HW 20: Big Paper Revised

INTRO:
Most people in the American culture are the same. The way we communicate, the way we dress, the way we act, and generally, the way we live. We are all being brainwashed by the media to live the way we do. The media presented through digital representation devices manipulate the way we live and distract us from the deception of the world.

ARG#1:
Advertisements as a form of media shown on the internet or on television manipulate the way we present ourselves; this distracts us from current events. Seeing that 74.1% of Americans use the internet (Nielsen) and 99% of American family households own at least one TV (Nielsen). This tells us the majority of Americans are fed advertisements very frequently. Advertisements tell us how we should look which distracts us from political issues. In Feed by M. T. Anderson, an allegory about modern day teenage life, the main character Titus is always distracted by his feed that fills his mind with lots of advertisements, "Feeling blue?, Then dress blue! It's the Blue-Jean Warehouse's Final Sales Event! Stock is just flying off the shelves at prices so low you won't believe your feed!"(299). Titus is constantly being told what to wear; this prevents him from noticing what is going on in the world. In contrast with his friend Violet, is not as distracted, she knows about current events and tells Titus, "Do you know the earth is dead? Almost nothing lives here anymore, except where we plant it?"(273). Violet basically tells Titus that there is nothing is natural anymore, everything is produced by humans.

Also seen in the movie Wall-e, an animated film about a robot trying to bring life back to planet earth, All the people on earth traveled to a space ship to live on a machine that allows them to have the ability to do anything from their hovering chair, they never have to get up for anything. Similar to feed, the citizens have very easy access to television at all times which gives them advertisements and several forms of digital entertainment. One of the advertisements says, "Blue is the new red!" and instantly, everyone changes what they are wearing to blue without having to move an inch. Eventually, because of Wall-e's interruption to the stimulated world off of planet earth, one of the citizens' portable TV turns off and their eyes are opened up to how the world is really, they saw how everyone was in their own world on their digital devices and everyone looked almost exactly the same. The digital advertisements make consumers believe that they should look like everyone else and it distracts them from the fallacies in society.

ARG#2:
We are also being manipulated in the every day conversations we have though digital devices, this distracts us from the reality of our world. When one person is manipulated by advertisements, it is then spread in every day conversations when people talk about what to buy; this distracts us from human thoughts. I personally, know of several times where I ask for a friend's opinion about something before I make a purchase. During one of Andy's lectures, he pointed out that everyone mostly thinks about what to buy. That is ultimately how we are brainwashed. In the back of our minds there is always something we want to buy whether it is absolutely necessary or not. This distracts us from the ability to think for ourselves about whatever we find important in our lives. Our minds are so filled up with advertisements without physically owning a feed it deprives us from thinking for ourselves.

ARG#3:
Advertisements also manipulate us to have these ideas of what is important and is necessary to purchase distracting us from the control advertisers have over us. Media makes us believe we always need the next best digital representation device to be socially acceptable in society; this distracts us from the fact that we are being manipulated. I personally feel taken over by technology. I allowed the addiction to digital life and technologies to hold true in my life because it was the norm of society, everyone else had it and you have to keep up with the progress in civilization. (Will 9/9/09). In Feed, Violet's father had to buy a feed to be taken seriously in the work force. "'I was at a job interview...I realized that they had chatted me, and that I had not responded. They found this funny. Risible. That a man would not have a feed. So they were chatting about me in my presence. Teasing me when I could not hear. Free to assess me as they would, right in front of me'...'It was this that I realized that my daughter would need the feed. She had to live in the world.'"(288). the media brainwashes us to think we need the latest digital technology to survive in society distracting us from the fact that we are being brainwashed. We are so caught up in buying the newest devices we do not realize the fact that we are being manipulated.

ARG#4:
Movies, as another form of media, also influences consumers about their own lives distracting them from reality. We all watch movies, as a country we spend millions of dollars on movies at the box office at movie theatres, a good amount of Americans are influenced by current films today (movie tickets website). Movies make viewers believe their lives have to be just like a movie, distracting us from a real way of life decided upon ourselves. In Mr. Tsui's lecture (10/27/09), he made a point that most of our ideas of love and romance come from the movies and what they make us believe. For example, the typical Disney story how the girl always finds the perfect guy and they live happily ever after. We seem to base our lives a lot on this and several other algorithmic aspects about a 'normal' life that are shown in movies constantly. Also shown in Feed, after Violet faces many problems with her feed, she begins to dream and imagine what she wants to do before she faces her inevitable death and she realizes that most of her dreams are based on what she's seen in movies. "Everything I think of when I think of really living to the full--all my ideas are just the opening credits of sitcoms. See what I mean? My idea of life, it's what happens when they're rolling the credits."(217). Similar to Violet's ideas about life, our own ideas come from what we see on the movie or television screen. People watch generic TV shows about the drama of a high school student and they expect and their lives to be just like that. This is manipulating us about the 'right' way to live, distracting us from actually living our lives to the fullest the way we want to.

