Sex Ed

Something that really spoke to me in where is invade next is how sex education is taught in France. Something that is not touched upon in America enough is consent. In high shool, we discussed the statutory rape age and how different people deal with it. We never talked about our personal life. I am assuming that part of this is because students would be embarresd talking about it. This is a whole issue in itself. Sex should be an open conversation. This is not stressed in class nor in life enough. How are children supposed to know what consent is and how to be in a healthy relationship. They also had abstinence based health classes at my school in which they wouldn't teach you about contraceptives because if you don't have sex you don't need it. Sex Ed tried to scare us all out of having sex, but it should encourage healthy relationships instead.

Charity for profit

I believe in the idea that people will be more inclined to participate in charitable acts if they have the incentive of a profit behind it. However, I do not believe it is the same act. A person who donates to charity or creates a non-profit must do so for the act of doing the charitable act itself. If a person only did something nice because they wanted something in return, how genuinely nice is the act?

It leaves humans at the corner of a dilemma. Does a human accept the idea of making money off of charity or do they do charity for the act of doing charity. This however is not the criticism that Toms faced. Tom faced a lot of criticism in reguard to the people they donated to. People thought that those who recieved the Toms would become too reliant on others to have shoes. However, I do not think this is the issue. I believe the issue is making a profit from charity.

No Laptop Left Behind

This reading really opened my eyes to the role that technology plays in education. I often think about the new technologies that have come into play in schools. I was friends with some girls who were required to get iPad in high school at the private school they attended. I had always thought this was unnecessary. To some aspect, I feel that requiring certain technologies in the classroom is not always the answer. When the girls at the school were required to get iPads, they were required to do work and learn on iPad. This narrows the scope of study. It creates an environment where the student is told what type of studying is best. I believe that every person studies differently and these differences should be explored and embraced. For example, when I study for a test, I cannot create a study guide on a computer. If I want to retain information, I must write the information down. Many studies show that writing something down by hand increases a person's ability to memorize it significantly.

I also often think about what school must have been like before the internet and Microsoft word. Everything had to be hand written and if a person wanted information, they needed to search through a book. When this was the case, people had an entire extra set of skills that learning in this way required. Now that these steps are no longer necessary, many people have lost those skill sets. To me, this doesn't matter because the skill sets that used to be a necessary are becoming obsolete. However, the people that have access to technology have an unfair advantage over people who do not have access as it pertains to information. The girls at the school who were required to have an iPad had an advantage over me because I didn't have an iPad. They may have not been able to memorize information as well, but they didn't need to because it was all at their fingertips. Even though I do not believe that technology should be pushed upon students, I do believe that every student should have equal access to it. This scenario is almost an impossibility. There will always be people with less access than others, but efforts must be made to secure access to information for everyone. If everyone had access to information, that global awareness would lead to an increase in problem solving and give everyone the opportunity to do so in their own way.

Future of Advertising

Advertising is not what it used to be. Advertising used to be a novelty that we could easily distinguish from the rest of our life. Now, it is all around us. Advertising is, financially, an interesting part of business. Most of the time businesses pay for advertising. This is not the same as paying for new equipment in your business, there is no guarantee that the type of advertising will make a big impact. Advertising is a game of trial and error for small businesses.

Big businesses proved advertising to us from every angle at all times of the day. We cannot escape it. We are hit with so many ads a day, they don't make as huge of an impact on us. This is why advertisers must now catch the attention of the consumer immediately. This can be a difficult task since our attention span has evolved to that of a goldfish.

My sister works in a very modern entity of advertising. She calls it "the future of marketing." She works for a company that specializes in experiential marketing. This is marketing made into an experience. It is almost a cross between event planning and marketing. Her company creates an event or a pop-up kiosk that gives consumers the chance to participate in the ad. It is interactive. This type of marketing holds the attention of the consumer and makes it almost impossible for them to escape because they are literally a part of the ad. The idea is that this form of advertising will encourage talk among consumers. Company marketing events will begin to trend on twitter and everyone will want to come and be a part of the marketing campaign. It is giving the power to the consumers while catching their attention and keeping them engaged.

