Consuming & Creating ME(dia)

I begin to write this blog post and see my phone screen awaken. It tells me I’ve an unwatched snapchat and an unread text. The screen lingers, taunting me with possibility. The temptation is unbearable. The screen falls asleep again – but what’s done is done: I must know. I check my phone. I didn’t want to, necessarily. I know I need to get this assignment done and I know that checking my phone hinders that process. Isn’t there something terribly ironic about writing a blog post about identity and media consumption… and getting distracted by your phone?

Stock Image of Phone, 2018

I wasn’t always like this. I had one of those chunky unbreakable Nokia phones most of my life. I didn’t get a Facebook until senior year of high school. I missed that whole phase of embarrassing prepubescent photos on social media. I never got to regret hitting “Like” on three hundred Facebook pages titled things like “I’M sO raNDom xD.” But I changed, as people tend to do. I spend a lot of time mindlessly watching crappy television shows on Netflix. I watch Instagram stories like they are their own form of television.

 But still I continue to change, as recently I’ve discovering that constant connection through social media and texting overwhelms me and makes me anxious. I tell people I need to step back from texting now. I discovered it to be the root of past failed romantic relationships. I’m guilty of deleting my Instagram app off my phone and going on a “hiatus.” My relationship with media consumption is constantly in flux and I am constantly examining myself and my dependence on media. Do I really need to watch this episode of The L Word that I’ve seen at least 4 times before? Why am I checking my Instagram when I just checked it ten minutes ago? Do I really need to check my phone again right now even though it hasn’t buzzed or dinged or beeped at all throughout writing these past two paragraphs? Yes, apparently, I do (and I did).

As a 20 year old, as a queer, as a college student, as an American citizen, to say that the media I consume doesn’t somehow define me would be inaccurate. I am someone dependent on media. And I think we all are, in one way or the other. I don’t believe there is a way to not be dependent on media – whether it be newspapers, Twitter, podcasts.These are the things that make societies thrive and grow: we connect, we tell stories, we relate to one another. Media can serve as much as an escape route from the real world as an entrance, which makes the shame associated with this dependence unnecessary. What there should be is recognition. What there should be is a healthy balance. I use podcasts to educate myself, like Hoodrat to Headwrap, or to imagine and enjoy escapism, like Welcome to Night Vale. I use Spotify to discover new music – and also to immediately find out where up-and-coming artists are performing live near me. 

In as much of our consumption, we also create. In our creation of media, we create ourselves. We create how we would like to be portrayed, viewed, analyzed. That is if we are lucky enough to be in control. Social media, media on a smaller scale, allows us to tailor make ourselves and our lives for the consumption of others. To speak our mind, for the most part, about the truths and trials of living on a day to day basis. My little post on Instagram or a funny picture on Facebook I might share, these reach my circles of friends. They are a personal level.

Film, television, novels - these are larger, much larger, orchestrated events and processes that do not always allow for the input of the many. The lack of minority representation in media is an increasingly recognized issue - and it should be recognized and altered. If our media consumption allows us to connect and to tell stories with one another, we have to be sure that people are being given platforms to voice these stories. It is voiced by bell hooks in her work The Oppositional Gaze that "...conventional representations of black women have done violence to the image." Violence. Representation through media, creation with input and knowledge... these issues are life and death. They can not be ignored. 

Consuming media and connecting through media is exhausting. And it is exhausting because of it's power. You ask me who I think I am? I don't know for certain. I am many things and many things create me. Whitman said it best in Song of Myself:

 Do I contradict myself?

Very well then I contradict myself,

(I am large, I contain multitudes.)

Our journey in life is to discover ourselves. Consuming and creating media is a part of this. My relationship with media will constantly be in flux, but will never disappear completely.