Disney Channel

I just had the wonderful experience of watching one episode each of "Suite Life on Deck" and "Sonny with a Chance" on the Disney Channel for the content analysis project. I must say that I wasn't too impressed, but what can you expect from shows like that? At least they were pretty much clean. If I had my "sexual content assignment" cap on I wouldn't have had much to go on, but there was one weird part in "Suite Life on Deck". One of the main characters practices using a whip. As he's whipping, the whip goes off screen and comes back with a women's bakini top or bra or something. You hear a little female scream off the screen and the whip recoils with this article of clothing. I think it was supposed to be funny. I'm not really sure how they thought of that one. Also, in "Sonny with a Chance", there is some young adolescent hand-holding, snuggling and one kiss. It seems like the whole goal of these shows is to make the viewer laugh. They definitely try to appeal to adolescent-minded audiences.

Our Family's TV History

In the 20 months that my wife and I have been married, we have owned three different TV's, all of which we have received for free from various people. In fact we have two TV's right now. The funny thing is that we don't hardly ever watch TV. We thought each successive TV was an upgrade, but this hasn't necessarily been true. Our second TV was bigger than our first, but the picture sometimes would have a green tint, and some channels didn't come through very clearly. We received our third and latest TV probably about a month ago from my wife's sister and her husband. So, I think the only three things we have used our TV for in the month that we've had it is test it out the night we got it by watching our wedding DVD, watch a Tuesday devotional once (usually we're on campus to do that), and watch Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs for the sexual content assignment for this class. That's the extent of our useage of it. It's bigger than our other one that is now sitting by our door waiting to be taken to DI or something, but we're a little hesitant to take it away after our experience last night. We turned on the TV around 10:30 to see if we could find the BYU basketball game score, but for some reason all but of a few of the channels on this TV were fuzzy. We eventually had to settle for listening to the end of the game on the radio as we fininshed our game of "Lost Cities" (card/board game). I didn't realize this TV was like that. I'm not sure why it is. Oh well.

Annoying online ads

This morning I was rushing to finish this big assignment for my Hebrew class and I needed to use an online English to Hebrew dictionary. Well, I know a really good online dictionary for Korean because I have taken lots of classes for that, but since this is my first semester of Hebrew I didn't know where to go. I found several dictionaries, but can I just say that online dictionaries are sometimes not worth it for the plethora of ads that appear on them? Sometimes the ads give me a headache because they're moving and shaking on the screen. Other times they give me knots in my stomach because they're approaching pornography. One dictionary I went to probably had 10 new ads for every word I looked up. The page was really busy and annoying. I didn't use that dictionary for long because of all of the ads. I found out that Google translate doesn't have ads and that was nice.

Media Malfunction at Stand for the Family Symposium

Media can be a powerful tool in instruction. It can enhance learning and illustrate a point poignantly. However, when media is a primary part of a presentation, instructors run the risk of that media malfunctioning or not working properly. This happened to me one time when I was teaching a short ten-minute lesson that determined at least in part whether I would be able to continue on a path that could possibly lead to being a full-time seminary teacher. Today I witnessed another media malfunction that, although handled well by the presenter, seriously limited the understanding of what was being presented. This was at the Stand for the Family Symposium and the presenter was discussing pornography's effect on the brain. His PowerPoint slides probably could have helped the audience understand what he was talking about regarding the brain. He still did a nice job though.

Your blogs are distracting me

So, now that I finished part of a test for my Hebrew 101 class, my first priority in school is to study for the media test. Unfortunately, I haven't done more than a little yet. There is a lot of information to know that I do not know well at all. It's a little overwhelming. Well, I need to study a lot for the test, but what did I just do for 35 minutes? I read classmates' blogs! In my head I justified it because I was doing homework for this class. I have to make two comments a week, right? And I like to read through several posts or several people's latest posts and comment on the posts that most interest me. I'm generally a pretty low media use guy, but I got sucked in by the blogs. That doesn't happen very often. Good job. You are captivatingly interesting blog writers.

Netflix--a source of conflict?

If you read my last post you'll know that I don't like people feeling they deserve something or their entitled to it, when they haven't done anything to earn it. I'm guilty of this attitude too though. I am ungrateful for a lot of things, including things like nice computer labs and technology resources across campus, the use of our church building's basketball court, relatively well kept roads and a free country. If any of these things were changed, I would probably be unhappy about it, even though I am not really doing much to deserve a lot of those things. Well, I want to write about another experience with something that was "free", but actually caused some temporary hard feelings between my wife and I.

