Media: Too Much of a Good Thing...



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Media is a good thing.  It has brought people together, changed technology for the better, and created new ways for people to learn and express themselves.  While I believe media is great, and technology needs to continue to be pushed in order for innovation to rise, I am beginning to see a trend of media being used to create division, instead of being used to bring people  together.  While I'm sure this has been going on for longer, the start of this trend of using media and new technology, specifically social media, to look for ways to attack one another, began when Trump became president.  Weather you are for or against him, it is hard to deny two things: 1, he has very little control over his mouth, and 2, that people started believing more and more that in order to have a discussion with someone, you have to have the same beliefs.  With the seemingly 24 coverage of the president, on CNN and Fox especially, it seems as if people enjoy arguing just for the sake of it.  They go looking for fights to start, and I believe this is where the idea of "Cancel Culture" came from.  The invention of social media further solidified the idea of "once something is on the Internet, it's there forever," and this new wave of cancel culture has latched on to that.  The idea of looking for fights to start is inherent in this new wave, as people go searching for 10 year old jokes or 20 year old pictures of people in an offensive costume, all to justify tearing down someone's job or standing in society.  There are some people who deserve the backlash they receive, but the vast majority are usually minor mistakes from a person's past, mistakes that they have since worked to ratify.  As a communications and media student, this new trend worries me.  I think the reason that media and technology has surged forward over the past 2-3 decades is because people used it to push others to be great, not to tear each other down.  But, I believe this new idea of using media to push away, stead of draw together, will only hurt us in the long run; and I'm scared to see where it goes past old tweets. 

Link To Video Prompt: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=4&v=5DU1B_XkyIk               

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