Why I Heart My Media

Practically from one of my first memories I remember media being everywhere, because of my family. We were and still are in motorsport and therefore it was normal to see my dad talking in front of the camera or see his face somewhere as well as our last name. Whereas we are a small team and never participated in huge championships still people in motorsport knew my father and brother and recognised my family. From this point of my life, I started to get interested in media and found my love to it as well. Since then, I followed the photographer from our team and asked her a lot of questions and I still do, because I want to start my career after my studies in motorsport. Media has been and will always have a substantial impact on my life because I grew up with it and as we learned media is everywhere and I do not want that fact to change, because it is my passion.  

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It has come to my attention that suddenly deleting Instagram doesn’t turn you into the modern day Plato. Four months ago in an attempt of becoming more unique, maybe finding out more about myself, I deleted my Instagram account. Before doing so, I went for a last look. A story was told, a 5 year story of how I shared my life through those lenses. The person who I once was and turned out to be was in front of my eyes; with every picture, comment, and reply telling you something about myself.

The thought that I was an open book, open to any of the hundreds of people who followed me to read, made me uncomfortable. So much so that I felt like there was only one solution.

To delete everything. So I did. I deleted every single picture and trace of my Instagram account. It felt like a part of me was gone, but a new one was (re)born.

I still don’t know what my relationship with media is. Its like we are a couple who took an indefinite break. The love is still there, whenever I take a peek at someone’s Instagram in the metro, I feel like I’ve been cheated on. That I’m missing out on this mediated reality.

In the end, I feel like I know nothing about my media, but my media knows everything about myself.

Iuri Bertie , 13759086

Like most people, media has contributed majorly to the person I am today, and will continue to do so until the day I die. From filmmaking to pop-culture, to dating, to music, to staying connected, media has allowed me to engage with the world and express myself in a way that is not possible in real-life. Furthermore, I am grateful for media as it can often be incredibly helpful to me, however, I feel myself become increasingly more dependent on it as time goes by. It is easy for me to say that I love media as my interests revolve around media such as film, pop-culture, music, and art, but I do sometimes wonder who I would be without it.  

Student ID: 13835793

Dear media,

I’ve laughed, found passion and cried with you.

Late at night,

When my thoughts were too loud,

Music calmed me down,

The artists inspired me,

The memes and vines shaped my sense of humour.

I could have spend an entire day

Watching movies and obsess

After fictional characters and actors.

Ever since I was a child,

You’ve taught me how to look and behave.

90-60-90 was the only way to get that boy’s attention.

Those blonde girls in bikinis were so pretty.

Thirteen year old me wanted to be like them.

Oh, but my nose is too big?

I must change that.

A pimple?

Buy that cream, do that treatment, they said.

At least I learned how to use Photoshop.

How can I impress my crush?

Laugh at his jokes and touch his shoulder.

Give him attention,

But not too much.

You don’t want to seem too clingy.

Now I’m jealous.

That girl has a car and a cool boyfriend,

She received flowers and a ring,

And I’m crying myself to sleep.

Everything I did,

I did it for your approval.

Thank you for inspiring me

And for shaping me into the woman I am today,

Who is now confident in her skin,

With all her flaws and spots.

Thank you for everything.

Love,

Student 13751840.

When I was younger, I tended to feel alone. I lived in the middle of woods with my family, and for a kid, it felt like living in isolation. Media was my best friend: I had movies, tv shows and videogames, and I had news from every corner of the world. It was very comforting for me when I felt alone.

When growing older and moving away from there, I did take the media with me. But sadly, it didn’t feel like a best friend anymore, it was my co-worker now. It helped me through my school and work, but I constantly felt like I wanted to take a break from it. Sometimes it felt suffocating to be available around the clock and I wanted to run away from it.

And then I moved away from everything familiar. I was in a new country and new city, and I didn’t know anything or anyone. Then I remembered how comforting media could be, when used right. I could get in touch with people I miss and see what is happening in my country. And it is all so easy.

I love my media for being there for me. Sometimes it just feels a little too much, that it’s always here.

