Arsrp

               Or media reach us too easy

               This huge world seems to be too full of things to follow, so many things to be interested

               Twenty-four hours seems to be so few for all those stuff.

               And not enough to be left for the things we love

               The more we grow up, we seem to have so many things to get to know them

               At the same time, we have lesser time for what we love. Until sometimes we curious that what we actually love

               Know more, but love lesser

               Know so many things, but only a few that we actually know

               And know something until we fall for is much lesser…”  

 …RoundFinger (KhwamSukDoySangGade)

 I have read this book years ago when my life faced tons of problem. I was encouraged by this book. But when I felt better, I dropped it down and goes back to live my life again although I haven’t finished the book. It isn’t interesting for me anymore after I felt better. Then, the world of technology and social media ran around me again. Just like other people, I felt safe and stick to what’s going on in social media again.

Soon after, tons of problem hit me again and reminded me of this book. I couldn’t remember when the last time I read the book was, not even know where it was. Luckily, I found it in a corner of a drawer of my bed. I decided to continue reading it from where I had stopped last time. Then I found that part of the book above. I cannot continue reading the book but repeatedly read that paragraph over and over again. I couldn’t stop thinking about what the book trying to tell me.

Sometimes when you know more, you just hurt more. I decide to drop my social media down instead of this book. I delete all my Facebook account, Snapchat, Instagram, and also Twitter. Only Line left in order to keep contact with important stuff like my family or university. Actually, the book is not the reason why I did this, but just a little part of my decision. Then, that’s a big change. I use to be a person who knows everything and is on every trend. But at that time, without social media, I rarely know what’s going on out there. I felt so insecure that I know nothing so I read news on website and newspaper. I just found that it took quite a long time for getting to know something. The newspaper will not just put two sentences of the news summarize for you. I even read the editorial or critics of stuff. It took so long for understanding a topic. But you know what, things was so clear, it makes me think of what can happen next, or who gonna be affected by a story which when I read stuff on social media, I just receive two sentences headlines and that’s all. The long stories are always the celebrities’ dramas. I even forget that how much I was interested in economics news when I was younger. You know, no teenagers gonna retweet or share economic stuff. Feel lonely sometimes because everyone was on their smartphone, but that’s OK. I’ve learned something.

But now, I realize. Nobody can get out of this maze. Everyone expect you to be on social media, to keep contact on Facebook, to show nice pictures from your latest trip on Instagram, and to send your work via Line.

I unwillingly came back to the same old world with intangible stuff, intangible people. We wake up with smartphone rings, then check our Newsfeed on Facebook, then Line, and follow with Instagram. And if we have time we check our Twitter, Tumblr, and Snapchat too. Then, just copy and paste those routine for before going to bed routine.

Sometimes I feel like, I talk to people via social media just like normal, but when I actually meet the person, just feel so awkward and nothing to talk.

However, at least, my decision of deleting all social media account have taught me so many things. I appreciate the value of an actual thing, an actual person, as well as time, that we lose by spending on social media expecting to enjoy them. I have never feel sorry that all those FB messages and pictures were gone because the account was deleted. What I get in return is much more precious than them. I have plenty of time for what I forgot that I love. Now I play piano again, I read books after very long time that I only read books for studying for the exam. I am reminded of who was my favorite writers when I was young. I am reminded of when I was bursting into tears when a member left my favorite band. Although ,right now, I have re-registered new account of those social media, at least I have learned something. I know how precious my family and my friends are. I feel thank you for myself in that day that I have this decision.

Didn’t mean that media is bad, but the way we use is wrong. It is hard to live with social media in today society, but at least we need to know where the limit is. You don’t need to be jealous of anyone’s post on Facebook. If you ex post pictures of his new, just ignore them and happy for them. Live in reality that you create more than the world that other create for you.

It was hard for me too when I first have my social media deleted, but if I can pass it, you will too. And remember what you will get in return is much more precious than what you lose so just be brave. You don’t need to be like anyone else.

          Last time, we talked about pop-culture in Thailand so today will be the second part of pop culture. But this time, I will talk about pop culture in terms of postmodernism aesthetics.    

Then let’s watch this music video from Epik High, “Born Hater”

          This music video is a combination Christianity belief of 7 deadly sins which was very popular among artists during 14th century so many artists put this belief into their work. As well as this music video. It’s kind of a combination of a Religion’s belief and Korean rap song. Each rapper represents each sin; pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath and sloth, which are related to the lyric that is sarcastically sent to their anti-fan club. This kind of combination is called Bricolage in terms of postmodernism aesthetics as it is a combination of things but finally comes out with new meanings.

