Socially awkward or Socially pleased

Social media is something that I have always been active on. Being eighteen I basically grew up around it in every corner. I got my first Facebook account in sixth grade and I remember how addicting it was. The constant validation made me feel better about myself at that point in time. Little by little as I grew up I realized how much of my confidence relied on other people and at the beginning of my tenth grade year in high school I took a break and started working on myself. Fast forward now being a freshman in college I rarely post on social media. It is actually very self pleasing that I do not need that sort of validation in my life anymore.

Social media tends to affect people’s mental health in many ways whether it is good or bad. Some people see social media as a way to just keep up with the rest of the world like friends, family, and current events. Others see it as a wormhole that nobody should be a part of due to how exposing it can be. I personally see both sides of the situation but I am biased towards social media being good for us. I use social media for entertainment, communication, and as an immediate news resource.There is a documentary on Netflix called “The Social Dilemma” which is about how our phones use our recent searches and cookies on our devices to show us things that would attract us. Have you ever looked something up on Google and then minutes or days later while scrolling on Instagram or Facebook you see an ad about exactly what you looked up? That is the social media algorithm just doing its work collecting our information and selling it to try and keep us in a constant loop. My question is how do you feel about your personal information being used and being used and sold just for a few clicks?

Although social media violates your privacy you know what you are signing up for when you install the application and create an account. Whatever you decide to post, share, or comment is all on you so how much complaining can people do before realizing they are not forced to share so much information. What you post on social media is your decision to stop blaming the algorithm for using your information and just read the terms and services before signing up if that is what you would like to do.

When it comes to this class it was kind of a love hate relationship. The class all in all was interesting and certain topics we covered had me wanting to learn more. I loved that we covered the history and nostalgia of certain topics but I wish that we just had a bit more time in the semester to cover some of the present aspects of all these media. This course was the latest class on my schedule. It was hard for me to get out of my bed to come to class but every time I did it was definitely worth the while.

Is the internet really as unsafe as we think?

The Internet is a very broad topic to place a finger on but maybe that’s the point. My whole life has been around the internet. It is hard to imagine my life without it, people say that too much internet consumption will rot your brain. I say the more the better, there is so much information and entertainment to be gained from the internet but there is also a lot of things that are just completely messed up. 

One of my first big experiences on the internet was YouTube. I would sit down and stare at my phone for hours non-stop. It was just so entertaining and interesting. When I was younger I was not allowed to play the game Grand Theft Auto. So what I used to do is watch YouTube videos of other people playing the game just to get the thrill and excitement I could not get from playing the game. I also enjoy watching twitch streams especially gaming ones or even just funny ones like some podcasts I have seen before. We all have things that we love watching on YouTube and social media but what about the videos we want to see but cannot. This dates me back to the week we did on censorship in movies and still makes me question why are we not able to choose exactly what we want to see. Do you think we should be able to censor our own feeds on our internet platforms?  

One of my favorite ways to consume the internet is through online gaming. I was never much of a gamer but I remember when Fortnite first became popular and my cousin talked me into playing the game after I spent months trashing the game because I thought it was not interesting. When he finally convinced me to play with him once I thought it was amazing. I would play video games with him for hours and it was a bonding moment for us since he lives in Florida and I lived in Rochester. From Fortnite I went to play NBA 2K online to Call of Duty and many others. Online gaming has brought me so much entertainment and joy, do you have any connection like this with gaming or anything else?

We all know the internet is not the safest place on earth with constant catfishes, scammers and frauds. I do not see how people can do online dating. Sites like tinder, bumble are sites that personally I do not see how people can put their trust in a person that you do not know in person without video calling or actually knowing the person is actually who they say they are. Apart from all the bad experiences I have seen other people have, I have also seen good experiences with online dating. I have seen people not only true love but also true friendship. I personally have online friends that I have never met before in person that I have made great connections with on a level that I do not have with people I know in real life. But there is always a thought in my head that what if the person you thought was someone ends up being a completely different person. Do you think online dating and friendships are healthy and why?

Just your average FAN-tastic Blog

Throughout this week I have been thinking to myself and questioning, are my passions for certain healthy things? I consider myself a fan of many things like artists, actors, superheroes but I do not see myself as a “super fan”. By super fan I mean a fan that revolves their life around a certain obsession they have on something. We all have seen scenarios where a fan confronts an actor about a movie that they took a little to personal and are imprinting on their everyday life, or musician being rushed by a fan and giving that fan a small bit of attention and they run with it take it to the next level like claiming a friendship or lying about something that did not happen.

