Have I Grown Up?

etc?

      Let's keep it real. How much do I watch tv? Not all the often. How much do I look at magazines and other types of printed sources for entertainment? Not all that often. Yet, getting down to it, how often am I on twitter, snapchat, Instagram, and other forms of social media? The time keeper on my phone says four-to-five hours, daily. So yeah, I guess all that often. So what does that mean for me? Well it means out of my fifteen-hour day I spend about five hours being bombarded with advertisements in and out of the main stream media. At one point I only knew of the mainstream media, but I didn't think much of it. Little did I realize that the world I live in is shaped by the marketing campaigns, main media, personal media, and the few people who live with influence.
      I would say I am better at looking at at advertisements and realizing the difference between "BS" ads conveying lies as compared to ads which tell me what I need to know. However, I would not call myself literate. To be literate, to me, means to completely understand the underlying intentions for the creation. After this class I would be willing to agree some can do this and be considered literate, but for I, I am not one of these. I am taking quick steps in a positive direction towards media literacy. After this assignment and this class I can without a doubt watch a commercial and find everything from assumptions to pathos, ethos, and logos. My natural view of an ad has become more scientific than it had been just months before. Rather than counting myself as a viewer, I would now appreciate the term analyzer. For I have grown.

        Why is my simple growth such an important part of my life? Why is literacy even needed? Well, the answers are quite simple really. It all dates back in time. Advertisements, propaganda, and commercials began as more than just Coca-cola asking you what color Santa's suit is, or Volkswagen changing to pathos due to TDI Clean Diesel tricks. It started in war time. Leaders hired propaganda artists to sway the people and create a world where their image is spread across the land. Hitler spread ads in media in order to expel the Jewish people from the land anyway possible. Martin Luther King Jr. used it to spread the message of inequality among a "free" nation of "peers." Yet the trick to literacy is in the moment of this happening deciding when it is right to listen to the ad and when it is right go against the media's idea of correctness. Our world is overrun by the media, it's our job to realize the good from the bad, to have control when it's needed, and to see what an ad is really showing for what it is, not what it's painted to be.

Snapchat

      One of the most notable names of 2015 and 2016 is snapchat. The new private social media one can use between friends and no one else. Using DM's, pictures, and videos snapchat created a small world for the user. Yet how did it become so popular. With ads as simple as the one shown how could snapchat become as hot as it has?
     Snapchat originally fed on our need to satisfy curiosity by really not saying anything at all. They let the app spread by word of mouth. Very few ads were posted for snapchat and the few that were posted looked simple with only the symbol and a few time the word snapchat in a corner. Confused, people look it up, ask about it, or even download it to learn about the app. The app soon spread like wildfire. Most everyone you see while walking outside is bound to have the app.
      If you asked the average teen today, they would claim the application has become a part of their life. A lovemark has been created between the app and most of its users. One would choose snapchat over many other activities in life that involve real human interaction. There is no real reason for snapchat addiction because quite often the people that are "snapped" are seen everyday in real life.

A Lot of Food, or a lot of money. that is the question

     I love food. Its such a wonderful thing. I could eat it at anytime in a day. I'd much rather have food than rocks. Yet i can find and endless number of rocks, is my food endless? Usually not. However, some places offer that "endless, bottomless, and infinite," but is it ever true outside of a buffet? Olive Garden offers a bottomless "pasta, soup, salad, and breadsticks" deal, so I tried it. Here is what happened.

     So I walked in, got seated and ordered a nice bottomless pasta. It was a little extra from what I would see everything else being priced at, but who cares? I get bottomless food! Or so I thought. My first dish comes, it's a plate that holds a little less than the normal serving amount, but it's bottomless so I still don't fret. I eat it and the waiter comes over and offers me a second bowl. Of course I say yes, that's why I ordered it. When it comes out it's noticeably smaller, possibly a kids meal size portion. This is when I began to realize something was wrong. I ate this, quite quickly because of how small it was. They next offered us the check, what? Before anyone realized it, it was too late for having another round of pasta. Our pasta which we paid extra for this "bottomless" supply of, ended up being a big setup for just seconds.

