Why I Heart My Media

Media, such an important part of our life. Why I heart my media?

I heart the platform which I can express myself freely; I heart the people I meet who I feel connect it with them; I heart the music I listen…
Thanks to the media, I captured the most important memories. I save the pictures of the people who are already not here anymore..

I feel there are a thousand reasons to say, why I heart my media. But, for me instead, I heart my media. I would say I heart my life.

Student number :13779672

Online spaces gave me the resources to figure out my gender and sexuality. It gave me an escape from the real world for a couple hours a day.

I have always consumed a lot of tv shows and movies. The first couple of years of my life I did not care about who I saw on my screen, as long as the story was intriguing. However, when I figured out my sexuality I wanted to see other people who were like me. I started watching all the sapphic movies and tv shows that I could get my hands on. I did not know any queer people who I could talk to in my real life, so, seeing queer people in media was the only way that I could get a taste of what my future could look like.

I started questioning my gender identity a couple of years after I figured out my sexuality. I figured out my gender, due to reading about peoples experiences with their gender identity on online platforms.

Media gave me the representation and the feeling of community that I did not have in my personal life growing up. It gave me a space to freely explore who I was as a person and who I wanted to be.

Student ID: 13795171

I think I am trying to finish this assignment for the 5th time if my memory is correct. I was trying to write why I love media but it started to created some kind of uncomfortable feeling inside my chest so I gave up. After that, I tried to write why I hate media. The same feeling stroke me again. Maybe it was because seeing my self trying to find reasons why I love or hate media even thought I don’t. Maybe it was because I felt I was lying to myself.

So the problem is, I can’t really tell if I like media or not. I have been consuming media since I was born. Maybe even before I was born. I was probably listening to music when I was in my mother’s womb. Probably there was some kind of a radio or television turned on at the hospital where I was born. After that, I read books, watched television, played videogames and so on. My life was full of media and still. I was never told to love or hate media. Nobody taught me how to use or force me to use media. It was just there from the very beginning. It was like air. If I ask someone ‘do you like air’, that person will ask me if I’m crazy or something. You don’t breathe because you like breathing. It works the same for media. I don’t consume media because I like it. I consume it because it’s just there.

This is the reason why I can’t distinguish if I like media or not.

People are conferred with multiple identities and power of media, yet are also caught in their own vision and expression. Ridiculousness, conflicts and harmony coexist in diverse contexts. I once always comment on media with a bantering tone, but I gained a sense of embrace when trying to sincerely pose doubts rather than playing with words. And I chose media as my major partly because I thought this subject was(is) most inescapable in life.

Media won’t have a destination. But at least for me, media is constantly filling up my unfillable desires, constructing my unstructured emotions and recalling unspoken memories. Maintaining engagement and observation is hard, but may be worthwhile through continuous enquiries. 

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I love media because it normalizes my problems. It makes me feel like I am not alone with my problems, that they are possible to solve. Seeing people come out of harmful mental states that I occasionally fall into, actually motivates me to keep going knowing that there is a way out. Because there are sometimes situations that your friends or family or the people you generally talk to have not been in, therefore they cannot help you with their experiences. In such situations – as primitive as it sounds – a long, deeply explained and detailed Instagram caption can work wonders. When reading about what an interantionally renowned mid-size model went through in terms of struggles with body image or not meeting internalized body standards but still making it in the industry, still feeling good in her body, it all helps even though you’re not getting the advice from people you personally know. 

This next one is a silly example but my brother and I used to get extremely upset because our mom kept reorganising our pan/pot cabinet in the kitchen EVERY Sunday morning and it always woke us up undeniably early. Then we both saw a Tiktok making fun of how all moms do the same thing every Sunday morning and the video got over 2 million likes. So it turned out that plenty of others have the same problem with sleeping in on Sundays and since then, every time this happens to us we just think of it as this comedic scene and we laugh it off. 

I think what I’m trying to say is that knowing that you’re not weird for feeling a certain way gives a very nice comfort and eases your problems, let it be a more serious mental issue or even just a small but regular inconvenience.

The relationship between me and my media started all the way back when I was a child. Since I can remember, I have read books, and books have been read to me. As a kid, I watched Madonna’s music videos on loop, played games on the house computer, and watched Winnie the Pooh when I was sick. When I got a little older, I got my first phone with a monochrome display and the classic Snake game. We played in the park and sent songs to each other by Bluetooth, songs that we had recorded ourselves from the radio. We read all the Harry Potter novels, and we would recreate the stories and play the characters. Then I went to the cinema to see the last Harry Potter film. I was fascinated by the 3D glasses and how the whole experience was so different.

Media has constantly been evolving throughout history. Still, I feel like I got to witness the emergence of smartphones that sort of took over our lives in just a few years. I feel like I was part of the last generation that could still turn off our media. All we could do with our phones was play the Snake game, listen to our own recordings of songs from the radio, or call our parents. Thus, we just played outside with sticks and sand. My younger sisters didn’t experience that kind of childhood, and I have felt sorry for them.

In upper secondary school, I realized that I wanted to study media. Today, five years later, I still feel like this is the right place for me. I love my media. I have a great passion for films, and my dream is to make them myself one day. I am super interested in all kinds of media and how media shapes our lives. I think media is a place for endless possibilities, and I am excited to see where the media are heading. But, as much as I love my media, I also miss the times when I could just turn everything off. And now I realize that maybe it was never really off. So many of the best memories of my childhood were actually either with media or influenced by media.

The experience of childhood has become different from what it was before the first iPhone. So instead of feeling sad for the kids who will have it differently, I hope that their inevitable relationship with their media will be positive like mine was. And I guess that’s what makes me appreciate my media more. I have realized how much media has actually shaped my life and is still actively shaping it. So now I know that through and with media, things can be changed. And isn’t that cool?

I can confidently say that my relationship with media could be easily expressed with the lyrics from the song “I hate you, I love you”, which is “feeling used, but ı’m still missing you.” The reason behind this is that when I’m on my phone and get the weekly screening time notification, I find myself thinking “how on earth did I spend this much time on phone?!” and cant help but feel used. Then I start thinking about what I’ve been doing on my phone… Except the time I spend on my lovely game 1010, I use my phone to connect with people, sometimes through whats app, sometimes snapchat, sometimes instagram. And then ask myself the question: How can I not miss this? Especially ever since moving to a new country, I’ve started appreciating the usage of media more and can hear media telling me the line “if I were you, I would never let me go” from the same song. So I guess what I should be doing is appreciating how media “helps” me:)

Student no: 13559354, Aleyna İrten