It can be argued that belonging to fandom can be a distraction from a bad situation or a delusion that makes you unstable. I personally say that it depends on how passionate and obsessed you are with the person or thing. But overall I think that more positive things can come out of a long-term fandom than negative. We tend to make relationships with things that give us most comfort like how some people see books or movies as an escape or others see music as a therapy. I believe that being a fan is almost the same thing, being a fan is just familiarizing yourself with something that brings you comfort or just makes you joyful. 

Evolving yourself in a fandom can show you how far you have come as a person. It allows you to make memories based on certain events that you liked or disliked. For example growing up I was a fan of Disney and Pixar movies like many other kids. It just brought entertainment and joy to my young brain. Often I would not know what was going on in the movie because I would lack focus and knowledge to fully understand the plot. Now as a young adult when I watch some of these movies I loved as a child I understand so much more from the plot and conflict to the not so well hidden adult jokes that I was so oblivious to. In other words it is a way to see how you have matured or how you are still the same.

The media of being a fan is something that takes a lot of passion, there is a difference between liking and finding something interesting and being an absolute fan and being obsessed with it. As a fan of many things myself I say we do whatever makes us happy as long as we do not hurt anybody. I have heard people say you should not wrap yourself around things that are not true. I say we make our own decisions on what we want to take seriously and what we do not. We are all aware of our actions and entitled to our own opinions so how bad can it truly be to wrap yourself in a make belief story when it is not harmful to anyone?

Here’s Christian with his beliefs on News Networks, Take it away Christian

The news is definitely something that I am not super familiar with. I have little clue about what it takes to build a story or even how certain stories get approved and some do not. The Newsroom made a great dramatic reenactment of what actually happens behind the camera and in the back rooms of a news station. The Newsroom was honestly not my particular thing to watch on television but it was actually very intriguing seeing all the drama and conflicts that happened throughout the show and honestly made me want to watch more which I plan on doing.

After watching the newsroom it made me wonder if newsrooms are actually like this in the world we live in now. It seems like a slow and inefficient process to get valuable and reliable information. With the introduction of news networks cable news may actually fall in popularity but what I believe is more capable of happening is that news will not be live. With networks being in the picture will news stations consider recording the news like any other television show or movies and then uploading an edited version of what was just recorded. I actually do not think this would be a good idea because it ruins the way we get our news when it is live. There is little room for mistakes and a lot of room to make adjustments in the middle of the broadcast such as we get our breaking news.

I wonder what current news broadcast would be most popular if all channels were to convert to streaming networks. But how will this affect the network? We all know each news broadcast has their own beliefs in politics and many other things. Will this lower or raise numbers for those networks after being tagged with a specific political belief. I think that if this were to happen numbers would for sure fall because the thing with cable news is that once you pay for the cable you get more than one news channel for one price. With streaming networks you would have to pay multiple amounts to get different points of view on one topic. This will most likely cause republicans to buy republican biased news networks and democrats to buy democratic biased networks.

I personally do not watch the news. I get most of my information on the world nowadays from social media and a few google searches after that. I also do not have cable back home. Everything is mostly streaming services. I think that news stations starting their own networks would crash and burn like CNN plus. I think they should try and partner with an already successful streaming network and evolve from there. This ties back to the point I made about political standpoints. Will streaming services like Peacock, Paramount, HULU and more be able to open their platform to news broadcasts that get constant hate from opposite political believers. If you were in charge of any streaming platform would you partner with a news broadcast in risk of the hate you might receive? Do you think cable news can rule for longer than they have or do you think eventually news networks will rise up?

Musica de La Isla del Encanto (Music from the Island of Enchantment)

We all love a good song and have our own favorite genre and style of music. Well being bilingual I have been blessed with the ability to listen to music in English and Spanish. I honestly enjoy listening to music in Spanish more than English simply because it is my first language and it reminds me of home. I was born in Guayama,Puerto Rico and lived there for the first seven years of my life. You would think that since I was so young I would not remember much which is kind of true but one thing I will never forget is waking up at my grandparents house and instantly hearing Salsa and smell breakfast cooking. 

