Refliection

   




      Media has had an immense effect on my life as well as the lives of nearly everyone else on the planet. No matter where you may be media will always find you and that is the way it had been for nearly 16 years. Media has greatly affected my day-to-day well being and I feel as though it is effecting it in increasingly negative ways. In my opinion I would assume that I consume an average of 500 ads per day, that is an estimate and the real number could be much higher, from my computer, phone, and on the television. Seeing this many advertisements in a single day has absolutely shocked me and it has driven me to try and stay of my devices to decrease my ad intake. I would say seeing 500 ads in a single day has effected my life in a negative way because I have began to notice that I am slightly intrigued to all the personalized advertisements sent my way. Now that I have learned about the issue in school and have begun to realize the fault in my media intake I hope to change from my ways of distraction and attempt to narrow down on what I happen to be focusing on whether it be a game or homework. When companies send me personalized advertisements I have began to realize their gambit. When pitched these products I am often entertained by the fact that they wasted programming in an attempt to make me buy something off of an ad. Ever since I have began learning about the truth behind all media this semester I have found that there are serious issues in ads that I would never have noticed before. I have already began to ween myself off of my devices or at the least i have been attempting to block out the ads from my field of vision or I find a way to close them to better focus on my initial task. To have the skill of media literacy has helped me immensely and is a necessity for anyone and everyone who wishes to have and actual understanding of the images and ad campaigns they are seeing every day.  Media literacy is an important part of analyzing, accessing, and evaluating of media in all of its forms. This idea ties in nicely with the importance of being an educated consumer, meaning you need to know before you blow all of your money on a product forced upon you and a product that may very well not be something you actually need. I am grateful that I kept logs of my media usage and the effects of media on others because I was able to better understand the true negatives of my exposure to media in massive amounts. I am proud now that I am trying to "change my ways" and shake off some of my current media consumption. My overall thoughts are that everyone needs to be well educated to better understand the ads being thrown at them and media companies need to cool it wit their campaigns seeing as they often have little to no effect on the target audience.

SNL is God

   


      Since 1975 Saturday Night Live, "Saturday Night" in the earlier of the 43 seasons, has made an impressive and humorous impact of the lives of all who watch it. Their bits ranging from drama to comedy have long drawn large audiences. In recent years there has been one drastic outlier in this force, politics. SNL's ingenious takes on the political state of the US is absolutely ingenious. SNL, being blatantly democratic, has currently focused their hell-fire down upon our current president. Since the first debates for president in 2016, Trump has been brilliantly portrayed by the actor Alec Baldwin.
      The jokes and bits they have created have been immensely popular and with the addition of the current players in the white house it is bound to become even better. Kate McKinnons glorious impression of both Hillary Clinton during the election debates and Jeff Sessions have been both humorous and a little insulting. I am quite surprised that Trump has not already shut down SNL, let alone NBC, seeing as they have made a complete mockery of his staff using wit and humor to make jokes of the current situations in government. I however look forward to the political sketches SNL creates seeing as they are always funny and never fail to remind me how likely it is that the Trump administration will be sent to prison.

Trump and Twitter

   


      Why does he do it? What good is there to come from a Trump tweet? Why would the president of the United States of America be tweeting to his public when he could easily appear on all of our televisions to deliver us with the important messages. Whenever I see the headline beginning with "Trump tweeted..." I automatically get scared. I find myself thinking "dear god what has he said now?". This automatic sense of fear obviously comes from the notion that at any time, Trump, could be playing candy crush on his little phone as he sits on the toilet and then have some terrifying thought come into his head along with the decision to post it onto a social media platform.
      Last year, a museum in Chicago briefly showcased the Daily Show funded "Donald J. Trump Twitter Library" which turned out to be a huge success. It had all the fan favorites from  "#FakeNewsCNN" all the way to calling James Comey "slippery". I don't know about anyone else but I think this is exactly what our president should be doing, late at night, in a room he can't escape from, on a private account that only he can see. Trumps tweets have continuously solidified the fact that he is the most un-presidential president ever.

"MISter"representation

     


      Men are victims of misrepresentation ,however: not as much as women. Men in media create images that younger males strive to follow but often find mixed results when they try. There are hundreds of TV shows, movies, and videos open to the world that depict men in three different ways. There are the "skirt-chasers", the "metro-sexuals", and there are the "macho men". These three categories of men seen on TV and other sources seem to embody what a man is, right? Wrong.
      For too long men have been depicted as these things and they just don't cover whats a man truly is. Personally, I identify with none of these categories and I could most definitely name 10 other males I know that identify with none of these or slightly with one. In my opinion as a man it is time for a change at how men are seen in the media. It is time to pull away from these three main categories that incorrectly define what as man is and to place a real man, open to debate on what a real man is, on the screen.

"Miss"representarion

   


      Women are severely misrepresented in today's media seeing as thought the main idea of the usage of women in media is sex appeal. For some time the world (specifically men in advertisement projects) has seen women as their gendered stereotypes instead of valuing them as human beings. The media objectifies women in ways that are quite sexist all for the name of selling a product to those who that women may appeal to.
      It is as though these major networks have convinced both men and women that women can only be valued for their appearance which causes teen girls to strive for a look that is both sexist and impossible seeing as most of the beauty and sexual appeal isn't very present before Photoshop. Even in politics women are constantly being scrutinized for their appearances and if they behave like "proper" women, both factors having almost nothing to do with elections or politics. Misrepresentation of women in media has been a reoccurring situation and it is time to leave it behind and embrace women not for sexuality but for shill and perseverance.

What is Cool?

     


      The dictionary defines cool as being "fashionably attractive or impressive". This definition has not changed since the creation of the specific usage of the word cool as being popular was created and it is something advertising companies are ruining. In my opinion the over usage of the  "cool" factor on commercials creates a world where nothing can be cool without it having to be a secret. When companies stupidly use today trends in music, dance, or clothing they often begin to lose their cool factor the  ore they are witnessed be teens.
      This decision by companies to use cool in their commercials as a way to appeal to a younger graphic is becoming a situation. It is as though they are taking what is cool away from us and turning it into a past fad. Yes I know that does happen naturally but when companies show something very popular with today's youth in television 100 times in a day it looses its value as an embodiment of cool.

My Response to the Merchants of Cool

     

     
      Frontline news for PBS did an amazing job analyzing the appeal of cool to the youth that make up a rather large marketing opportunity for ad companies. The short documentary revealed to me several things: one, teens are becoming a more important market than adults,two, people literally search for cool within teens, three, there is such thing as the band "Insane Clown Posse". What I was most shocked to learn about however, was how much advertising is targeted straight at us, teens, and how much of it is entirely based off of what is cool rather than giving the facts and selling without any flash.
     To companies such as McDonald, Coke, and MTV finding what is cool is absolutely necessary to have a successful fiscal year and to be able to sell their products with ease. For MTV this is mostly the case seeing as they can communicate with teens over the television through music. Music is a factor of cool that is constantly changing so MTV chooses to change with it, always remaining popular without holding true to their original "beliefs".