Why I Heart My Media

Hi everyone,

My name is Yordi Eimers, 21 years old and I have an addiction, a media addiction. But don’t judge me, because you are an addict as well and I will explain to you why we are all (a little) addicted to media.

First of all, I don’t have to be a psychic to know that the closest thing to you right now is either your laptop or your phone. Sad isn’t it? We are all living in social media rather you like it or not. We are producing and consuming media the whole day through. We are even consumed by it, because Research by Emarketer tells us that we are willing to use 12 hours of our time in media on an average daily base. But why are we so obsessed by it?

In my opinion,  we use media a lot because there seem to be no rules at all. You can post whatever you like on social media. I think that this feeling of freedom really appeals to us.  Furthermore, you are in absolute control of your account. You decide what you post. You can create a whole new version of yourself online and that is okay. You can create a version of you that you can’t be in real life. You can be the perfect version of yourself. Social media gives you the power to bend reality. I mean that you can post pictures of yourself on Instagram and pretend to be extremely happy and pretend that you are having the best night ever. But you are actually feeling like sh!t.

In addition, the likes, the shares and favorites, on our comments on social media just make us feel good. I think it makes us feel loved and who doesn’t want to be loved? I do and I guess you do too. Also, we post pictures of us on social media, not only because you want to show the world that you had fun last weekend. Nope, we post this so people can compliment us. We just post pictures of ourselves to feed our egos.

So, we use media for 12 hours a day on a daily base, but we think we only use it for like 4 hours a day. We don’t even notice the amount of time we spend on media, because everyone around us does have the same media consuming behaviour. I think that speaks for itself of how problematic this is. Media isn’t officially a disorder, because it isn’t categorized as one in the psychiatrists’ bible, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). More research is needed, before they can officially categorize this complex disorder.  In 2012 psychiatrists  denied the entrance of the internet disorder into the DSM IV. Looks like they are denying their disorder up until today.

I am going to be honest with you. the actual assignment of this blogpost was to write about why we love media. But I think it is much more than love. I think we are consumed by media and therefore we can’t live without it. Just like a heroine addict can’t live without his heroine.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I believe that taking media life can open your eyes – pun intended – to all of the media that we consume on a regular basis. Before taking this course, I was so unaware of how much media controlled my life. Now – I find myself searching for what is real and taking advantage of the moments in my life that do not involve media. While media isn’t something to necessarily fear, I believe that we should be aware of it. If we are not aware of media, we can often lose sight of what is real and become extremely immersed in technology. While I LOVE my media and would not be able to communicate with my loved ones without it, I feel that many people spend too much time using media to isolate themselves from the “real” world. By taking this class – I feel that we are all fortunate enough to learn not only a lesson on media – but a lesson on realizing what actually matters in life. You can watch the Notebook 100 times but it will never be as gratifying as falling in love yourself.

Rachel Kaplan

RAKAPLAN@indiana.edu

Okay so not fair because I actually have had a chance to edit my search results before I did this task. I’ve deleted a site that I didn’t want to be found on my google search but obviously I didn’t come empty handed out of this assignment.

So now, who am I. Okay instantly I can find two pictures looking like me but that third one I wouldn’t say looks like me but I guess it could be me when I was young and before plastic surgery?! Searching for more images I can see that there is another Ida Sjöman living in Sweden.

I can find stuff about a crane company which I assume I work in. But this could also be a coincidence just because of my name. There is a facebook profile which I’m pretty sure is mine. Looks like I did BA in Kingston University and Masters degree in Helsinki, I currently live in Helsinki and I’m born 13th of June, year unknown. There’s a twitter account that has not much activity and an instagram account that is being used on a regular  bases. From this instagram account I can find actually pretty much info about my family, boyfriend (I assume), my interests and what my house looks like (I assume that is my house). There is also a Vimeo account with couple of videos that don’t make any sense to me, maybe I’m into digital media!

Okay then there is an open portfolio and from there I can see my work history and education background as well. I can also find an email address. There’s also a linkedin profile that is under my name, there I can see that I have a few professional connections, great!

Funny finding is that I’m actually on IMDb! International movie database, haha maybe I’m an actress after all or some kind of celebrity? Clicking on that I can see that I’ve actually worked for a production company, information also on my online portfolio, and linkedin so no I’m not an actress although it would have been cool.

In the end I’m not that interesting to be honest. There’s noting off or nothing scandalous to find out about me. No drunken photos or anything I could see affecting my future plans to become next Barack Obama.

 

I’m secretly in love with steam…

Z. Ece Sarioglu