Why I Heart My Media

You must choose. You can talk about media negative aspect, or you can try to take advantage of positive aspect. You can disapprove the high standards of beauty online, or you can accept your body and show how you are. You can envy everyone who exhibit their perfect life, beautiful trip, or you can admire who you are, and what you have. You can criticize media, or you can use it as a tools to achieve your little goals. Don’t drown in this media ocean.

I am grateful for the opportunity to use media because of my huge love towards my 6-year-old sister.

She lives in another country, and I could only meet with her 5 times during summer holidays. The rest of the time I could only see her through the screen.

I didn’t hear her saying her first words in real life, but I could listen to the voice messages.

I didn’t see her first steps, but I could see the videos later.

I didn’t feel the atmosphere of joy during her birthday, when everyone was celebrating, but I could at least order gifts for her online.

I heart media for giving me the chance to see her smile, but it is heartbreaking at the same time to hear her voice asking over and over again “Will you come to see me? Will we play together? Will you read me my favorite book?” 13988514

In January 2021, during the still rampant Covid-19 pandemic that has changed all of our lives, I finally bought myself a VR headset. This has turned out to be the best cure to how overwhelmed I felt during this once in a lifetime event. Suddenly I could go travel without leaving my house, I could experience new forms of interactivity, new experiences or watch a movie with friends and strangers, but the game Pavlov VR is what has turned out to hook me the most. Pavlov is a VR first person shooter, similar to Counter Strike. Just like that game, Pavlov has an extremely active modding community that make maps, modes and other things that you can experience in the game. There are maps from Halo, zombie game modes from Call Of Duty, and even completely original modes. The one that hooked me the most is a take on the classic mod Trouble in Terrorist Town (abbreviated as TTT). In this custom mode, people are split into 3 groups, innocents, Detectives and the titular terrorists. The rules of the game are simple: Some players are terrorists and you have to eliminate them before they get you. Unlike Among Us, which has taken this formula to the mainstream, there’s a third faction of players, the detectives. There’s usually 1 or 2 of them per round, selected at random. Unlike all other players, everyone knows who the detective is, and the detective has limited tools that can help innocents win.

So how did this game mode based on lies and deception help me cope with the situation in the outside world? Well, there’s this simple thing called voice chat. Such a simple inclusion has changed this game from a normally stressful and isolating experience, to one that is the complete opposite. In my first game, people were roleplaying as donut store owners, giving ammunition magazines instead of donuts, causing quite the laugh to all involved. I was innocent, but as it would later be shown, the “owner” of the shop was a terrorist. But I didn’t care. Nor did anyone else. Instead of holding a grudge once the timer ended and he had to kill us all, everyone in the server had a massive laugh, and we proceeded to add this roleplay of the donut shop to our next rounds. Remember, these were all strangers, having a fun time as if they were back to being children playing with a sand castle. But alas, all good things come to an end and I had to say goodbye to the temporary friends I had made.

However, when I logged in the next day, there were more people playing, more strangers to have fun with, now I could meet ridiculous and fun people every day on this simple online game mode. Once I met someone in a Pennywise skin playing while acting with a Joker-style voice, another time there was George who couldn’t aim a gun properly even if his life depended on it, the donut shop owner, the guy that constantly became detective and would be all uptight about it for a whole minute until someone shot him. My favourite must be a guy who asked what the weather was like where I lived and it turned out he was from Wyoming and we laughed constantly together for the whole round.

This game has really given me the social interactions I have lost in 2020 due to Covid-19. As my high school friends moved on to study somewhere and I was mostly left on my own, Pavlov VR and later others have given me the ability to have a chat about the most mundane things in the most incredible environments with the weirdest people I have met on the internet and beyond. The ability to socialise with people through a common media experience was incredible. This is why I love VR. This is why I heart my media.

Daniel Schuju – 13281623

Why I Heart Media

I think media fucked me up. I have a habit of studying things that have given me distress. Now I’m  suddenly here in Amsterdam trying to listen and understand as my mind wonders and I get distracted by media. At the moment I’m looking for information about a news article I read this morning. I googled it, searched for the instagram of the person of interest and his relatives. I am listening to the music he has made, read a couple more articles and read his wikipedia page. I have used about 15 platforms online in the past 15 minutes while I had the intention of writing about Why I Heart Media.

 I often wonder about how life would be without internet. My mom travelled around the world while that was still the case. When I left for my trip around the world, I had an idea of doing it without internet and documenting my travels navigating through the world without a GPS. It felt like it was going to be near impossible so I went the easy way, used all the lovely accessories we have been given to make our life easier.

I don’t love or hate media, I just feel for it. 

