Pop Culture

Steve Johnson gave a great explanation on what exactly pop culture is and how important it is to learn about it today. In his book, Everything bad is good for you he explains and talks about how pop culture impacts people today and how it technology has effected our world. In the video we watched in class, he tells a story about how he was playing SimCity with his nephew. Immediately his nephew caught on to the game and started telling Steve what he could do to make his "SimCity" better for the people. I think this shows that kids and young adults catch on to things faster if they are interacting rather then sitting in a class room reading a book about it. When Steve was talking about this during his video, it made me think that if kids who are 6-10 years old can learn about Industrial Tax by just watching the SimCity game, how are kids going to be in 20 years? I think the internet and all of technology is going to impact us so much that when we look back in 20 years, we are going to think that we are almost unintelligent today.

NBC nightly

During class this week, we watched NBC nightly news with Brian Williams. There was a lot of news that wasnt all that important and it took up a lot of time during the segment we watched. I think the most important news that was covered was about Susan Rice, the UN Ambassador. Also the weather that effected the west coast was more important too. There was a lot of news that didnt really mean a lot, it was pretty irrelevant. They talked about the Christmas tree, the committee chair men, and about Obama and Romney having a lunch date. Honestly i thought that was sort of funny and totally should not have made the news. I felt like there could have been a different news story they could have covered that would have been way more important then the president and Romney having lunch and trying to decide what to eat.

Generation Impact.

I think the Twilight series and the Harry Potter Series had the biggest impact on our generation. The twilight movies had a bigger impact in the last few years where as Harry Potter was dragged out over the course of like 10 years. Harry potter was more of a magical series i would say too. I feel like Star Wars and Harry Potter were more alike becase there was so much publicity for those movies. Star wars was like the BIG thing and the next big thing was Harry Potter. People went sort of from Star Wars to Harry Potter then to Twilight. there was so much merchandise for the star wars movies and i feel the same way about the harry potter movies too. Ask anyone and they know some what about the Twilight movies or the Harry Potter movies.

Digital Nation

One significant idea of the movie Digital Nation is Living Faster. The internet has changed so much since its been created. Our generation says that it makes it easier for us to multitask but in reality it makes our response time and accuracy slower and makes us more distracted. As i am sitting in my class right now i am listening to my teacher talk and writing this blog but the more i think about it, i couldn't tell you what the teacher said 5 minutes ago because im not concentrating on him as much as im concentrating on writing this blog post. They say the internet is changing the human mind because now supposedly we have an inability to communicate. Kids can do almost anything on the internet because its like they have the 'technology skill' built into their genes at birth. My sister who is 12 years old can do more things on the internet and computer then i can, which is honestly mind blowing to me. I think i am pretty fluent in technology but she can do so much more then i can. Another significant idea has to do with the war. They say the military is blurring the line between real life and virtual reality but I dont think that true at all. Majority of people know the difference between real life war and playing a video game of war. Kids/Teenagers have the ability to move between reality and virtual reality, its just a element of imagination. Some people want to argue that if it looks real and feels real then the brain will think its real. The last significant idea that i have picked is learning. These days its normal for kids to have their own laptop in the school setting. Schools are changing to a 1:1 Laptop Initiative, which means each student would get their own laptop to use as an educational tool. Kids know what is expected of them and how they are expected to act. Technology today is like oxygen to kids, they cant live without the internet. Violence is down but attendance and test scores are up. People cant deny technology, they have to embrace it. If they dont keep up with technology even a little bit, they will fall behind completely.

This week we watched Football High and it was about how high school football is getting so intense that players still will play even if they are hurt. This leads to the example "you gotta play hurt." In the whole video it showed how players play even though they are hurt (head concussion, heat stroke.) One player who ran off the field after getting hurt yelling to his athletic trainer that he was fine and wanted to play even though he had a concussion. "Fight on to victory" is another example because football players will play till the end as hard as they can because they simply dont want to lose. “The enemy is inferior; so learn how to exploit their weaknesses.” When the other team notices that a players leg is hurt for example, they are going to make sure they keep hurting that same leg over and over again.

Advertising

Killbourne talked about issues within advertising and how women are portrayed. In this ad that i have posted, you cant really tell what the are trying to sell. If the Victoria Secret logo was not shown, you would have never known that this as was trying to sell underwear. Women that are shown in ads are supposed to look like they are a flawless. In this ad the girl has absolutely nothing wrong with her. She is a Victoria Secret Angel. Angels are beautiful, stunning and flawless. This is what young girls look at and try to be. I've heard many people that i know say that they want to be skinnier, prettier etc. Even the body language of this girl shows her being silent or meant to be quiet.

assignment #2

This past week, we learned about pamela anderson and marilyn monroe and how they are major sex symbols. I think these two sex symbols do effect our society because people strive to be like them, they think thats how people today should look and act. It impacts how kids feel about themselves growing up and effects how they think they should act in society. We also learned about porn and how its different today then it was in the past. Kids have very easy access to porn now when before kids had to wait to figure things out. I think having easy access to porn makes kids think that they should start having sex earlier then they should be. magazines, tv and advertising use sexual imagery a lot because they think it attracts more people to the item or the tv show. Sexual imagery is used in pretty much everything these days and i think it is an effective way to sell a product because it does bring more people to look at the product and potentially buy it.