Mediums, Messages, and Relationships with Everyone (and No One): Meyrowitz and Wesch readings

One thing that struck me about both of these readings was the idea of relationships being affected and even created by media. In Dr. Wesch's article, he talked about how, through vlogging, we form deep but loose connections with other people; they see us more profoundly than our daily, face-to-face interactions, in which we unconsciously change our behavior, our presentation of ourselves, to suit our audience, but the viewer is under no obligation to foster this relationship and help it grow into something stronger and more concrete. Meyrowitz remarked that "we each gain a sense of ourselves through our relationships with other people"(31). So what is it we're really learning about ourselves when we sit before a camera, and broadcast ourselves to a faceless audience? While I'm curious, I'm at the same time apprehensive, for the very reasons expressed in Dr. Wesch's article: What if I'm not the "me" that people want to see? What if, years from now, I look back on what I said and how I said it, and find myself ashamed of it? I've seen Becky Roth's vlogs more than once, and I felt like I learned things about her that I never did just sitting in a classroom next to her all the time. She raised issues about how we are as a society, how we view ourselves and others, and how we seem repelled and ashamed of things like touch and the gaze of a stranger - since when was it a crime to be looked at? - and found that she thought about a lot of the things I think about, but find myself afraid to talk about with most people, because maybe they won't understand. I wonder if I could have the courage to experience that collapse of context, and if, at the same time, I could be freed by it.

Which brings me to another question - does the use of various electronic media to send an anonymous message at all similar to this? We've talked in class many times now about how anonymous expression can be a gratifying release, a way to express something you can't when people know who you are. When you vlog...well, someone's going to recognize your face. Does this change the feeling of liberation at all, or does it just deepen our anxieties?

Meyrowitz says that there's too much focus on content in media studies, and I think that this, too, is true - while popular content can probably tell us a lot about our culture (what we find intriguing or funny, what draws us in and what repels us, what we can best relate to, or even how we perceive reality), I think just as much can be learned about the environments created by new media, and the relationships that form in these environments.

So if McLuhan is right, and the medium is the message...what message does each type of medium send? I'm reminded of the example in my last blog post, about the different portrayals of the same story in print and in film. Does the new media change the original message? Is this positive, is it negative...or is it just different?