A Paranoia Injection

Putting together all I’ve learnt in a semester of Cultural Studies IV and writing a reflection post about it is really not an easy task.

A topic such as “Inside the News Media” doesn’t sound easy, not even a little bit. And in fact it isn’t. But I have to admit I found it fascinating. It’s crazy how much stuff hides beneath the surface of newspapers and social media, and it’s amazing how easy it has become to spot stuff that I wouldn’t even have thought about before, while reading an article or checking Facebook’s homepage.

Being a very anxious person, this course made me really paranoid. Now, every time I stumble across some kind of news, I find myself looking for sources and owners of websites and newspapers, counting ads, mentally checking the whole list of possible reasons why it might have been written. I even went so far as to immediately check Facebook after writing Whatsapp messages to friends, in order to see if the ads I was ‘bombed’ with had anything to do with the content of the said messages. And they did indeed. EVERY. SINGLE. TIME.

I feel so much more aware of what’s happening around me (at least for what concerns news media), it’s like having woken up from a looooong sleep (no, I’m not comparing myself to Sleeping Beauty, if you thought so). It’s not necessarily a good thing, being aware of stuff sometimes means not being able to enjoy what you’re reading anymore, because you know exactly that the aim of what you’re reading is not to amuse or inform you; I feel like I’m nothing more than a number in somebody’s statistic, sometimes.

But I love knowledge, I love being aware, I love not being asleep anymore, and if I could go back in time I’d take the red pill over and over again. I love exploring this rabbit hole.

Yup, I just used a pop-culture reference within a pop-culture reference… Meta-pop-culture reference, baby!

In conclusion, I can cope with being paranoid, if it means having the opportunity to go beyond what I’d normally see and to widen my knowledge. I’m sincerely glad I chose to take this course.