A Resident of the Virtual World?

     Reading about people and actually seeing people live their lives provoke two completely different emotional responses in me.  When I read "The Ecology of Mind" in the book Culture Jam I felt confused at first.  I had never thought about how society is adapting to this information loaded world.  Therefore, I have never heard of some of the main ideas in that chapter such as jolts, shock, hype, unreality, infotoxins, and infodiversity.  It was new and different from my original thoughts and quite difficult to fully digest.  I felt almost disbelief like our world really wasn't as extreme as the author made it sound.  For example, the author stated " If you add up all the psychological ailments Americans complain of, the portrait that emerges is of a nation of basket-cases."  The author then continues to spout off random numbers of people with disorders including SAD, alcoholics, pathologically socially anxious, depression, panic attacks, borderline personality disorder, and sex addicts.  I found it hard to believe that these were cold hard facts and not just random numbers.  I thought it was just one person's perspectives on how people are affected by the media. 
     Then, I watched the Second Skin youtube videos and came out with a different reaction.  At first, I thought it was funny that people spent so much of their time on a game.  I was flabberghasted to see real life people talk about playing one game for more then 8 hours a day.  That is just unimaginable to me, but it is evident through this film that it does occur.  Then, I felt concerned that people were wasting their lives in front of a computer instead of fulfilling their responsibilities to the community.  In other words, people were playing their life away in place of being a productive member to society.  I realized it's not good to judge people and try to force them to live a certain way, but when it promotes negative results, the question is do you step in?  For instance, there were two examples in Second Skins where two people committed suicide because of their gaming addictions.  It was really hard to hear and see these mothers talk about their sons wishing they would have intervened.  The sad part is they couldn't take back what already happened and unfortunately, it was too late.  Watching this film actually reminded me of this one television show I watched called True Life: I'm Addicted to Video Games.  It connected to a lot of people in the Second Skins videos, but it was also relatable to me since they were around the same age going through college and dating.  The article on True Life: I'm Addicted to Video Games discusses the similarities and differences between two videogamers, Barry and Charisse.         
     Overall, I could see how both sources now connected.  I think I needed the visual representation of Second Skins in order to fully understand what Culture Jam was referring to.  Both texts work together to convey the message that Americans are losing their ability to think for themselves.  With the great boom of technology, Americans are surrounded by constant streams of information from all directions.  Some information is very beneficial and educational whereas other information is dedicated to telling the public what to do, buy, read, write, live.  I believe in the environmental movement of the mind that Culture Jam suggested.  I know my mind has been polluted by the media, but I am willing to change that.