Why I Heart My Media

Ik hou van media omdat het er altijd voor me is. Ik weet nog dat een paar maanden geleden de servers van YouTube niet meer werkten en dat ik me toen besefte hoe afhankelijk ik eigenlijk was van dat ene filmpje wat ik zou kijken voor ik naar bed ging. Media is voor mij een ochtend, middag en avondroutine geworden en omdat ik ‘in’ media leef maak ik mij ook geen zorgen over mijn afhankelijkheid ervan, zolang het maar geen obsessie/verslaving wordt. De lopende kraan aan constante informatie die je tot je kunt nemen moet namelijk ook soms dicht kunnen, zodat je je kunt focussen op bijvoorbeeld studeren.

Iets wat ik wel minder leuk vindt aan media is dat veel mensen denken dat ze in elke discussie een kant moeten kiezen. Ik heb soms het idee dat ik de enige ben die van sommige dingen niks vindt, terwijl dat vaak heel bevrijdend kan zijn. Voordat ik de grote wereldproblemen op ga lossen lijkt het me dan slimmer om bijvoorbeeld eens mijn dekbed te verschonen, of mijn kledingkast op te ruimen.

De media waar ik het meest van hou zijn toch eerder films en games dan de sociale media, omdat het mij de mogelijkheid geeft om een ervaring te hebben in een hele andere fictionele wereld. Dit zijn dan ook de media waar ik het meeste tijd mee doorbreng.

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It is very hard to remember things for me, it has always been. I don’t recall a single time where recalling was not a struggle of mine: the teacher asking me to recall the discovery of America, my mom prying to know whom I met yesterday, my therapist questioning why I felt sad last week. And all I can answer is: I do not remember. And every time I try to, my mind spirals, seeks for answers, goes back to the beginning and then again: nothing. I am not able to tell whether growing in a digital age influenced my memory; maybe the continous stimuli did. Getting lost in loopholes that made me forget what I was looking for in the first place probably does not help. However, it did help in a way. Yesterday I opened my camera roll to delete pictures, and I found some that I did not remember taking. I did not remember the context, barely talk anymore to the people I was in that picture with, could not even recognize the place. But we were looking at each other and we were happy. I observed the picture for ten minutes, trying to understand where it was taken and why. I tortured myself and scolded my brain for being so forgetful: you were there – how can you not remember! And you were so happy! And then it clicked. It is not important for me to remember what I was doing in that moment, my mind was never made to elaborate long moments. But the fragment of authentic happiness I saw on our faces made me reminisce the feeling of pure joy. Media helped me to remember that some feelings are unique – they will come in different shares and forms, and you will not remember them anymore. In a few years, I will not remember writing this. But I will be reminded of how I felt in this exact moment, which will never be replicated again. To the future me, please do not hate media: it will paradoxically help you remember you are human. You felt and you will feel. You were happy in that picture.

I am a person who needs much self-expression and private space. It is perfect for me to share my true feelings freely on media without worrying too much about others.  I can express things that are hard to share with my friends or families. I’m really introvert so talking on the media reliefs my stress for face-to-face conversation. I feel like I even can’t live without my media. 

Media is like my diary tracking my life. I prefer to share all my little things with people I don’t know. I even create another account to save my private space from my friend’s disturbances since there are some who wants to follow me. 

As time passes by, I find that I have less and less connection with my real-life friends and feel immersed in chatting with people on the media. Although I do feel more comfortable with this kind of social interaction, I also feel worries. Am I living in a real life? Am I isolated？

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As a media student, I’ve been asked multiple times what I love about media. However, I’ve never been able to find a simple answer to that. “Love” is such a strong word, it also involves so many other strong emotions, such as “anger”, “hate, “happiness”, and more. When I listen to “Monsters” by James Blunt, I feel unbelievable sadness. When I watched “The Truman Show”, I felt anger I didn’t know I could feel towards a movie. And when I open my Instagram in the morning to see that my sister posted a new picture of my nephew, I’m filled with inexplicable joy and pride. Media makes me go on a rollercoaster of emotions, and that’s why I love it. It’s the shoulder I lean on to cry, the pillow I scream into when I’m mad, the platform I run to to share my happiness. It’s there with you through your highs and lows. We’ll have our moments of disagreement, but I know we’ll reconcile. That’s my definition of a friend. And that’s what media is to me, a friend. A friend whom I love.

Student Number: 13557122

Media has allowed me to keep in touch with people that are special to me consequently making media just as special.

Even though we are so integrated in our media and It has become a normality, I am many times very aware of the vastidity of the digitalised world and don’t take it for granted. When my phone has run our of battery I realize how handicapped I feel without one and how much a part of me it really is.

To understand our interactions with people we study psychology and biology to understand how our brain works. Our interactions with humans are now done through a medium of which I would not be able to explain its technological composition and the workings of it at all but seems just as important.

Media has allowed us to express and document our humanity in a different way. My baby pictures are tucked in a box and some are digitalised as blurry pictures on my phone. Babies born today will have countless data of how they talked, walked and looked from all stages in life stored in a camera roll. It seems that our data will keep accumulating and that there are endless versions of ourselves tucked in a cloud for us to refer back to. As we have seen media grow media has also seen us grow.

