The Media

Jack Herrera 1/13/19 The Imprisonment of Emotions The other day in my critical thinking class we were watching Miss Representation and an interesting topic came up. It was about how men are taught to hide away their emotions. This seemed very interesting to me but I was confused on how this would happen. Then I thought of only one explanation, the media. All over the media you have men fighting bad guys, fighting each other, playing sports, and many other things. However have you seen a man cry on the media? Have you seen a man express emotions? Maybe you have but most likely not because being a "man" is being tough, strong, and brave. This is what the media teaches people. This is what the media teaches young boys. This influences them to not express their true emotions. To keep them locked away and imprisoned within themselves. This effect that the media has on boys has influenced them to be emotionless, something men are not.

Jack Herrera 1/13/19 The Advertisement Invasion When I was watching this show called Futurama I noticed something in one of the episodes. It was in the episode where they go into the internet and play video games. Anyways when they were in the internet they were swarmed by a bunch of advertisements that chased them around everywhere they went. This reminded me of how this happens in real life too. Advertisements aren't literally flying around and chasing us but they are everywhere we go on the internet. When these advertisements are lurking around on educational websites this causes a huge problem. The whole point of advertisements are to distract you from what you're doing and look at them. If there are advertisements on a website that is supposed to teach you something, it will make it harder for you to focus on reading the website and learning. You will just get distracted and look at the advertisements for a really long time and then just do it repeatedly. The invasi...

Jack Herrera 1/6/19 Birdbox's Influence on the Media For those who don't know about "Birdbox", its a horror film on Netflix that was released recently. On December 28th, 2018, Netflix revealed that over 45 million accounts had watched Birdbox. When I watched Birdbox with my friends I was confused about how so many people knew about it since it is a new movie. After I watched the movie I went on my phone and browsed Instagram for a few minutes and I began to figure out why its so popular. All over social media there are memes about Birdbox. My mom and I watched it together and just earlier today she was showing me some. These memes began to spread all over the internet so fast that it made the movie very popular almost instantly. Birdbox was a solid movie but it wasn't a fantastic movie. This shows the power of the media and how it can spread ideas so quickly. Businesses who can find out how to spread their ideas throughout the media will make huge profits. Th...

Jack Herrera 1/6/18 Culture Spies, why are they important?  The first thing I asked myself when I read Culture Spy off my worksheet was, "What is that?" I had never heard of that word before. According to the video, "Making Cents out of Teens: Merchants of Cool" a culture spy is someone who looks into the "teen landscape" for trends and things that could potentially become the latest trend. They go look for trends and things that are "cool" where businesses can't go. The media connects a growing number of people to the latest trend. Someone with the name of Tom may ask, "What is the point of a culture spy?" Well Tom, culture spies go where businesses can't go. Teens are the biggest market in the world and culture spies try to obtain information that will help corporations approach this huge market. According to an article on pbs, teenagers spent $100 billion as well as influencing their parents to spend $50 billion. This ma...

Jack Herrera 12/16/18 Nike and their Advertisements Nike is a very popular company, according to statistica.com they brought in 36.4 billion dollars in sales in 2018. How does Nike do this? First lets look at their ads. One of their most popular ads was the 30th anniversary of the Just Do It campaign, the crazy dreams one. This ad was very popular as it has 27 million views on YouTube but it also caused a lot of controversy because of Colin Kaepernick's recent dispute. However the advertisement appeals to your emotions. It makes you want to be bigger than what your dreams desire, it motivates you to make you feel like you can do anything. This causes the audience to begin to think that Nike can allow them to do anything since the people in the video that are accomplishing something are wearing Nike products. When I watched the advertisement, it made me feel motivated and that I can do anything. Just Do It advertisements all try to motivate you, another advertisement was Kyri...

Jack Herrera 12/16/18 Commercial Food vs Reality Does anyone else ever wonder why the food in the commercials looks so much better than in reality? I thought about this, why do the burgers always look so juicy and delicious? How is that ice cream surviving the studio lights? How is that turkey perfectly cooked? These are questions I always ask myself. I decided to lurk in the media for any answers I can find and I found a lot. We are constantly being deceived by these companies and there brilliant ways to endorse their products. The foamy beer that any football dad desires on a Sunday evening is actually just dish soap mixed with beer. The foam is created with the dish soap, without the dish soap when you would pour a beer into a glass it doesn't foam. The burger that has the patty looking as if it descended from Heaven into the commercial was actually covered in vegetable oil to make the patty look juicy. The perfectly roasted turkey in the commercials is actually not cooke...