The Media Made Me Do It

I believe that I have a very special and deep rooted relationship with the subject of media and consumerism. Ever since I can remember, I have been bombarded on a daily basis with the media, although, these occurrences were never truly realized until recently. My relationship with media and consumerism comes from television, internet, and the hand I had in it as well.
With television, I have always had a relationship with it. Ever since I can remember I was plopped in front of a television whether it was getting ready for school, watching Saturday morning cartoons, or simply out of boredom. This, I think, was the start of my consumer life. During the commercials of these shows the broadcasting companies would play commercials whose target demographic was children. I would constantly ask my mom if I could have the new Barbie. Then I would ask if I could have her outfits and matching convertible and all of her friends. Within a short amount of time, between segments of shows, at least three commercials are played. Within that time, companies successfully lured me along with millions of other children into desiring what they were selling. The shows themselves were a way in which the relationship between media and consumerism and me was thickened. The shows I watched made me want to buy products with their images on it when I went shopping with my mother. I wanted shoes or a shirt that a certain character wore. They had things that I wanted. My high school math teacher told me that when Christmas or birthdays come around, his children do not know what to ask for. This is because he does not let his kids watch television so they never see commercials. They do not know what to ask for because they do not know what the latest toy or gadget is. In a way, I think it preserves their innocence for just that little while longer, not being exposed to all the heaviness of consumerism as much as the rest of us.
The internet plays a large role in my life and my relationship to media and consumerism. First of all, every website you go to has numerous ads that try to get you to visit their site and buy their product. Everyone is trying to sell something of some sort in the internet. There are few things that are not accessible through the internet. You can get news from various sources as well as television and pretty much whatever your heart desires. I spend a great deal of time in the internet. One thing that the internet does is feed my consumer needs. As well as finding anything on the internet, you can buy almost anything on the internet as well. Within the last month, I have already purchased four items on the internet. It makes it so easy to shop and spend. It is also easy to get sucked into a whole virtual world in which you can spend hours at a time looking at the most random things from court case documents to pictures of cats in sweaters.
Another way in which I am attached to media and consumerism is through being on the producing end of it. I was Editor in Chief of my high school’s newspaper and for three years I worked to bring a source of media to the student population as well as the faculty and administration. I always tried to be as objective as possible, but it was not hard to make sure my audience clearly knew what angle I was taking. Every article has a bias and it was not hard to quote people with similar opinions to make articles lean towards a certain way. I also had to design advertisements for businesses who bought space in the paper. It was my job to make my target demographic want to buy these products or visit these places. I even redesigned the whole paper with a new name, different layouts and segments, and fonts sans serif to make it more modern so that the students would be more interested. My hand in the media gave me a better understanding of how media and consumerism operated and how it impacted me.
Media and consumerism is a part of everyone’s lives. Apart from living as a hermit in the base of a mountain, there is no real way to escape it. There are many different aspects of media that we do not always realize penetrate our lives. As much as I would not like to admit it, I am somewhat of a slave to consumerism what it has to offer.