Student number:12557897

Whoever controls the media controls the mind 

To me, that Jim Morrison quote has never been kind 

All the Western media shoved down my throat 

At first, made me feel like I was aboard that boat 

The boat of my favorite Hollywood movies, CNN anchors and music bands 

Till it upturned and showed me the portrayal of myself was out of my hands 

The superiority given to Western forms of entertainment and news by consumers was key

As it only heightened the inferiority they presented in brown girls like me, which I now see

I see in the vocabulary of headlines stating the “developed” world

Or in the faces of most movie heroines, their blonde locks perfectly curled 

I see it in the billboards of skin-whitening products in my home town

Glorifying the mark of the colonial world that left my ancestors in a confused frown

A television show might throw in the token South Asian character as a formality 

But my feelings of exclusion will not end till this becomes a semblance of normality

You associate my part of the world with the word “terrorist”, and that’s all groovy

But the histories of genocide and racism, those didn’t make your movie

I don’t deny the small steps towards inclusivity slowly coaxing me back onto the boat

But I refuse to fully get back on till they have drained the whole moat 

I love media that promotes all backgrounds and cultures

Not the “Fox News mentality”, because they’re all blind vultures 

Whoever controls the media controls the mind 

To me, for now, that Jim Morrison quote has never been kind 

Ayla Alam, 13835963

I can’t really remember a day without media. From a really young age, I was always really interested in all kinds of media (except anything that involved lots of reading). I spent most of my childhood playing video games, watching YouTube or TV, listening to music or just hearing a trashy talent show running in the background during dinner with my family and occasionally looking over to see what’s going on. My fondest memories would probably be getting home from school from the ages 6 to 10; just turning the TV on to see Pokémon and Naruto, and topping it off if Takeshi’s Castle was just pure bliss. Also, I even tried to have an own YouTube channel but the lack of views demotivated the 12 year old me pretty fast. What’s funny about this is that I barely ever used social media, even up until now. I still (mostly) use these the platforms as simple messaging apps and don’t really use them for their other features, well, at least not actively. I don’t know if it has to do with me or the platforms but I never really saw many reasons to participate in them. Sure, I was aware of what’s happening, but in a way I wasn’t. Of course, the big exception in my life is YouTube, which I, to this day, cherish like nothing else. It’s hard to say what’s keeping me glued on it but I feel like it still is this very special place on the Internet. I never really liked the other platforms. Instagram was too public for a shy me, Twitter too political, Snapchat is just a messaging app in my eyes, I like Reddit but it just doesn’t draw me in as much, and don’t even get me started on Facebook. YouTube gives me just this perfect balance of silliness, seriousness and everything in between, all perfectly tailored to me. And in the midst of this you still have this early YouTube spirit living on, just representing everything I love on the Internet. Sure, the YouTube landscape has undergone a tremendous of changes but I feel like many of the creators nowadays still recognize it as a certain, not independent, but (I really don’t want to use the term) ‘authentic’ platform. Well to me at least it seems like this is the case (and I do exclude the pile of arguably ‘bad’ YouTube channels). Oddly enough, I’m also the one person in media studies who basically doesn’t watch Netflix. I have maybe watched a handful of shows over the last 5 years. It was just never really appealing to me if it’s just to talk about them to my friends later, well then I might as well just watch something that I actually enjoy. I do have to make the confession that I love watching anime from time to time, even if it’s not much as it used to be… I don’t know where I would be without them to be honest. Probably not in Amsterdam. Or maybe yes? I also love that it gives and has given me the possibility to not only maintain and strengthen, but also start ties with my loved ones and friends around the world. Conclusions aren’t really my strength, so, yeah, I love my media.

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Growing up, we got to watch the development of social media. Instagram became the new big platform in sixth grade for my friends and I, and it was a place for us to post silly pictures of things we liked or found funny or even sometimes things we thought were sad. It was like our own little personal blogs. As I grew older however, people started taking Instagram more seriously, including me, and we started posting only photos we looked good in. Snapchat was also the ‘new thing’ back then, it was all so exciting and fun but for the longest time I didn’t realise the real use of media till I moved countries. This was during my prime growing up years in High School, where I needed my friends. Social media, WhatsApp, messenger, you name it – all became an outlet for me to keep in touch with my closest friends. It became a place where I’d be able to call my friends and catch up and a place where I could go back and talk to people I relied on while I was in this new country trying to settle in. After moving around, there were times where social media made me anxious and many times where it made me feel empowered. I struggled to find the right balance between both for a very long time till I realised it’s my social media, it’s my platform to share what I want with who I want and so I cleaned out my social media accounts. This made the anxiety of posting or going online disappear and has once again become a place of self expression for me. Although there are times where I hate media, being able to express myself, empower others as well as myself, and keep in touch with my friends and family around the world is the reason I love media.

• Student ID: 13743686

Media. I love you and I hate you. You are there for me when i am lonely, but you also make me feel lonelier then ever. You cheer me up when im sad, but are the reason for my depression. I learn things through you, but sometimes all you show is fake news. Some days you help me fall asleep, and other times I stay awake all night because of you. I cannot imagine a life without you, but sometimes I wish you would not exist. You are always there with me, but sometimes that scares me

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