Salsa is a genre of music constructed by many instruments like guitars, trumpets, congas and many more. Though salsa originated in Cuba as well as in Puerto Rico it holds a special place in my heart as well as many other Puerto Ricans. One of the most global salsa artists from Puerto Rico is Marc Anthony  though he was born in New York both his parents were born in Puerto Rico. In my opinion when I hear the name Marc Anthony I cannot deny that he is an amazing artist but he is not what I imagine when I think about Puerto Rican Salsa. Artists like Hector Lavoe, Willie Colon, Ismael Rivera and many other talented artists that my parents used to force me to listen to but now I appreciate. Hector Lavoe’s career started as a vocalist in Willie Colon’s band. He was of course making music before this he was very popular not only in Puerto Rico but also in New York. He was one of the first bug names from Puerto Rico to make music in New York which is shown in the movie “El Cantante” where the actor who plays him is none other than fellow Salsa musician which in Spanish we refer to as “salsero” Marc Anthony.

Salsa is not the only native genre of music born in Puerto Rico there is also a very lively and dance worthy genre called Bomba. Bomba consists of maracas, cua, and a Bomba barrel. The cua is one of the most simple instruments to play and my personal favorite to play whenever I go to Puerto Rico during Christmas and we gather around and sing and play music outside. The cua consists of two wooden sticks that you smack together to the rhythm of the song being played. Plena is also another genre that usually goes hand in hand with Bomba because of how similar they are. A noticeable difference is the instruments Plena uses such as the guitar, accordion, saxophone, and the cuatro which is a kind of guitar but smaller. Since the two kinds of music are so similar they are usually referred to as just Bomba y Plena this can be seen in festivals and parades where the dancers, who are usually women, wear a two piece set that looks like a dress where they swing the skirt around while they dance.

All these genres are amazing and unique in their own way but my favorite of all is Reggaeton. Reggaeton is a Caribbean genre of music that evolved from reggae adding a very repetitive beat that can be heard in almost every song in the genre. Reggaeton is probably the most popular genre of music to be born in Puerto Rico with artists like Daddy Yankee, Don Omar, Bad Bunny. Artist Don Omar was featured in the movie The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift, with his hit single alongside Tego Calderon “Bandolero”. When I first watched the movie I heard the song and was so confused because why was an american movie playing Spanish music on its soundtrack. That was one of the very first times in my life where I realized that music is an art no matter the language it can be felt and understood in ways that are unimaginable. Daddy Yankee to some is arguably the best Reggeaton artist of all time, in my opinion I believe that he is hands down the best Reggeaton artist of all time. He often rapped about struggles that certain people go through in their everyday lives whether that be being involved in the violent and dangerous street life or just having fun and enjoying life. Daddy Yankee opened the door for many artists that I enjoy listening to today such as one of the hottest artists in the entire world right now Bad Bunny. From Vega Baja, Puerto Rico Bad Bunny is the most streamed artist on Spotify as of right now with 62,172,025 monthly listeners. Bad Bunny is the current talk of the industry which makes me think if any other Puerto Rican artist can reach his level of success. Do you enjoy listening to music that is not in English? 

SOURCES

https://www.discoverpuertorico.com/article/guide-to-music-puerto-rico

https://www.latinorebels.com/2022/04/05/legendaddy/

Lights Camera Action?

Everyone knows and loves the feeling of going to watch a new movie with all that built up anticipation with some nice popcorn and a nice cold soda. Us as viewers do not see all that leads to the actual release of a movie and all the steps it takes to direct and act in it but also all the guidelines a movie must follow just to try and reach as much success as possible. But when a movie is directly correct and has no issues during and before its release it can truly be something amazing.

The MPAA is the association in charge of censoring movies and making sure movies abide by their code of conduct. In the film we watched in class “This film is not yet rated” films were rated by an anonymous group of people which I think is very biased and unfair. It restricts viewers from what we actually want to see or what we do not want to see. Directors and writers are also on a leash on what topics they can actually cover directly without having to try and find ways to say something meaningful in a way that wont get them in trouble. I do not think movie censorship should not be as strict because film is a form of art and speech and it in a way kind of violates our first amendment right to have freedom of speech  

How good a movie is really just based on what the viewer likes or dislikes. My opinion I do not watch many movies unless they are high action or I personally find it interesting. Which is probably how we all judge, but there are movies that are majorly loved across the world. A movie I can easily think of that we talked about in class is JAWS. I have seen the movie only a couple times but the few times I have seen it I can see how influential the film was to the movie that came after and how Spielberg grew and was shot into stardom from it. 

