Unseen Part 2

I think this time around, this little experience was bad. The first five minutes, I was focused on using my other senses. I listened to the sounds of the birds, the people mowing grass, and the sounds of my dad coming home. That was fine, until everything grew silent. The birds stopped chirping, the person finished mowing their lawn, and I stopped hearing my dad move around. After that, I observed the way sunlight was filtering into the room and the dust motes twirled in the light. This was the first five minutes. After that, everything went downhill. I got bored with the silence and started playing in my hair, and after I lost interest in that, the urge to turn back on the computer made itself known. It’s not that I’m bothered with sitting in a silent room and just relaxing. The blank screen just irked me, because I knew I could be doing something more exciting on the computer. The ten minutes that followed were some of the longest minutes in my life. When I turned back on the computer, I felt a sense of relief. I felt connected with the world again and went straight back to tumblr and the Fairy Tail Wiki.

This time was definitely worse than before. My mindset wasn’t the same. Instead of seeing this as an exercise to reflect on my actions, I saw it as a nuisance. I didn’t spend time re-evaluating my life choices or daydreaming about my future. I was anxious to get back to social media and see what memes were created in response to Beyonce’s new album Lemonade and trying to research a character in this manga I’m reading. The blank screen I stared at was a tease, because I knew the wealth of knowledge I could access with a click of a button. It is because I knew this, that staring at the screen was so annoying this time around. I just wanted to laugh at the memes ad be happy.

Wayback Machine

         For this assignment I decided to use the Yahoo website. When I was 8, my parents allowed me to make my first e-mail account. At the time I was obsessed with Stardoll and Dollwar. Those are dress-up doll websites that allowed you to make an account and create your doll, shop, make friends, etc. To make an account, you of course needed to have an e-mail and I always pestered my mom for hers.

Back in 2006, when I first made my Yahoo account, they website looked completely different. When you were signing up for an account, you could make an Avatar, Yahoo! would sing when you opened up the instant messenger, and you could actually watch music videos.  I used to open countless tabs and read the news, technology updates, and even science articles. Since then Yahoo has undergone a ton of changes. There is no longer a music section of Yahoo, making an avatar is no longer an option, and the news that is placed on the main page is usually celebrity gossip. Yahoo has changed with the times.

Nowadays, I only go on the Yahoo page to read technology updates. I don't read their news section because I probably found the information out from Tumblr. Yahoo's change from a useful information source to celeb gossip with the occasional news, is a reflection of the cultural norms of today. People are more interested in celebrity news than in actual news. That along with the fact that people now find out important news from alternate sources.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/yahoo-redesign-aims-more-inviting-120021873.html?ref=gs

If I’m not at work, doing homework, or talking to my best friend, I can usually be found on Tumblr. This is a well-known fact. Tumblr is my main source of entertainment. I was recently scrolling down my dashboard and saw a mass of Powerpuff memes. With the return of the Powerpuff Girls on Cartoon Network, a website was created were you could turn yourself into a Powerpuff Girl. All of the memes I saw originated from Twitter and were created by #BlackTwitter. Black Twitter is the large network of black twitters users and their loosely coordinated interactions. Black Twitter is also a force to be reckoned with. It has created many trending topics including: #AskRachel, #ThanksgivingWithBlackFamilies, #Ferguson, #IfIWasGunnedDown, and many other famous tags. Black Twitter can be considered an active audience. Black Twitter is known for its involvement in creating and popularizing hash tags on twitter. For a hashtag to get popular and trend on twitter, there has to be a large enough amount of posts relating that include the tag or speaking about the tag. Some tags gain fame because they bring up important issues. The Ferguson tag was filled with news about the riots that went on after Mike Brown’s murder. People were live tweeting everything that was going down and posting pictures and videos that showed what the news did not. Some of the other hashtags popularized by Black Twitter require certain knowledge for someone to actively participate in the hashtag. For example, the hashtag GrowingUpBlack required a certain understanding of African American vernacular and culture. Nonblack people looking on were often confused because they didn’t share the same experiences or understand the terminology being used.

