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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnMYerc0M-U

Games

I don’t know if I can honestly say that I have been addicted to a video game. I played Rayman for a good three days back in middle school and had the occasional Pokémon game glued to my hands for a while.  I just don’t see the allure in spending hours of my day pretending to be someone else. That is my thought process when I think about video games and changing the world. I do not understand how using a system that hurts social skills and encourages seclusion can ever really benefit the world as a whole.

I understand that playing video games can help us with certain skills. That makes perfect sense to me. What I don’t understand is how these skills are better than the skills we learn from socializing with the actual world. I also thought it was funny that Mcgonigal mentioned how 10,000 hours makes you a master of a certain skill. I see how this applies to video games, but what about the people who have dedicated 10,000 hours to clean water, or HIV research. Are we saying the video gamers are more qualified than these people to solve these problems? I call shenanigans.

I just don’t think gamers have the right mindset to solve these problems. They aren’t super geniuses with the ability to change the world; they are addicts with a visible problem.  I don’t think the answer is encouraging addicting behavior. I think we should leave these problems to the people who are qualified to solve them.

Food

Is it bad that I am physically disgusted by the meat industry, but I cannot get myself to start eating it? I can’t say I was surprised by the mechanization of the food industry, but I can say that I was thoroughly unprepared for what I witnessed. I realize that there really isn't a humane way to kill a chicken, but….ugh. Unpopular opinion time, the ethical treatment of animals isn't what I think about when I bite into a hamburger. Meat is meat and meat is meant to be eaten. I guess I am more disgusted by the amount of bacteria we are subjected to because of the way things are done. Why feed a cow grain if it can cause that much harm? It doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

I really had no idea how much corn can be put into. I never thought it could contribute to things other than food. I guess the miracle of modern science can do just about anything.  The whole concept of corn being bad was a little lost on me. I get why feeding it to animals is bad, but other than that I say go for it. It is a cheap renewable resource.

The whole movie left a weird impact on me. I hate meat, but I love meat. I want to eat organic, but it’s so complicated. I really wish food hadn't become so commercialized. I feel like we took something that was very simple, and completely over complicated it. I guess that is what humans do. 

The media, war, and patriotism

I’m a conflicted individual. That’s what the pop-culture class has taught me recently. I've spent a lot of time thinking about the military. The thought that our cultures immersion in war has somehow made us less critical thinkers makes me very…unhappy. I've been developing an opinion that I think might be a little controversial. Someone called out the fact that we voted for George Bush for a second term and that was their example of us as Americans not thinking critically. I don’t think it was our immersion in war that took away our ability to think critically, I think it was our blind patriotism.

I’m not trying to say that we shouldn't be patriotic, especially in times of crisis. I just think our patriotism created an atmosphere where we made decisions that weren't optimal.  I’m also not saying that the news does a good job when it portrays war. I think we can all agree that the way the news portrayed the war, specifically in 2003, was downright deceitful. I just have trouble believing that the news is capable of rendering the American public incapable of making critical decisions. I feel like we are giving the media too much power. I just like to think that we are capable of more. I do think that one of the things capable of taking away our ability to think critically is a situation in which we feel our security is threatened. I think this was the case in 2003, and I don’t think that was a bad thing in that instance.

Feminism

Let me start off with a story, a story of a freshmen boy who was working on a paper for his English 104 class. The boy was writing an annotated bibliography on female doctors in the early 1900’s. It was during this time that the boy made a startling revelation about himself, he was a feminist. The revelation was so surprising that he said it out loud to a room full of peers. Several audible gasps were released, he couldn't be a feminist! He was a boy and feminist had a rap for being unreasonable and extreme! The boy was shunned, never to be heard from again.

It’s time to come clean my friends, that boy was me. Okay…so I wasn't shunned and I don’t think there were several gasps heard throughout the room. I get a little dramatic sometimes. The point of the story is that people did treat my new found feminist perspective as a bad thing. Like I had jumped into some irrational cult or something, or I was claiming something crazy. I thought my respect for women's rights would be a good thing. Nope. Feminism is  treated as a devil term and I’m not sure why.

I don’t find it unreasonable to think that men and women should be equally. We are raised in a society where equality is praised but women still make less money than men on the hour. It astounds me that women are still fighting for their right to their own bodies when we as a culture have come so far.

I don’t think men have it easy either. For every woman that is being objectified on screen, there is man who is getting exactly the same treatment. Men are one of two very simple stereotypes, the doting husband or the suave playboy bachelor. Men have to be insensitive and brave or else they are perceived as un masculine.

I think women and men both have it bad in our modern society. That’s why I consider myself a feminist. I want equality for both genders. That’s what I think modern feminism entails, a belief that we as humans are all entitled to equal treatment. The word feminism suggest a break away from our overly masculine culture, not just for the benefit of women but for the benefit of society as a whole.

My Parasocial Relationship: A love letter to Taylor Swift

Dearest Taylor Swift,

I am writing you this letter to inform you that we are in a relationship! It’s a one-sided, parasocial relationship, but it still counts! You may be wondering what a parasocial relationship entails, my love, and I am going to tell you. Deanna Sellnow describes our relationship as a relationship where one party knows a great deal about another party, while the other does not. That’s us!

I, for instance, know your birthday, height, hometown, middle name, and (thanks to the media) every boy you have ever dated. You know absolutely nothing about me, and apparently that is perfectly okay. This kind of relationship emerges when a bond of intimacy develops. That means that while an increasing amount of the population hates you, I still love you because I feel like I know you on a personal level. I refuse to let the haters deter my love and/or psychotic obsession with you. You are, after all, my future ex para-social relationship.

You see, Tay-Tay. (Is it okay if I call you Tay-Tay?) I have no delusions that our relationship will last forever. I may finally feed in to the hate and backlash that you encounter.  The sad truth is that our bond of intimacy is based on two factors, realism and privacy. You seem like the portrait of what a good, wholesome girl should be. That realism is why I am obsessed with you and I fear that I may finally jump on the T-Swift hate bandwagon. Your lack of privacy heavily influenced my infatuation with you and may be the cause of my distaste for you later. The obsession the media has with your personal life has given you a somewhat negative reputation.

Alas, I’ll move on to a different para-social relationship, and you will not change at all because you have no idea I exist. At least you know I won’t write a break-up song about you. (That would be crazy…right?)

Sincerely,

Your parasocial stalker Brandon