          Let’s start with the first sin, Pride. This is kind of a debate that which rappers here represent the pride of seven deadly sins, but, in my opinion, and due to the lyric as well, I think Tablo is the one. Tablo is the first one who raps in this music video. White top, black trousers, black shoes, and black “beret.” Since his very first line, Tablo praise himself and insult Beenzino, another rapper here, by his rap line “Dali, Van, Picasso? But I’m Velázquez, Millet, El Greco.” There all are the world famous artists, but, “Dali Van Picasso” is also a name of Beenzino’s famous song. So, it’s kind of like Tablo trying to say that if Beezino is Dali, Van Goh, or even Picasso, but he is Velázquez, Millet or El Greco. Also, you can see in the music video that there are six pictures hanging on the wall, but three are crossed out by red tape and other three are clean. The one that directly behind Tablo, which is the Picasso’s self-portrait, is also crossed out by red tape. In an easier word, Tablo is trying to say that he is more talented than Beenzino. Or even Verbal Jint, another rapper here again hahaha, is insulted as a sub-culture of Tablo. 

(This is the Picasso Self Portrait)

Tablo even says that they are all the bad copycat versions of him. He also raps about Tajinyo, his anti-fan club that questions him about his academic background as he graduated both bachelor’s degree and master’s degree from Stanford University within three and a half years. Although the university, his transcript, and any legal document are siding with him, but no one believes anyway. Even worst (For more detail in case you want to know some more about the issue: https://alumni.stanford.edu/get/page/magazine/article/?article_id=40913) So in the lyric, he says that he try to love Tajinyo (maybe sarcastic) and no matter how hard they try to go against him, they are going to lose anyway.

          Also, in the part of Tablo, there is another postmodernism aesthetic that might have made some of you feel disgusted or goosebumps, yes, I’m talking about the cockroaches that are running around Tablo in this music video. Some are on his outfit and, even worse, he take one of them out from his mouth. This is called Alienation or something you feel like seeing it but not directly experience by yourself. But there are some meaning why they use cockroach here. Let’s have a look at Tablo’s reaction on these cockroaches, he isn’t scared by the cockroach, but he seems more to hate and ignore them as these cockroaches represent his haters. However, I’m sincerely to say that I have no idea why he need to take a cockroach out from his own mouth. (If anybody knows please tells me that too, Thank you in advance)

          The way this music video is filmed can be seen as the smartphone screen which can represent the social media criticism that they’re always hiding behind the screens. Also, in the scene that Tablo flick the computer keys, which can be read as haters. It might represent those haters who always hide behind the screens as well. As we can see, social media help us in reaching information easier and faster, but, at the same time, it cause cyber bullying and enemies as well. Like Tablo that he got so many haters question about his college degree that although he has so many evidence, they seem worthless for calling back his credibility. Media can be a useful channel of communication, but they can harm ones’ lives as well depending on our use-role of media.

          Actually, there are many parts of the lyric that talk about social media criticism. However, let’s talk about that and go through this music video together next time. Hope you enjoy and see you again.

          Culture is what we have collected over time, from common behavior to cultural value and social standard that are accepted and followed by numerous people until it becomes mass culture. In an extremely easy word, mass culture is the culture that is formed and followed by mass in the particular period of time. In fact, mass culture, in the past, is more about the high culture of high art which are paints literature, for example. There were quite a fixed standard and pattern for anything to be counted as a piece of arts, but now, in postmodernism period like todays, everything can be an art piece which depends more on individual’s preference. So that why many people say that the line between high culture-low culture, art-not art, beautiful-ugly are blurred or almost invisible. Thus, things cross the line of low-high culture. Everything can be a piece of arts.

(Photo: http://www.bet.com/news/music/2012/06/25/mixtape-review-xv-popular-culture.html)

          As the culture is different among different societies and period, sometimes you might curious that is a behavior counted as the mass culture as it is known or followed by a number of people that you are also not sure is it counted as a mass. I mean there might be like hundred thousand people using LINE application, but there are more than ten billion people in the world. Sound difficult and confusing right? So that is the time the word “pop culture” occurs.

(Photo: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/498914464946185812/)   

          Then what is pop culture? Not only comes from the word popular. Pop culture is more related to commercial and marketing purposes which to spread any culture through media and technology to benefit the business. They observe what people like as well as their taste then convince those via media to make people engage any cultural activity that benefits the business. These influence might be concealed in media that we consume in our daily life such as TV, newspaper, especially social media which is the most popular way of communication todays. Instagram culture is an example that girls try to post the picture of food that is in trend or posts only very bright and low contrast photo on Instagram as they have seen others do so. So that becomes the pop culture among Thai teenagers.

