Final blog: Diverse, not Dumb.

I think what I have learned the most is that there is a lot of difference in opinions among all of us in this class and even the world. I am a really stubborn person, and when I take a stand on something, I automatically assume it is the correct one. That brings along a lot of frustration and anger. Sometimes due to the stupidity of those who can't defend there angle on the conflict, or because they have a valid point to counter my position. I'm sorry, but the students in this class fall under the first one I stated there because I don't feel a lot of them looked deeply into some of the issues we discussed about. I know we are supposed to be "scholarly" and "well-informed", but when they are not, I cannot sit there and take what they seriously. We aren't well-informed at all because we live in a society that treats conflict with a sense of indifference and then take the usual route to remedy it all, which is WAR.
Now with all that said, I feel this class moved us all one step closer to ridding ourselves from having that exact mentality. I enjoyed "thought-picking" at certain pieces this semester to get more out of it than what is on the surface. Even though we beat a lot of the same stuff to death, then revived it, and then went over it again. Of the themes we did cover, I particularly enjoyed analyzing the fact that we are consumed by entertainment and cannot get enough of it.
Entertainment to us has become almost as if it is "owed" to us. We nearly demand that shows continue that we enjoy so much, and get pissed when a Lockout of the NFL may occur. Without all these things to consume our time and attention, we wouldn't know what to do with ourselves! What would we do? Read a book? Go on a hike and enjoy wilderness? Cure AIDS? (well maybe not that...but you get the point)...We could do great things. Which brings me to Emerson and Thoreau. Thoreau went a very long time with only basic necessities and very little technology and resources we take for granted. And he was able to do so easily and established a new look at life. He grasped a sense of life that nobody else could because of his experience. I can't help but think he had a better satisfaction with life than I will ever achieve...
Overall, what I am getting at is, from this class I have gained a new appreciation towards literature in a whole and how it may or may not benefit me. I see that a lot of what is out there, whether it be stories, experiences, themes, personalities, can be related to every one of us. The problem is that not many of us take a lot of effort to go see what those things are and what they could have in store for us. From being called "The Dumbest Generation", I have really wanted to prove that notion WRONG since the beginning of this semester. I want us to not be under that umbrella, I want us to sort of have our own umbrella and be diverse in our thoughts and opinions. If we can prove that we don't all think alike and can contribute a plethora of different achievements of the sort, then we will be taken seriously and not deemed....Dumb.

Blog #9: No books?

I want to start out by saying that I rarely take the time to sit down and read a book, unless I am forced to by a class I am taking of course...Anyway, I have never been one to find much enjoyment through reading a novel and analyzing it when I am finished to somehow gain a sense of satisfaction that can't be achieved elsewhere. In reality, I would much rather "read my screen", meaning be on my laptop reading posts on Facebook, articles about sports news from my favorite teams on ESPN.com, or even breaking news stories of car accidents or crime being committed in our region from Pennlive.com. So to answer the question asked of us for this blog, being forbidden or "missing" the access to a plethora of books would probably not affect me as much as it would others in the class or even the world.

I know there is probably some loophole argument that can be made to counter my OPINION that I just answered with, but truly it would never change my viewpoint about this. I have seen that much of the people in this day and age just "wait for the movie to come out", than actually go read the book. We do it because it is easier and most likely more entertaining. For some of us it is hard to envision exactly what is going on in a book, so seeing it on the big screen prevents us from having to use a thing called "imagination". I found this particularly true with Hunger Games. I couldn't help but sit there and wonder what Peeta, Katniss, and Gale might look like, but now that a movie is being made, I won't have to imagine it for myself. So it could be said that no books equals easier understanding in some cases.

A book can be informational, creative, thought-provoking, and even inspiring. But how a book becomes dangerous is when it is controversial. Controversial meaning it opposes something already deemed factual by society. Examples of this would be "The Origin of Species" by Charles Darwin and "The Da Vinci Code" by Dan Brown. Sparks of outrage came about in rebellion to these novels because they questioned and even altered facts that had already been established. People have a right to freedom of speech, but when that speech opposes society as a whole and what they may believe, it can become a dangerous weapon that causes events we've never witnessed before.

