Week 6 : Elitism VS Populist and How does Mass Media Affect Socialization in Children and in Young Adults?

Journal Entry 6

Elitism vs Populist Values

Definition of elitism and populist and my thoughts:

An elitist is a small group of people with a lot of advantages and keep the most power who thinks themselves superior to others. To them, certain groups of media entertainment belong with different factions of people in the social ranking. For example, classical music should be listened to by high class people, whereas comic books, kung-fu movies are for a low class audience. This is a very shallow way of thinking because all forms of entertainment should be enjoyed by the public.

Pop culture appeared after an art movement that brought about artistic techniques such as photomontage, collage and assemblage, then comic strips, mass produced objects and advertising all impacted the subject matter. Pop culture was categorized by something that was ‘popular, gimmicky, glamorous and Big Business’. Pop culture has an issue where something ‘trendy’ but insignificant is often popularized. For example, Taylor Swift’s recent music video, Look What You Made Me Do had 63 million views in a week.
This is the link to the video clip in case you are curious : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tmd-ClpJxA

That is so much for a video clip where Taylor sings about ‘how terrible her life of fame is and how unfair media treats her’ through a low-grade song equivalent to dog poo sprinkled in gold. I could say the same about Katy Perry’s Swish Swish. The music was dull and boring and made purely for the purpose of dissing each other. There are probably thousands of people all over the world who produces good music and good video clips that deserve more than the cheap glamour-and-fame-infused music the pop culture produces. In any case, I couldn't care less about their little feud, I just wish the media didn't manipulate it in a way where they would get so much money for it.

"How does Mass Media Affect Socialization in Children and in Young Adults?

Talks about how the mass media affects socialization in children and in young adults.

Discuss how there are negative and positive factors of how mass media can influences

a child's or young adult's life. "

A strong media influence in our modern day culture is the huge presence of Youtube. In Youtube, there is beneficial and good content, made to teach their viewers or simply for the purpose of entertainment, and then there’s really bad content. The way Youtube works is that everything that is trending/popular/famous has a ‘viral’ factor where it is shared over and over again. Most of the times the content are entertaining, but without any filter, children are sometimes exposed to inappropriate videos that are not suitable for their age. What shows up in your recommended might be trendy, but poor content. And the things that make these videos viral are sometimes the character a specific Youtuber produces. Some are very loud and irritating, some are overly excited, and some simply use their children to gain ad revenue on Youtube.

I have firsthand experience when it comes to seeing this type of trash content. There is a popular type of youtube video trend with kids that consists of opening toy packaging. In each video they buy some new toys, like kinder joys or as they call it ‘surprise egg’, open it and talk about it. That’s it. And for that they get a lot of money from ad revenue. There is a popular youtube channel that does this by the name of HobbyKidsTV, and I have a particular dislike for them for a few reasons. One, the type of attitude they have to potray (else they won’t get as much viewers) is acting overly excited, a very strange attitude to set an example to for children.

Notice : There are 6 ads in this video. And it is a video of their dad playing a horror game. Hardly beneficial for kids to watch.

Second, the kids are sitting and watching these grown adults play with toys and not playing with it themselves. Kinda says something for the irony of modern life. And third, it is not educational. These poorly-produced videos of grown men or women opening different types of surprise eggs and talking about their content, has probably no educational value at all.

There was also certain type of Surprise Eggs videos that use their children to open the eggs and talk about the toys for them. And some, as I have dreadfully notice, use their children to gain that ad revenue. If the child was a natural born with the camera, and had an adorable charm about them, that is fine. But some parents have their camera-shy and awkward children do it and it becomes quite pitiful to watch. And then an ad shows up in the video and you know their parents gained money off of this. What irks me is how easy the line of work is for them to get millions of subscribers and millions of views, and how the children are blissfully unaware of this exploitation.

Also, the fact of the matter is that we cannot fully control what our children watch on Youtube, and it ultimately becomes a danger to them. Sometimes cartoon shows are manipulated by adult fans and turned into a different type of show that is rate R18. But the kids won’t know this and click on what looked like a video of a My Little Pony Show. What they see however might confuse and scare them as the videos are not appropriate for their age. Exposure when a child is too young might result in a disastrous future for the child, especially if the child is traumatized.

We must take better control of the mass media around us, and make sure the rules and regulations are always properly enforced so that good-quality content shows up more on the mass media. Because there is a clear difference between bad-quality content on Youtube that is still shown to the world and good, studied cartoon shows aired on TV. The contrast is great and I cannot imagine what result would bring about to a generation that watches these terrible youtube videos.