Rationale and Reflection

Rationale

I was asked to create a blog as part of Unit X Assignment. In this essay, I will try to describe my thought process behind the creation of my blog, why I decided to write about the topics I chose to talk about. Moreover, I’ll analyse the media diary from the first weeks of the unit. The blog focuses on gaming, animation and pop culture the target audience is teenagers and young adults.

I’ve always been interested in a wide variety of online media. Gaming, Animation and Pop Culture are the three things I invest most of my time. I’m not too picky when it comes to games, anything that looks appealing enough I’ll give it a shot but when it comes to watching, retro game reviews and gameplay series is I’m mostly familiar with. I’ve been following multiple gaming content creators on YouTube for many years and even when I don’t get the chance to play a game I always watch or read reviews just so I can form an opinion. Video games have always been a big passion of mine and are a subject I really enjoy sharing my opinion.

My comfort zone when it comes to cinema and tv is anything related to cartoons and animation. I enjoy watching both adult animation shows and kid-friendly shows. As an amateur webcomic artist, shows like South Park, Ed, Edd n Eddy and Rick and Morty have been an inspiration for many of my projects. I enjoy talking about old cartoons I used to watch as a kid and it’s a subject that I want to cover in my blog as well.

Lastly, the internet and the way it affects the youth’s culture is a topic I find very interesting. Ever since I discovered the infinite communities you can access with the internet I got hooked. I like to always know what’s trending and what’s viral and over the years I’ve collected a huge collection of useless knowledge that now I have the opportunity to use. As with video games, I really enjoy learning and talking about old trends, music and entertainment in general.

The media diary above, confirms everything I talked about in the previous paragraphs. On an average day, I spent more time on online content than I do with any other form of entertainment. Watching tv-shows and films is also a big part of my entertainment, but I decided to stay away from such topics since I think they are oversaturated and my expertise is limited. I decided to write about topics that I was really passionate about since I thought I would enjoy the process more and create higher quality content that could eventually attract traffic to my blog.

I wanted to create an online persona that either loved or hated too much the topics that he talks about. The inspiration came from gaming YouTubers such as Jon Tron and The Angry Video Game Nerd, both of which are known for their passionately angry personas and their vulgar vocabulary. I really enjoy the process of writing and potentially I want to expand my blog further as my online presence. When the Unit is done I’m going to add a portfolio section where I’ll be able to share my content as a filmmaker.

Lastly, I wanted to create an old-school looking blog that gave to the viewers a taste of anarchy and retro pop culture. In order to achieve this look, I recreated the original Beavis and Butthead logo and added my blog’s name. The name’s inspiration came from a blink-182 song I was listening at the time and decide to go with it since I like its religious tone and raises the visitor’s expectations.

To conclude, the approach I had for my blog is mostly affected by my three main interests, gaming, cartoons and retro pop culture. The tone I decided to use is casual, which allows me to express my thoughts in any way I want. Unit X helped me improve my reflective writing, research subjects more efficiently and was a great opportunity to get into the world of blogging.

Reflection

After uploading my last blog post for the unit, I realized how much my writing has improved since the start of this unit. In this essay, I’ll try to describe the difficulties I faced during the whole process, how my team worked together to create the infographics for the unit and in what extent I managed to achieve my original goals.

Understanding is achieved by virtue of reflection, which connects an experience to with its consequences, that connection being critical to understanding (Dewey, 1916:139)

Even though I worked with a new team, I knew most of the other members which made cooperation easier. We decided that we wanted to create each one of us an infographic that reflected our individual blogs instead of creating all of them together. In order to achieve this, we were communicating during the whole process both in seminars and on the Facebook group chat. We were sharing tips and helped the other members when they needed it. Everyone’s contribution was more or less equal, and since there wasn’t a team leader everyone tried to be as helpful as we could. All members managed to submit their work on time and there weren’t any major issues.

My original idea for the blog was to create a persona that would give the impression of someone too passionate about the subject of his posts. To achieve this, I tried choosing topics that I was interested in and used an almost verbal tone. When writing, I was trying to talk to my audience as if I was speaking to them in person and behind each post I tried to share a piece of my personality. In retrospect, I think in some of my posts I got carried away with talking about video games and shows that mean a lot to me and created content that isn’t interesting enough for other people. However, I’m really satisfied with the result and I think I managed to achieve my original goals. I covered a wide variety of topics that appeal to my target audience with enough research to provide useful and entertaining content.

There are however a few things that I would change. I’m not satisfied with my third post mostly due to insufficient research. In addition, I’m not satisfied with some many aesthetic elements of my blog. That’s mostly because of WordPress’s limitations and if I hadn’t invested as much time as I had, I would have used a different platform such as Tumblr and Blogger.

Even though the subjects of the lectures were not related with the topics I talked about in my blog, they provided helpful insight on aspects of media that I was not aware of. More specifically the lecture on superheroes helped me develop my critical thinking when it comes to characters and representation.

Working as a team was a very different experience and helped on my individual work as well. My team provided valuable guidance and made the whole experience much easier. During our weekly meeting, I had the chance to present my ideas and get feedback which helped me improve my work and refine my posts.

In conclusion, this unit helped me a lot. It introduced me to the world of blogging and helped me gained valuable skills. By cooperating with my team, I managed to go through the assignment smoothly. Even though the unit was challenging at times, I managed to achieve my goal and had the opportunity to develop my skill in the field of blogging and journalism.