Why I Heart My Media

Media is a system of communication that enables people to influence and communicate with each other. This means of communication has always been a vast part of my life; it has shaped my personality and broadened my outlook on the world. Although it is difficult to express the emotions I have for media- as they have completely shifted throughout my life- I truly love it and aspire to follow this career path.

I come from a family that has been in the media business- specifically the television business- for the past twenty-five years. When I was younger, I despised my parents’ job; I couldn’t go out and enjoy daily activities with them like a normal young boy. Everywhere we went, people were taking pictures of us, filming us, asking my parents about the next step in their career, and about rumours that were being spread about them. Such an invasion of our privacies angered me; I felt like my parents were not protecting me and merely allowing these people disrupt our lives. These interactions made me truly detest media- I vowed to myself not to follow the same career path as my parents and to keep my distance from it.

As I grew up, the way I viewed my parents’ jobs fully shifted. I observed the way their humour and encouraging aura transmitted to their audience and positively affected their lives. In addition, I noticed that my parents weren’t being restricted. Instead, they could express their creativity and ideas freely, and be the most authentic version of themselves, an aspect which truly enabled my outlook on media to change. My parents have always adored their job, and the fact that their privacy tends to be invaded is a minor negative feature of it; I comprehended that the way you use media matters, not the exposure you obtain from it. From that point on, I started loving media- I used every resource I had to not only be influenced by others, but also to try to influence others myself. 

This transition in my perspective made me realised that I also want a career in the media business. I love my media because I can easily interact and positively influence others’ lives, because it gives me the opportunity to get in touch with unique people that come from different backgrounds, and because I can express my true self instead of having to put up a facade. I am confident that these principles will shape my personality and motivated me to be the best version of myself every day .

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My relationship with media is like a romantic drama everyone watches in their bed with hot chocolate. I hate my media as much as I love it. I try to escape it but then come back every time, relieved that it’s still there for me.

Like everything in life, my media is not one dimensional. I cannot tell right from wrong media sources because each one of them gives me something and takes something back. Chick flick movies made me have high expectations of men, which were quickly destroyed by men on tinder. Instagram gives me a confusing mix of body positivity and body shaming. Ads based on my browsing history, which are everywhere online, make me feel constantly watched. Well, I have to admit that two-thirds of my purchases are made through online advertising.

When I think about my media, I mostly think about social media. Let’s be honest, it consumes most of my time now. However, films and television are media that raised me and brought me the comfort I sought. I just know that I would not be the same without Roman Holiday (1953), Spirited Away (2001), or even The Devil Wears Prada (2006). I have many comfort movies that it would be hard to list all of them here. They distract me from real life, giving me an escape to the beautiful world of film.

My media has many flaws, and my love for it is not always mutual, but I would never want to lose it.

Student number: 13917609

I heart my media because I’m able to stay connected with friends and relatives depsite geographical distance.

I heart my media for the comfort I find in it, how I can feel close to someone without being with them.

I heart my media for the time and effort people put in to make everyone feel welcomed, in a safe place where everyone is accepted.

I heart my media that enables me to discover new locations, foods, cultures, fashion, movies and lifestyle.

I heart my media because I am constantly discovering who I am as a person and understanding who I am in this world.

I despise my media because I realize how dependant I’ve become of it.

I despise my media because my days always start and end with the on/off button.

I despise my media because makes me consciouly aware of my time dedicated to it.

I despise my media because it makes feel guilty, ashamed, stressed, often not worthy and has been a real source of stress and lack of confidence.

  These days media is an integral  part of our life. Our generation was born into a world full of different kinds of media. Right now it is hard to even imagine living without it. 

When it comes to my personal relationship with media it’s extremely complicated. On the one hand I can definitely say that media is one of my best friends. Every single day I am using my phone, which  helps me to stay organized, reminds me of my meetings, classes or my to-do list. It’s crazy to think how harder studying would be if we couldn’t just google a topic that we’re interested in and instead we would have to browse numerous books to find necessary information. Now the browsers do this work very efficiently in no time at all. 

Another thing is my love to cinema- media allows me to watch almost every possible movie I want to because of variety of film streaming platforms. Media can also help us with communicating with other people. Currently I am studying abroad so because of that I am not able to see my family in person every day. And here comes the media! Thanks to FaceTime I can talk to them and see them regularly. 

On the other hand it’s quite easy to lose yourself in all this media world. I can’t tell how many times I had to do something important for school but instead I was binge-watching some TV series or just scrolling through TikTok.   What is more, sometimes the social media can also have a harmful impact on us. Everywhere on Instagram we see how perfect other’s lives are or how good they look and we are trying to meet these fake standards that are almost impossible to reach. We have to remember that in media world everyone shows only the aspects of their life that they want to and often we create a slightly better version of ourselves.

