You don’t have to Shout

Videogames………Not really my thing seeing as the last game i played was either duck hunt, Sonic the hedge hog or Xmen back in 1996.

I just found out what a Wii was a few months ago, and could not believe how advanced technology had become.

I don’t really know anyone that would consider themselves gamers, however, I am convinced that my nextdoor neighbours are addicted to Video Games. All day and Night I hear gunshots and explosions coming through the walls. It is enough to drive a person insane. I never see these neighbors outside, If It were not for the gunshot noises I would not even know I had neighbors. here is a link to videogame addictions

http://www.mediafamily.org/facts/facts_gameaddiction.shtml

When I was introduced to the Wii at my friends house, her boyfriend was playing one of the first computer games created , I can’t remember what it was called, but after watching him play for 30 seconds I thought I was going to have a seizure. THe graphics were so intense, the lights and colours, flashing things and crazy music were all too much. After that night I could not fall asleep because I think I was so wound up on videogame stimulation.

I tried to read the articles, and I had a tough time getting through them, so all in all I think videogames are Violent and overly stimulating and are not a positive form of entertainment for our children.

It is concerning when children play violent videogames all the time because the games could interfere with a healthy development. With the exception of Wii, Videogames do not encourage social interaction or physical activity, . It is important for children to learn to socialise at a young age so that they can become a functional part of society. It is also important for children to be physically active in order to stay healthy. It concerns me when children replace social interaction with hours of violent and sexist graphics on the television or computer screen.

I do think that there are many non violent or sexist graphics on many video games, and I encourage children to play these games in moderation. On the other hand, child obesity is on the rise and more and more children are staying inside to play with technology rather then using their imaginations to play  outside the technological world.

What good do videogames provide for our children other then hand eye coordination skills and a fast paced, violent and sexist form of entertainment?

I really like this ad because it is an example how gender is a socially constructed phenomenon. the only true differences between males and females are biological, everything else about gender is created by what the media portrays as masculine and feminine.

I in-vision a genderless world where bisexuality is common among all people. I feel that bisexuality would reduce gender stereotypes for a few different reasons.

First, many of these stereotypes are rooted in heterosexual relationships. Look back to overly gendered ads featuring the stet-ford wife looking prim and proper waiting for her dear husband to come home from work to the lovely home cooked meal she made.  okay extreme outdated example, i know, but even now, today, we laugh at at those ads and watch men enjoying cleaning up with a swiffer sweeper hunkidoree thingi instead and think nothing of it. So we are switching the gender roles when it comes to domestic behaviours, but today women still prim and proper them selves up with overly priced beauty products far more then men.

Secondly, Why don’t I see an ad selling black eyeliner and nail polish to men?I mean some celebraties wear eyeliner so isn’t it cool……or is it emo?do we chastise men for wearing makeup and nail polish and call it emo or gay, because we don’t see any ads selling black eyeliner to males? In a bisexual society beauty products ads would sell to both males and females and transgendered people and would not need to encorperate  gender stereotypes because no female will have to be hotter than another to get with a guy because there are lots of females to chose from instead.makeup is marketed to girls so that they will buy the product and use it to be more attractive to men. perhaps the beauty market would go down because women would stop caring so much about their looks. Or perhaps it would go the other way, more beauty products would be marketed at men because they might want to seem more attractive in order to attract women away from commercially beautified women . I don’t know.

 Third, We see overly feminine homosexual males on female programing like design and clothing shows. As a result we create a schema in our brains of what homosexual is: a male with feminine qualities. Why? because we find it so hard to imagine 2 overly masculine men(gender ideal) having a sexual relationship withone another, so we attend feminine qualities to a man and put him on what not to wear and call him gay.

But now there is this new term metro-sexual, what? It seems like a way for males to act feminine without being labelled a homosexual. Silly, but I guess that in a bisexual world every man and woman would be a metro-sexual in a strange sort of way.

Basically i see gender as based on societies expectation of how particular sexes should behave based on their sexual preference. I feel that this labeling confusion could be solved, if everyone just realised and embraced the fact that we are all bisexual to some degree or another.  

Lastly, look at bonobo monkeys, they are the only known bisexual species and also happen to be the most peaceful species. check out this link to learn more about this crazy monkey.  http://www.nerve.com/regulars/lifeswork/bonobo/

I think that living in a bisexual world would be like living in a gender free world where people are able to  be free with theirsexuality and not be forced into gender traps that prescribe the way men and women must act in relationships and otherwise. I blame romantic comedy’s! Go bonobos!

I just finished reading Sut Jhally’s article on advertising and was shocked that playgrounds in new-york are going to be sponsored.I generally agreed with her ideas of how advertising is destructive to society and the planet.  She mentioned that most advertising is for selling products, not social movements or issues. I agree with this idea but i it seems like there are more and more commercials or ads that are not selling a product but a message. For example,the smoking commercials from the government of canada or this commercial I found on youtube.

also I have seen more than 2 recycling comercials on canadian channels. 

I never realised how intertwined everything is into advertising. I found it interesting that the article mentioned a connection between ads and the destruction of our planet. I recycle everything and anything and when I took a load to the recycling bins the other day I was appalled at the amount of paper advertising my mailbox had recived over the past 6 months. I was even more shocked when I thought about how many people probably just throw those ads in the garbage without ever even looking at them.

Then I started to think about the amount of garbage we create just because of our consuming habits. My roommate and i are drowning in plastic bags so for the past few weeks we have been refusing bags at any store we purchase something at. It is interesting to see the looks some people will give you when you ask not to have a bag. I guess we can all do what we canwhen it comes to making individual consuming and environmental choices but ultimatly, advertising is so big that it would be difficult to solve the problem without structural changes.

So I just finished reading the article paul sent us, and i thought I would try my own Soci experiment by asking my roommate (a vinyl collector) why he prefers LPs to CDs.

Interestingly, he responded similarly to the 8 participants described in the article. His first reason for choosing vinyl was the pretty pictures on the jackets. He said that sometimes he just buys a record because of the art work on it.

Secondly, my roommate chooses to purchase records rather then CD’s because he enjoys searching for them. Its like shopping at a vintage store rather then the cookie cutter old Navy or Gap. The prices are better, there is an element of excitement in trying to find a particular album or stumbling across an album you didn’t even know you wanted, and most importantly, the element of authenticity, knowing that you just bought the only bob Dylan album in the store.

My roommate also suggested that he enjoyed the effort it took to play a record, because of the sweet sound you can only get from vinyl. He said he felt more part of the musical experience when he puts the needle on the record. My roommate likes the sound a record makes, its cracks and pops, he says, make the music sound raw. 

The article mentioned that record collecting was a way to break away from conventional capitalist driven Brittney spears pop style music. My roommate listens to records for the above reasons, he chooses the records by the artwork on the cover or if the band name has nature words in it. Sometimes he gets albums of bands that he knows, but other times he just listens to what ever, and if he likes it he likes it, if he  doesn’t he doesn’t.

Also the article mentioned the culture and social interaction among vinyl collectors. My roommate has a very small social network and only one of his friends is also a collector. He says that their relationship started over a conversation about music (venal in particular).

So there you have it, another persons reasons for listing to records.