I watch a significant amount of TV. Do I blame being a latchkey kid in the 1990s, preferring hanging with his grandparents than playing outside? Do I blame working 18 years for a cable company? Who's to say? Nearly a year into a new industry, I still turn on a real TV set and watch live linear channels every day. From old-school broadcast channels to the apps, I consume hours of visual media every day.
Even though I have clung to the traditional ways of viewing, I have also maximized my viewing on Web 2.0 platforms like YouTube. For years I kept them separate: YouTube was for short-form videos like vlogs and viral videos. Then, after consuming a long series of shorter videos (what I called falling down a YouTube rabbit hole) I found Jack's Story.
Jack's Story is a supercut of a character from the New Zealand evening soap opera Shortland Street. Thanks to the industrious supercut (assuming a way to overcome international copyright restrictions) I learned about medical student Jack Hannah and this charming fictional hospital outside of Auckland.
(Sidenote: if you're thinking "that show sounds familiar," you may have heard of it from Jimmy Kimmel.)
The supercut forced me to dig for a way to watch this show here in the US. It's not important how but let's just say I've stayed with this series for three years and counting. (Jack is a doctor now, divorced, and my goodness so much has happened.)
YouTube wasn't done with me yet. The algorithm introduced me to Emmerdale and EastEnders and Coronation Street. It also brought me Hollyoaks and Neighbors, but I gave that back. One can only take so much overwrought acting.
Mark you, I have a past with soap operas as well. My aforementioned parents were ABC soap opera loyalists. I grew up watching those when they lived in Florida and even more when I spent my summers with them after they retired to Jamaica. Television in Jamaica also introduced me to the drama series outside of the US franchises, such as Generations from South Africa and Home and Away from Australia.
Social Media has broken barriers in my own life and opened my horizons. Because of YouTube I look for a more global selection out of the apps for my weekend viewing. I also don't put up with what feels like the same old recycled plot points out of Hollywood - there are innovative stories out there.
While I would never encourage anyone to circumvent any restrictions, I highly recommend a good YouTube rabbit hole to expand your horizons. It just might change your life.
As a child, I remembered when anything not in the Microsoft Office suite was "playing on the computer." At least that's how my mother put it. So it's strange to think about how much social media has changed our lives. Mine in particular. There are so many examples I could share, but the first anniversary of one is coming up. Social media changed how I bathe. If you're like me there are certain news stories that you purposely avoid when they trend online. For me, the story of Ashton Kutcher and Mila Kunis discussing how infrequently they bathe their children and themselves was an automatic "pass." Every year this cleanliness debate comes up: some people admit to not showering daily or brushing their teeth or washing their clothes...then the rest of the Western Internet immolates them with critique. I've even participated in the outrage, but I realized a while ago it's not productive. Are you going to convince this famous or popular person...
Thanks to a wacky few weeks, I had to settle for the concept version of the Online Communities assignment. If I did have the chance to do the full version, I would have spent time capitalizing my decade of time wading into the fitness and bodybuilding communities. I have been obese since the summer after I turned 6 years old and have been under some sort of pressure to be fit. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Jason C-L ✈️💪🏾🙏🏾🧠 (@fitby40orelse) My desire to be fit was under tension: be slim and sporty like my cousins (and my father in my youth) or aspire to be as big as the bodybuilders in the grocery store magazines. Option 1 is what led me to several phases of movement: infrequent gym engagement, on-demand dance videos, the BeachBody movement (P90X and Insanity), yoga, running. It wasn't until I moved down to South Florida that Option 2 came back into my life. Through it all...I have been using social media to ge...
When we consider Web 2.0, the biggest draw is the global reach. The premise of the World Wide Web is to share information (originally a library system) quickly across the miles. All you need is a connection. Wireless Internet and smartphones means that getting connected should be easier. So imagine my surprise when reviewing the Pew Research study from this week's reading that this overview is based on 37 countries. Notably, there are only six sub-Saharan African countries and zero data from Central America and the Caribbean. While DataReportal reports a significant gap in penetration in these areas, these three gaps represent roughly 10% of Internet users. This makes me challenge even the conclusions about sub-Saharan Africa. Worse by erasing such a significant part of the developing world, we miss the high penetration of social media use in the Global South. Global Means Global. If we are truly learning to engage learners a...
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