          After you can differentiate mass culture and pop culture, now lets me show you some example of pop culture in Thailand so you can figure the idea out clearer.

          Go back to the time that Blackberry phone is very popular in Thailand, teenagers here tried to have friends in BB Pin as much as possible to feel like they’re popular. Some of them posted their BB pin on social media. Some even asked other students she’d never talked to each other for BB pin after she saw that they were using Blackberry too. I even heard a student ask her friend how many friends her friend has on BB. This just sounds like a competition that who will collect BB pin more. So that was a pop culture that Thai teenagers really did in a period of time.

          Also, when the novel Harry Potter of J.K. Rowling was very popular in Thailand, Thai readers are so crazy about Harry Potter until the publisher of Harry Potter Thailand need to pre-order the book before it was actually released as they want to be one of the first people who have the latest book in hands. Moreover, there were Harry Potter games, fair, souvenir, and, yes, Wizard World in Universal studio that is very popular until todays. It can be seen as transmedia that give people more channels to engage the story of the novel which gives power to the novel in becoming a pop culture. Thus, J.K. Rowling can be counted as an icon of pop culture as she creates an amazing children book wave that attracts not only children but every age and gender reader.

(Photo: http://www.photographytips.com.au/waiting-for-harry-potter/)

(Photo: http://now-here-this.timeout.com/2015/02/05/fan-fun-harry-potter-versus-game-of-thrones/)       

(Photo: http://blogs.wsj.com/japanrealtime/2015/01/14/harry-potter-puts-universal-studios-japan-on-track-for-visitor-record/)

          Next is the pop-up weekend market. Since the year of 2015, loads of pop-up weekend markets have been opened for Bangkokian to spend time, go shopping and chill on their weekend especially teenagers. It becomes popular as most of the shopping stores on Instagram open the actual booth or store in the market so their customers will have the chance to see and try the actual product which they couldn’t when they go shopping on Instagram. I mean Instagram shopping is another Thai pop culture too. Also, there are a lot of appetizing food with cool packaging.

(Photo: http://www.bangkok.com/magazine/artbox.htm#)

(Photo: http://bk.asia-city.com/events/news/10-markets-coming-up-bangkok)

          Last, after the trend of being healthy, both actual health and body shape, becomes popular in Thailand. Clean food or healthy food is sold all over Instagram and Facebook with free delivery to people’s house. Although the price might be double of a normal meal, but as it is healthy, convenient, and, of course, on trend too, so the clean food business is still growing up continuously.

(Photo: http://www.gcfhawaii.com/products-pricing/)

          So, until now, we can see that pop culture plays a big roles in our society as the more our lives engage media and technology, it seems to be that the more powerful the pop culture affect our behavior. It doesn’t mean that pop culture is bad, but it is about what people decide to consume and behave to satisfy themselves. In other word, pop culture seem to shape and convince people to act in the same way like normal culture, but it pops up only in a period of time and then might be gone.

          In the previous blog, we talked about the beauty standard and the influence of media over it. Then, today, we are going to talk about something that quite relate to beauty standard but not only for women. As we all know that media are not only one of the biggest influencers of beauty standard but also of gender stereotype. What is the first thing that comes to your mind when thinking about girls? I think most of your answer will be like pink colour, Barbie, ballet, weakness, need help, moody, or sexy. Then how about boys? We usually think of blue colour, strong, sports, or motorcycle. Why boys cannot like pink as their favourite colour or do ballet and why girls are seen as weakness. 

(Photo: http://www.sexedcenter.org/where-does-the-bullying-start/)           

          Suppose that you have to buy a birthday gift for a boy, what colour will the gift be? For sure, it’s not going to be pink as it seems to be a colour for girls. Also, you must prefer a car model than a Barbie doll for the boy. Thus, am I able to assume that we mostly give people different gift depending on their sex and children are taught to play with different toys divided by their gender? Then the children start to absorb the different between sexes and gender stereotype since they were young without noticing things.           But how it becomes like that? Sometimes media show us that man has more ability and stronger than women. For example, in a lot of movies or scenes that woman plays in a significant role, other characters always question about the woman’s ability. Then the woman character has to do something to prove it while men are easy to be accepted. Also, in movies, we usually see that girls always be the one that needs boy’s help in saving their lives or saving them from a dangerous situation. We often see these scenes in a lot of movies which might create wrong belief in people’s mind that men have more ability and women always need men. We seem to be divided by our gender.           Media influence us in terms of stereotype and roles of each sex and also shape our behavior in order to act differently to the different gender. So, in these days, the both gender stereotype and role are segregated by the way we are raised up and the media and it seems to be very difficult to get rid of this belief.

