This Sums Things Up

The Innovation Of Loneliness

Oxford Dictionary 2013 Word of The Year

Can you guess what it is?

SELFIE!!

I Have No Real Friends So I'm Selling My Soul To The Robot King

I read a short article on loneliness in old age.

http://metro.co.uk/2013/11/15/so-lonely-isolation-drives-one-in-five-patients-to-gp-4187711/


The article stated that more people are now seeing their GP's because they are struggling with loneliness. It is understandable that in old age we find ourselves lonely. Generally the elderly have lost their life long partner along with many of their friends and are in a seniors home where they spend their days alone in the confines of their room. Without friends to come visit and families that are too busy to take a break from their schedules to visit, the elderly are left on their own.

But the feeling of loneliness shouldn't be something a younger generation suffers from. Yet social media encourages isolation and thus loneliness. It is already proven that today's youth have a harder time communicating face to face with their peers than generations before them. This is due to constant use of online communication and social networking.

What does the future hold for us? Do those crazy apocalyptic hollywood films about robots and technology taking over the world have some truth? I always thought those movies were dumb an irrelevant but maybe they make a good point. Maybe it really is possible. <---- thats a scary thought.

Selfie

The selfie is one of the most popular ways to represent ourselves online. The selfie allows us to create the most perfect picture of ourself. We have the ability to choose the perfect lighting, the perfect angle, the perfect pose, the perfect picture (because no one takes just one selfie pic, lets be honest - we take at least 10.), the perfect crop, and finally the perfect filter. I believe the selfie is the most contrived way we can represent ourselves (more times than not we don't even look like ourselves... The strange thing is it is ourselves. Weird.).

We Are Our Biggest Critics

When I was riding the subway today I found myself looking at all of the ads lining the inside of the train. I don't normally read the ads so when I found myself doing just that I realized that maybe advertising isn't what influences our population today. Maybe, just maybe it is us / each other that have the greatest influence on how we portray ourselves.

We are our biggest critic. We live in a society where we constantly scrutinize and compare ourselves to others. It seems to me that we are not fully content with being ourselves. This got me thinking of social media/ social networking (however you wish to put it). This cyber world that we have created allows us to represent ourselves any which way we please. We are able to publish our life online through a selective process - a process where we pick and choose what the public eye, our peers/ followers/ friends get to see. This allows us to create an idealistic representation of ourself.

Everyone is trying to be perfect, yet the reality is that nobody is perfect. The great thing about social media is that it is a platform that allows us to view/ represent ourselves however we please. The negative side of this is that we are now comparing ourselves to each other more than ever. This is why I say that we as a culture have the greatest influence on each other.

(I guess you could say that advertising and how we represent ourselves online are very similar. They are both idealistic and persuasive representations that have the intent to send a message to it's target market or friends/followers/peers.)

Iterative stage 1

How advertising uses images to portray a message...

Intro

A large number of today’s North American population suffers from negative body image. Through my research I would like to find out why this has become an increasing problem over the last decade. Some other questions I seek answers to are; who is most affected by the issues surrounding body image, what triggers these negative self perceptions, are there aspects to advertising and media that target theses fears and weaknesses in people, at what age do body image perceptions develop, can they be prevented?