Does Media shape our lives?

I am a firm believer in that media shapes our culture.  Recalling the research I have done previously regarding this matter, it is evident that media shapes cultures.  Early 2012, there was a film released called “Project X.”  The movie follows three high school students that throw the ultimate party where anything goes which of course spirals out of control.  In Houston, a spring break rave was meant to emulate a movie turned deadly when a few attendees fired guns and killed one person as police tried to break up the party.  The party in Houston attracted between 500 and 1,000 people.  Mark Stephens, a private investigator working for the home builder told WFAA, an ABC affiliate, “I asked some of the kids why, and they said “Project X” and I said, ‘O.K., what’s ‘Project X’?”  He also stated, “When you look at the movie, and you look at what happened here, the parallels are uncanny.  It was a copycat.  They did everything that I saw in the movie.”

While researching this topic, I took it to my personal Facebook to see who exactly it was that people wanted to trade lives with in the movies.  Popular answers include your typical Superhero’s like Iron Man, Spiderman, and Captain America.  I also found many stating random people I had never thought people actually wanted to be such as Bella Swan from “Twilight.”  There are a lot of great qualities portrayed in all of them except one, if you take the psychological standpoint.  The one that actually shocked me the most was Bella Swan from “Twilight.”  The relationship between Edward Cullen and Bella Swan throughout the “Twilight Saga” is needless to say slightly less than masochistic.  She hurts him, he hurts her, he hurts her again, she runs to her wolf friend, she hurts him, and yet they still want to be with one another no matter how much it literally could kill them.  Edward exposes Bella to things that he should have thought more than twice about.  Yet, teenagers want to be her.  They think the obsessive and controlling Edward is the perfect relationship, which it is far from it.  This isn’t a movie about hero’s it’s about a violent and controlling relationship, yet almost every teenage girl wants Edward as their boyfriend.   

     If prior to this I had thought differently about my position on media shaping our culture, this would have done it to turn me over.  These teenage girls want something that was portrayed on screen and is the farthest from reality.  Yet, these are the same girls that hold guys their age to a “higher” standard and complain that they are alone.  Movies are shaping our cultures, beliefs, and lives, whether we willingly want them to or not.  

Net Neutrality

Net Neutrality is the principle that Internet Service providers and governments should treat all data on the Internet equally; basically meaning, that internet providers cannot charge more to have their websites run faster while their competition runs slower.  The internet is a carrier of online content that does not distinguish one website from another; it is the internet service provider’s responsibility to make sure all websites are running at the same speed the rest of them are.

The government has no authority to implement this policy.  It cannot be regulated.  If we regulate the internet provider’s speed, the companies would fold because none would be successful, it would become federalized.  According to JudgeAndrew Napolitano, “Today the FCC does little else but regulate as much electronic communication it can.  You have the right to know that the First Amendment makes the FCC unconstitutional.  Think about it.  The FCC regulates content.  It tells broadcasters what to say, but the first amendment guarantees the right to free speech.  If speech were truly free, why would we need an unnecessary intrusive and unconstitutional government agency to oversee the distribution of speech?”  The FCC was started for radio, so broadcasters knew what they were able to say on air and what they were not able to say, not for regulating something that should not be apart of the government.

 My personal policy is to leave the internet as it has been since the beginning.  Do not disturb something that has worked so well in the past.  However, there are some certain websites that should be kept the same speed for any internet service provider that your household or company chooses to sign an agreement with.  Websites that should be kept at the same speed should be state, government and educationally run sites that hold a higher importance then for instance social media.  Keep the internet free of the government.