Harry Potter

One of my favorite series, aside from Star Wars, is Harry Potter. When I was younger, a very popular parody of Harry Potter is the Potter Puppet Pals. These videos typically parody life at Hogwarts, taking away from the seriousness of it.

In this one, we see Harry exploring swearing, a typical teenage thing to do.

Spring break media consumption.

The majority of my spring break was spent watching Netflix and other television shows, along with watching some movies with a friend. The other stuff I kept up on was online news about the current election, along with people's reactions on social media. The other media consumption that I kept up with was using Facebook to keep up with friends and other social media to keep entertained.

The movie that my friend and I watched was The Night Before, mainly due to our obsession with the "bro" type movies.

Literature in the New Media

Over the weekend, I managed to stop by the local Barnes and Noble in Sioux Falls. While there, I noticed many covers for their e-reader, the Nook. I began to wonder if e-readers were really the future, or if they had fizzled out, like most technology like that does.

I did own a Nook for a while, but never really used it. I much preferred the feel of the real book, along with reading on my iPad's iBook feature. It felt silly to purchase new books on the Nook when I had already had a good majority of them in the physical, along with easily getting them onto the iPad when I got one.

My question came down to the idea of if the Nooks were just made to make money off of individuals. There were no real discounts to buying the books from the e-reader, except for free downloads of books that were in the public domain, which could be easily downloaded on the computer. The Nook itself costs over a hundred dollars, then the accessories, such as the cases, cost even more.

I view the e-readers as a con to make more money off of books, but that could just be my cynical outlook on capitalism.

Digital Inequality

One of the things that interested me the most about this chapter was the idea of the habitus. The habitus is the world that you grew up in and were socialized in. For example, I grew up in a much different one than my grandparents and my parents. I've grown up with more technology readily available to me, which influences my way of thinking and how I respond to different types of things. I was able to pick up on texting and use of different media than my parents have been, and even more so than my grandparents. Another example is the idea of how materialistic my grandparents are against how minimalistic I am. I am not very much into the flashy things, keeping most of my decoration and my life in a minimalistic way. My grandparents, however, feel the need to keep up with everyone else, needing to get the newer cars and needing to keep up on what is going around in terms of social media.

This idea also reflects the idea of the cultural capital, the idea that what we have shows our social class. Since I am a college student and do not have a savings account as large as my grandparents or a full time job like my grandparents have, I do not feel the need to spend the money that I have earned on things in order to keep up with everyone else around me.

Thug Notes

For one of my other classes, our assignment was to read Dracula. Since I was really confused with the story, I went in search of youtube videos in order to help with my comprehension. Thug Notes combines modern language with summaries of classic and contemporary works, and helps keeps things simple and easy to understand.

Media Ecology

Media that I have

The list of media that I have A collection of approximately 200 vinyl records A collection of approximately 100 CDs My laptop My variety of Apple products (iPhone, iPod, iPad) My gaming counsels (XBOX 360, PS2, PS3, PS4, Wii, Gamecube, and Nintendo 64) and various games for them That's all I can think of off the top of my head, but I will add more as I continue to think of them.