I may be very different from the others when comes to the reason of why I love media. This is because media is where I can conceal and hide from the reality – I have different accounts along with various virtual identities, profile pictures, personal information, and shared moments. I can act however I want with a specific account, and this ‘mask’ helped me to be a real human in the virtual world. What I mean being real is that I find my existence inside the virtual world, since I can get some attention. On the contrary, I can not really be a normal human in the reality, due to the fact, I do not even know what I love, what I enjoy doing, and how I can make long-term friends. In this sense, media helped me to find and be connect with different types of people around the world, and made many friends, although never lasted long. However, I still fully engage with media and the online culture, because they accept me. Recently, I discovered long-term network relationships, which made me keep growing, learning, improving, and appreciating the world. Media keeps me alive.
Media is what I need for the meaning of my life, and it is the ‘thing’ that supports me to keep living. This may sound pessimistic, but media allows me to be alone while enjoying the myself: I am always accompanied by music playlist on YouTube or Spotify; When I am alone in my spacious but lonely room, I watch Netflix ; I have WeChat news and BBC news to consume news from a dual-perspective; Everyday, every minute and every second, I have my computer, iPad and mobile phones around me — I can not control media, because media has controlled me, and I can not live without media. Media keeps me working.
Another thing for media to shaped the way I am is through the role of “gallery”. Without the photo gallery, I would not think that my life and experiences and my memories are wonderful and interesting. The pictures that were taken has recorded my life which can be traced back to that time. The idea of being able to transcend time and space and experiences has made me embrace the existence of media itself. Media makes me cherish the life I once had, and I still do. Therefore, media is not simple, it not only connect you to the others, but also helps you to connect to yourself. This is what I have learned during the pandemic with the great presence of media in my daily life. As a matter of fact, I can know myself better through the functions that media have, which makes me “heart” media with great respect.
Oppositely, the fact that I sometimes dislike media because of my anxiety about consuming media. The reason is that I have computers, iPad and mobile phones, and it is precisely because of them – the information on each device, the notifications, the message from the updates irritates me. Every information makes me anxious when I am reading it, and because there are too many things that I need to consume at a time, I just can not do anything. Overloaded information makes me sometimes afraid of opening the phone and facing the information. In this sense, this sense of helplessness has made the media less attractive to me to a certain degree. That is why I always have a love-hate relationship with media, because it has shaped the way I am (the positive side), and also created a very anxious me.
Of course, I would never stop using media. It is part of me, or maybe all of me. And I heart media every day, because I give people “likes”; I have some existence online; I can use media to entertain myself etc. Everything that involves media make me so connected to it, I feel media is my friend, my mentor, my invisible influencer. No matter how negatively it affects me, I would always manage it, and come back to it. Because I heart media.
Thank you so much to read until here, really appreciated.
(Writer’s notes: I really appreciate this assignment, because I never asked myself why do I use media for such a long time, or why I do not get bored. This has absolutely helped me to realize how important media is for me, and how I am dependent on it. Thank you for this opportunity.)
M.
13548719
Why I Heart My Media 