Follow Up To Online Disinhibitation

Thinking over everything that was stated...it's definatly something to think about. But, I think I will stick with the life that I have in the world. Away from my keyboard. Sometimes you have to accept that you can't take away all the bad from your life and you were mad the way you were. There is a reason for that. There is only one you, you can't spend your life being something that you aren't.

Online Disinhibitation

  This theory is about the fact that when people are online they feel as if they are invisible, like their true identity is a secret. In a way that is very true. You can start a Facebook online and pull the pictures from  someone else's profile. It's very simple to do and I know a couple people that have fake ones to spy on people. There is a growing need to be 'invisible' online though, for instance people feel the need to be anonymous when they are giving true feedback to something like a blog, book, or song. There is a website called Second Life where it allows it's users (who remain completely anonymous) to create basically a second life online. They can be from anywhere and have whatever personality they so chose. These people never have to meet face-to-face, they just have to have conversations online. It's easier for people to hide behind a keyboard and pretend to be someone else. People who do things like this generally don't have a huge social life besides work and family. This usually stems from people's social anxiety or dislike of being around new or large groups of people.
   When people post things online they have the luxury of reading and not reading whatever they want. Making things out to be exactly what they want, there is almost a complete control over things. For instance, if you post a picture and you get a couple positive comments and a couple negative you can delete all the negative ones and act like they never happened. It's really that easy. For most people this is extremely appealing. Think about it..you'd be able to control everything online. You could make yourself out to be someone you want and delete all the negative feedback so you look like the best person in the world. You could make yourself out to be so popular whereas in real life you aren't that lucky. It's something to think about. Complete control? Remake your life? It's tempting, but for some people this is the way their life really is.
 

Follow up to Encoding and Decoding

After taking a drive all the way from Orlando FL to Boston MA my boyfriend and I have had a lot of billboards to look at and radio commercials to decipher. The billboard that I remember most was when we were sitting in traffic in the Bronx, it was a billboard for a mattress company. The billboard said something comical about needing sleep and I just looked at it and thought to myself that yes people do need sleep. Well, my boyfriend laughed and asked me if I understood the irony of that billboard and then he explained that we are in the city that never sleeps and there shouldn't be any need for a mattress company. That's just one example of all the different ways that you can look at a billboard and come to different conclusions. I would suggest getting opinions from friends about billboards, commercials, etc. to help you and them understand media on a deeper level.

Encoding and Decoding

    Encoding and Decoding theory states that people who create media create it with an intended message. The creator encodes it in whatever media he chooses and then the consumer is left to decode what the message is. I believe that this theory is most defiantly valid in my field of work. I've seen this all the time in media. There are instances where I don't get what the billboard or the TV commercial is talking about but maybe the person next to me does. It is also very possible to decode a message in the wrong way, to have a completely different idea from what that original creator was talking about. This has happened to me before.
    What are some examples of you misunderstanding an artists intended message? I know that I didn't understand the commercial with the Toyota Venza for a while. I didn't understand why she was talking about how many friends her parents had on Facebook I thought that she was talking about how she got her parents to go out and hangout with people by having a lot of friends on Facebook. I finally understood what the commercial was about when I was sitting with my parents watching TV. My mom explained that the parents were in fact living and the daughter wasn't living.
   

Follow Up

So in my blog that I posted earlier I talked about the Cultivation Theory. Basically, this theory states that people that watch a lot of TV have an altered sense of reality. I believe that this theory is true based on the analysis that I posted along with it. As I continue to go through my Media and Society class at Full Sail I and beginning to realize that people watch to much reality TV all together.

Cultivation Theories

   This is a theory that states that media shapes how we view the world. To an extent I believe that to be true. How many times do you see a friend watch a TV show and then believe everything that they have seen to be true? I've seen it a couple times even with myself. It's easy to fall into a trap like that when you like what you see. After watching all of these reality TV shows and such you begin to believe that life is like that. I have a friend that has maxed out a lot of credit cards to make herself and her closet resemble Kim Kardashian. After I introduced her to the show she fell in love and insisted that she had to look like then. This girl works three jobs just to try to keep up. While I will admit watching a show like that really makes a girl jealous I realize that with the amount of money I make and given all my circumstances I will not be looking like that any time soon. I grew up watching reality TV and I will admit there where times when I expected things to be handed to me. My dad had to sit down with me and go over things that didn't grow on trees and things that I would be responsible for when I moved out. It's a shocking thing to be shown.
   There are people out there in the world that go to extremes to be something they aren't people get plastic surgery to look more like the people they idel. Sometimes I think they there should be a limit on how much reality TV you can watch in one day, but then all those TV executives wouldn't make all their money.
    Sometimes I think that people live on their own worlds. Where everything revolves around them. Those people that are always late because they are on their own time. The people that think that everyone should be watching them. You know the people that watch to many reality TV shows and just assume that the hotter they look the more likely they are to be picked up by a network that wants to make their face famous or better yet the people that think that that Brad Pitt would drop Angelina to date them. Those people drive me crazy but the more I read the quote at the bottom of this paragraph the more that I just let them be. Everyone has a different view and a different opinion. You just have to accept it and move on because at the end of the day your perception of realty is drastically different than mine.
“Everything you see or hear or experience in any way at all is specific to you. You create a universe by perceiving it, so everything in the universe you perceive is specific to you.” – Douglas Adams