A world without books may be a good thing or a bad thing however you look at it. We pay an astronomical amount of money for books we barely use in our college courses. Getting rid of books could mean getting rid of that expense. But getting rid of those books means losing out on the information they hold.

Blog #8: Hunger Games

First, I would like to take the moment to say that this is one of the greatest books I have ever read. I was weary of whether or not I wanted to put much effort into reading it, but after hearing how great it was from my group-mates, I had to. One night I recall actually reading for about 2 and a half hours straight until about 2 am. I could not put this book down and the end of every chapter left me wanting to move on as it should. I really would recommend it to anyone now to read.
With that said, I felt that this book worked entirely into the theme we have beating to death over this whole semester about information technology, the media, and how our society reacts to all of it. I think this book took a much more drastic measure to express the urgency for us in reality to wake up and realize how we are being manipulated by a more dominant force. And in this book that dominant force was The Capitol. The Capitol was in equivalence to Big Brother and the Feed. All of these things continually held a sense of "rule" over the people within the societies.
Of all of the characters, my favorite were Haymitch and Gale. As senseless as Haymitch was, he came through for his Tributes and aided them to victory. But deep down I would have wanted his feelings to be elaborated on more because in reality his life of "Hunger Games" never ends. Every year he has to be a part of it in a big way. He has to deal with a lot of loss and depression with merely no celebration to be had. His role was under displayed. I hope the movie spotlights him more.
Also, Gale was almost nonexistent once the Reaping was over. But the sense of him was still lurking. I wanted to know his reaction to all of what had been happening throughout the competition and whether or not he had lost his feeling for Katniss, if there were even feelings in the first place. I hope he too is spotlighted more in the movie and next books.
Below I have a video to a song called "Don't Fear the Reaper", kind of a pun to the Reaping and also it fits in well with the story because basically when going to the Hunger Games, you had to relieve yourself of the fear of dying. This song stresses that reality.

Blog #7 Reality?

Chelsea is busy studying for her GED, but gets distracted when she meets a new guy, while Jenelle has to face the music about stealing her mom's credit cards. Kailyn tries to focus on college and files for an official custody agreement with Jo, and Leah and Corey get closer when told they have to take Ali to another doctor days before their wedding.<<<<------- Synopsis from the March 22nd episode of "Teen Mom 2" on MTV.

I have followed the show "16 and Pregnant" and "Teen Mom (1-2) since the time they started playing on MTV. I have become addicted to watching the lives and the struggles involved with the girls who are featured on these shows. They are usually between the ages of 16-19, and have are basically forced to grow up into adults they are not yet because of the consequences of having a child. They made the decision to have sex at a young age, and in result got pregnant and must deal with these hardships that are being displayed before the viewers.

I feel that I and the many people who watch are doing so because they are getting to see a dramatic display of events that we don't often see everyday in our lives. We get the see the fighting between the solo-mom and the deadbeat dad who doesn't pay child support. We get to see the irresponsible mom having to give up the custody of her child to a relative because she can't realize that she needs to become an adult. Those types of situations and story lines are embellished a bit just to keep the viewers watching. But on the other hand, in this season of Teen Mom 2, there is one couple involved who I feel has legitimate issues that are not so much mocked for our pleasure but in actuality we root for them and there daughter because we want to see the best turn out for them. Leah and Corey have twin girls, and one in particular has been having developmental difficulties and is not progressing as quick as her sister. I find this to be more of a heartfelt story and I would genuinely hope that she is okay. From watching the show, you can see the pain that her family endures and it makes that connection to you with them that you would hope everything turns out for the best. Instead in other cases, where we hope something more drastic comes about so the fight and lies and can go deeper.

I guess what I am saying is that when it comes to these reality shows, we find pleasure when people are not being harmed or there is something genuinely wrong. We love the juicy lies and gossip but realize after all of it, that they do it for the ratings and fame.