Best,

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This clip of the late James Gandolfini (pbuh) illustrates the three basic meaningful activities of contemporary human life: to have sex, consume media, and make money.

As I am ideologically opposed to the idea of making money and too cool to have sex, the only thing that can possibly give my life meaning is the increasingly self-destructive urge to consume media.

~LMW 13330934

As I thought over the question, ‘why would I love the media’, another question had struck me, “How could someone hate Media ?”. Media is now spread worldwide. Everywhere we go, there are cameras displaying someone or something, which later becomes a post on a somewhat media platform. With today’s technology, we can see all those posts in our bedroom, helping us to feel different cultures, learn new information and even receive virtual ideas of how everyone, everything looks. These are just several examples of privileges that Media provides to us and there are a lot more. With all these benefits, is it possible for someone to actually hate media? If I have the choice to bring one thing to an unknown island, without hesitation, choose a fully charged smartphone with 5G internet service. Overall, I love the media, it helps me to spread my ideas or receive new perspectives on a specific topic. I would like to send endless esteem towards every individual who is dedicated to creating nowadays media and is looking forward to the next step of it.

Student ID : 13948032

My relationship with media is always changing.

I’ve gone through phases of heavy gaming, many many hours of nonstop YouTube watching, binge watching about all the anime and TV I could find, listening to as many albums as I could. My life when it was the most media saturated was, curiously, from the confines of my room. Weirdly enough my total screen time was always half (or less) than that of my friends.

All of the so called “pleasure” I was having gave me no fulfillment or true enjoyment. My time spent with media was full of bloated trash I had no interest whatsoever in doing or viewing. And so, I decided to clean up my Media. Stopped consuming so many games and TV. Unfollowed most (still finding them) of the accounts I did not care about or which added nothing to my enjoyment. Stopped watching shows/YouTube with food. And many more. This has made me appreciate my media much more. By taking out the unnecessary saturation I had, my media has opened itself up for more inspiring, creative and communicative content. I feel much happier with this way of handling digital life. More as a tool and less of direct extension of my body. There are days where I see an hour of Instagram and feel like that was way too much for my own good, but still I am happy where I am taking things with my media.

13125354 – BB

Media, such a broad concept but somehow right now when I hear this word I think of my phone. I consider 03’s the final “good year of people” and I mainly believe that because we weren’t introduced to exposure through the world of social media as soon as the later years.

I have two younger half brothers aged 3 and 4, they both can call me through an iPhone, they both can go on Youtube and put freaking Cocomelon and that shark thing and watch for hours. When I see this phenomenon I just can’t help but feel lucky that my early years did not have all these media outputs, that our toddlers are now familiar with.

To be honest, I know for a fact that consumed media from a young age. I watched cartoons through cassettes, dvd’s even television, I listened to classical music every night up until the age of 5 which is still some form of media consumption. I feel like the simplicity of the media in my head that I used to consume as a child is the reason, I find myself loving media now.

You can find a variety of bad qualities that media possesses, but when I stumbled upon the question ” Why I heart my media”, I immediately thought of media that helps express art. To be able to have countless of art work, endless hours of music in an app in your phone feels as if it’s a blessing. I just go back to the times we used to have thousands of cd’s even vinyls to listen to music. Let’s say after I’m done listening to an album that just dropped I can switch apps with a simple hand gesture and watch the new season of Rick and Morty, something I know find so surreal.

One final aspect that fascinates me about media is how we choose to portray ourselves through a variety of “profiles”. I believe I’m a key observer of the human condition I like observing people’s social activity because it creates an enigma that questions authenticity which I find very intriguing. Furthermore, I find myself very hypocritical when I choose for instance, how my Instagram feed should look like, but to be honest I can’t help but be part of that need because I receive pleasure when people compliment my choices.

Social media has helped us realise that we live in a chaotic world everything nowadays feels so out of reach only because we are familiar with too much material different of our lives, this leads to expectations being formed in our head and this persona that we choose to showcase is an attempt to grasp upon acceptance.

I heart media how could I not.

Victor Ponirakis

student number: 13755897

You are the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen! Even the ugly has charm! Even the biggest tragedies are filled with romance! Even in the darkness one can find warmth! Everything is fantastic! You let me wrap myself in your endless stream, and in your embrace I lulled myself to believe the well-crafted stories you let me lose my mind in. From page to page and screen to screen I felt like I was falling in between of all the seats. You allowed me to indulge in things I could have done very well without but at the end of the night it’s not your fault that you amplified what my mind was so frantically searching for in every page and every photo, and what I was seeing was just a feeling of not feeling so great, I suppose. Now that my head is sunnier you seem a lot funnier and we get along oh so well. Love is complicated and so are you.