Black Mirrors Ep. 2

In the second episode of Black Mirrors, they live in a dystopian society in which media is imbedded into their everyday life by force almost. They live in a box that is made up of TV's. They are forced to watch the ads that come on the screen. If they close their eyes a piercing noise plays until their eyes are open again. The most unique part of this society is that they all work at the same place. Their place of work is a room with exercise bikes facing a TV. The people who live in this society must pedal to power the TV's and the shows that are on them.

Some think this is a dystopian view of the future of advertising. I do not agree with this. I think that this society is a metaphor for that way that advertising affects us today. If you think about it, we are slaves of advertising. Like the people in the dystopian society, we cannot escape it. The room of TV's is a metaphor that shows we have no power over advertising being in our life. Even if we try to avoid it, we see logos and hear jingles wherever we go. Ads are always around is an inescapabable. The place of work is a metaphor for how we are buying into consumerism. Our inherent need to buy more and more stuff is what fuels companies ads. It is the very act of buying into the ads that allow the ads themselves to control us. It is a positive feedback loop. The more we see inescapable ads, the more it allows them to control us.

Transmedia vs. Traditional Storytellling

This reading opened my eyes to the endless possibilities that exist through transmedia storytelling. It brings a whole new level to traditional storytelling. In my opinion, this can be a good or bad thing.

                Traditional storytelling gives you a linear story that you either read or hear. This is one dimensional as if you are watching the events in the story take place. Transmedia storytelling gives humans the capability to take a one dimensional story and put a person inside of it. From this point on, the story is no longer linear. The story changes depending on your decisions. It takes a person who feels like they are witnessing the story taking place and places them in the story. The witness becomes a character and the story begins to engage all of the senses. This gives people the power to become one with a story and fully experience it.

On one hand, transmedia storytelling is positive because it engages people more than ever before. On the other hand, transmedia storytelling can be seen as negative because it allows people to rely on everything they are given. With traditional storytelling, listeners and readers were only given a plot. In order to become immersed in the story, one had to use their imagination. People had to imagine what it would be like if they were a character in the story. Transmedia does not require any extra thought. Everything is given to the person. This could damage the way people think and cause people to use their imagination less. 

Transmedia

The reading this week is about transmedia storytelling. Transmedia storytelling is telling a story through the use of many media platforms. Though transmedia storytelling is not always used for marketing, it is an extremely powerful marketing tool. A very recent example of transmedia used in a mass marketing campaign is the film Jurassic World. Jurassic World launched a twitter account a full year before the film came out to begin generating talk of the new film. The producers knew that they would have to create a huge marketing campaign in order to win back fans from an older franchise. They used modern techniques to do so. They took advantage of viral marketing and instead of creating a website that would promote the movie, they created a website to promote Jurassic World, the fictional theme park. The website included park maps, park cameras, current weather on the island, ride wait times, and even how to book a flight to the park. Every detail was addressed and users could easily be tricked into believing it was a real theme park. The website connected to the "official site" of Masrani. This is a fictional corporation that owns Jurassic World. This website includes the company stocks and the option to apply for a job. Both websites also included many videos from YouTube about the building of the park and the owner of Masrani. When the film came out, the fictional company website included a note from the CEO warning of the risks of investing in the company since the recent event (the destruction of the park that is portrayed in the film). The campaign was revolutionary and extremely instrumental in the success of the film. This is a great example of transmedia storytelling in marketing. The creators of Jurassic World used several mediums to not only tell a story, but to create a new world.

This is my badge that I earned for applying for the dinosaur maintenance job.

Something else that is under conspiracy of being a transmedia marketing campaign are the clowns. There have been reports of clowns luring people into the woods and scaring people all over the country. Few of the reports have been verified and many have turned out to be rumors. The rumors have started mainly on Twitter and there have been videos on YouTube of creepy clowns walking around and scaring people. It is not yet verified if these are all elaborate pranks or if all this talk is promoting the remake of Stephen King's "It." If it turns out to be marketing for the movie, this could be and even more successful marketing campaign than Jurassic World.