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/04/the-truth-about-black-twitter/390120/
http://heyyymandii.tumblr.com/post/141997331649/trendingcurrentevents-50

April Media Log

Anime
- Akame Ga Kill
- Fairy Tail

Books
-Winter by Marissa Meyer
-Forged by Fire by Sharon M.Draper

Websites
 -Tumblr
-Yahoo
- Gmail

I am responding to question 2. I think social context does influence my experience when watching a movie. Depending on where I am, who I’m watching the movie with, and what I’m watching the movie on, my behavior varies greatly. If I’m watching a movie at the movie theater, there is a certain etiquette that is expected. I’m not going to hold a conversation during the movie, continually get up during the movie, or do anything else that is considered disrupting. It would be rude to the other people in the theatre and I could get kicked out of the theatre. (No way in hell am I’m going to do anything to deliberately get kicked out of the movies. Movies are too expensive for that nonsense. I paid 15 dollars for a bucket of popcorn and two drinks.)

 

Why is it so expensive?

 If I watch a movie in the classroom, I’m going to focus on the smaller details. I’m not watching this movie for enjoyment. If we were recently discussing a movie and we are watching a movie to see how the concepts are put in action. I’m also going to take notes on key moments. I still would not talk during the movie or make other unnecessary distractions. If I'm watching a movie with my family; we have a running commentary, my siblings continually get up to get more snacks or go to the bathroom, we pause the movie and rewind to certain parts over and over. There is definitely a different comfort level. If I'm watching a movie on my phone , I definitely multitask. I'll stop watching a movie, to respond to a text or go search wiki for clues about the movie. Each setting brings a different reaction.

http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=active+audience+examples&&view=detail&mid=78EEEDBBE9C6272AA46178EEEDBBE9C6272AA461&FORM=VRDGAR

The Celluloid Closet mainly focused on gays and lesbians and completely excluded transsexuals and bisexuals. It doesn’t make sense as to why the documentary wouldn’t include those other groups. It’s understandable how asexuals, pansexuals, and demisexuals would not be included because those are relatively new terms: however, the Stonewall riots occurred in 1969. That’s a good twenty-six years before this documentary was created. Were they not mentioned because they were led by POC? I would also like to pose the question as to why the entire movie was focused on Caucasian people? I guess people of color who were homosexual didn’t exist. On Tumblr, there are many different blogs that serve to bring awareness about transsexuals and bisexuals to the mainstream media. There also awareness day for all members of the LGBTQ+ spectrum. During these days, posts about the different groups in the spectrums explain who they are and how they fall on the spectrum and people who fall into the different parts of the spectrum upload selfies and transformation. Some Tumblr users include their pronouns in their bios. The Netflix series Orange is the New Black also showed representation for a good portion of the LGBTQ+ community. Not only was it ethnically diverse, but there were lesbian, bisexual, and transsexual women. That’s probably why the series did so well. Everyone could relate to someone.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/21/glaad-studio-responsibility-index_n_3786064.html

http://mediasmarts.ca/digital-media-literacy/media-issues/diversity-media/queer-representation/queer-representation-film-television

 

It’s already known that I’m an avid Tumblr user. For the most part, if I’m not breaking my thumb scrolling through tumblr, it is highly likely that I’m on the booksite Wattpad. Wattpad is a site where people can upload stories and get feedback through likes and votes.If a story has a lot of likes and votes there is a strong possibility that it will actually get published. I’ve seen quite a few books I read on Wattpad on the shelves of Barnes and Noble, while others have become e-books sold on Amazon. Some even gain the momentum, after publishing to become movies. All though I love Wattpad, I’ve recently noticed that the majority of the stories I’ve read have had an all-white cast. Majority of the stories start off with a Caucasian heroine with blonde hair and blue eyes, or there is a switch up and she’s a brunette with hazel eyes. Rarely have I read a story with a black, Asian, or Indian main character. Almost every LGBTQ+ book is about a Caucasian couple. The occasional person of color is mentioned and even then that character is just the perpetuation of a stereotype. I’ve read stories where the Indian kid was the top of the class and only cared about grades, the Chinese girl was the best at math and science, the black girls were braid-wearing loud mouths, and the Hispanic guys within the story only referred to girls as mamacita and were in gangs. If I do find a story with a black main character she is mixed or there is an emphasis on her curvy shape, “full lips”, caramel skin and straight hair. People have become aware of the lack of diversity on Wattpad and stories can be found with POC casts; however, these stories are less popular and therefore hard to find.