Going into this blog this week I thought I did not know many movies made in the late sixties and the seventies, but while doing a little extra research I realized I knew a lot of movies that I like. Movies like Rocky, Halloween, The exorcist and a couple of other films. One film that stood out to me from this time was Bonnie and Clyde which was one of the very first American violent films. 

 After writing this week in class I actually had to fight the urge to watch some classic movies instead of doing my homework, Which brings me to the question: is there a movie that every time you see that it is on you have to watch it and why? Do you think the movie industry now is at a good place and if not what do you think they should do to satisfy more viewers and why?

Grab the Popcorn

Hollywood was not always what it is now, what was a place of excitement and dreams and now it is more a place of scams and greed. I am not a huge expert on film but I can tell when something big is going on and how much impact it has had or can have on the world we live in. 

This week in class I saw how simple the world used to be compared to what it is now. Thomas Edison’s “The Black Maria” was honestly fascinating to see how they used a studio with an open ceiling just to have natural light. The films shot inside the black maria were so simple like the kiss, it is crazy to see how something that nowadays we find so simple like a kiss was a thing people paid to watch. It was also very interesting to see how creative people can be with just what they have. The problem with the black maria would have been how do you follow the sun to get maximum lighting for filming. The studio was put on a track to be turned to follow the sun therefore getting as much sunlight as possible which to me is absolutely brilliant.

Thomas Edison and the black maria were all in the US but they did have competition in France known as the Lumiere brothers. They were known for going out and capturing a regular day in the life of things which honestly is not very special but it is a way to capture a memory of how things were in the past to be compared to how they are now. They were also known for the film a trip to the moon. This era of Film was a lot of back and forth between the US and France but ended up back in the US with the birth of the five major movie studios.

Before Hollywood became the big scene for film and entertainment there was New York. But as we see now and learned in class, actors, producers and companies migrated west to the California area. Which was beneficial for its weather, free space but to me most importantly to escape their parent companies. With companies moving west to get away from their parent companies we saw the birth of the five major studios MGM, FOX, RKO, Paramount, and Warner Bros. There were also the three minor studios known as Universal, Columbia, and United Artists. With the success of these eight studios also came a downfall known as the Paramount Decision, a lawsuit on how there were corporations illegally fixing films and monopolizing the distribution of films. I am not big on movies and their background of what it came from but it was interesting once again to see what the world has evolved from and what it is now from how low it used to be.

Do you think that you would enjoy films how they were back then or do you think it is a little too out of date for you?

Skip ad in 5,4,3,2,1

Advertising to me is a love hate relationship. Being a marketing major that sounds absolutely insane in my brain but I feel like certain advertisements like commercials, and posters are not as creative now as they once were. Nowadays everything to do with advertisements is social media whether it may be on Tik Tok or Instagram or any other platform it is all repetitive and annoying that it is pretty easy to just click “skip ad” on a YouTube video or just scroll right past it. 

Advertising is quite literally everywhere though not just on social media it is in music, comics, posters on the street and more. Personally, the most effective way for a commercial to speak to me is if it is full of life and colors with a catchy tune or a really creative slogan. Commercials like that just make me instantly think about the company and I will randomly just sing the tune around the house or the dorm because it was so catchy. A specific commercial I can think of is the Reese’s Puffs commercial where the kid was just rapping and I thought that was so cool and catchy and it made me try Reese’s Puffs for the first time, though I did not like them the commercial did its job.

As we all know advertising is not just commercials there are also events with companies and partnerships that can sometimes be very interesting. An event that I always think about is when McDonald’s partnered with rapper Travis Scott and introduced the “Travis Scott Meal” which was really popular due to how popular of an artist Travis Scott is. Another example that I personally remember is when singer Summer Walker was going to release her album “Still Over It” in late 2021 her marketing team put several copies of a hard drive in various cities in a bulletproof  glass box. The challenge was to take the pink hammer that was set up with the box and try to smash the box to get early access to the album. Both of these are tactics that personally worked for me and had me intrigued to buy the McDonald’s meal or listen to the album. 

Streaming services were a great way to get away from ads while trying to watch television. With advertisements literally being everywhere now on certain platforms like HULU and peacock you have to pay extra on your subscription just to not receive ads. Ads are usually very annoying especially when you get a double set of ads on a YouTube video and they both can’t be skipped. The Superbowl ads are usually amazing and have a lot of thought to them makes me wish all ads were like this. Which brings me to these questions: what is your favorite Superbowl ad if you have one? Do you think if ads had more thought into them and actually tried to speak to you personally you would be less likely to skip them? Enjoy a couple of my favorite commercials.