Sometimes I also feel that media push me away from the real life or nature and because of that I tend to feel lost and distracted. But I think it is enough to put some limits and restrains on using it to enjoy fully its benefits and to have a healthy relationship with media. And that’s what I am willing to do!
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In the recent time we experienced a social media breakdown. Instagram, Facebook and Whatsapp shutdown and the world froze. This ridiculous situation led to worldwide panic. People didn’t realize how important is for us to have a constant connection to social media and how much our life depends on it

Naked – this is how I feel without having a connection to the media. I feel safe knowing that I can connect with people all over the world any time I want, especially with my parents in case of an emergency. 

Although all of the informations, photos and videos I scroll on during the day usually seems the same and don’t make any development or improvement in my life. 

It doesn’t really matter if I love or hate it. Media is my life itself, sometimes it gives me joy and inspiration, as well as it can make me feel insecure and lonely. 

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The sun will never set on (me)dia.

It is the sun, the land, the colonizer and the colonized. 

As the sun, it makes its way around the world, lighting up faces and providing relief from the dark. 

As the land, it holds up our societies and births our resources, providing a base both feeble and strong. 

As the colinizer, it infiltrates, controlling and possessive, giving us a price to pay for connection. 

As the colinized, it’s here for the taking and it’s up to you what you will make of it.

Student ID: 13144626

I’d like to start this off with a joke I heard told by David Foster Wallace. 

One morning, two young fish are swimming out to a reef. On their way, they pass an older fish who calls out to them, ‘Good morning boys! Lovely day out today, the water is nice and warm!’.

The two younger younger fish smile politely at the older fish as they pass by. Eventually, one of the younger fish turns to the other and asks, ‘What the hell is water?’.

As brilliant as I think David Foster Wallace was, I interpret this joke slightly differently than he did. I tend to naturally interpret this joke through the lens of media consumption. As someone who has always consumed an awful lot of media, whether it be my grandmother teaching me to read using newspaper headlines as a child or my teen years spent obsessing over cinema and music, I have always felt completely surrounded by media. And I must admit, there have been times where I felt like I was drowning in media. However, most of the time I was more comparable to a fish in water. There was rarely a moment that passed when I was teenager when I didn’t have at least one earphone in, listening to music or watching some random YouTube video or another. And this trait has, somewhat unfortunately, followed me into my twenties. 

Nowadays, I tend to think more critically of my massive media consumption. I try to be aware of my own online echo chambers, keep an eye on my screen time on my phone and engage the media I do choose to consume in a more critical way. I can feel the push and pull of algorithms like currents in the water drawing me towards a narrower view of the world through videos that the site knows I will most likely agree with, top picks for you or bland agreeable content. The older I get, the more I seem to be aware of the negative aspects of media and the ways in which I engage with it. Having said that, I can’t help but be pulled back to the moments in my life in which media changed me forever. I remember how entranced I was the first time I saw Apocalypse Now, getting my first understanding of true heartbreak listening to Love Will Tear Us Apart for the first time, or the sheer joy I felt watching the news with my gay loved ones on the day my country legalised same sex marriage and seeing through media their delight in finally being recognised as equals. Media has played huge roles in some of the happiest memories I have, yet medias all-encompassing and vast nature can’t help but make me very wary, like the dread some feel in the open ocean.

Ultimately I know that like the old fish, I need to accept that even though I’m completely surrounded by something, that doesn’t mean that it can’t be pleasant and that I can’t love it. But I can’t shake the questions, can you truly love something that you can’t escape from? What if it isn’t the ocean, but a tank? With the advent of social media, does that make everyday events, stories and emotions pieces of media? I don’t think I’ll ever have concrete answers for any of these questions. 

So I turn to you and ask, what the hell is media?

Most people on this planet use media on some level. Some dip their toes, and some dive right into the ocean. Undeniably, I belong to a generation that was born already submerged without having much choice. That isn’t inherently good or bad, it’s just a reality. In my eyes, there are lots of lovable elements to my media and use of them.

Ever since moving to a new country, I have found a new appreciation for reading a weekly magazine reporting on politics and news in my home country. I took being in the know on what’s happening for granted, but now this same magazine gained a new dimension, it became a little window into a place I’m not physically in. This brings me to my next point, that in the past two years and especially since I moved, I’ve been able to maintain relationships, that I wouldn’t have been able to keep had it not been for media. They also allow me to express myself, capture memories, see different perspectives, educate myself about anything and everything.

So I realize I live most of my life submerged in an ocean of media that consumes a lot of my energy, however, I don’t out empty-handed.

Student number: 13586807

Student ID: 13966928