokes and forms of expression.

2. In Davison’s framework, what are the ‘ideals’ of your chosen memes? (Cite Davison)

Each individual Dragonball Z meme has its own unique ideal. An ideal of a meme is simply “the concept or idea conveyed” (Davidson, 123). The ideal of the “Over 9000” meme is depicting a number or amount that’s larger than natural. This could be used to describe humoristic characteristics such as the volume of someone screaming, how annoying someone is, or how ugly/attractive someone is. On the other hand, the ideal of the “Final Form” meme is to depict an object or entity humoristically out of its natural state or appearance. Finally, the ideal of the “shoop da whoop” meme is simply representing an element of surprise and shock value, rather than a specific message or form of communication.

3. What are the “behaviors” of your identified memes? Where do they originate, and how do they spread? (Cite the Know Your Meme database)

All 3 of my Dragon Ball Z memes have originated from early community based websites in 2005 and 2006 such as YouTube, Reddit, or 4chan. Through several users reusing the templates of these memes, they grew in popularity on several other meme websites such as 9gag and iFunny.

4. What are the “manifestations” of your chosen memes, and how are they different from other possible manifestations?

The manifestation of a meme is “its observable, external phenomena. It is the set of objects created by the meme, the records of its existence.” (Davidson 123). For the “Over 9000” meme, the manifestation is typically just Vegeta from Dragon Ball Z referring to Goku’s measured power levels as over 9000. For the “Final Form” meme, the manifestation is Dragon Ball Z villain Frieza letting all the protagonists know that he had not even reached his final strongest form during one of his transformations. For the “Shoop da whoop” meme, the manifestation is a humorous looking scene of Dragon Ball Z villain Cell firing a laser beam from his own mouth.

5. Conclude by considering how the specific manifestations you have chosen can appeal to your target audience.

The manifestations of each of these memes have had significant cultural impact on the internet and memes as a whole. Additionally, each manifestation represents iconic scenes of Dragon Ball Z that new Dragon Ball fans may be interested in exploring. If new Dragon Ball Z fans are interested in the context of these iconic scenes, they will be encouraged to check the anime series out for themselves.

This is the first official and individual episode of the LeBron James Family Foundation Podcast. In this episode, we explore the origins of the “I Promise School”, as we dive into the motives and reasons that encouraged LeBron to devote so much time towards this mission. Additionally, this episode covers further details of how the “I Promise School” functions, including how the school organizes students, curriculum and funding, along with how the school guarantees tertiary education after the completion of high school.

More information on the Lebron James Family Foundation can be found from their official site: https://www.lebronjamesfamilyfoundation.org/

Here are my group members and each of their personal blogs:

Enrico Borromeo – buzzerbeaters.food.blog
Keeran Reid- keescoveragecompany.business.blog
Raaj Patel – dailysoccerupdates.wordpress.com
Will Yang – abakusfashion.wordpress.com

For our nonprofit podcast, we have decided to focus on the LeBron James Family Foundation. The  purpose of the LeBron James family foundation is to provide proper education and support at-risk kids of families in need. Through public fundraising orchestrated by Lebron himself, the LeBron James Family Foundation was able to launch the “I Promise School” (IPS) in Akron, Ohio, being established in 2018 hosting grades 3 and 4, with plans to host grades 1-8 by the year 2022.

In future episodes, we plan to discuss LeBron’s nonprofit organization in more detail.

Welcome back to the Dragon Ball Den! My new screencasted video tutorial on how to stream the entire Dragon Ball anime series for free. If you’re a frequent viewer of this blog, chances are you are a fan of Dragon Ball and would be interested in viewing the Dragon Ball anime in your freetime. However, if you were to search online how to watch Dragon Ball, you may see the option to stream the anime via paid services like Hulu or Amazon Prime. While these streaming services would be able to successfully stream the Dragon Ball series, there is an alternative streaming service called Funimation, which doesn’t cost any money at all. Funimation is a streaming service that is primarily meant to stream various anime series. In my video tutorial , I have covered full in-depth instructions on how to set up a free account with Funimation to begin watching Dragon Ball today.
This tutorial on how to stream the Dragon Ball anime series via the Funimation streaming service will be of great worth to my audience, since watching Dragon Ball is most likely the biggest interest of a Dragon Ball fan viewing my blog. Since my tutorial covers the most convenient way to stream Dragon Ball for free on any device from a laptop to a smartphone, my viewers will most likely be very satisfied after watching the tutorial. The process that viewers go through when finding and evaluating videos is crucial to consider as a blogger. The value of a video posted on a blog is often subjective, as the viewer’s evaluation of the presented content depends on the specific needs and interest of that specific viewer. Author Christine T. Wolf discusses this in “DIY videos on YouTube: Identity and possibility in the age of all.” Visual media content can be very impactful, since “Practices of watching media content can be instructional and educational, but also transformative in shaping an individual’s perceptions of what is or might be possible.” (Wolf 2). In order to take advantage of the effect of visual media, I made sure the video tutorial posted on my blog catered to my audience’s specific interests. Delivering this tutorial over video instead of a normal text filled blog post was optimal since “…the ease of retrieving information digitally (i.e., search) versus the organization schemes in other forms, such as books” (Wolf 6). With all the details and instructions on how to stream Dragon Ball for free in a 5 minute video, my tutorial serves as a convenient and efficient source of relevant information for Dragon Ball fans.