Sunday, September 20, 2009

Mass Media in My Life

The media has always been a large part of my life in terms of entertainment and networking. As someone who grew up during the mid nineties/early millennium, the internet was my first introduction into the exciting world of mass media. I remember making my first AOL email account and receiving updates on all kinds of current events, from politics to the entertainment business. However, as is expected of most pre-teens, politics was very low on my list of things to discover. That lack of interest has been fully nurtured by a society who no longer believes in discretion or privacy; Any opportunity that presented itself to me to learn about the more important things going on in the world, was overshadowed by celebrity gossip that was made to look ten times more entertaining than any breaking news that was reported. Unfortunately, that bias toward gossip, instead of factual information, has created some pretty horrific tendencies. For example, in stead of starting my homework at 7 (as I had planned), I looked up celebrity reactions to the Kanye West VMA disaster. Some might say, because of observation alone, that mass media is very important to me, but I see it as just another vice that has become apart of all the other things I do throughout the day: sleep, eat, workout, check E! news for any celebrity gossip. It doesn't help that the majority of my educational obligations require a computer as I am, for the most part, an internet consumer. Thus because it is so much apart of my everyday routine, I would have to call myself an expert.