THE BUZZ

 (Image credit to Banksy)

I went back to my childhood summer camp a month ago. Walking around in the peace and quiet, the not-so-silence of nature, I felt a sigh of relief escape from my body and mind. I couldn't place it at the time, so I kept walking, taking in the scenery and laughing with old friends.

It wasn't until I got back home that I realized that silence, that feeling of relief, wasn't that of true peace and quiet (because we all know a forest is quite loud in reality) but of technological silence. And further than that, I consumed no media. No electronic devices are allowed at the camp. No cell phones, no TV, no electricity. There was nothing. What usually was an endless drone of words and thoughts and ideas and images was silence. Nothing. And it felt fantastic. 

There was no buzz. No electric hum echoing from the devices, from the news, from the posters and the billboards; no buzz was echoing through my head. 

Now, I'm not here to whine about how we all need to unplug and untangle ourselves from the technological mess we've all got going nowadays – I think we all know we do, plain and simple. I'm going a bit deeper here. Very few of us know just how much media we consume. Nor do we realize what we consume on an daily basis.

What do you mean, media?

Here's a nice simple definition I swiped from dictionary.com:

Media (noun, plural): The main means of mass communication (esp. television, radio, newspapers, and the Internet) regarded collectively.

So basically media is everything and anything send out to the masses. Be it a pamphlet, a commercial on the television or an article on the internet. Heck, even this article I'm writing is considered media.

So what? You ask. It's just media.

So what? The media we consume has morphed itself in to a machine. Our very society is dependant on us purchasing products we don't need. And to do that effectively, means promising (or selling) the potential customers not only a product, but an idealized lifestyle as well (well get in to this more later). This machine is not built for our benefit – in fact, it is built to our detriment. And the fact that we've grown so complacent to it, and that it has infiltrated every inch of our own lives (hello bathroom adverts – ew!) is quite a frightening concept.

I firmly believe that everyone should take a media awareness class. After taking in the first of many lectures and articles about media awareness, critical theory and media analysis, and they changed me. Suddenly everything that I watched, everything that I listened to, experienced, read, meant something. Suddenly everything that I took for granted, passively accepted as truth, was something much deeper, and in many cases, much more sinister.

Suddenly I could pick out biases. I could see when a commercial was trying to tell me something I didn't want to hear, or didn't believe in. I was noticing the pieces of media that really 'hooked' me, that got me intrigued and excited, and the media that made me feel awful and gross inside. After a large period of shell-shock from seeing all these messages hidden within seemingly innocent things, I became grateful.

I began to be able to understand why people thought a certain way. I began to understand that not everything represented in media is equal, or true. I learned to read between the lines, and at once sensitize myself to it, to understand and sympathize with the biases within media, and harden myself so that I wasn't as affected by it.

To put it frankly, I viewed media in a much more positive way, for myself and for, eventually, the betterment of the world.

And I hope that through this series, you can do the same thing. It's not always a fun process, nor is it an easy one, especially since almost all of us have grown up with a constant stream of media flowing through us. But I am almost positive that by beginning to understand, and later critique and pick apart media, you will not only be making a positive impact on yourself, but eventually on the world, too.

We live in a world that is constantly being force-fed media – so much that we don't even notice it anymore, or even fight against it when someone attempts to bring themselves and others away from it. So please, if you're feeling resistance to this, take a step back and look at how media has influenced you – today, a month ago, a year, your entire life. Look at how it affected you as a child, or your own children. By taking a look at how effective media is at getting us to do what it wants, and the mammoth-scale in which we consume it, it's paramount that we understand the beast we're dealing with.

Because those who can understand media, not consume it, will be able to rise above it.

Will you join me?