The video shown is just a few clips put together of when Leah and Corey took the daughter to hospital and just clips of there life shown of the show. No audio other than a background song.

Blog #6 Orwellian?

I personally think Big Brother is everywhere. We have this thought that privacy is in our control when really it is not. I feel we have only a privilege to privacy and there is always a way to lose this privilege. We can do whatever we want, but within the limits of what the government or "Big Brother" will allow us. We have laws and such we must follow which are regulated by the government. We the people really don't have very much say of what we feel is within the limits for us or our peers, it's all left up to the people we elect to make those decisions. I will never understand why we give up our idea of right and wrong to someone else to make a decision for such a massive amount of people. 1 person representing a state? Or a county for that matter? That person will never have the best interests of every single person. Nobody will have the same mixture of views on privacy rights and such as the next person does.

After talking about it so much in class, I still strongly believe that we shouldn't fret so much when we give up SOME NOT ALL freedom to feel a sense of security. I for one do not care if I am searched at an airport of before getting on a boat if that is the precautions taken to ensure my and everyone else safety. If everyone is subject to the same searching, then there can not be any outcry of profiling. I don't care how much it would cost to do so, because a human life is worth more than any amount of money. Money doesn't heal the loss of a loved one in a plane crash or bombing, etc... Sure if you feel you can carry a weapon, get a license for it, conceal it, and only use in emergency. But if you are caught with something that may be dangerous to the other people around you, you are taking away there right to safety, which in result should allow authorities to take away your right to freedom.

I just found it bizarre that people in our class thought that we should have to give up nothing to help stay safe or feel safe with whatever we do because we do it everyday and they haven't had an outcry about it before. We aren't free to do whatever whenever, and there hasn't been a complete rebellion yet.  

Blog #5

Write from the perspective of Violet or her father (or a character that you make-up). What is life like without the Feed? What do you think about the Feed and the people who use it? --these are just starting points; feel free to go in any direction that makes sense to you.

Being in the perspective of Violet:

This is new. I am confused but oddly content with this way of life. With so many people relying on something so unoriginal and boring, I am overcome with joy of being rid of such an invention. I remember days of trying so hard to "deactivate" my Feed, that I began to give up on that dream, and would just deal with whatever filtered through my Feed. Sometimes I couldn't even sleep because my mind would be filled with Feed related things. Which unfortunately is EVERYTHING. I despise the Feed, I wish there was a way that I could forever be in the state I am now, Feed-less. That's it! Rebel, rebel, rebel against the Feed! Overtime, I will hopefully, for my own sake, be normal, or at least what I believe is normal. What everyone else thinks is normal is actually the thought of the Feed. So from now on, I will live opposing the Feed.
Now I wake, and I can think for myself and not worry about being characterized as someone I am not or do not truly want to be. I can believe in my own God, analyze things in my own way, ask questions of things I never truly understood, and maybe, finally live. Live my own way, joyous and carefree. No longer forced to hear about a new trend, or what is happening in the life of every celebrity that there is. In another aspect though, it feels lonely and distant being on a complete polar end of life than those around me. It makes me wonder if it is all really worth it. Should I be an outcast and stand up for what I think is right? Or should I conform to what is around me to forever be linked with everyone in the same way they are to me? But would I be able to call that a real relationship? Would we really be linked? Would we really connect on a level that can be seen as friendship? I sit here, thinking to myself, why do I so badly want to be different from those with a Feed when there is nobody to be different with me. Would I be contradicting what I want to accomplish? Even without the Feed, I still feel my head will explode with loads of uncertainty and confusion. The Feed will still dawn over me even when nonexistent.

