Posts

Media Reflection

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I would say that I’ve always consumed a lot of media, but writing this blog has made me think about how much I’m really immersed in it. I probably spend anywhere from one to four hours on social media or youtube daily. Outside of that, I live in a semi-urban neighbourhood within walking distance of school, so I don’t see much in the ways of advertising or media on a day to day basis. I also frequently discuss televisions shows or video games with my friends, though how much depends on what has come out recently and how much homework I have. Media can sometimes cause me to delay getting work done by distracting, and generally makes me less productive. Being aware of my consumption hasn’t really changed my interactions with the media, as I still just about never buy anything because of an ad, but it has caused me to see marketing campaigns as more deceptive and often manipulative. My media consumption habits seem to have changed a little this semester, as I think that I’ve gotten bett

3 Buzzfeed Articles I Analyzed: Number 3 Will Shock You!

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Since this is a blog about media, I basically have free reign to talk about whatever as long as it's technically media. And Buzzfeed is very TECHNICALLY media. I should preface this with saying that I literally have only gone on Buzzfeed once prior to writing this article, and it was only to find a good clickbait author name for a certain media blog I did. I have heard stuff about quizzes, so I'll be analyzing language and the general millennial culture that Buzzfeed employs. First a cheese quiz to determine my personality type. Off to a great start, especially given that the title of the quiz is "We know if you're an introvert or an extrovert based on you cheese preferences." That's just creepy phrasing paired with an incredibly dumb premise, but it does make you curious and want to click. Turns out I'm an ambivert, which is according to Websters: not a thing, but according to Buzzfeed means I'm somewhere in between. My best guess is that this is

The 2020 Election: Why Are We Wasting Our Time?

So even though we won't have a new president for almost six  two years, various politicians have already started announcing their candidacies. Two republican candidates, including our current president, as well as 23 democrats. Despite almost all of the democrats standing no real chance of winning, news outlets like CNN seem to have learned from the 2016 election and are giving surprisingly equal coverage to all the candidates. Trump got all the press the first time around because he was the most controversial figure, but now people are realizing that all that coverage is what allowed him to win, and that they can't just ignore potential candidates. For instance,  this  article is about John Hickenlooper disavowing socialism, even if he's nowhere near as popular a candidate as Biden or Harris. In addition, outlets like the New York times are offering  article s about every candidate in equal amounts, so that people know which one's beliefs most closely align with thei

TOP 5 SEXIEST MALE POLITICIANS (NOT CLICKBAIT)

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            TOP 5 SEXIEST POLITICIANS by Ryan Schnocket Although they are powerful and run the world, most male politicians are decidedly unsexy. Lucky for our greedy eyes though, there are still a few diamonds hiding in the white-haired, overweight rough. Many of those listed below have bodies and looks that would never lead you to believe they work in government. Here are the sexiest male politicians in America, as decided on by me, someone with way too much time on his hands. 5. Gavin Newsom Gavin Newsom is the current governor of California, which is all I know about him other than him being relatively good looking. At 51 years old, Gavin has already past the age at which his gender retains any degree of usefulness. Despite this, he barely looks a day over 30, which does give him some inherent value. He seems to have no problem showing plenty of skin, teasing voters' imaginations with just a hint of clavicle. With a strong jawline like that, has my vote for sure! 

Lets Talk About Parks and Rec

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Parks and Rec has been my favorite American show since I started watching it, so I'll be talking about it   analyzing it as a piece of entertainment media. The show is a comedy centered around a parks and recreation department in a random town in Indiana, with its overzealous deputy director, Leslie Knope. Most of the show revolves around her and her coworkers and their various antics, with most of the conflicts being caused by Leslie's overambitious projects or some sort of bureaucratic incompetence, either in the department or higher up. Strictly as a piece of media, Parks and Rec obviously seeks to make money. Given that I've seen around 5 seasons of it on Netflix, and don't recall any product placement, only fictional businesses, I'm pretty sure that's not how they're getting their money. So that means that when the show ran (as I watch it on Netflix) it was getting money exclusively from the commercials woven into the program. This means the top prio

A Week of Just Media

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I was just sick for over a week, a time during which I was in constant pain rendering me largely incapable of doing work, eating just about anything that wasn't bread or rice, or even sleeping for the most part. During this time I only left the house for brief walks, or to go to doctor's appointments. For the most part, I was completely useless, and all I really could do was lie around, read if the pain receded a little, and use various forms of media, mostly through my phone. How that last thing affected me will be the topic of this post. While a fair amount of the time "on my phone" was just me lying down listening to various music, I won't pretend I spent any small amount of time watching Youtube, or various TV shows. I watched probably over 30 episodes of a video game play list, hundreds of short several miscellaneous sketches, and almost an entire season of a show I've been watching. I also spent way too much time reading posts and comments on internet

How Do You Do, Fellow Kids?

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Since I don't get really into brands for clothing and shoes and all that nonsense, nor do I read magazines, the only type of pseudo-targeted marketing I feel comfortable with talking about is internet ads. Since the only media platforms with ads I really tend to use are Reddit and Youtube, I'll mostly talk about those. Starting out, Reddit is definitely more specialized. It seems to focus on things it thinks I would actually want, such as video games, sports, and headphones. While the advertising isn't perfect, as it seems to assume I'm interested in buying a basketball off the internet despite never having spent time in any basketball-related communities, it has definitely identified that I'm fairly young and targeted ads accordingly. Unsurprisingly, a documentary on advertising from almost 20 years ago is pretty dated, and since then I think most advertising firms have realized that playing up a "cool" factor doesn't always work too well. Teenagers w