Vaennessa Eng 216 blog

We covered a lot today about the music industry! There's a lot of avenues we can venture down, but I want to focus on the mental health concerns for both the fans and the musicians.  So first off, lets talk about STAN culture... aka stalker fans.  Eminem released a song called Stan back in 2000. It brought up some pretty dark stuff about the consequences of fame. From the eyes of Eminem, he writes about a fan who has become obsessed. This obsession leads to this fan officially losing his mind and deciding to commit a double homicide and suicide. The reason: the fan felt like Eminem was ignoring him. Obviously this is just a song, but it does an excellent job at essentially identifying a stan.  I want to add that there is a spectrum for Stans. This song exemplified the extreme. I'm sure in one way or another, we definitely have our stan moments. We might stalk our favorite artist's social media, stalk their album releases, tours, etc. The issue develops when the love of sa...

 "When you study prison populations, you see a common preponderance of childhood trauma and mental illness. The two go together. So what we have in prisons are the most traumatized people in our society" -Dr. Gabor Mate The realization of that phrase holds an insurmountable weight.  Every person who stepped inside the circle carried that burden with them.  "I was a traumatized child, raised by a traumatized child"  Hearing the thoughts and experiences of these individuals is heartbreaking. These people need help. They need help processing what they have gone through, they need help healing from it.  The counselor even stated that she committed many of the crimes that the men in this video have committed. She acknowledged her get-out-of-jail-free card. She acknowledged that she could have been where they are. This goes to show how sad and flawed the prison system is. Some individuals held to lesser degrees than others simply based on demographics and race. That's...

 I want to start by saying that the video we saw in class scared the shit out of me. I don't want to feel helpless in the grand scheme of things, but seeing the way we've destroyed our world is heartbreaking. As humans, we are supposed to be these intelligent beings that use our intelligence to be stewards of the planet. Instead, we've destroyed our planet. We demolished natural habitats and have induced a mass extinction of species. The video "Ice on Fire" showed us the aftermath of our actions. I know at the time of the industrial revolution, no one could have known long-term impacts of burning fossil fuels and other nonrenewable resources. We were just focused on advancing civilization. The technology that emerged from the industrial revolution was life-changing..... beneficially for us, while not so much for other creatures on earth. I can not call these innovators of the industrial revolution evil, because they did not know that they started the chain reactio...

  These videos offered a lot of depth into the view of race.  After watching them, I can concur with the fact that race is a social construct , and in that aspect, is real to people.  I can understand how race is a  large  part of identity because race  and culture are very much intertwined. Overall, race  is used to categorize. Categorization is a great way for humans to understand things! However, w hen we  too broadly  categorize  humans , we sometimes lose sight of the humanity w ithin us  and within one another.   But on the other hand,   categor izing to a lesser scale can offer a sense of comfort because the  similarities  can bring us together.  The issue arises when we become unaccepting of categorizations that we do not belong to, when we condemn them  on the basis of  being different from us. This is when we strip away humanity. I think the biggest issue   in regard to  race ...

  Social media is a blessing and a curse. To me, it’s a normal part of life. I grew up when social media just came out and slowly integrated it into my life, one platform at a time. It was a way for me to explore my curiosity and connect with others. It was also a collection of my memories over the past 10 years. That aspect was great! The downfall for me is that social media became an addiction. The first thing I do when I wake up is check  F acebook and Instagram. I spend hours of my day consuming nonsense videos and looking for the tea in comments on peoples’ posts.  I can’t really say if social media has caused me to become a more socially withdrawn person or not. I don’t really remember having too many friends when I was younger. I was always shy and to myself. I’m sure it has  impacted my  face to face  contact on some level though .  The thing I like about social media is that I can choose to disconnect at  anytime  and cease interacti...

Although I was glad to hear that this father was accepting of his son coming out, I felt like he tried to rationalize why his son was the way he was because he didn't know how to cope with the fact that his son was gay. James O'Keefe is a doctor, so I think he approached his son's sexuality from an analytical standpoint instead of an emotional/humanistic one. I understand taking an interest and being curious about the nature of homosexuality because it is something that we can look at from an evolutionary stance and question. Evolution is about passing on genes to future offspring and continuing the sire line. Homosexuality does in fact prevent the production of offspring from an evolutionary view. Now obviously in our day and age, we have adoption and in-vitro-fertilization, so it's not uncommon for homosexual couples to have children. Since homosexuality has been around since people existed, I think it's accurate to say that homosexuality is not a flaw in nature. ...