Me and the Media

One of the things I've always found hard is thinking about myself, so when someone asks me "who am I?" I have immense difficulty trying to answer this. This is because I want to answer the question with just a short answer, however that is more or less impossible. Still, I should keep this brief so I might as well try, just where to begin. I guess I should start with how I spend my time and I guess that can be summed up in two words, the internet. I spend the vast majority of my time on the web looking up information, watching videos, playing games, chatting it up on online forums, and talking to friends over Facebook or Aim. Side from that the other two thing that really takes up a lot of my time and brain space is gaming info. Regardless of what I'm playing, be it my Nintendo Wii, PC games, or table top games, most of the time I'm not on the internet is spent playing games. For the small amount of time I'm not doing either I'm watching some form of TV show. No matter what I'm doing I'm always "plugged in".

When all of this comes together calling media an "essential part of our lives" is something I can really relate too. When I'm with my friends I often joke that I live on the internet but I know their is a lot of truth to that statement too, so to answer the question of what my relationship to media, or in my case the internet, is that it's my life. Part of this is because I like information. I love learning about anything that captures my interests and will often loss ours reading Pixar's wiki or the page they have on TV Tropes. Another reason why the internet specifically has become one of the main focal point of my time is because it has almost everything I could want to waste time. Internet forums let me talk to random people to learn tricks in a video game. Youtube has countless hours of videos to distract me be it music videos, Lets Plays, or just random videos. Netflixs and Hulu let me rewatch and keep up with my favorite TV shows. The other reason is that it has allowed me to broaden my horizons to things outside of the country.

On of the best things the internet has done for me is it has allowed me to experience the media of countries. For several years now I've become more and more into Japan's anime and manga. Todays the unique way manga is read and the ability to reads subs as I watch shows has become second nature for me. From this I've learned a lot about the culture Japan and has made me want to see the country for myself. Side from Japan my interest in British culture has increased thanks to my increased exposer to there media. Thanks to shows like Dr. Who and BBC America I've been able to experience things you'd other wise need to go the UK to truly enjoy. And overall this is has helped create my view on the media, specifically the internet, is that it allows us to spread out past what we see. It is because of the wonder that is the internet that I've come to learn so much of Japan culture and am starting to learn about British. It's thanks to the internet that regardless of what may interest you, you're always able to find others that share that interest. Over all I've found the internet to be an amazing tool to learn and entrain us regardless of who we are.