Reflecting on our Love/Hate Relationship with Media

In analyzing the relationship that I have with sound media, as well as the opinions gleamed from my classmates' posts, I want to draw the point that its seems as though we actively seek emotional connection with media forms, whether aware or not. In sound media, this can be in the form of a certain dictation, voice, or music that we feel most drawn to. Bear with me as I make a few assumptions and observations.

Examine how our culture has a tendency to decorate homes, office spaces, school lockers, or any other "personal" space with a variety of print media. Individuals often try to create a stronger sense of personal ownership or reflect themselves in the decorations by utilizing specific print media.  In our use of sound media, I feel that our use is little different. I often find myself constantly hitting shuffle on my phone while driving to work until I find a song that matches my mood. Maybe I'm angry about something and want a more heavy, hard-driving song. Maybe I've had a rough week and want a slow song sounding of troubles.  We even store emotion in the memory of a song- I'm sure we all have certain songs that, when played, bring back certain memories, places, or people. We actively seek to connect ourselves and our emotions to music.

Despite all of this, how much hate do we hold for music at the same time? Hell, in my discussion of my HATE of sound media, I spoke of how certain music only serves the purpose of trying to be so generic that a wide variety of people listen to it and think "well this is just barely not total shit enough for me to tolerate it."  As a culture, we seem to protest against a lack of "authenticity" for music artists, but then often demand the exact same type of music that the unauthentic artists tend to produce. I've heard a few people calling Iggy Azalea a total "fraud" in terms of the culture she represents, but at the same time, how big of a hit was her song? Love/hate.

Moving beyond the topic of music as sound media, we each have our own preference in how things sound, or tempo, or emotion in dictation or voice. This applies to radio, audiobooks, podcasts, etc.  Some individuals like things to move slowly, others want the pace picked up as fast as possible. My experience with Audible.com and listening to narrators seems to reveal that, although seeming impassioned and involved to some listeners, narrators will inevitably appear as completely missing the point and dry to others. We as the audience are once again seeking something that we can emotionally connect to. If that connection is even slightly disturbed by an accent, lack of pace, etc, then it can prevent that bond from being established.  "I loved the book, but the way the guy pronounced the wizard's name was idiotic." "I was interested in the story, by the reporter has this weird southern twang, so I just googled it." As a class, we viewed a digital story for a few former classmates. I would wager than many viewers from the current class tried to establish an emotional connection to those stories as they watched. If that connection was made, the reviews of the digital story were likely to be much more positive than if that emotional tie was absent.

We are each different; it is what makes us unique, and what separates one person's interests from the next. In the same fashion ,we use the media at our fingertips (and earlobe tips) to represent our individuality. This is why we seek out certain music types while shunning others, why we seek a certain sound in speakers or narrators, and why we, at times, seem to feel like a certain musical artist just "gets us." This same desire to seek connection to music also drives us to be critical, demanding certain standards and administering our own level of peer review on the media that is released to us as we audibly, visibly, and commercially provide feedback on what we approve and disapprove of.