Looking Back

The past semester has really been an eye-opener for how much media surrounds be daily life. The 7-9 hours of media exposure bombard me with hundreds of ads. But the overall effect of this media on my life is that the media begins to almost build up a culture of its own around me, surrounding me with ideas that benefit the media rather than society. It's almost like shaders but for the human eyes only allowing you to see below the surface. Miss representation is an amazing example of the effect media has had on me, specifically my outlook on the world. Companies such as Disney create a culture by shaping young impressionable minds into believing that it's natural to have young women seen as sexual objects of desire.
But my awareness of the media around me and the techniques they use will help me to look at situations the media presents to me and analyze them to comprehend their full intent. This will primarily help with advertising being able to look behind the brand and societal norms that have been formed around this brand as well as seeing what the actual product is selling. I'm now able to tell if I want to buy the product based on the product rather than the culture surrounding the company. My newly acquired skills will also help me dive further into political opinions appealing to certain emotional appeals in order for support.
Overall, this course helped me see the world media presents clearly with my own view rather than the one they want me to see. My media consumption habits have been changed this semester by this course and I have begun using much less media then I used to. It was such an eye-opener when I finally looked at my phone usage and it totaled up to about 9-11 hours a day. I'm proud to say that now my average has been lowered to about 7 hours per day. It's still high but improvement doesn't happen overnight. But more importantly I actually looked into any product that I was buying or any media scheme I was following making sure that when purchasing something at a store rather than the concept. This media literacy is extremely important in order to have e clear view of what's happening in the world around us. Without media literacy, we would let the media have full control of our world. Becoming an educated consumer helps us to see beyond the high status that companies wants you to buy and see the actual product that company is selling. More than anything, it makes me think twice because its extremely easy to purchase something on amazon with an impulse decision. From this class, I've become more aware of the world that surrounds me even though its changing rapidly. In all honesty it was a bit of a shock to realize that the little tweaks and quirks commercials have can have an effect on whether the consumer buys the product or not.
For example yellow is seen as a happy color because of so many things associated with it so if you put a sunset yellow theme in your commercial or advertisement, it's likely more people will flock to this product. However if you put a less appealing color such as a dark green, it may attract less people because its not as visually appealing. This is my takeaway from the Media blogs. It was a way to help me polish my glasses to see the up-in coming world even more clearly.


 

     

 

Miss Representation's Misstakes

The validity of the statistics

After watching MissRepresentations, it was pretty clear to me that the idea of women through mainstream media has been corrupted and now women are displayed as objects of lust a desire for men. I also agree that the next generation needs to be raised to think of women differently. They threw so many statistics and supporting details involving numbers on how the media has negatively impacted the minds of many young women across the country. The one thing that I wondered is with all these statistics they've given us, how many are accurate to what they entail. Although it does bring the problem of the mindset towards women to attention, I can't dismiss that some of these statistics may be exaggerated to fir the needs of the documentary. One of the most shocking statistics given 78% of the women at the age of 17 are unhappy with their bodies. The vagueness of this one statement was enough to put me on edge. If they had added a supporting detail of how unhappy they were then it would have been more believable. However all they said was that these women were unhappy with their body. This one statement is so vague because being unhappy with your body could vary in everything from physically harming themselves because of the way their body is to just simply being uncomfortable with who they really are. Due to the vagueness of this statement, I want to see for comparison what the statistic for men is since everyone has insecurities in one form or another.

Black Mirror Review

Episode 1

Mr. Masincupp introduced to us as a class a new series and after giving us a brief summary about what the show is about, I stayed up until 12am that night because after i finished my homework I decided to watch an episode and I haven’t been able to stop watching. Heres a brief summary if the first episode. This is a world where every interaction could change your fate forever. Everyone has a score from 0-5. Your average rating could determine if you’re qualified for a job or if you are allowed to buy a house in a certain area of town. Often people of middle class are around a 4-4.4 average rating. The elites are around 4.6 and above. These are the upper class citizens that live in mansions with high paying jobs. The character of this episode, is Lacie Pound.  She wants to buy a luxurious house in a more expensive neighborhood but she cannot afford the weekly payments. However if she reaches a 4.5, she can qualify for a 20% discount. While figuring out what to do, her childhood bully reaches out to her asking her to be the maid of honor at her wedding. They’re both extremely fake to each other and both are only in it for the points. She plans to give a tear-jerking speech where all the prime members (the elites)  attending the wedding will all give her a resounding reviews. Basically yelp but for humans.
For me, the most interesting part was the end of the episode and how Ironic it was. She ended up getting to the wedding after a 9 our truck ride due to the flights being canceled and uninvited to the wedding. After being arrested, she insults a man in the cell next to her as he stares at her for a creepy amount of time. What’s interesting is that while she’s in this cell, she begins to speak her mind because she stops caring about what others think. It’s Ironic because while physically she’s imprisoned, mentally she’s been set free.