ARG#5:
The media constantly advertises the next best thing which makes our lives easier and more convenient, it brainwashes us to think that easy and convenient is good, this distracts us from physical activity. Emails make it easier to send letters, phones make it easier to talk to someone, ipods make it easier to listen to music on the go. Technology simply makes things easier for us. It is not necessarily something we need, but something that makes our lives more convenient. This allows us to become lazy. The physical experience of working technology and knowing how to use it is preventing us from using our bodies to its full extent. Technology allows us to do the bare minimum with our bodies, whereas in a sport we need to work our muscles to adapt to that type of physical activity. Also shown in the movie Wall-e, when a citizen fell off of their hovering chair, they would fall to the ground helplessly and a machine would have to pick them up because they were physically unable to get back up on their own. Advertisements tell us digital technologies that make our lives easier are good and it distracts us from the negative aspect, that it limits our physical ability. We are convinced that DRDs making our lives easier is a sign of progression in society but it is preventing humans from using their bodies to the full extent.

ARG#6:
Media in the form of movies and television make us believe that we want to find happiness, distracting us from actually living our lives to the fullest. Norms make us believe that conforming will make us happy but fitting in distracts us from doing what we want. We think we want happiness because that is what we are influenced through the media. (Andy lecture 9/25/09). Connecting to a movie we saw in English class, I <3 Huckabees, the movie is a comedy and comes from an angle that does not take the existentialist topic seriously and I noticed, often times we don't take our lives seriously. We waste lots of time doing meaningless things on our digital devices and they don't really allow us to live our lives to the fullest. We become lazy and we may think we are living our lives to the fullest because it is what we see people in the movies doing and they look happy but we are just meeting the standards of how to live our lives. Connecting to Feed, Titus feels the same way, like he is always trying to be cool because he thinks it will make it feel better but it never does, "It turned out that my upcar was not the kind of upcar my friends rode in. I don't know why. I had enough room, but for some reason people didn't think of it that way. Sometimes that made me feel kind of tired. It was like I kept buying these things to be cool, but cool was always flying just ahead of me, and I could never exactly catch up to it. I felt like I'd been running toward it for a long time."(279). We are always listening to the advertisement tell us how to be happy or how to be cool or how to fit in but in the end we are never satisfied. We get caught up in the films and shows that portray this idea of finding happiness in life and it manipulates us to think we want that too but it only leaves us unhappy and distracts us from thinking for ourselves and exploring our own reasons for living.

CONNECTIONS:
I believe that in the past there have always been expectations for how to be normal. Women had to fit the norm by cooking and cleaning and dress a certain way because that is what would make them attractive to men. In contrast with how it is today, there are still ideas of being "normal" and accepted in society but now I feel like they have become more open. There is more gender and racial freedom specifically in the work force and thus in everyday life (Giecek). To continue the pattern, I think in the future there will still be ideas about what is normal, I think there always will be but there will be more freedom for the people who do not follow that, they create their own idea of normal for other people to conform to. (Andy Lecture 10/20/09)

OPV:
Banach argues that essentially, everyone has absolute freedom, we deceive ourselves by giving into the influences around us and we choose to fit the norms and be manipulated by the media. "We attempt to deceive ourselves and act as if we weren't free, as if we were really determined by our nature, our body, or the expectations of other people."(Part II of Bench’s lecture). He argues that essentially we all think for ourselves. But we are really being deceived by marketers and the media to believe that we think for ourselves but in the process, we fit the expectations of society because it is what we have been told and it is what is easy and convenient. We are manipulated to choose the life that is laid out for us algorithmically. We think we decide for ourselves but ultimately we take the easy path rather than thinking for ourselves.

SIGNIFICANCE:
It is important to be aware of this manipulation. Instead of simply falling for all of it, we look at it from the perspective of the advertisers and see what is it that they are really doing to us. It is important to see what lies behind the amusing and shiny digital devices and ultimately do something about it.

CONCLUSION:
Overall, the media makes us think that being happy is fitting into the norms, buying the latest clothing, buying the next best digital device to make our lives more convenient, and it all leaks into our minds highly affecting our lives. All of this distracts us from the truth and reality of our society.