LOGGING OFF: MEDIA REFLECTION

I enjoyed the Critical thinking class substantially more than I thought I would this semester, largely in part because while working through the ways we think and interact with the world and media around us we were able to connect what we learned in class to our everyday encounters with media.

Like I originally thought I did in my first post on my interaction with media I would say that I still consume a large and quite possibly unhealthy amount of media.  I believe that this media fuels dissatisfaction within me as I am constantly exposed to more products or experiences that I feel as thought I need to have to be content.   These are usually in the form of advertisements but can also be seen through friend's social media posts of cool trips or activities.

Through this semester I have been able to realize the manipulative ways in which companies try to seduce me as a consumer, and often I find it funny to decode the advertisements and the significance of where they are placed whether on a certain television store or in a certain area of town on a billboard.  Yet while I can recognize when media is attempting to manipulate me, in the end if I see an advertisement for an item I really want a commercial will only remind me of my desire for that object, ingraining my "need" for it into my head.  I do not think that I will ever be able to avoid my desire as a human living in our world today for some sort of object.

One of the most important lessons I learned over this past semester was one that was hard to admit for myself, the idea that brands and companies can provide more than they are selling.  Though it was almost subconscious after analyzing ads and thinking why certain brands appeal to me.  I would be lying to myself if I said that I didn't associate dignity health with human kindness, or Coca-Cola with togetherness.  Though I originally thought I could outsmart ads, I began to realize that I did in-fact associate athletic superiority with nike, even if a large amount of people wear their high performance athletic clothing for sitting on the couch and watching a marathon of TV versus actually running a marathon.  Seeing a brand for simply the product the are selling was an important part of my learning this semester, and is going to help me become a smarter consumer, by not allowing myself to be manipulated in the future.

Through keeping this log I was able to reflect on my experiences with the media in my own life and within the classroom through various documentaries that dissected media culture.  This was a very import aspect of my learning because it forced my to think and put into words the way I saw media and media trends through my own perspective.  Critically thinking has been a great class, and I feel like I am a more aware consumer of media and the products and cultural ideas it attempts to sell to us.