The Mooks and Midriffs that raised me

The Mooks and Midriffs that raised me

I grew up like many kids watching shows of channel 226 on the Disney channel, cartoon network, and sometimes even Nickelodeon. After watching the frontline episode "Merchants of Cool," I realized that many of the personalities I watched as a child were based around these types of characters. They were often the goofy character that was always doing dumb things to appeal to audience. I reflected on the personalities that I had watched every day from 2:30-4:30 at my grandma's house waiting for my mom to get off of work and taking a trip down memory lane was a different experience than watching nostalgia compilations at 3am in the morning. I thought about all the characters in the shows that I had watched that were based around Mooks or Midriffs and realized there was a lot more than I expected. To my surprise, some of my favorite characters from my favorite shows had been a Mook or a Midriff. Then I started thinking about what the show would be without these personalities and in all honesty, they'd be quite boring, and not as playful as a show designed for children should be. This is how many television companies keep their watchers loyal. These characters were what made the show interesting and even though they were often side characters in the shows, they would always somehow find a way to make themselves noticed. Besides the often childish storyline, the main factor that separates children shows from shows meant from adults is these childish personalities that appeal to the child inside of you and even as an a teenager or young adult still find new ways to amuse you.

Do 9 Year Olds Need An Iphone XsMax

Do 9 Year Olds Need An Iphone XsMax

This weekend I attended the wildlife camp 4H On the Wild Side. This camp was high up on the mountains of Nevada City where this weekend it was pouring rain. This was a camp for 4th-6th graders from public schools for kids to learn about biology and the environment. They chose to attend this camp which specified that there was no cell service and they were here to learn about biological topics chose by the staff here. Which is why I was so surprised by the fact that a majority of the kids were so uninterested in the curriculum. Actually you know what I take it back because I most likely would be daydreaming as well if I was there age so that part I could understand. However the thing that surprised me the most were the amount of kids that were on their cell phones playing games or trying to find service. I thought, rather I had hoped that these kids would bring out some card game or board game or even just talk to their classmates about something, anything. Instead they all pulled out their phones and started playing some video game. The thing that baffled me most was that each of these kids had an iPhone 8 and above. One of the kids in my cabin even had an iPhone XsMax. I have the same phone and I already feel guilty for having such an expensive phone but for someone 7 years younger than me. I remember my first phone was when I was at promotion from 6th grade to 7th grade. After a year of begging my parents finally decided to get me a phone. It was a green iPhone 5c which had already come out for 2 years. It wasn't a terrible phone but it was already more advanced than I needed. Seeing these kids makes me cringe a bit to wonder what was going through their parents' heads when buying their 9 year old child a phone worth the price of a laptop while they're still in grade school.

Asian Community on the Rise

Asian Representation in Movies

 Not to sound like a complete social justice warrior or anything but I really appreciate that the Asian community is getting a larger role in the movie  Industry. I honestly remember thinking a few years ago about how Asians are sort of like the punching bags of society. Not just in movies where  often they are the laughingstock of the entire film but outside the movie sets as well. When some racist comment was made back in 2015-2016, Specifically towards Asians, everyone would just go along with the joke and nobody stood up or commented or even said hey that’s a little bit racist. Other minority groups would often get a bit more respect  and someone would speak out against any racist comments even if it was purely a joke. It honestly bothered me that at the time,  I am most likely wouldn’t have done anything myself. I let myself believe that I was deserving of these comments just because of my ethnicity.
Not even in just the movie industry but also on social media platforms just Instagram and Twitter, I’ve seen those of Asian ethnicities stand up an out rage against not reall not even in just the movie industry but also on social media platforms just Instagram and Twitter, I’ve  seen the Asian community and out rage due to the inconsiderate and  flat out racist behaviors from those of other ethnicities. With all that said let’s get back to the main point of the movie industry.  Shows and movies such as fresh off the boat, to all the boys I’ve loved before, and crazy Rich Asians has given the Asian community an opportunity  of relevance in the near future. I think the goal is to get these movies to not be  predominately white males and to mix it up a bit. Possibly thats just a bias because of my heritage but I would be much more eager to see a movie where the main role wasn’t the stereotypical cis gender straight white male. Movie companies can actually take advantage of this and encourage a larger audience to see their movies.

