PEACE, LOVE, UNITY, RAVE?

The image that I decided to manipulate is taken from the 1969 Woodstock festival; taken during a time of upheaval, due to the US taking apart in the Vietnam war. These so called “hippies” strived for peace, love, unity, and respect. Now, these four keywords have been morphed into a subculture within the growing popularity of Electronic Dance Music. Raves and music festivals have profited off these ideologies, by implementing peace, love, unity, and respect (PLUR) as the themes when attending these music festivals. From my edits I decided to add various present day ravers. I added a man holding a Stewie Griffin totem that seems to be on some drugs as his pupils are enlarged, as raves are notoriously known for heavy drug use. I also added a typical raver that is seen wearing various decorative beads and bracelets which is a common decorative choice. To contrast the original sign, I implemented a couple with a woman on top of a mans shoulder and I made it seem as though she is holding a sign that reads “EDM saved my life”. Meanwhile, the girl looks like she is rolling which is when someone is on drugs like ecstasy or molly then creating a sense of artificial ecstasy and euphoria. I also added another girl on someones shoulder holding a sign that illustrates the ideologies of PLUR, as it has transcended from the hippie movement to a party scene. I then added a trio of friends that are all just having a good time as raves are seen as place to escape the issues of the real world. Lastly, I also erased some of the crowd in the back and added an explosion of fireworks to represent how this subculture blew up from the original ideologies of the hippie movement.

DIY 2

For my DIY I wanted to focus my idea around the representation of the LGBTQ community within the film industry. Luckily, within recent years, the representation of the LGBTQ community has begun to increase and become more prevalent within the film industry as a whole. However, there is still an under representation as a whole. Within my infographic you will be able to see the inclusion of these characters; as many large film companies have included more of the LGBTQ community in their box office hits. As expected and found throughout films, and even other media services like broadcast tv and streaming, there is a high representation of gay men specifically. Nonetheless, in total there was an an increase in the representation of the LGBTQ community, with a total of 109 films that were released 14 of them (12.8%) includes the LGBTQ community. In addition when talking about ethnicity and the diversity of the LGBTQ community, there was finally an increase in ethnic diversity from the previous two years. In total 57 percent of the characters in these films were people of color, while the previous two years showed a representation of  20 percent in 2016, and 25.5 percent in 2016. Hence, in terms of ethnic representation there seems to be a drastic increase from previous years. In addition, movie companies as a whole have all tried to welcome more LGBTQ characters into their firms. For instance, Universal is by the far the most inclusive company which had a total of 14 films the past year; four of those films where LGBTQ inclusive. On the other hand, other major music companies like Paramount released 11 films, and two of those were LGBTQ inclusive. Fox produced 14 films the past year, and two of those included the LGBTQ community. Disney was on the lower end of LGBTQ inclusivity, with only one out of the eight films which showcased a gay character. Sony however was on the lower end and only represented one LGBTQ character out of the 25 films that were released, which is only four percent. What I find really interesting is that there is such an underrepresentation of the LGBT community. According to the 2018 GlAAD report, in the United States 20 percent of people between the ages of 18-34 identify as being gay. Now when we compare this number to the data that I have quickly recapped, it becomes evident that there is a discrepancy in the representation of the LGBT community on the big screen.  Therefore, my infographic highlights these inconsistencies, in hopes that major film studios will add more LGBT characters to their films, and really level the playing field in terms of both diversifying and being more inclusive of the LGBT community. In addition, the LGBT community should be represented fairly, in term of positive and non degrading roles in which they translate well to the LGBT community in our society.

DIY #3

Many of use Google as their primary search engine. The saying “I’ll just Google it” is what many people say when they want to find out more information on a topic. However many Google users are unaware of just how much information Google receives from its users. Therefore, for my DIY #3 I have created a remix video that points out some of the ways that Google does more than view what we search. Throughout my remix video I start off by stating that Google not only sees what we search, but they sell that information to marketers around the world. So Google doesn’t just view what we search but they record that information. In 2017 Google, made 95 billion dollars from selling our search information to marketers in order to see what we would be interested in purchasing, leading to see many advertisements. I also point out a huge misconception that when one goes incognito, they are given privacy from Google. Well although you are under Incognito mode, Google still has the option to view our search history they just decide not to. Hence, your search history can still be viewed by other websites. As mentioned in Josh Marshall’s article “A Serf og Googles Farm” Crome is responsible for 41% of our page views. Safari comes inn second at 36%. But the Safari number is heavily driven by people using iOS devices. On desktop Chrome is overwhelmingly dominant”. Therefore, more people use Chrome than Safari which means that Google has even more access to our information since we are mostly using a web browser owned by Google. Although Google does a good job of protecting our files that we have saved, a leak can happen and the private searches or data can be exposed. In fact in 2009, Google Doc experienced a bug in which 500,000 users documents were leaked to the public. So if you had very important or personal information you should be aware that Google can have its flaws and contract a bug which can expose your personal files. I also include the fact that Google does have ties with the CIA  and NSA, so your information can be recorded and seen by the CIA, since Google has associations with the CIA’s IN-Q-TEL. All in all, we should not be scared of Google it is a very handy and convenient search engine with a vast amount of information. However, it’s best to know what exactly Google sees and wants to get from our computer use. Therefore, in my video I decided to lay out a serious and informative message by clipping scenes from various tv shows and movies. Most of the videos that I utilized had a bit of humor to it in order to keep the viewer interested, however there is an underlying message that touches on the issues that I presented above. I also added some sound effects to the beginning of the video in order to let the viewer know that they should be aware of what Google really does with our information. From there I weaved together the rest of the films and tv shows to best fit the message that was presented on the screen while the film or tv show was playing in the background. From my video I hope that the viewer will realize that Google does more than view what we search, our privacy is not so private. Yet we should just be smarter and more informed the next time we decide to say “I’ll just Google it”.

Citations and links to videos

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=250AfhEZQb4 (Pretty in Pink), https://www.youtube.com/watch? v=QctdSJcPUUM (Black Mirror), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYYy-YkHg4k (Spiderman Homecoming) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5Zt_D4UVg8 (Grace and Frankie), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZkwrIZQDt50 (Zoolander), https://www.youtube.com/watch? v=OMgQvJ8XJZQ (Google Commercial),https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TtjRViNYzJs (Ted 2) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s4NWk2QAqBo (Mr. Beans Holiday)

Hirst, S. (2019, March 17). 8 Google Data Privacy Concerns You Should Be Worried About! Retrieved from https://thevpn.guru/8-google-data-privacy-concerns/