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Final Blog Post - Media Reflection

My Media Reflection Over the course of this semester, I have realized how much media has shaped our communities and this generation. Personally, media has altered the way I perceive the world, trapping myself in a feeling of needing to purchase the next “trendy” thing or a persona of an influencer to fit in. Of five months of this Critical Thinking class, I have begun to take a step back when analyzing general media and advertisements, and the spontaneous feeling of needing the next cool thing has severely diminished. I do not yet consider myself completely media literate, as there are still advertisements that are targeted towards myself that I could overlook when I am not looking for the mischevious ways corporations try to your attention. When watching television with my family, and seeing those Nike and Adidas advertisements about achieving greatness, I have learned to analyze the strategies these companies emotionally trigger your want for their product. I believe it is importa
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Catfishing?

Earlier this week, I watched the 2019 Youtube Rewind and the amount of hate it got was unbelievable. Although it didn't get as much hate as the previous Rewind, it still gathered way more negative feedback than positive making three million likes and almost eight million dislikes. The worst part was how Youtube tried to fix its mistake made in last year's Rewind but failed and only became a "meme" for not including any of its hard-working content creators.  The main reason for the hate on Youtube is for their elimination of their creator's autonomy. With hundreds of thousands of creators trying to make a living off of Youtube by making the content they like makes it almost impossible with Youtubes' strict algorithm. Their algorithm forces content creators to post content aimed towards younger audiences by demonetizing videos that have any adulterated humor, cursing or political opinions on anything. This makes their content creators feel oppressed by the s
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Do we ever have control over our own lives?

When watching the "Merchants of Cool" documentary about young teens and adults, and how they are shaped by the corporations controlling the market and what we see on television and media. When watching this documentary, the question of actual freedom over my decisions of what I purchase and portray myself came to question. When products are so tailored to your gender, ethnicity, and more. How could you say, what you buy is what you like. When I think of myself and the shoes I like, I think of Vans, Nikes, and many more, but when I think it about it more and more, it becomes clear that there is no coincidence that myself and millions of other teens like the exact same brands of clothing. Everything we see on a regular basis is simplified to our liking. When we scroll on Instagram or scroll through Snapchat stories, we are hit with an advertisement tailored to what we have searched on the internet or even what we have mentioned in the previous conversations. This leaves me
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Weird Company Collaborations

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In the past few months, the chip brand Doritos made a collaboration with popular skateboarding apparel and filming business called Illegal Civilization. This collaboration is primarily merchandise sold on the Illegal Civilization website that featured the chip brand. I believe that this connects with the "Merchants of Cool" video that was watched in class. This connects to the Frontline video in the section where they discuss how companies will try to access certain brands and companies and collaborate with them to gather an audience and expand their company. In the Frontline video, we saw how MTV tried to connect with the Hip-Hop community by hosting concerts with some local and big named artist at the time, to gather an audience to MTV that they might have not connected to. The same thing could be seen with Doritos collaborating with this small skateboarding company in order to tap into a community of skateboarders and gain extra revenue and supporters. I believe that
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Am I The Only One?

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So this evening while opening the Instagram app, I noticed at the bottom of the app that it now says "from facebook". When reading I was completely surprised and I never even realized that Instagram was even slightly related to Facebook. Facebook and Instagram have two completely separate user demographics and I think I have an idea of why Facebook wouldn't try to force their app onto Instagram. It is apparent that the majority of Instagram users, or at least avid users, are the younger generation of children and teenagers. While Facebook is primarily adults and generation X. My idea to why Facebook stays a separate entity from Instagram is primarily influenced by our need for autonomy. When teenagers and younger adults are given a platform to express themselves mostly free from adults and parents, we are given a sense of freedom and our own individuality. While many older folks still use Instagram there are many settings like activating your account private and
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Youtube Rewind 2019

Earlier this week, I watched the 2019 Youtube Rewind and the amount of hate it got was unbelievable. Although it didn't get as much hate as the previous Rewind, it still gathered way more negative feedback than positive making three million likes and almost eight million dislikes. The worst part was how Youtube tried to fix its mistake made in last year's Rewind but failed and only became a "meme" for not including any of its hard-working content creators.  The main reason for the hate on Youtube is for their elimination of their creator's autonomy. With hundreds of thousands of creators trying to make a living off of Youtube by making the content they like makes it almost impossible with Youtubes' strict algorithm. Their algorithm forces content creators to post content aimed towards younger audiences by demonetizing videos that have any adulterated humor, cursing or political opinions on anything. This makes their content creators feel oppressed by the st
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Instagram Likes No More?

Today, I read an article about Instagram supposedly "taking away likes" in the future. This update would take away the number next to the post indicating the number of likes it received. The post would say "this post has been liked by hundreds of others, thousands of others or millions of others. Although this would take away the number of likes of the post, people would still have the ability to see the people who have liked the post. This update is still in speculation and can still be changed or canceled altogether.  If Instagram were to go through with the update this would give its users their need for affiliation. Some people aren't posting any content because of the likes they would receive, so by taking away the ability for people to not directly see the number of likes would let users feel less pressure to post content and create more of a community within Instagram. This update would also create autonomy for its users as people would not have to post &q
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