After reading and re-reading Johnson's essay i have realized the truth about his theory of probing. As a youth i played video games occasionally, i mainly played sports games with friends. What i thought was a a simple act of playing with my friends turns out to be much deeper in the eyes of Johnson. Being an athlete my entire life competition and the desire to win has been an aspect of any thing i partook. I brought that same drive to win when playing video games, and what started off as a simple social game soon elevated into heated, hostile battle. Whether,it was the need to win for personal gain or the need to prove one's dominance to others losing was a hard outcome to swallow. Johnson opened my eyes to the aspects of video games that aren't promoted but are extremely influential in their appeal to those who buy them. Video games offer a person an outlet for their creativity. In addition to added creative the gamer has the the absolute power to create his own reality where he is the one who decides what goes instead of being directed. Steven Johnson digs deeper into an overlooked subject.

Before reading Caputi’s essay, I had a little bit of knowledge over the psychology that goes behind adverts but I never imagined the complexity of the sexism that is involved. I had always heard about companies secretly sending subconscious messages to consumers by using certain images or catch phrases that stimulated the mind in a way to sway your thinking kind of like a subliminal message. Jane Caputi really takes apart the methods and use of discriminating sexism seen in ads, the “Pornography of Everyday Life”. Recently, I have been noticing the use of this subconscious sexism and the belittling of women in the media that were all subjected to. Last night I unfortunately woke up in the middle of the night only to realize that my TV had the most wretched program known to mankind on the screen, American Idol. I would normally change the channel or turn it off but the remote’s batteries were all the way in the hall inside of our Swiffer Wet Jet ©. I Digress. Whilst being forcibly exposed to the program I had noticed a trend. Not only were the majority of the “good” singers good looking but also I noticed something else. The image conveyed by most to the women that were being praised was one of innocence sexiness and a certain lack of outside issues. There was no real trend for the look of the male contestants other than Hollywood fashion, but the women were a different story. At this point of the contest, I believe that all the ugly girls had been filtered away, because the music industry is all about image. The show advocates a sense of generalization of race and class. All the white girls were very hot soft spoken and dressed in a very white, Hollywood socialite fashion, and all the black girls were dressed a bit more urban and ethically “fitting”. This is no coincidence; the show does this in order appeal to the demographic groups in the strongest possible ways. Next time you are watching TV don’t just admire how beautiful every one is, ask what are the producers trying to tell me.

Discussing Leslie Savan’s work in class has had me looking at commercials, show, and other forms of media more scrupulously. The mixing of cultures is often times a causal effect of to cultures co-existing in the same area. However, the once innocent phenomenon of culture adoption and integration has been turned into a tool for gain. Most recently, I have noted that instead of products being marketed to a certain demographic, products that at one time were reserved for a certain demographic are now being pushed upon others. Companies are taking advantage of the false notion of black culture being cool to market products. This marketing is not only promoting coolness but it makes those that indulge in it think that they are now “in: with blacks. So the other day I am watching a soccer game on espn 2 when a commercial interrupts the game. It took me a while to figure out what was being sold. The product ended up being Smirnoff Raw Iced tea. What struck me most interesting about the commercial was the fact that it was made in the form of a rap video. Interestingly enough the rappers were all very white New England "gangsters" equipped with polos sears sucker, jackets, penny loafers, and appropriately enough blonde WASP girl friends. In the interest of relating Savan this commercial demonstrates overwhelmingly the marketability of black culture in mainstream white America. I think the commercial is an interesting attention getter and also quite funny but it does not do a lot for the abolishment of barriers between the cultures in turn it pokes fun at the obvious differences. You can draw your own conclusion, just watch the advert here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYtFGriF6UY

To Blog or Not
While the Internet’s start may have seemed like no more than just a huge storage closet of random information some useful some not, one can not help but notice its growth in size integrity and usefulness. The birth of blogs over the past years has spawned a rise in communication amongst individuals. This communication allows for a freedom to express opinions, theories, facts, and questions more easily. No longer does a person have to be an established journalist for a mass of people to have read their writings. After searching through the internet for blogs it became evident that if something exists there is a blog of it, there are also blogs for non existent things i.e. time machines. As David Kline mentions these blogs have to be looked at carefully. Although some blogs are no more than schoolyard type arguments like what is cooler a Ferrari or a Lamborghini, some blogs have a great deal of useful information, many times information not extremely known due to the mass media’s lack of interest to it.
There are blogs for everyone. I, being a soccer football player hit up Google for the latest in soccer blogs. Unsurprisingly Google came back with over 47 million returns. Choosing one at random led me to http://www.soccergossip.com on page 22 of the Google result. The site at first glance is just a statistics sheet and some rules, but at closer scrutiny it is full of information not seen on the daily. The site also expresses dedicated supporters feeling on prior and future match ups. Without blogs this one would have to go without this information and make due with second class American reporting on the world’s game.
Some suggest that blogs are the inevitable end to mass media. This sounds scary but it is not probable. The internet has made it excruciatingly easy to get the news one must still first get to the internet. This is a task that seems mundane to most but the reality that notion of ,”just log on” is nearly impossible to stricken with poverty or ignorance. Even if everyone could blog not all choose to. Some people rather be silent. It is circumstances like these that will allow mass media to yet again survive another epic frontier. “The mainstream media has also demonstrated an unrivaled ability throughout history to adapt to new media and its challenges” (Kline 242). So don’t worry CNN we will still be watching, we will just have a lot to say on the side.

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Current Mood: accomplished
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