Too Cool for Skool

Merchants of “Cool”


 Although merchants of cool was a documentary made into thousand and one, it still seems like these are parents trying to crack a code of teenagers When in reality they’re making it more complicated than it should be.  I believe that each generation has their own definition of “cool.”  Back in high school, my dad wore a leather jacket and drove around his motorcycle. In the eyes of my mom, she was “the coolest kid on the block”  which still makes me laugh today because these were her exact words. I believe that there’s a boundary  between how much parents can’t understand about the children of this generation. Each generation has split and one generation cannot fully comprehend that of another because they aren’t immersed in the culture and environment as said generation.  Since even in 2001,  A majority of the economy is made up of teenagers. So companies often try to break their way into the “cool” environment In order to better market their products.  Finding the trendsetters  what is the main point of the documentary so far but in today’s culture I’m not so sure teenagers even use this term anymore..
 The reason I say there’s a split between generations is because every time  I have to explain a joke to my mom or dad multiple times before they actually understand.  Just approve my own theory I did a little experiment with my dad and tried to explain to him what a flex was. It took us about 35 minutes and if I had a dollar for every time he asked me why? I might be able to afford that new car I want.  He asked me for an example of what a “flex”  was and I explained to him Yeezy‘s were a flex. After showing  him a picture, he was more confused than when he first asked. His response was “these shoes shouldn’t be worth nearly as much as they’re sold for. Why would someone spend so much money on shoes? All you do is walk in them.”  I couldn’t explain why people would want to wear this and could only tell him it wasn’t about how it looks but the status it gives you.  As I was writing this, he agreed with my ideology that this was a cycle in which the generations have a split.He said even when he was a teenager and was riding his motorcycle, his parents would still question his decision saying how it was just another mode of transportation but more dangerous.  The reason these larger companies are successful in their marketing and selling of their products is because  heads of advertisement departments are paid to understand the culture to the best of their ability and produce products that cater to the needs of the consumers.

Nostalgia

 Nostalgia


 Honestly not giving us topics to write about for the media blogs is giving me too much power because this is basically just a third Instagram account for me. Anyways if you know anything about me or my music taste, you know I’m all about nostalgia and things that make you think back to your childhood. Every old cartoon I watched as a kid after schools on the Cartoon Network or Nickelodeon channels  flood me with my childhood memories.  I was blessed enough to have a relatively normal childhood watching cartoons after school and on Saturday mornings.  So whenever I see or hear something that relates the  spark of my childhood, I have to go back To get the full experience whether it means going on YouTube to look for episodes of this one cartoon I used to watch  we’re going on Spotify to listen to this one nostalgic song.

This isn’t even limited to just cartoons and songs because my childhood also included video games. Just today I was talking to a few of my friends and we decided to take a trip down memory lane and play Minecraft like old times sake. I’m sure it didn’t have the same affect as when I was a child but it just felt right. This is the feeling that I re-create as often as possible because it sets me in a positive mindset  where all my insecurities meltaway and I drift  back to the unexplainable happiness of my childhood. I have a Spotify playlist named “simpler times “specifically for the re-creation of this feeling. Whenever something nostalgic comes drifting back into my life,  everything that’s going wrong with my life kind of just becomes a memory as I reminisce about the good times, of all the Saturday mornings on my couch with my cereal, still in my pajamas.

How I got Into Volleyball

How I got into Volleyball

 It was the summer transition from eighth grade to ninth-grade going in the high school for the first time. Just like any other summer I had gotten to the point where I was so incredibly bored that I couldn’t find a single other thing to do.  Then I suddenly remembered an anime suggestion that have been given to me by a friend saying this was one of his favorite animes of all time. After asking him about what it wa this was one of his favorite animes of all time. After asking him  what it was about,  I was immediately  disinterested. He told me it was about volleyball which I had no knowledge on and had never even seen a full game of. Boy did this change.

 It had gotten so far into the summer  that I didn’t even care what I did as long as I was doing something besides laying in bed looking for random YouTube videos to watch. After watching the first few episodes I couldn’t stop until I reach the third season where it came to an abrupt end. I finish the entire series in less than a week. Actually no that’s a lie it was less than half of a week. I think what attracted me the most about this was the fact that it didn’t focus on volleyball but more so on the relationships formed because of the sport. Besides all the action shots like the picture above,  each character had their own story, own thoughts, and own emotions.

 I think the part that got me interested in volleyball what is the relationship between characters that was formed progressing through the anime.  I thought “I want a team like that”  as I signed up for a sport I had  absolutely no experience on.  I think what people don’t realize is that these “childish cartoons” have their own set of morals  that are only seen when you look below the surface of it being a silly cartoon that you’re “too old to be watching.”  Honestly I’m not really sure where this media blog is going about but if you have time I would highly suggest checking out this anime to all my fellow weebs out there.

