Ellen's Media Blog

                                                           Last night I watched part of a documentary called The Creepy Line  on Amazon Prime Video.  It is about the internet and data mining focusing mostly on Google and Facebook, the two main corporations that rule the internet.  The old CEO of Google once said that Google was not going to cross the "creepy line."  This is interesting in a few ways.  The documentary brings up the point that an ethical person who does not want to mess with people's data would say that they are going to stay very far away from the creepy line so nothing they are doing would be confused with being creepy or crossing the line.  Instead, the CEO said that they were going to go up to the creepy line but not cross it.  This is a little to close for my comfort.  ...

The documentary MissRepresentation talked a lot about women in politics, bringing up points about self-objectification, voices in politics, women's views on woman leaders, and woman leaders in other countries.  There are real problems surrounding gender in the world that need to be solved.  If young girls are not assaulted by such judging media, a lot could be different. The media is centered around the criticism of people.  Women are presented in a way that makes the reality of women and girls seem sub-par.  Young men start to judge women more harshly because of this, and girls but immense pressure on themselves to conform to men's ideals that are presented in media.  Girls start to objectify themselves, see themselves as objects because of these overwhelming forces surrounding them. They do not think of themselves as someone with a voice anymore,  and therefore do not think they should be involved in politics.  This is the terrible founda...

A Midriff is a prematurely mature caricature that was created by media and the need to sell to teenagers.  Midriffs sell the idea of flaunting sexuality to young girls.  This shows these girls that their only asset is their sexuality, so they need to use it to be noticed.  One example of a midriff who is currently big in current media is Ariana Grande.  Especially in her new music video for the song thank u, next , Grande is showing young girls and teenagers that their sexuality is their only strength and they always have to look good for others. Over winter break, my families friends came up from Salinas.  The youngest girl who is 11 wanted to do a photo shoot with my sister.  They got all dressed up and put on a ton of makeup.  This is one of the effects of the midriff.  My sister and friend are prematurely putting on a lot of makeup for the purpose of looking beautiful for others.  They came back from it with a lot of pictures...

Netflix makes so much money and has so many subscribers it makes $950 million dollars every month.  Everyone has Netflix, and it is surprising when you come across someone who doesn't.  I  recently watched To All the Boys I've Loved Before  with my friends and it was okay.  Nothing great about it, but nothing terrible.  I have realized now that Netflix is cranking out so many movies and TV shows that most of them become white noise and are just content.  I have been seeing a lot on the news that a lot of big companies are pulling their content off of Netflix.  To counter this, Netflix has been making an insane amount of content.  Most of which is not the best quality.  Mindless movies and shows to keep us entertained.  Even though To All the Boys I've Loved Before  was entertaining, it is definitely not at the level of most other films. This may be a pessimistic view of the reality of "Netflix Originals,"...

I send my fact to 57 people.  Some people get it individually, some are in group chats, others are even on a Remind class that I created.  Every day I spend at least 10 minutes just looking for a fact.  Then it takes me a while to send it to everyone.  I would say that it takes me a total of 20 to 25 minutes of my day are spent doing my fact.  Sometimes this can be even longer if it is hard to find a good fact, or if I have to fact check.  I don't want to send out a fact to people that is not true.  Most days I get a little scared that someone is going to reply to a fact saying that it is not true. Most days I have to check my facts because a lot of the times the places I get the facts are not very trustworthy.  Sometimes I hear facts on NPR, other times from people who want to suggest facts.  Overall, where I get my facts varies greatly and so does where and how I fact check them. It is a little sad that I even have to check facts....

When people go on social media it is to connect with other people, to talk to their friends, not to give their information away.  When people talk about the good parts of technology being forgotten when media and technology are criticized, they often bring up the fact that now people can connect much easier.  I can have a conversation with someone across the world if I wanted.  But this brings in another dark side to it.  Because we give away so much information about ourselves when we do go online, the media companies sell this information to earn money, since media is free. Data mining taints the good parts of media.  The part that I have almost unlimited access to so much information is darkened by the data being collected and sold on me.  The part that I can talk to my friends whenever I want is overshadowed by the corporations that now have even more data on me.  They know what I am doing, when I am doing it, and can even predict what...