     So what's the big deal OG? "It's just business," -most likely response. This strategy worked because of their well used weasel words. They used big words that ultimately mean "never-ending" to explain the "great deal" they have for their food. Yet no matter how many times you had the bring you food it would never be infinite because their backroom can only hold so much. They also created it as you feel like its unlimited because they ask if you want seconds, yet that's the only time they ask you for more.

All *people* are created equal

     Throughout the centuries men have been regarded as the dominant killer, bread winner, and anything that involves having more power than women. There is no simple answer to say where this domination idea came from, many follow religions some follow instincts; however, all past leads the same way. Father, son, mother, and daughter.
     Many people in this modern age are growing less and less confident with this idea, feminist groups have emerged with powerful voices and government positions. Yet no female can escape the glass ceiling held above them. They are constantly seen for nothing more than a body, a mother, and practically a toy. On Oprah Winphery's network a film titled MissRepresentation dug into the life of women through the eyes of social media.

     The ongoing male forced continuation of sexual harassment, sexual assault, and sexism among television, movies, and in the work place has far gotten out of hand. Today, most humans begin using technology at a very young age and so therefore at a very young age our untapped brains receive and process the messages shown as our everyday "what it should be" attitude. Yet what humans create for humans is far different than what it should be, the standards and assumptions created at a young age do not match the everyday life of our reality. Constantly seeing women in nothing but underwear sets the sexual image for our young generation. Yet for the older generation the real world has already set in, as unlike kids these images aren't just images.

     The media leaves a deep impact on the life of women and men. Each picture of a clothing deprived woman with a photoshopped body creates the image of women as only sexual creatures. Constantly leading to sexual harassment and in extreme cases sexual assault. It seems that no female can step outside without being told how good looking she is, or how not good looking she is. Yet there is hardly ever any comment on the mental capacity of the girl or no comment on the work she completes. This leads to disastrous results among females of all ages. Already by age 13, 53% of girls  are unhappy with their physical appearance. This number jumps to 78% by the age of  17. If these numbers are scary then keep listening, 65% of all females have some type of eating disorder due to the pressure placed on their shoulders. Another 17% engage in self-harm. In politics, the number of female senators worldwide has almost doubled within the last 20years; however, that still leaves only 22% of all seats resting in female hands. Females have won many more rights within a small amount of years, yet the power has only made a small shift. "All ((hu)man are created equal." A male should not be a male, and a female should not be a female, we all need to just grow into our own equal human beings. We are all people who deserve as much as we deserve, not as much as the roof set for us lets us climb.

How to: advirtisements using the dummies

The Madness

     "It's a trap!" -you should know. Some of us have fallen for the ways of the advertiser, yet some of us have evaded the capture of the predator, is there anything different between the free and the caught? Well there may be, but one thing is for sure,  the trap is still catching people today. So what is this trap? Well advirtisements go up to save you money one way or another, "do ___ and get $10 off ____." Most often I see it assosiated with Instagram followers, free Clash of Clans gems, or iTunes money. Now, for the main event. How does one redeem this free money? Well it's simple, type in your username, download a few apps, and then get money. Yet always somewhere along the way it happens to not work. It may just be me(sarcasm) but it always happens to get stuck between downloading apps and getting money. You may not get the win this round, but the company does. Each time a person falls the company gets another download for their app.

The Science behind the madness

     Why does this work, who could possibly fall for this? It can be along the lines of a lovemark but more often it's closer to what's formally known as: attention. We all want attention to a certain extent, some of us want 2.7M followers on Instagram so we say Bless up, another one, and they don't want us to.... So we will, every other sentence. Yet some of us would rather have a few followers who we actually know. And still, there is no difference. If you're hit where it matters, then anything will work. Using the addictive nature of attention an advirtisement can make a false promise of a completely unrelated idea and get someone to sign up for something. After one signs up, somehow an error occurs with loading the page, yet the newsletter that the person signed up for weekly still comes. Barriers that were once set can, and will be broken if enough is out on the line. The science is deciding on each ad: What's enough? Once enough is found, all you have to do is tell the user to share a link then the product will appear. The "dummies" spread the product so the ads don't have to.