Let’s Binge the 80’s

Television has come a long way from what we call “box TV’s” to flat screens, from black and white to color TV’s. We all love watching television but these past two weeks I have been learning a lot I did not know about television and its background. Last we covered the sixties and seventies this week covered more on the eighties. Still not knowing much about television from this era I can compare it to certain experiences I have had which shows and movies I have see now

Dallas is a show that first aired in 1978 a soap opera that had everyone tuned in to the next episode because of their cliff hangers. “Who shot J.R” was the most famous and impactful cliffhanger of all of them. Who shot J.R had everyone at the edge of their seats trying to “solve” the crime. Which reminds me a lot of the cliffhanger when Avengers Infinity War first came out and the villain of the movie won and beat the heroes and had to wait a full year to figure out how the heroes were gonna fix everything and get their revenge. Dallas was a gateway to all the other shows that came after when people really got even more into television and its TV series.

Hill street blues was a cop show from 1981 in a big city that had a great mix of drama and comedy. Though when it first aired numbers weren’t amazing it still inspired shows like The Sopranos. The Cosby Show was also a big thing in the eighties, sitcoms were not a new thing to television around this time it was one of the pioneer shows for a predominantly black cast for a television show, alongside with “A Different World”. 

Television series were not the only thing that was popular at the time sports had a very big thing going on with the Los Angeles Lakers and the Boston Celtics. Playing each other three times in the NBA Finals throughout the years 1983-1987, Larry Bird and the Boston Celtics won one of the three match ups while Magic Johnson and the Los Angeles Lakers bested them the other two times they faced each other. This feud between both teams grew to something unimaginable. The hatred these both teams had for each other was something that you could feel through the screen. The eighties were also the rise of Mike Tyson by the end of 1986 he had won a total of thirteen fights and eleven of them were won by knockout.

MTV made a huge appearance in the eighties being a television channel where you could just sit and watch music videos all day long. Which really shows how times have changed since then. You used to be able to turn on MTV and listen and watch artists like Madonna and Guns N’ Roses. Nowadays you turn on MTV and it’s close to impossible to try and find any music video of sorts. Which brings me to my question in which time period of television would have rather grown up in the eighties or whichever era you group up watching as a kid and a teenager?

Behind the Fourth Wall

This week in class we covered the “classic” era of television. We covered Rod Serling and his success in screenwriting with “The Twilight Zone”. A show I personally have seen much of just a few episodes but was a big hit back in late fifties and early sixties influencing sci-fi shows such as Black Mirror, Futurama and many other shows. Some may say the “classic” era of television is the best television that has ever been produced. I cannot comment on that much because I do not know much about it.  

The seventies documentary we watched was actually very interesting and had made me look up a couple things about that era so I could be better informed. The seventies television was held by three major channels ABC, NBC, CBS. 

CBS had shows like “Taxi” and “Happy Days”. Both being under the genre of sitcoms running for a combined number of sixteen seasons, five from “Taxi” and eleven from “Happy Days”. These sitcoms were pioneers for some of very popular shows like “The Office”, “Friends”, “That 70s Show” and other beloved shows. 

NBC had a huge hit in the seventies with “Saturday Night Live” (SNL). The first episode of SNL was aired in 1975 a somewhat new way of television SNL was shot in front of a live audience. I personally love this kind of filming because it leaves little to no room for mistakes. This raw form of acting is very entertaining for the fact that if a mistake is made actors would improvise on the spot to cover up their mistakes. It was also a show that was not all about jokes and laughs but would often touch real current events in a serious and comedic way. 

Television back then was not just for adults and teenagers. With shows like “Sesame Street” and “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” in the late sixties television would draw the attention of kids also. Both shows were meant for teaching kids different things. “Sesame Street” would focus on academic skills for children. While “Mr. Rodgers’ Neighborhood” would be more centered on social and emotional skills for them. 

HBO also had its upcoming release in the seventies, specifically 1972. Though introduced in 1972 HBO had a big break in 1975 being the first american network to deliver programming via satellite with the championship boxing match of Muhammad Ali vs Joe Frazier.

The seventies are not really my strong suit when it comes to television because obviously was not even thought of around the time and it also never really peaked my interest but after this week I am interested in going back and watching some of these shows and see how time has changed now. My question to you is if you know about the era what are some shows that you would recommend? Do you think television was better back then or is it better now and why? What new show or shows do you think would be more popular back then compared to how popular they are now?