http://www.cbcdiversity.com/post/131694482968/the-importance-of-role-models-and-being

http://www.csmonitor.com/Books/chapter-and-verse/2014/0506/Lack-of-diversity-in-book-world-continues-to-stir-debate-video

I've been on tumblr for the last three hours. (._.) What am I doing with my life?

Ideologically, the things that fit into genres and categories are not realistic by any means. Nothing fits perfectly in the boxes the media and other conventions try to force them into. There are more than fifty shades of gray. Not everything is black or white. I’ll use my previous example of action movies. Action in everyday life is not something blowing up every three seconds, cars transforming into big ass robots, or even Vin Diesel stealing and street racing cars in your neighborhood. Action in everyday life is a car accident that blocks up the road in the morning, a fight at school that gets reenacted for the rest of the day, or even the birth of a child. These are realistic and are what can be expected during everyday life. I guess people watch action movies because even though they know it’s unrealistic, it’s nice to ponder what it would be like in reality. Cars blowing up, shoot outs, and drag racing are all cool in retrospect, but the actuality of it is when these things actually happen in real life they are terrifying. Nobody actually walks away from these things unscathed. Have you seen Fast and Furious 7? I would love to know how the hell Vin Diesel walked through flames and only had a handful of cuts and bruises. How the hell did he have a fist fight with another man, where they were actively punching each other in the face and slamming each other into walls, and not walk out limping? How Sway, how?!

http://public.wsu.edu/~hughesc/film_and_ideology.htm
 

The media loves to categorize people and things and I think that is the reason it clings to genre conformity; it is the easiest thing to do. Everything is placed into a nice little box and has parameters to guide why it was placed in that box. When you categorize things, it’s easy to appeal to people who like those things and make money off of it. It is also easy to critique something when you put it in a genre. When you watch an action movie, you know it is an action movie because things blow up, there are gun fights, the Rock is in it, or there are racing scenes. An ad for this movie will push the scenes with the most action and people who love action movies will run to the theaters. After watching the movie, people will compare it to other action movies out and to other movies within the genre. In most movie reviews, there is usually comparisons to other movie franchises or to movies from the past. When movie companies review box office numbers, they will look at what movies made the most money, and they’ll see that this particular action movie made more money than another, because it had these kinds of scenes and this particular actor. The next time a movie studio makes an action movie, they’ll include more scenes like the other movie and they might hire the same actor or another actor who is often seen in action movies. This is all an example to say that the media compartmentalizes to further profit. If you apply this concept to other things, it also rings true.

 

For the most part, some politicians are using the media to its full capacity. Hillary Clinton is dabbing on Ellen, Bernie Sanders is meeting with Black Lives Matter Activists, Donald Trump is still spewing nonsense, and Marco Rubio is exposing Ted Cruz for being a flip-flopper. Republicans seem to hate the media because of the questions they are asked during debates. The media is more liberal oriented and Republicans don’t even get a chance. During Republican debates, the candidates are asked questions that pertain mostly to gossip and rumors instead of the actual issues. The questions are made to catch the candidates off guard or make them look idiotic. Donald Trump is the perfect example of this. He is brazen and completely filter-less and the media emphasizes this. His campaign has been criticized at every step. For every criticism that has been thrown at him, he’s lashed out. He has lashed out at NBC, CNN, and FOX. He has also taken to utilizing social media as a part of his armory. Recently he took to twitter to ask his followers what he should do in regards to the debate on Fox News. He was he later publicly announced that he was not going to a Fox News debate because Megyn Kelly would be in attendance. Megyn Kelly had asked him a hard question about his treatment of females during an earlier debate and then replayed his own words to him. He didn’t like having his words thrown back in his face.

