Reflection

After writing in this blog for over a month now, I have been able to reflect on everything I have written and everything I have learned about what we call media.

See, when I did my first blog back in April, I had been under the impression that there was only one kind of media: social. I would immediately associate media with Facebook and Twitter and all of the stupid, pointless things people post about. The things they know no one would care about in the real world.

But now I understand that media is everywhere and comes in all forms. Music, movies, T.V. shows and books are just some of the forms media takes. And these are forms I am very receptive to. Movies like The Princess Bride and books like Once Upon a Time by Niki Daly heavily influenced me growing up, and I still enjoy and appreciate them today.

I've also learned that I consume a lot more media than I thought. If books count as a form of media, then I've read a few thousand of them and over one hundred novels. I have also been influenced by a lot of T.V. shows, starting with C.B.S. when I was in kindergarten to the one thousand channels available to me in my teenage years.

There are also forms of media that I know are considered social that I like to indulge in. YouTube is one of my favorite sites online. I can find thousands of songs and videos that interest me. Deviantart is also a favorite of mine. As an artist, I love looking at the works of fellow artists and it interests me to see the different mediums used by different people to express similar ideas and interests.

I understand now that media, social or otherwise, is not necessarily a bad thing. My parents both have Facebook accounts and they don't use them to post pictures of their breakfasts. I don't think the amount of media a consume is something to be ashamed of. There are adults who are just as immersed in media than I am and some who are even more so.

Sell Me Some Cool, Man

Last week in my Critical Thinking class, we finished a documentary by Frontline called Merchants of Cool. In it, we got to talk a look at 2001's world of "cool." We saw what "cool" meant to the teenagers, but, most importantly, the documentary focused on how media companies were using "cool" to sell their products.

 

In the world of "cool," teens have always had all the power in determining what is "cool" and how they spend their money on it. Marketers have always tried to find the best ways to discover the newest trends and turn it into a profitable product. Unfortu-nately for the media, as soon as they discover what's "hot," it  stops being "hot." Adolescents are often turned off by adults pretending to be them or attempting to understand them when it's clear they're getting nowhere. The trick is to market in a way that doesn't feel like marketing to the consumers. And eventually companies start to understand how to sell us "cool."

 

But what, according to the media, is "cool?" What is it teens want from them and are they delivering?

 

According to the marketing representatives of 2001, media is a mirror: a reflection of teenagers and their desires. Adolescents want sex in their T.V. shows, they want horror movies that are rated R. What the media presents to us is just a feedback loop of what they see us wanting.

 

On some accounts they were right: marketing is just a feedback loop... of sorts. The way I see it, the media views  a small minority who we'll call Minority X. They take what Minority X wants-- Product A. They then turn it into a product to sell to the majority-- Majority Y. They then see Minority X turn into the majority and Majority Y turn into the minority. They believe that Product A is what teens wanted the whole time and that Minority X was actually Majority X to begin with. This causes them to continue to sell Product A to their demographic. In this way, marketers get the false impression that Product A, and other products like it, are what define the generation they are appealing to.

 

Is this misrepresentation such a bad thing since you wind up wanting the product in the end? How do you think the media winds up finding these minorities to appeal to? Do they misrepresent us on purpose