A Day In the Life

                  Media are all around us, and we all use them every day.  Like most people in today’s age I consume lots of media.  Due to the rise of the internet, and my heavy use of it, most of the media I make use of is found somewhere in, as the saying goes, the series of tubes, that makes up the internet.  It’s a miraculous thing, every bit of traditional forms of media: newspapers, videos, music, etc.  all of that can be found in staggering amounts at just the tips of all of our fingers, and it’s definitely one of the reasons why I love it, my entire day and almost all of my media interactions are interconnected through technology.  And I am not alone “By 2008, 75% of American adults used the Internet.”(45)

A remix of a speech given by Ted Stevens referring to the internet as a “series of tubes”.

                My day always begins the same way, with my alarm going off, and me getting in the shower with no media at all, except for my laminated power tools.  After that though, I immediately turn on my laptop and load up three things: my email, Facebook, and reddit.  Facebook and email don’t give me much media, occasionally someone will post an interesting link, but other than that there isn’t much going on, especially early in the morning.  It’s become more of a habit at this point than actually wondering what is going on.  Reddit on the other hand is absolutely brilliant for finding any kinds of media.  But I usually don’t have much time to browse as much as I’d like to before it’s off to class.  When I leave one of the first things I grab is my iPod and headphones and I start listening to music to make the journey from my room to the dining hall, and then to class that much more interesting.  I’m always somewhat disappointed that artists don’t get paid very much.  “A $0.99 iTunes download generates about $0.33 for iTunes and a standard $0.09 mechanical royalty for the song publisher and writer, leaving about $0.57 for the record company.”(99).  With the rise of the internet though artists can sell their own music much more easily, as Trent Reznor has shown with the two albums he’s released since leaving Interscope.

Music video for one of my favorite bands, Opeth.

My top 10 Artists

                On occasion I will venture over to the website Last.fm which is a modern form of radio.  Stations are set up by various things; there is a recommended station, which will play music that the site thinks you will like based off what you listen to, which is what I usually listen to, in an attempt to discover new bands that I’ve never heard of.  There are also stations for similar artists to one that you input, or just one artist, and stations for a genre of music.  It’s quite versatile and one of the few sites that I use to listen to music.  Mostly I use it for the ability to discover new artists that are similar to the ones that I already listen to.   It also lets you link charts of your top artists, tracks, and albums for the week or overall.  And offers charts of other listening data which is pretty neat to look at.  Last.fm falls under the type of station that carries “music formats unavailable on local radio, such as jazz, blues, and New Age music.”(133).

The only Textbook I've finished (courtesy of Amazon.com)

After grabbing my iPod though and turning on some tunes, I grab my textbooks, which are the few books that I actually read nowadays.  I used to read quite a bit when I was younger, but now it seems that the only things I read are things that are assigned for classes.  I feel like I do read more overall though, most likely due to the fact that I am reading a lot more news than I used to.  Almost all my reading is done online though, instead of the older traditional methods.  I think that is true of most people my age though. 

                 After my deprivation from almost all forms of media during my classes, I return back to my dorm to immerse myself in it once again.  And once again, in a style quite similar to my mornings, I open up my usual sites: Facebook, email, and reddit, as well as several forums that I browse.  As I mentioned earlier, reddit is amazing for finding media.  People submit links, and they either get upvoted or downvoted so you find things that other people found interesting.  There are many different subreddits, or categories a link can be submitted to: worldnews, politics, science, gaming, etc.  They even have one called IAMA which stands for I am a _____ Ask Me Anything, where people submit stories of things that happened to them, or of things they do or did and answer questions about the subject.  It’s this site where I am usually exposed to online newspapers, seeing the big headline news on sites like The New York Times, and the Huffington Post.  “…many readers begin their day by logging on to the Internet and scanning a wide variety of news sources…”(261), this is exactly what I do.

reddit's logo with the trademark reddit alien.

                After that I usually check the several webcomics that I read: XKCD, Cyanide and Happiness, SMBC, Nedriod being the main ones.  Daily webcomics are awesome.  I’ve always loved comics, ever since I was little.  The Sunday comics were the only piece of the newspaper that I ever read when I was young.  My dad would take the rest of the paper, and I’d take the colorful little section.  But now instead of getting comics in print, I can get them online.  “…comics endure as part of popular and alternative culture.”(323).  With the rise of the internet comics are everywhere, there are tons of daily, or weekly webcomics to be found and read.  I think I have over eight in my bookmarks that I read. 

Cyanide and Happiness: Comic #2195

                 Then I usually relax with some gaming.  Recently I have gone back to playing QuakeLive, a remake of the old Quake 3 Arena.  I love it for the fact that it is for one, free, and two, it has that old school game feel to it.  I can’t play new First Person Shooters.  They all feel too clunky to me.  There is a much higher focus on realism than fun.  In the new games, the screen shakes all around when moving, and the character moves slowly but realistically, and gunfights are short due to the fact that you die in only a few hits.  In older FPS games, such as Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory, or Quake, your character could move incredibly fast, especially when using a technique known as trick-jumping or strafe-jumping, where you move your mouse side to side in a special way while jumping and strafing to gain up massive amounts of speed.  Things were less realistic, but more fun, as far as I’m concerned.  Team Fortress 2 is one of the few recent FPS games that keeps the non-realistic gameplay that I like.

Get Quaked video done of some of the best Quake players.

                The rest of my day is spent lazing around, browsing the web, listening to music, and playing games until I feel like it’s time to do work.  I usually settle down at night turn on the TV for one of the few shows that I watch and start on my homework.  If there’s nothing on, I usually just turn it to Comedy Central.  They almost always have something interesting on, either some standup or a movie.  There are a lot of reruns though, but I usually don’t mind, since it just helps me concentrate on my work more easily.  Nick Swardson and Daniel Tosh are both good standup comedians that I like to watch when they are on.  Both have their own shows on Comedy Central now as well that I like to catch when they are on.  One of my favorite shows though, is Its Always Sunny in Philadelphia, which I first found on Comedy Central, but is an FX show.  It’s one of the few sitcoms I watch where “character development is downplayed in favor of zany plots.”(158).  Which Always Sunny fits that description incredibly accurately. 

Video of some of Nick Swardson’s standup.

                The only movies that I really watch are the ones that I see on TV.  My roommate has a fairly extensive collection of DVDs though, and every now and then I’ll watch one, but it’s not a frequent thing.  Most of my entertainment is found online so movies are definitely not my highest priority for entertainment, but when there are good ones that come out I do enjoy going out to the movie theaters with my friends and seeing one in theaters.  I most often watch movies with my friends which proves what the book says “…movies have acted to bring people together.”(213).  But I still don’t watch them that often.  The only form of media that I use less than movies would have to be magazines.

               Overall most of my media experiences are through the internet and online versions of traditional media.  But due to the increased availability of the internet as well as speed the internet is gaining an increased importance in our lives and for media.  There is just such a variety of things to be found, remixes of some of the weirdest things, stories, news, videos, music, and everything else that you can imagine.