Print Culture and Wars

Print culture affects our day-to-day lives more than we think, and it has been that way for centuries. It will continue to be that way, although in what form is up in the air. Although back in the 1700s, viral was a little slower than what we think of now, the print culture still brought about a war. Letters and pamphlets were published in newspapers, and these newspapers travelled around the colonies at a fairly fast pace. Fast for them, anyway. It still took a few months for news to travel, but eventually it did, and these letters and pamphlets antagonized and organized the colonists into a cohesive unit capable of bringing down the most powerful country at that time. Now, online newspaper articles and pictures are spread on the Internet at an astonishingly fast pace. The pamphlets and letters are comparable to blogs and articles that go viral today. Things that go viral today have the same impact that pamphlets and letters did back in colonial times; articles that have inciting content encourage people to pick a side and take action-either for or against the article. Political articles are the most to go viral because people feel so strongly about the issue. Articles about politics have the same power to bring about a war that pamphlets and letters did before the Revolutionary War.

Social Media Makin' Moves

Social media has really made a move on my lifestyle. I check Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat every morning when I wake up, and multiple times during throughout the day. Twitter really dominates my life, as it is my favorite form of social media. I follow my favorite celebrities, friends, and magazines so I can keep up with their lives. I personally don’t like my newsfeed on Twitter to be dominated by serious tweets; most of the celebrities I follow are comedians, and their tweets reflect that wholeheartedly. I mostly use Instagram to follow designers, friends, celebrities, and shops. Many of my favorite boutiques have an Instagram that have links to their online website to shop, which I use frequently. Facebook, which is still one of the most popular social media sites, really bothers me, but I still use it. It is a great platform to share videos or links, but there is always the problem of over-sharing. My newsfeed is very political, which is entirely my fault. I’m friends with people who love to post their political views on Facebook, which is the main reason it bothers me so much. I don’t think that social media should be taken as seriously as it is; I think political views should be left said in person. People get too bold behind a computer, and then they get rude. They say things that they would never dare say to a person’s face. I will concede that it does have its benefits, but they are quickly overshadowed by those who abuse their social media rights.

My Personal Reading Experience

I have been reading since I was about five years old. The first real book I ever read was Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, which pretty much jumpstarted my love of reading. Since then, I have been devouring books. I have a booklist that is three pages, front and back. Literature classes were always some of my favorites throughout school, and I loved learning about authors’ different styles of writing. Many times throughout school, I couldn’t put books down, and my teachers learned to ignore me. I’m still not sure how I got away with not paying attention in class. The Harry Potter series is far and away my favorite, followed closely by Russian literature and British classics, such as Anna Karenina and Wuthering Heights. Every year or so, I go through a phase of types of books I read constantly. A couple years ago it was Russian literature, mostly Tolstoy. Right now, it’s Stephen King. I read It this summer, and it gave me the bug to attempt to read every Stephen King novel. I’m not sure where I’ll go once I accomplish that goal, but thankfully I have my list to fall back on. With the new technology age, however, many of my favorite bookstores have closed. I hate reading eBooks; they give me headaches. I think I get this old fashioned idea about actually physically holding books from my mom, who always encouraged me to go to the library and read physical books instead of reading online. I’m not complaining, though; there’s nothing I like more than curling up with a cup of coffee and a good book.

Pictographs- The Early Words

Using pictographs was the first way people used to communicate. Drawing pictures that represented actions and people on walls or tablets let people tell stories of their past and their ancestors. It is through these drawings that historians have been able to deduce what life was like back before any type of printing we recognize today (pamphlets, books, letters, etc.). The activities that we did in class- the deciphering of the code and drawing our own pictographs- really gave perspective as to how people communicated, and how potentially difficult it was for them to decipher a new language. Figuring out which drawing meant what must have been incredibly hard for those first trying to learn about the peoples who used this type of communication. For the class activity where we had to decipher the phrase using pictographs, it was hard to figure out which letter went with the picture. I couldn’t imagine what it was like for historians who first had to decipher these pictographs and create the alphabet to correctly interpret messages. As an artist, I would have loved to see how people figured out how to make dyes to write on the walls or tablets, and if I had been around during that time, I would have wanted to be appointed as the chief pictographer, which may or may not have been an actual job.