Tetris Forever is both a game and a documentary
25 minutes ago
Sunday, August 15, 2010
Media Drug
Postman makes many interesting points throughout his book, but the one that really sticks with me is how we can let our opinions be run by the media. Lots of people believe that they are extremely individual with their own thoughts, opinions and ideas, but really how much of an indivdual can you be if so much of our lives are influenced greatly by that big magic picture box in the living room. True, now reading Postman's very plotless novel we can begin to form our own opinions without the influence of the media and daily entertainment, but how long have we all been under the influence? Can we really bounce off of our media drug so fast? Postman's novel makes the reader think about how truly easy it is to manipulate the mind with the news of the the day, but with our selected news(that in truth is extremely unimportant) we can not really help being influenced unless we live in a completely media free environment (almost impossible). Being controlled by the media is in no way a good thing, but can we really help it?
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Frankly, no, I don't believe we can help being influenced by today's media. It's hard to find something that is completely yourself nowadays, and we are so influenced by the media that it's even hard for us to form our very own thoughts sometimes. However, I don't believe we are completely controlled, because even though we are influenced, we can still decide if something is really cool or if something is a complete waste of time all on our own, even if the opinions of our media are in our minds. There still might be a chance that we are not all brainwashed robots.
ReplyDeleteAdding to what Mraz said, it's hard not to be influenced by what's around us. And, media happens to be a very big "something". Sometimes we don't even know we are directly being influenced when companies use subliminal messages and other forms of hidden advertising. We also follow trends that the media presents because it serves as an advertisement, making us want to buy what we see. Being of the technological generation, media and technology are what we know, so it's hard not to be controlled by it.
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