Nicole's Notebook

Before this semester, I never really realized or acknowledged how much media has impacted my life, and the messages that have come with it. I, sadly, consume a lot of media whether it be Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube or Netflix. This made me susceptible to the many messages that went along with this. Sometimes when I get bored I scroll through the Instagram explore page where there is a lot of different types of posts. I started to realize after this unit that I unconsciously let these ideals influence my life, where I have noticed that some things make me feel insecure about myself and feel like I am not good enough for I don't have enough/ good enough friends. This feeling I get from consuming media so much made me even more vulnerable to the persuasion of brands and their ads that appeal to my insecurities and promise to fill this "void" with their products. Now that I know the many techniques that these companies use, I have become a lot more cautious and aware of thes

Recently, this image has been spread throughout the media and has caused lots of controversy all over the world. This boy was modeling for H&M and was seen in a sweatshirt with the words, "coolest monkey in the jungle". People took offense to this because the boy is black and the negative connotations that the phrase could bring up because of the color of his skin. But, the parents of the boy had said that they never saw anything other than their son modelling for the brand. They didn't see what others saw as controversial, and the mom said that she would've never made this kind of connection herself. To me, I see how some people could take offense to this and see it in a bad light, and I understand why so many people are upset but when I saw this on Instagram I wasn't as mad or upset as I've seen others get. I didn't really make the connection right away even though I knew the reason people were mad was because, "Oh they used a black model desc

https://www.rollingstone.com/tv/news/times-up-golden-globes-2018-tackles-sexual-assault-with-mixed-results-w515097 This year's Golden Globes was definitely one to remember. To start, every single person who attended the show wore black to show the unity of all female actresses in the businesses and support  the brave victims who have spoken up about allegations of sexual assault. There were multiple times throughout where many spoke out about the movement, yet some statements made lots of people there very uncomfortable and were very straightforward. One example is when Natalie Portman was presenting the best director award and pointed out that all of the directors were all male ( https://youtu.be/I7mwGW1N3aY ). In Miss Representation, it talked about the filming industry and how there is hardly any female directors or female protagonists in movies. And even if there was a female protagonist, they are usually shown chasing after a man. All of these "sexist" aspects of t

https://youtu.be/n1HUAavAjaU It's become very obvious of the many issues with social media and media in general. We've watched lots of videos in 0 period to prove it and even though those videos are a little outdated, they contain problems that still exist and more that have manifested into worse things. YouTube is one of the biggest platforms for social media stars to provide content and entertainment for us, the rest of society. This can range anywhere from daily vlogs, posts of creators doing different challenges or games, music videos, songs in general, DIYs, and much much more. This creator, Christian DelGrosso, made one of the best videos I've seen that accurately describes everything wrong with certain problems in social media. Don't mind the title though, because it may seem like clickbait or like he's going to expose him or something but he mainly talks about the media on YouTube. The video is 16 minutes long but trust me, it is worth the watch.

https://youtu.be/hVEBJxS2J_Y Over break I went to watch a movie in the theaters with my friends and we ended up getting there very early so we saw all of the previews, sadly. One commercial that stood out to me was one from the AT&T ad campaign It Can Wait. This campaign has been going on for awhile, and it encourages drivers to stay off their phones while on the road because no text is worth risking your life or the lives of others. The part that stood out the most to me was the ending. In the beginning of the commercial, it seemed like a normal scene where a father is driving his kids but you could tell that something was off. By the end, this random kid appears in his car and tells him that it's okay to check his phone because he's alone in his car, but then as the father checks his phone and looks up, he sees the same kid that was in his car playing on the road in front of him. The way it happens was shocking and got me to gasp. It evoked anxiety for the child's s

         What you see on media nowadays from some YouTube "stars" and so called "role models for our generation" is saddening. In our discussion before break, Mr. Starace brought up an example of mooks our age, and he mentioned the Paul brothers. They are definitely known for being absurdly obnoxious and annoying to the normal human being. Yet somehow they are multimillionaires and have millions of 12 year old fans willing to defend the two at all cost. I try to stay away from their videos at all cost and I don't know how people can even stand to watch them, yet the two seem to always cross my path in my social media outlets because of the horrible mistakes that they make.       Recently, Logan Paul made one of the biggest mistakes in his career.  To start off the new year, he uploaded a video where he and his friends went into  Aokigahara forest in Japan, or more commonly known as suicide forest. Already knowing where he was going, he continued to film