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My Relationship with Media


Overall, I would characterize my relationship with most media as fairly surface-level. While I enjoy doing things like watching movies, listening to music, and playing video games, I do not typically try to analyze my experience to determine what caused the feelings I had. However, if I experience media that I have a particularly strong negative or positive reaction to, I usually try to determine what about it made me react so strongly. Furthermore, I do not usually try to leave my comfort zone very much with the media I consume. For example, a vast majority of the movies I watch are sci-fi, fantasy, or action-oriented, so I have a narrower stream of messages I get from them than someone who watches a wider variety of genres. Over the course of this media blog, I will try to learn to further break down the experiences I get from media, and to apply the things I am learning in Critical Thinking to my everyday life.
The vast majority of the media I consume is strictly for entertainment. While I may receive deeper messages from the movies I watch or the games I play, I do not actively try to seek them out. Instead, I focus on what I would personally find most enjoyable on a surface level when looking for new media to consume. Despite this, I try to stay at least somewhat informed on more "serious" media, like the news. I use the information I get from it to help inform the decisions I make about the world and people around me much more than I use information from more entertainment-based media.
Another facet to my relationship with media is the media I personally create. For instance, while I have slowed down somewhat recently, I used to write short stories in my spare time. Similarly to the media I enjoy consuming the most, my stories are generally written to entertain first and foremost, and do not have very many significant themes or messages. However, as my view of the world has evolved over time, I have tried to evolve the media I produce with it, and am currently trying to incorporate more meaningful messages and themes into my writing.

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