The Value of Digital Media

    Personally, I adore digital media. There are so many wonderful stories, ideas, images, and experiences that can be shared with this medium. Digit media is quite unique in that it does seem to have a greater capacity to highlight and illuminate the greatness of ordinary life. I think that this is a result of the type of people creating this media. For example, anyone can post about their life on Twitter or Facebook, or they can have a blog with followers. These mediums allow other people to literally know what a individual is up to on a minute-by-minute basis. Though Twitter oftentimes gets a lot of hate, I personally love that I breaks down barriers. If you follow a celebrity on Twitter, soon they will not seem a demi-god-like figure, but a regular human who gets excited over Starbucks coffee and takes lots of pictures of their pets. This new perspective allows followers to see how ‘average’ everyone’s life is, but this new view also makes it possible to appreciate the beauty in the everyday. With my MA focus being in New Media, I have a very long list of people who I feel use digital media really well, but to be incredibly concise, here are a couple of my favourites from two different media sources and why they are so great:

YouTube:

    -VlogBrothers (http://www.youtube.com/user/vlogbrothers): One of my absolute             favourite things about the VlogBrothers is the subjects they focus on. In             their videos, they talk about their lives, their thoughts about places and             ideas, and they talk about, and are interested in learning about real things--              life as it is. Their appreciation and excitement for live as it is is infectious.
Twitter:

    -Tom Fletcher (https://twitter.com/#!/tommcfly): I have come to appreciate so much             about regular life and     being completely yourself because of his ‘tweets’.             Though is a successful band, the majority of his updates have to do with             food, his cats, silly facts, and the best of all: ridiculous musings. Also, he             is always updating his Twitter, yet he always puts something interesting             down. I think this is because he genuinely appreciates the good things in             life, and this helps others to more easily see the good in their ordinary, yet             beautiful lives.

Ode to the Internet

As I grab my breakfast everyday
I pull up the internet so that I can survey
My class syllabi to make sure I’m all good
And that an assignment wasn’t misunderstood
I also my e-mail and clear it out
Because I don’t care what some stuff is about
After this, I can’t resist
To go to YouTube and check my subscriptions list

Towards the end of the day
I’m sick of homework and want to get away
So I’ll browse through Pinterest
And re-pin things of interest

I think you can see
How the internet is important to me
In so many ways, whether work or play
I definitely need it to stay