My wife and I receive a Netflix ad in the mail probably once every month or so (not to mention all of the Internet ads for them). The ad offers a free trial of Netflix for a given period of time (two weeks maybe?). If you cancel your trial after that time and return any video you have then you don't have to pay anything. Well, my wife signed up to do this awhile back and she ordered a DVD to be sent to our house. Neither of us our big movie fans, but I especially have a hard time not feeling like I wasted my time when I watch a movie. Most of the time I watch movies is because my wife wants to watch something with me on a weekend night. But we probably only do this once a month or so.

The way the free trial works is that you can order any movie they have to be sent to your house in the mail. As soon as you watch it and send it back to them they will send you the next one you order. You can do this as many times as you want in the two week trial period. They are pretty fast to respond. I think we got our next movie two days after we sent our first one back in. Well, with this program you could watch several movies for free if you wanted to or had time to watch the movies and return them soon after you received them. However, I didn't feel like I had more time to watch movies just because they were free. My wife, however, motivated by the "free"ness of the movies, wanted to get our "trial's worth" of movies. When I told her I felt like I didn't have time to watch more than one movie per week on the weekend, she had a hard time. She wasn't too happy that I wouldn't make more time to watch free movies with her, and I wasn't happy that she was expecting me to. I thought it was interesting that this media promotional could become a source of misunderstanding between us. We had different expectations I guess about how we were going to use the free trial. I have since sworn off of free trials (just kidding, but I am a little wary of them).

Disclaimer: I hope this doesn't sound like I'm criticizing my wife. It's really not meant to. I tried to be open and honest. My wife is great--seriously.

Freebies

This post is tied to media somewhat, but it may be hard for you to see that tie right away. Be patient.

So, once upon a time there was a boy named Jason. He volunteered to help man a booth for a little while that was set up to advertise the Stand for the Family Symposium and help register students to go. Whoever was in charge of the booth earlier in the day had bought doughnut holes to allure students or something. Jason was aghast at what happened during his short tenure at the booth. Students would pass by and grab doughnut holes without a second thought. It was "free" to them and therefore fair game to anyone and everyone. It seemed like the passers-by felt they needed to get some doughnut holes before others ate them all. Some students simply grabbed them in stride as they passed and a few others, stopped quickly, asked if they could have some doughnut holes and then scampered away as soon as they had the treasure in their hands. This happened intermittently over the course of probably half an hour or so. Jason could not believe what was happening right before his eyes. It really was shocking, astounding, eye opening, and surprising to him. The most amusing doughnut-hole snatcher came up and asked if he could have some doughnut holes. Jason didn't answer him. Instead, Jason simply asked the student if he had heard of the symposium before. Since the student had no idea what the symposium was, Jason proceeded to describe briefly some of the highlights of the symposium. After about ten seconds the student was becoming very antsy, but listened politely. After Jason realized this student could care less about the symposium, Jason decided to save the student from having to stand and listen any longer. The student was visibly relieved, scooped up the last few doughnut holes and merrily went on his way. Jason couldn't help thinking of the word "entitlement" over and over again during this experience.

In defense of the students, unbeknowdst to Jason at the time, there was a sign somewhere at a different booth that said there were free doughnuts at our booth. This advertisement was half true.

The reason I think this story ties to media is because I think advertising through media has created this attitude where people are fine with, and even sometimes feel entitled to, receiving something for nothing. At the BYU men's basketball game halftime today there must have been three or four games at halftime in which the winner got some free item like an i-pod. Advertisements seem to be saturated with this "FREE!" message. If you buy this you could win a million dollars. If you listen to this, you could win this ridiculous prize that you did nothing to receive. My favorite (or rather least favorite) is the jewelry store billboard next to the gas station by campus on the corner of 800 North and 700 East that says something about if it snows then your purchase is "on us". I don't know the details, but it sounds ridiculous to me. Is the allurement of receiving something free so persuasive as to influence purchasing that much?

In talking about these ideas with my wife, she had a good suggestion in regards to the free hot chocolate BYUSA gives out. She felt like it would be much more beneficial to make receiving hot chocolate conditional on something simple like doing something nice for someboday that day that you wouldn't normally do. If this was the condition, most students may not remember to do that, but probably a handful would, and that handful could make a difference. I think it would cut down on the entitlement our culture seems to be breeding.

Since the experience with the doughnut holes I have been more conscious of my own "entitlement" to free things or services. Really I think it's more commonly discussed as "ingratitude." I am realizing how ungrateful I am sometimes. We just expect certain things to be done for us, or be given to us without thinking twice about the work, time, effort or money put into it by another. This can include good grades in school, a holiday bonus from work, financial support from home, having our church leader spend time counseling us, amongst many other things.

Whew, that was pretty long.