13926586

Why I heart media

For as long as I can remember, I have always loved certain aspects of media. I have always felt a special connection to cinema and movies and playing online games with my friends have brought me countless nights of joy. These forms of media have helped me to see new perspectives, become more creative, find out more about myself and what I want to become and they have utterly amused and fascinated me. For me it’s undeniable that I love media, but in some ways, I didn’t like the dependency media creates.
I remember that I lost my phone about a year ago. First it felt kind of liberating to not have the constant urge to check my phone or to waste time on endless scrolling. When it became weekend, I started to struggle. It was extremely difficult to make plans with friends and communicate with family, I realised how important my phone and social media were to my live. I started to feel kind of lost on how to socialize without my phone, I still had my laptop which gave me some options to communicate with the people I knew, but since I mostly use Whatsapp, Snapchat and Instagram to talk to friends online and these things didn’t work on my laptop without conformation from my phone, I started to feel really left out. When I finally got a new phone, I was very delighted and it turned out I hadn’t actually missed much over the weekend.
This made me feel like a fool, I felt so lost for a couple of days, just because I didn’t have a phone and I became aware how dependent I had become.  After thinking it through I realise it doesn’t really matter how incomplete I felt without my phone, I absolutely love media and it’s a big part of my life and everyones lives, so its only natural to feel somewhat lost after missing such an intimate and integral item of that part of my live.

14004011

When I as an international student think of the media and especially social media, I feel many mixed emotions. On the other hand It gives me comfort, a warm touch to my home country and a way to keep up with the life of my close ones there. On the other hand it creates a demanding , almost scary pressure wave over me. The most interesting thing is that the parts of media that give me and many others a lot of anxiety and pressure , meaning for example popular platforms like instagram, are completely optional. Still the connection and fellowship are an invincible resource to a young human like myself. Many would not even dream about deleting that part of their life, would anything even exist if we would not be able to post about it or not be able to get acquainted with it just a few clicks. 

As said, the social media is a contradictory subject, and for me it’s impossible to evaluate if it brings more negative or positive effects to my everyday life. Still I could not even think that I would have had the guts to move far away from my hometown, if I wouldn’t have had the access to find about my future country or studies online through media devices.

Student ID: 14039036

There is no need to romanticise my relationship to media, i am just as addicted as everyone else. But for now it gives me a lot of joy. Being able to share music, thoughts, art, memes, profiling yourself with a concept just the way you want it to be (even if its fake) feels absolute great, not going to lie, but even better is consuming it all. Getting lost in endless access to almost every piece of information (or personal opinions stated as facts, who is even able to tell the difference anymore), illegally streaming every damn movie or series on this planet, deep stalking the new girlfriend of your ex, online shopping for hours, watching stupid compilations of drunk people doing weird stuff, being shocked by the accuracy of algorithms and the more or less personalised ads they produce (look, this key-chain-sanitizerbottle-holder is just what i needed!). The possibilities are infinite. But who knows how this will affect us in a few years, what will it be like when we get old? Will we still post instagram stories from the retirement home? What will this do to our brains, our bodies? We will all for sure have osteoarthritis in our thumbs from scrolling for 20 hours a day at some point, but what about our mental state? What happens if we drown in consumption? But who knows if we even survive to the point of possible long term damage showing…For now i would just say enjoy it as long as it makes you happy.

But never forget to question it in the end.

Student ID: 13591630

Living a life is all about making choices, so does living in media. We make choices about what clothes are we going to wear today, what food to eat for breakfast, who we are going to hang out with after school… Every decision we make shapes who we are. In other words, we are shaping ourselves by making choices between so many options. In terms of media, it is more like we are programming ourselves, by choosing following what news platform we want to receive daily news for on social media, which key opinion leaders’ posts we want to see when opening Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook. Or more personally, what songs for our playlists, what photos we choose to share on social media, what side of us that we choose to show to the public through media. In the end, the multiple choices we make are not just shaping ourselves, but also the reality we live in. We are making our own matrix. But are those choices really all of them? Are those decisions really made by ourselves? Is all of those choices making us feel in control of our lives just an illusion and the algorithm is what is really behind and takes control? Maybe in media life, we do not really own choices, but unconsciously program ourselves to fit in the reality that someone else provides.
Do I still love media? Yes. It is not about taking back control of our lives from the algorithm, being cynical about living in an illusion that media nowadays created, but realizing what really matters is the human behind the algorithm, humans live in media. The most important part of my love for media is the faith I have in human beings, that we could still make our lives better living in media.

Student number: 13913565

In the early days of people going to workout, there was always this one dude who was always there, giving advice to the newcomers. He wasn’t always right, but he supplied us with knowledge and motivation to not quit. This was my boxing coach, my wrestling or football coach. I no longer take part in organized sports but I still love to go to the gym, without media I would have been lost and would not have stuck to it. Media as in YouTube, Reddit or even Spotify for those PR attempts supplies us with hundreds of “dudes” who make videos and threads on all aspects of lifting to guide newcomers. We are very lucky to live in an age where information is almost too easy to come by.

Henri Tõevere

Student ID:13637959