Someone Great

Someone Great (It’s on Netflix)

So it’s no secret that being the blue, emotional, hormone-fueled teenager that I am, I love romance movies. Not even just movies but shows, books, ect. Something has always appealed to me about emotions and screaming “BUT SHE LOVED YOU” at the television. So this movie really threw me for a spin.

This movie is practically the opposite of what I normally watch. Heres the jist of the movie. Theres this young woman around the age of 28 and she has just been accepted into her dream job in the heart of California. The only problem is she lives in NewYork. Still she was ecstatic and told her boyfriend of 9 years that she was going to move to California for this once in a lifetime opportunity. However her boyfriend is afraid things won’t work out and avoids the future pain of a long distance relationship there and then. This is only the first 20ish minutes. 

The rest of the movie is about her leaving NewYork with a bang. She decides to go to a concert with her 2 best friends. While preparing for the big day everywhere they go she sees memories of the her and her boyfriend in the early “honeymoon” stages of their relationship. I don’t want to spoil the movie so this is all i’ll say.

The reason this surprised me was because I don’t like sad movies. I still don’t but for some reason this movie spoke to me. I think it’s possibly because of the many relatable situations of  this movie about overthinking and seeing someone that you miss through places to use to go to get together. I think this spoke to me so much because it wasn’t a traditional love story of  Romeo and Juliet I have two forbidden lovers. It’s also because no filmmaker has been ballsy enough to make a movie based on a break up.  On paper this doesn’t sound like a selling movie idea In the slightest but hey Netflix made it work. In all honesty I’m not sure where this media blog is even going but if you have an hour or two I would highly recommend seeing this movie.  Even if you have a strong hatred for romance movies I would still highly recommend watching this one.

Emotion Appeals

The Brainwashing Behind Ads

On a daily basis, I watch at least 2-4 hours of youtube. In turn this means I watch a load of ads since Youtubers typically place 2-3 ads in each video to produce ad revenues. So naturally there are techniques that come along with purchasing these ads and having the consumers make impulse purchase.  Some make us laugh some make us feel emotional but others trigger a subconscious needs or desires.
 Ads often have a subliminal message behind their advertisements influencing us to make purchases  that we normally wouldn’t make. I’ve been in a situation before where a company advertises something that I would never buy but because of the advertising technique that they used, I somehow ended up with three new bottles of perfume for my mom.  Everything from the words,  to visuals, and even the color schemes have a subconscious meaning that we associate with often creating a positive persona that Persuade you to purchase this one product. One of the companies that Has trick to my own mother would be dove kno has trick to my own mother would be dawn. It’s mostly from all the commercials that she watches of someone washing a duck and saying the soap is so  harmless so you can even  wash a baby duck with no problem. And in addition to  The cute duckling on the commercial, it’s also featured on the label. It’s not my mother’s fault but she has a soft spot for cute animals.  So this sort of hypnosis  is what made her come back from Cosco with six bottles of this dishwasher soap that isn’t even that effective but they got her right where they wanted her, in a trance because of a little duckling on the label.

Disney’s Transition

The maturity difference between the 2 writers is quite obvious as we read seeing as how Fox news writers use actual facts to back up why they think the salary of Bob Iger is, as both articles put it, “insane.” However CNN uses a less mature style of writing to explain why Bob Iger doesn’t deserve the salary he has inherited.

In the Fox news article, Bob Iger has a $66 million dollar salary. The comparison that the writer makes is that he makes the median of 1565 disney workers. With his newly aquired salary, he could give every worker of disney a 15% wage increase and still pocket about $10 million into his salary. Iger’s $65.6 million in compensation was largely tied to stock grants after Disney’s acquisition of Fox television and film assets, which closed earlier this year. The heiress has refused to specify the size of her inheritance but has announced that she has donated $70 million to charity. Her words were “If I wanted to be a billionaire, I could”

In the CNN article, His pay was  largely boosted by long-term incentives associated with his contract extension, which was announced in accordance with the deal for Disney to purchase a majority 21st Century Fox. In the article she is surrounded my criticism saying “at least respect the dignity of those you pay.” She has responded saying that those who contribute to making a successful business for Disney will be paid going so far even to say that employees and CEO’s in the past were paid too much. With the increase of Disney’s company as a whole rising from $75 million to $132 million, many workers for Disney feel they are being mistreated since the company is going through such a large increase financially. 

