Week 2: Media Impact

In our current society, it is without a doubt that media creates conflicts between expectations and society. Many reality shows today stress that beauty is more important than anything else. Girls and even guys spend unnecessary amounts of money just to imitate a certain look seen on television, on their favorite celebrity, or a trend that is popular among their peers. Media consists of a sea of many role models who sometimes do not understand how much of an impact they have on their loyal fans. Most people rely on the news, entertainment news, or radio talk shows to receive information about the latest topics or trends happening. Most of the media is corrupted by some sort and not many people think outside of the box and research a topic on their own, they solely rely on the media's word.

Another huge conflict facing young women today is the pressure to lose weight. Many shows like "America's Next Top Model" create controversy about what is considered "socially acceptable" in our world today. Many young females believe that being beautiful and skinny is what will help advance their social status in the world. These are the female who starve themselves, confusing their mind set and leaving them in complete ignorance that they are damaging their health. It's sad say yes, that people actually do that just to lose those unwanted pounds and look abnormally skinny.

A quote from this article I found that describes this whole issue in one statement, "Eating disorders are NOT diets!".

Media Autobiography

Growing up as a child, television became a huge aspect life. I remember waking up every saturday morning around 7 o'clock just to catch my favorite early morning weekend cartoons. I absolutely could not get enough of the Pokemon series. I was so hooked onto the show, I ended up spending my money collecting countless Pokemon cards that resulted to sitting in a box in my room to this very day. Another cartoon show that I really enjoyed was Dragonball Z. I remember how all of my friends were addicted to the series just as much as I was. Almost every morning after the day the show aired on television, my friends and I would get into character and imitate the action shown on the previous episode of the cartoon until class started.

Watching the show influenced me to start drawing the characters shown in the show, because I thought they all looked so cool. I would go to the library and rent as many Dragonball Z/GT anime books as I can, and attempt to imitate what I see shown in the book. Ever since I started drawing the anime characters, I became extremely addicted to just drawing in general.

Even though I can admit I was a scaredy cat when it comes to watch scary movies. Nothing stopped me from watching the movies with my cousins. I remember how we used to gather up every other weekend, and have a night dedicated to watching horror films. Going through all of the different types of nightmares that were influenced by the various scary movies, there's still something that keeps bringing me back to watch more horror flicks.

As I grew older, I got hooked onto playing video games. And there was a time when I could not stop ordering gaming magazines. I owned a wide range, such as Game Pro, PC Gamer, and etc. Just by reading the gaming magazines, it kept tempting me to constantly buy the latest and greatest games that were advertised. I remember that it got so out of control, my mom just had to cancel my subscriptions for the magazines. To this very day, I haven't gotten a magazine with my name on it ever since.

I got an iPhone almost 2 years ago, and I feel it totally revolutionized how media is used. When it comes to recordings, my iPhone is my new toy that I basically rely on 24/7. Whenever I need to document any new experiences, I always have my iPhone in my pocket so I can record any videos or even take quick snapshots of whatever I see in an instant.

I also see my phone as my portable computer. I'm hardly home, so I rarely have time to ever catch the daily paper anymore. To fix that, I use the News application on my phone so I can keep myself up to date with the issues going on locally and globally.