Diana+Dima's+Journal

=DIANA DIMA'S JOURNAL ENTRIES = =__= =__**1. Your experiences with media.**__ =

RIM (Research in Motion) recently encountered a lot of problems with BBM; nobody's messages were delievering because the system was down. While this was happening, this topic was a trending event over all social networks; everyone with a blackberry was uploading angry, annoyed stauses, people were tweeting about how irritating undelivered messages were (and it was a trending topic), and people on tumblr were reblogging annoyed pictures and blogging about how inconvienient it was. The thing that intrigued me the most about it all though was that on twitter, the trending topic was "dear blackberry" and people would follow up the tweet with things like "thanks for the new customers! signed, iPhone". What annoyed me about numerous tweets about how blackberry users were going to switch to an iPhone just because for two days, they had to go through the trouble of texting their friends, instead of bbming them. Sure, it was inconvienient, but was it really THAT big of a deal? It made no sense to me because iPhone doesn't even have instant messaging of its own, so just because blackberries have an extra feature that is disfunctionning for two days you're going to switch over? That to me just seemed like an overreaction, and it was pretty scary to realize how attached people were to their phones. Not only were so many people distraught, but I was too. For example, I don't have the numbers of some people who I bbm, so i realized some difficulties communicating as well. Overall, the malfunctionning of bbm for a short period of time really brought realization to the dependance we have on our phones, and how lost we'd be without them. =__**2. An entry related to some aspect of the Peep Culture documentary. Use the questions and handout and class discussion as a guide to help you focus.**__ =



"These days, it's easier to take part in community in front of a screen." "You need to know; you need to be known."

In the Peep Diaries, we were shown an opinion, Hal Niedzviecki’s opinion, to the mysterious question regarding why we post things on social networks, and how it affects us as individuals. I learned quite a bit about both of these topics, and they have opened my up my former judgment’s perspective greatly.



If someone asked me why I thought that people were involving themselves in social networks I’d think that it’s hard to generalize all the social networking sites our generation offers into one opinion. For example, I would think that people involve themselves in Facebook because they want people to share their pictures, and “peep” into friends lives. Since millions and millions of people have Facebook, it’s pretty hard to stay away from the hype. It’s the most known social network and so many things happen on Facebook that people who don’t have an account usually miss out on events, information…etc. When speaking about Facebook, I wouldn’t quite agree with saying that people who have a Facebook are lonely, as I might say about those who are active Twitter users. I, myself log onto Twitter many times a day. I have 160 followers, which to others may seem like nothing but I do feel as though if I don’t tweet a certain number of times a day I’ll lose followers. I agree that people in my category are a bit lonely, maybe. Usually, I log on to Twitter when I’m alone in my room, or in the library working. I didn’t notice this pattern until I really started to ponder what the point of Twitter really is. At first, when I was like the hundreds of teens obsessed with Facebook, I saw absolutely NO point to Twitter. Log on to see what other people are doing… cool? I didn’t even understand what people tweet about. On the other hand, once I got Twitter, it became much different than my initial idea. It gives users the freedom to tweet about whatever you’re thinking, feeling, or doing. I completely get why people would say that lonely people use Twitter- when you have nothing to do, why not see what your friends who you follow are doing. I don’t think that this is the only reason why people use Twitter, though. Many people just have a Twitter to follow their favourite celebrities, or to advertise themselves (eg. Tv personalities, business owners…etc). In addition, it’s always fun to see how many people know what you’re doing (those who follow you). Twitter to me is simpler to explain than more general social networking sites like Facebook and YouTube. All in all, I can easily say that now i don`t go onto Facebook or like Facebook as much as I like Tumblr, or Twitter. I think my views changed because I was introduced to more simple, straight-forward versions of social networking.

The main reason as to why I think people use social networking sites is because of the generation we’re living in. Technology is a major part of today’s society. We crave the fastest, most up-to-date versions of everything. People are very impatient and like accomplishing things as quick as possible. Getting your daily feed of what happens with your friends and celebrities is now part of the average teen’s daily routine.

An insight that I thought about before that was mentioned in “The Peep Diaries” was how people are also craving attention. This intertwines with the concept that people are lonely, so some go on social networking sites to feel like they’re part of something, or with people.

Lastly, I liked how Hal mentioned how he felt weird not being filmed after he stopped having cameras all around him. I could imagine this feeling would occur since you would be so used to acting for viewers. It’s human nature to act differently when you know people are watching you, so of course it would feel strange being in front of cameras for so long, and then going back to acting like yourself, before the cameras turned on.

=__**3. An open entry of yours on some aspect of "pop culture" that has caught your attention since the beginning of school.**__ = Pop culture is all around us and affects every single one of our lives on a daily basis. In my opinion, it mostly affects teenagers. We get imprinted on all the time by celebrities, facebook, that new katy perry song that won't stop playing on our radio, what goes on on our phone... and the list goes on and on. We are so impressionable that pop culture strikes us all the time whether we are aware of it or not. One aspect of pop culture that has caught my attention since the beginning of school is how much more lenient teachers are being with students and their cell phones. More and more teens are getting smart phones, and are so attached to them that it almost seems impossible to try to break the bond. For example, in previous years, teachers would ban the use of cell phones all together and sometimes even make us turn them off while we're in school, when today we have a lot of teachers who will let you keep it on your desk, or even just enforce the rule of not using them when they are teaching. Since technology has more and more of an impact on us, teachers are becoming less and less strict about their rules with technology in the classroom. =__**4. An open entry on any aspect of `celebrity` that has been in the news or that has caught your attention since the beginning of school. Remember, Toronto just sponsored TIFF.**__ = A couple of days ago, I was watching TMZ and I saw that Shia Labeouf was recently at a bar in Vancouver and had a barfight or confrontation with another male. Both of them appeared to be intoxicated, but what really drew me to this scene was that afterwards, viewers were told that Shia Labeouf gets confronted frequently because of his mighty, heroic role in the `Transformers` movie series. It baffled me how men feel inferior and almost jealous in a way that they resort to mocking actors who are merely doing their job and... acting. This video is also yet another example of how easily bystanders take to recording the fight and just watching it while doing nothing. It`s almost humourous how the only bystander (other than one of Shia`s friends) who tried to interviene was on crutches and tried to break it up by blocking the man who was punching him with one of his crutches. Overall, I am pretty disgusted with the fact that just because Shia plays a specific role in movies, he repetively gets confronted, name called, and even fought with. This just highlights the effect media has on the insecurities of others. Here is the video... [|Shia Labeouf Bar Fight] = =__**5. A final open entry on any other aspect of media that has caught your attention - e.g. provincial election ads or brochures; any news item related to media like the dour predictions for RIM or Amazon.com`s release of a tablet.**__ = When I was walking home from school, there were a couple of men walking towards Haig down Empress. Since a lot of people walk home in that direction, they obviously thought it would be wise to be promoting their party and hand out flyers to us. What confused and interested me was that the majority of us, going to high school, don`t even have the right to vote yet. At first I thought that their tactic was weak since it made no sense to promote and give out flyers and information to the minority. What was the point? But then I thought about it for a long while and it came to my realization that teenagers actually have a huge impact on the decision making of their parents. We are such a huge part of the holes in their wallet, and the choices they make that why not advertise election parties to us? I came up with the idea that adults think that they get influenced by their children more than they really do... just like when two people get in a fight, and they think they are more justified to be upset. However, from the teens' perspective, this is not the case. In our opinion (and probably most likely to happen) a parent would not vote for a party opposite to what their kid is trying to get them to vote for. What do kids know anyways?