The Pursuaders Behind Advertisements

The Persuaders Behind Advertisements

As stated on my media post, I have a small (pretty large) addiction to my phone. My second most used app would have to be YouTube averaging at the minimum of 6 hours a week. And unless you've been living under a rock, you know that youtubers and companies make money off of  ads that are placed on youtuber's videos earning them ad revenue. Some ads that are longer than 10-15 seconds often have a "skip ad" button after 5 seconds of being on screen but even though they give you the option to skip, Their goal is often to keep you watching the ad as long as possible.

The main goal of the ads that are longer than 15 seconds that allow you to skip is to pull you in during the first 5 seconds with some outrageous claim or famous actor that people idolize. The people behind the advertisements know the people will be attracted to this claim so they try to make it as eye-catching as possible. Thats why the "This simple step will lose you 10 pounds in a week!" advertisements are so popular. They make too good to be true claims in order for you to stay longer because even though you know off the top of your head that something is too good to be true, deep down you hope that it is true. Nobody doesn't want cheat codes for life and this is what advertisers feed off of. They lock on to that hope of having something thats too good to be true and use it to try and reel you in and keep you hypnotized for as long as humanly possible. Another way advertisers reel watchers in is using famous actors or singers that are idolized. One of the most common ways they're used is when advertisers give them products for free and in exchange they send a video back of them saying how good the product is in turn making people want to buy them because their favorite celebrity has them. I've been a victim of this as I saw one of my favorite youtubers sent a plush from Japan of Gudetama (look it up I actually can't describe it) and even though it was $30 and $8 shipping from Japan, I still had to buy it even though now all it does is sit with all my other plushies being neglected on my bed.

Politics In The English Langue Response

Politics In the English Language Response


The article "Politics and the English Language" is an article I had heard much about however never found the time to read. After reading it in class, the first thing that came to mind was all of freshmen year essays where I looked at every word that sounded too casual and jammed it into thesaurus.com to find an alternative.
A large point in the article is about the corruption on the idea of sounding smart and it's affect on the English language. Especially politicians using words that they don't understand in an attempt to sound smarter and more qualified then they actually are. This unfortunately backfires because their audience doesn't know what that 18 syllable word means either. A great example of showing your understanding of a topic is if you can explain it to a child. If you know your topic so well that you can convey it to a child with no problems at all using the most simple language, that could should your qualifications rather than using vocabulary you don't understand. Another major point that Orwell passes to the reader is that many writers use overused sayings, metaphors, and similes. He explains that the more you use it, the more dull it becomes, losing the full meaning and imagery behind the saying. On the other side of this coin, a well thought and put together metaphor can strike the reader where it counts, especially in a persuasive or argumentative article. As Orwell puts it "The result, in general, is an increase in slovenliness and vagueness." Orwell doesn't only target the problems of English but other languages as well such as German, Russian, and Italian dialects seeing as how they have deteriorated in the last 10-15 years as a result of dictatorship. In this article however Orwell does provide a solution. If people including politicians actively resist the urge to add words they don't understand, this could potentially stabilize the current situation that the English language is in reverting it back to it's best form.

My Relationship With Media

My Relationship With Media

Media has now just become a part of my everyday life. From when I wake up for school at 6am to God knows when I fall asleep. Social media apps have become an unhealthy obsession that has wrapped it’s claws around my ever day life. It’s extremely easy to fall into a rabbit hole of social media for hours without even realizing it.

Like the large majority of teenagers in todays day and age media is in every aspect of my life from using it for homework or to just pass the time. Any free time I have Instagram is my go to for wasting time. One Saturday I checked how long I had actually used the app and I saw I had been on Instagram for about 9 hours. Then I thought about how if I had spent 1 of those 9 hours studying for a test, I could potentially raise my grade. That was just the use of Instagram. I then checked my use of YouTube for the day and it read 6 hours. So in total I had been on my phone for 15 hours in total. 15 hours. Thats more than half of the hours in a day. I realized that I had an unhealthy attachment to my phone. Whenever I wasn't staring at my screen, time would move so slowly and every action I did but seem like it took forever. These apps are designed to keep us in the app and they were successful. Everything in digital media happens so fast that it actually alters our reality of time. I  decided enough was enough and that I would see how long I could swear off of social media. Taking baby steps I deleted Instagram which, as you can probably tell, didn't last long. After about a week I was filled with boredom that I just redownloaded it without even thinking. Social media platforms do such a good job keeping you attached so that overall my social media experience is mostly negative. In writing this media blog I have taken at least 7 "breaks" and went on Instagram for 5-15 minutes.