Being in the perspective of Violets father:

I've never really been on the same level as those who had the Feed put into there brain. But I have a general idea of what it must be like due to me having a generic type Feed. I've always felt a bit of distance from my daughter due to the fact of our Feeds being on a different scale, hers being much more advanced in a way. I know she still looks up to me for wisdom and knowledge because I stay true to my belief that experience is always going to beat out technology. I miss the times where the Feed didn't run our lives and I could simply live freely. My mind was my own back then, and had nobody to tell me what to think and when to think it. I always wish I could turn back time and bring Violet along with me to show her a world that wasn't fully incorporated. A world where diversity was everything and people encouraged it, and not forced it. Those people that experienced what I did in my opinion "sold out" to what has become of today. Those who rely on the Feed are far beyond lacking a sense of reality. They will never fully understand what life is, was, could have been. They will accomplish nothing, but be told that they did it all within there time on this Earth. 

Blog #4: No technology for a year?

Although the Thoreau Challenge we were proposed with in class seemed very tempting for those looking to get some extra points, I couldn't even lie to myself to think I could even try it. No cell phone, no text messaging, no calling, no chat messaging, no Facebook, no status updates, no Google, no ESPN.com, no Pennlive.com, no video games, no television watching, and the gut wrenching  list goes on. How would I wake up for class in the morning? Wake up to the rising of the sun? Impossible. To us now, I feel this challenge is way more difficult than it may have been back in the time of Thoreau because the advancements and developments we made in technology were not around back then. We have more things to tempt us than Thoreau had to deal with. What I ask is: what did he really have to "give up" when he stayed isolated from society in that wooden cabin?

If I were to ever give up all of the treasures I desire so much and rely on everyday, I think I might surprise myself with what I could do. I could just sleep for long periods of time to pass the time and just do nothing but wait with anxiousness to be relieved of my self-invoking promise to steer clear of technology. Instead, I think I would be able to read a lot more and analyze many writings like I always have wanted. I am interested in topics of life experience, but never reach out and find those novels to obsess myself with. I am sure that there is plenty of great literature out there that I have not been fortunate enough to stumble upon. Also,  I would use my time to think deeper than I ever have before about life. I took a philosophy class and was dumbfounded by the concepts and realities that were taught to me. I wanted to understand but I felt as if I was never supposed to, and maybe giving the topic another chance I could maybe have a better light shined on it for me to grasp it all. I have always wanted to fully "understand our universe" or something of the sort.

Hopefully by the end of my time in solitary confinement, I will be able to contribute something back to the world. Rationalize something or even curing a disease would suffice, just something to prove that I has some sort of success of something when I did what I did. I would want the world or anybody who would listen to see that without material things, we have a gift, the greatest gift, and that is our minds. It's something that can't be taken away, it is ours to utilize however we choose, and if we allow it to be fed with societal norms and media or ideas such as consumerism, then we have lost. We will never gain a greater satisfaction if we stick to what is expected or the predetermined pathway. The "verse" I would want to contribute is one of rebellion to the world today. Show that social ties can be broken, everyone can get along if we really put forth an effort, money isn't something that should drive us to do things and run our lives, and such ideas relative to that. If we all rise up together, we can't all be knocked down in defense.

Blog # 3

After reading the article of the LA Times review of "The Dumbest Generation", I was not only appalled by how true everything that was said is but also I felt depressed that I am within that "population" that is so closely being mocked. You and I both are part of the force that is shaming our society as a whole. Many young adults can't go without all of the technological advances we now enjoy and obsess over. We troll Facebook more than we research scholarly journals on topics that are actually important to the world. Instead, we care about what some kid we graduated high school with that you talked to maybe 5 times is doing next Friday night as opposed to the current conflict that has risen in Egypt.

I also liked the statistic included that stated "two-thirds of U.S. undergraduates now score above average on the Narcissistic Personality Inventory, up 30% since 1982.." because it further proves how self-involved we are becoming. We are beginning to only care more about the small aspect of life close to us and events meaningful to us rather than things that are important to all of society. I want to think that I myself am taking upon a greater challenge to start caring about world events and not just things that are happening in Pennsylvania or the United States for that matter. I have begun to frequent websites such as PennLive and and CNN to gain a greater sense of what is happening around me within a greater radius than just my Facebook.