http://www.cnn.com/2015/10/28/politics/republican-debate-media/index.html

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-wemple/wp/2016/01/26/donald-trump-fox-news-and-the-implosion-of-the-conservative-media-critique/

If the media I consumed was to be rated, it would definitely be rated NC-17. As a Tumblr junkie, I can assuredly say that Tumblr has mature content. Depending on who you follow and the content you are interested in you can stumble upon porn blogs, pro-Nazi blogs, blood and gore blogs, or any other range of things. Tumblr even warns you to be careful about the content that people you follow post. I don’t think I will ever forget the time I was on Tumblr with my mom sitting a few feet away from me and I scrolled down to see gay porn. I almost had a heart attack. I remember praying my mom wouldn’t ask what I was looking at. Tumblr doesn’t actually have a rating, because it is on the internet. People are free to post whatever the hell they want. If you are a courteous human being, some people flag their NSFW (not safe for work) posts and they include the fact that their blog is NSFW. Others don’t care.  I know for the other media I consume that there are certain restrictions. Instagram does not allow nudity and vine usually covers mature content with a warning. Rihanna was banned from Instagram for a year, for a picture she posted where her breasts were exposed. What’s interesting is there was a phenomenon on Instagram where people where posting nudes of “thots” and exposing them. These pages were created and named by people in different counties. It became big enough that the news covered it and was trending on twitter.

https://www.tumblr.com/docs/en/nsfw

To be honest, I consume a hell of a lot of media. Majority of the time, I can be found scrolling through my Tumblr feed, vine, or occasionally my Instagram. When I’m not doing any of that, I usually just browse the web for interesting stories or head to YouTube to listen to music. During any of these activities, there is always an ad for something. On Tumblr, ads are usually for a new movie, a new TV show, or some game app. Most ads are about new products that a company is trying to push. The ads, I usually see are for things I previously looked at or are things that are related to what I last looked at. For example, if I was looking at shoes on Finish Line, there would be a Finish Line ad on the side of the website I’m on. For the most part, product placement is obvious. On YouTube , ads interrupt long videos and on Tumblr ads load faster than the actual content you  are trying to view. Companies have long used celebrities to promote their products. In Nicki Minaj’s Anaconda music video, there was obvious product placement for Beats and the Beats Pill. Some Youtubers allow ads to be placed in their videos because they get paid from it. Usually I ignore the advertisements. If I do pay any attention to the ad, I usually research the product and read up on reviews before even considering purchasing the item. I’m not going to buy something just because a celebrity is pushing it. They get paid for pushing certain products. Content creators place advertisements where they do because they know it will be seen and shared quickly. Ads on Tumblr can be reblogged millions of times within hours. Those reblogs turn into big money when consumers actually buy the product and tell their friends and family to buy into it as well.

My First Post

I don’t really get to watch a lot of TV, but when I do I binge watch. I’ll watch almost anything, from Spongebob to Criminal Minds, Worst Cooks in America to Empire and almost everything in-between. In the recent years, I have noticed a trend in shows featuring more people of color, and I couldn’t be gladder. Blackish, the Mindy Project, How to Get Away with Murder and Parks and Recreations have brought more color to TV. Representation in the media matters, more than most people think. Watching Viola Davis become the first black woman to win an Emmy was inspiring . When I was younger, almost every show I watched had a Caucasian heroine/main character and barely any people of color. Majority of the time, the people of color within the show were just background characters, who were barely given any screen time ,or worse if they were given screen time, it was used to perpetuate racial stereotypes. The usual stereotypes were the sassy black girl, the really smart Asian guy, or the Hispanic character who had a massive family and was loud. The few shows that had people of color as main characters who had unique personalities, didn’t last long, were just about to go off air, or were just reruns. I remember watching the Proud Family and relating to Penny and her struggles, Sister Sister had me wishing for a twin sister, and I lived for That’s So Raven. Now don’t get me wrong, I loved Lizzie McGuire and Even Stevens, but I never truly bonded with the characters the way I did with the other shows. I am thankful, that there are more shows showing the beauty of people of color and the fact that those old stereotypes are dying.