Response

It is easy to see how the media affects people, but I find it fascinating to think about how much people affect the media. With all these new websites: Youtube, Facebook, Myspace, Blogger, etc. people have thousands of ways to make their own media known. I saw Mira Van Zandt’s blog post about an insane ski jumping video. This is just one example of how people can put their media into the public. Although this example are clips taken out of professional ski videos, without media like Youtube and other video uploading and viewing sources videos like this would be kept a secret from public eyes unless the producers want to pay extra money to get it published and distributed.
With Youtube, anything, from sports, to family news, to just friends being stupid, everything can instantly be put on the internet for free. Youtube even allows people to create their own ‘channel’ in which all of their shows or videos can be accessed from one point, this makes it easy for people to continue a series of videos or whatever other media they create. One example of this is Obama Girl; a young woman who made a series of videos of her singing and talking about why Obama was such a good candidate. She started the videos more than a year before the election took place, and was actually a very influencing factor in it. Blogger, Facebook, Myspace, and other sites like this allow people to literally create their own web page for free, with almost no restrictions. People can upload photos and videos in seconds, and post text of any kind on their web page.
Blogger allows people to create their own ‘blog space’ which the user can customize with decorations, organization, and other changeable features. Blogger also features archives so access to specific posts is easier for the viewer. Blogger and other blog posting sites allow users to make their posts visible to anyone or to no one if they choose. Blogger also has the option to include blog posts in Google searches if the user wants it to do so.
Public access TV also makes it easy for people to get their media out into the community. DCAT, the Durango Public Access Station, offers classes to help people learn to create and edit their own media, and even put it on the public access television channels.
With all of these extra services it is very easy for the average American to become famous, or in some cases infamous. These services have allowed millions of people to post their videos, pictures, news, and whatever else they want, and have it viewed by whoever chooses to view it.

Jean Baudrillard’s Simulacra and Simulation was a pretty interesting piece. I had to read it twice to gather a solid meaning, and that took quite a while so I really began to lose patience. The concepts of the piece were also kind of hard to understand, and even after thinking about it for quite some time I still don’t understand most of the examples, for example the parking lot at Disney Land. After discussing the piece in class I gained a further understanding of the concepts of hyperrealism and reality vs. imaginary. I skimmed the piece for a third time and actually found it to be an almost comical reading. It is full of sarcasm and enthusiasm and little side tracking jokes. Although the concepts induce good rhetoric reading, it is not the most effective piece because of the style of writing. I feel a conversation with the author would help me further understand his perspective and why he writes the way he does in a scholarly magazine.