Lastly, I found it really upsetting that a college student actually expressed to Bauerlein that "American Idol IS important", when he was trying to make the point that we know stupid things that we will never use in real life rather than historical facts or concepts in politics. Have we become programmed to believe things like American Idol winners and who won the Super Bowl 10 years ago are actually important because they are entertaining to us? Is what we enjoy becoming more important than facts that actually mean something and contribute to reality? I sure hope not...

Skin Doc response blog #2

This is the second time I have actually seen this documentary and both times it has had me in shock of how people live this way. I do not understand why someone wants to waste so much of their time and money on something like WOW and Everquest. I guess it must give them a sense of life that they don't actually possess in the real world. Some people are small, scrawny, short, fat, bald, or whatever bad characteristic that society looks down upon, and in a MMO, people can create someone that is envied by a large group of people. This kind of relates to what we read in Culture Jam where the point was made that we as a society have advertisements, commercials, movies, and billboards, or whatever can promote the "desired" norm of what we should be like or look like. Corporations promote fear of not being like other people, and that will in result make you not liked or weird to those who have conformed to what is accepted.

I have a younger brother (age 17) who is big into first person shooter games on his PS3 video game console. We never used to be into such things like that, but with a lot of people talking about it, we had to know and understand what was so amazing about it. Call Of Duty Modern Warfare 2 and other games within this franchise have really given me a firsthand look at what "gaming addiction" may be like. When we first got the game, we spent hours online progressing to a new rank and level. We quickly realized to be accepted you had to great. Your statistics as a player had to be good to even be liked by other gamers. We started caring about our "kill/death ratio" more than we did our homework or even eating some nights. My brother was never really a great student in school, and he started to take a lot of pride in how great he was in the game. He started realizing how others plays and figuring the logic of how to manipulate them to basically walk right to him and him kill them. He became better than I ever imagined. But in the meantime it also consumed a lot of his time. Like gaming did to the men we saw in the documentary. Luckily though, after moving last February,  my family has recently been living in a neighborhood that has very limited internet that my brother can not play these games online. He has started to care about other things and doesn't have Call Of Duty run his life like it did a time before.

Gaming addiction can be equivalent to alcoholism, gambling, and drug addiction. I feel as if it is not worth the time and money given up to put yourself into that state of being. Instead of having all of these people sit in front of the computer and play a game for hours on end, how about we do something productive. Volunteer for something, community service, coach a team or play a sport. I was shocked by the statistic that 60 percent of the online gamers were between the age of 20-35 years old. What does this say to our younger crowd? It shows them that it's okay to stay behind a desk and socialize in a way that comes second to how we were meant to come together. We meet people technologically now, and never face to face. They did say they built strong relations, but some people are not who they say they are. Technology brings this new danger to the table that we never thought we had to worry about. Online gaming can possibly be harm more than aid to a lot of people.

Blog #1

Hey classmates, my name is Christopher Stern, I am a sophomore Marketing major. I transferred from West Chester University and am from Hershey, PA. I am big into all Philadelphia sports teams (Flyers, Eagles, Phillies) and hope to one day possibly have a career within one of those franchises. I love music and my favorite band is Dave Matthews Band, the way they are able to include a variety of instruments is incredible. I really enjoy going to see movies, and a favorite (I have many) is American History X, I find Edward Norton to be such a great actor. As far as television goes, I have recently become really obsessed with Criminal Minds. I find the show to have more depth within the storyline of each crime and criminal. Being in college for a few semesters now, I haven't found the time to read a novel, my reading consists of college textbooks. I do enjoy reading ESPN magazine, GQ, and Entertainment Weekly. I have taken a couple writing courses already in college that consisted of reading literature. I found some of it to be interesting, while the rest did not catch me. I never got to choose what I wanted to read, I don't enjoy reading something that is forced, I want something to entice me. Literature in my opinion is writing that is creative and has a specific purpose to a topic.

Dave Matthews