          Moreover, according to the previous blog, media influence the beauty standard and also gender stereotype especially in women. For example, in the movies, most of the girls with blonde hair are stupid, those with black hair are clever, red hair means sexy, and wearing glasses represents a nerd. Everyone can choose what they would like to be without any rules that try to limit them to be the same as what people think or want them to be.            Last, I have seen these photos a long time ago, but these photos speak thousands of words about the stereotype. So, just want to share with you guys and hope it raises our awareness of the effect of media. Also, we have to keep in mind that not everyone in that stereotype will be like that way.

(Translate the content in the photos:     

I am Chinese, but I don’t eat dogs.

I am a beautiful woman, but I’m not stupid

I come from South-Korea, I’m not Chinese.

I come from Iraq, but I’m Christ.

I am Egyptian, but I don’t hurt women.

 I come from Romania, but I don’t want to have a lot of kids.

What is beauty?

Is being slim or having white skin beauty?

That depends on how you think about yourselves.

         As technology has been continuously developed, media are everywhere around both you and me. Therefore, it is almost impossible to not be influenced by media. Not only people, but also culture, thought, or lifestyle that is affected by media without noticing somehow.

        Now we are entering the postmodern era where the media have a big effect on society by governing and shaping things such as norms, popular culture, or even life goal. Beauty standard is one of those ideas that obviously influences people in every age, gender, or country. It is, even more, surprise that no one can get out of it. People seldom try to gain their weight, get pimples, or shave off their eyebrows to make themselves, which they think, more beautiful.

         Most of the media, in these days, create beauty standard with the same purpose. They want to sell their product by planting and spreading the seeds of beauty ideology belief in people’s mind. They conceal the idea in mass media then they will keep referring to the beauty idea as well as the product over and over again or referring to something else with reality. So the idea which has never existed before appears in reality and becomes a commodity that everyone knows about it. Then they success in creating belief in beauty standard and start convincing people to buy their products. Especially in the postmodern era like today, when it goes viral among people, then word of mouth marketing of the product (which has the beauty standard idea attached with) spreads quickly over the internet and social media. Thus, people in this era grow up with the deep-rooted idea which makes this wrong belief is much more difficult to be eliminated or changed.

(Picture: http://www.lingerietalk.com/2014/11/06/lingerie-news/perfect-message-gets-a-makeover.html)

          For example, in Thailand, as well as most of South East Asian countries, the skinny woman with white clear skin, big eyes, long eyelashes, big boobs, and not too tall represents the ideal type of beauty. So we will obviously see that in almost every skin care product selling in these countries consists of skin whitening substances. Also, weight loss pills are sold everywhere especially on online media like the social network. However, in these days, western media increasingly influence Asian people so some groups of teenagers in Thailand prefer western style (tan skin, healthy body, big butt, and sexy) as an ideal beauty more. These teenagers prefer western style, but, I believe, most of them continue buying skin whitening.

         (picture: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/550846598146463394/)  

Media not only create beauty standard, but also a disease like anorexia. Anorexia is a severe eating disorder that mostly happens with people in developed countries who want to be skinny and stop eating food. Excessive beauty standard is counted as a cause of this disease. Many of the patients think that only being skinny will make them more beautiful and get acceptance from the society. Just like they, maybe media too, pressure people to be like that. Therefore, it is the media that creates disease, nowadays, people use the media themselves in creating campaigns in order to get rid of the excessive beauty standard and the wrong belief about beauty.

           Back then, media is counted as a mirror that reflects the society, but in these days, media seem to be an influencer that shapes and gives ideas to the society. Then, how can we tell that which message is real and which is just the message that some group of people try to make you believe in serving their own profits? How can you tell that a reality TV program is real not scripted? How can you tell that what you define as a beauty is not be purposely created to serve some people’s profits? Even the campaign that tries to give awareness about being given the wrong idea about beauty standard, how can one tell that it is not another group of people try to change the direction of the market to benefit themselves? Sounds like a negative thinking right? But how you can ensure that your thought, that you have been thinking that it true is not directed by anyone? You never know.  However, how media are going to affect society is unpredictable as it depends on how people use the media as well as how they interpret the message that is sent out. So it is extremely difficult for ones to set the effect of the message to the society. All people can do is that give more possibilities to achieve what they want and media are the very powerful tools.

          If I ask you who do you think in the most beautiful woman in the world, most of you would tell me names of a famous model, Hollywood actress, or a popular singer. Next time, try to tell yourself that it’s you because “confidence is the most beautiful things a woman can wear.”

          Also, I really like these ads and really want to share with you guys. I hope you enjoy and.. see you again soon!