Visual Essay May 5, 2009

Consumerism

Reflection

Hi! Everybody thats reading this, if you haven;t notice the theme i picked for my visual essay is consumerism. My message in doing this visual essay is "simple." I want people to know that if we as consumers are demanding the same thing co-ops are going to make products more simpler. And soon, we are gonna toss out everything because it is now "null." Violet once said "the feed was trying to build your profile so that the companies that makes products would know what would grab consumers attention. Therefore, they create more simpler things, that'll appeal to everybody. Gradually, everyone gets used to everything being so basic, so they get less and less varied as people, more simple." To which in my piont of view is really true in the first picture, because every single girl in that damn picture have the same suit,flats,purse,shopping,glasses,ponytail, and probably the same cell phone. To which directly relates back to consumerism.

I chose these pictures because they really caught my eye and the message that the pictures vibes off are really freaky&cool. The pictures importance,implications and influence are as is, when you first look at the pictures, they may seem like they are really plain, but after a few closer analyzing, I think there's a story behind every picture. The first picture is just like what Violet said, companies are gonna know just what consumers want so, they create a product in which everybody would accept joyfully, but then it's really common. The 2-4pictures are more examples of what "expired" stuff would look like. The reason they are "expired" is probably because they were really popular, a long time age. And it was during that time that the only people who had access to those products where the "cool" or "rich" people. But once everybody had a hold of it, its not so "cool" no more, people, teens, no longer desire it. Lets take CD players for example, about 6 years ago, if you go walking around downtown or something, chances are that you are likely to see a person listening to their CD player rather than a person listening to a IPOD, right. But now, chances are that you wont see a CD player, its either a IPOD Nano, touch, or phone hat your gonna see. Still, I can sense rivalry, because many phone companies are search for ways to get upgrades, instead of having regular cell phones, we now have cell phones that have camera's, mp3 players, msn chat...etc

One of the themes that I sort-of understand is conformity vs. individuality. I specially chose the last picture for this problem. As you can see, the last picture has two hands in it, both of them are really close, but aren't exactly touching. What it means to me is that a person, who is alone, wants to join in with other people, but is hesitant about it. It's sort-of tantalizing. It's like wanting to do something so badly, but you know that it's bad for you. Now, growing up in a recently migrated family really set me up for my individuality. When my friends go out and they ask me to join them, I always reply "no." Its like I'm prone to it. Sometimes I wish that i was a boy, so i can go out with my friends, but I'm always think in my head "just wait until I'm 18!"