How to Avoid it

     It's quite a simple theory really. There are two ways to avoid the perpetual attack of falsified promises, the ideal would be to do both. Option one, the simplest of all: ignore any thing that says "free ___." In the world we live in, nothing but air is free(for now). Option two: don't get too connected to things. As the great philosophers often think, connection to objects can not be permanent. An Instagram page is not worth $30 and a few apps for 1k unknown people to start following you.

What defines a free game?

     We've all seen the simple advirtisements with big a big 50% off and a small select purchases only. Then we step into the store and find a few shirts, shoes, or pants on sale that were all previously priced relatively low. But how far does that world extend. The digital deals offer the same type of reasoning, "order online for free shipping and handling." Sounds like a nice deal right? It's the same price as the store though, the only difference is that you're ordering offline. so what does Apple do contibute to this madness of advirtisements? Well, free has become... less free.

Displayed is the top chart list of free apps on "app store." As you can see Apple says "get" rather than free like they used to. I'll discuss that word choice later. The next thing one should notice is how under seven out of eleven of them, there is the phrase "in-app purchases." Now this doesn't mean the select four have no in-app purchases, it only means they don't tell you. Take the calculator app for example: as you can see I downloaded it, what I saw within was a calculator. Yet, if one looks deeper than the open face of the app, the person would see "skins" available for 99¢ each. This, technically, would create the app to be a paid for app, because without paying you would not get the entire app. Expansion packs, today commonly known as DLCs have been around since the for a long time now. Back before consoles expansion packs were being sold for games of the era. Today's marketing have made expansion packs the way to go. Take this for example, a calculator app with four skins costs $1.99, yet a free calculator app with DLCs is free, you can get one skin for 99¢. After downloading the free app and buying the skins, you end paying about $4, double that of the calculator that included skins. This DLC company rampage has for gotten out of hand. Most games today offer, or require, a sort of extra that one must buy in order to fully play the game. Some games even rely on the extra bundles. The hit game skylanders, Disney infinity, and others alike, are based off buying extra figures that allow you to play certain levels, or as certain people. Disney infinity heavily targets kids by using all of the favorite characters, causing them to want each and every one. 

      Apple used to use the price of the app or the term free to explain what each app was. A few years ago they changed their version of free games to "get games." So why did they do this? Well, in reality this was no marketing trick at all. The European Commisions created guidelines leading to what games can be called free. One guideline included their habit for misleading titles, each title that was labeled free yet included in-app purchases led children into a trick. However, this was made unlawful with punishment by suing. So in turn Apple changed the title of free to "get."

Summer parties with the only summer beer

     I've always liked the ideas behind Corona's market campaigns, hang out with friends, enjoy life, and "share a cold one with some bros." Yet this commercial "Dear Summer" went somewhat of a different direction. The company not only wants to associate itself with friendship and travel, but quite often we see Corona on a beach, in the water, and in an ice bin because of the outdoor heat. The ads never show the beer in the winter. Almost as if the beer isn't sold in the winter.

      The commercial itself which aired on television as a 60 second ad with an online longer version of 92 seconds featured a man narrating a letter from Winter to Summer, as if they were two human beings. The online version was a slowed down tv clip with spread out piano notes and slowed syllables. It also it's felt like a slow-motion tv version, yet one could tell that it was not. The letter read spoke of Winter being "jealous" of Summer because of how much fun people had. It spoke of swimming, singing, and drinking. The ad directly quotes "you(Summer) even have a beer of your own(Corona)" in which the company claims ownership as the beer of summer. Is it really though? I'm not sure, I don't drink, but what I do know is that the image of Corona is connected to warm bright air, the ocean, and yes Summer. I did like the "Dear Summer" style of the ad, even though it was directed at people around the ages of 20's and 30's. It highlighted the traveler within you, an adventurer that only one beer can bring out of you in the summer, Corona.

P. S. It also showed a bit of creativity by filling a backpack with ice and placing some cold one inside.