Hey, everyone. I'm Brianne...a lactose intolerant Libra who enjoys reading for pleasure and deep conversation. But seriously, folks, I'm a sophomore soon-to-be Comm major with intentions of adding on a minor in Marketing. Extracurricularly, I'm a Delta Gamma and a big advocate of Greek life on campus. I'm originally from Georgia; I grew up in an isolated small city of about 100,000 called Albany, and my family currently lives in Atlanta. I'm very proud of my Southern heritage, but I absolutely despise people who assume that all Southerners are hicks and/or bigots. I assure you, while there are certainly areas of the region that could use improvement in those respects, the majority of Southerners are just like the majority of the people in the rest of the country.
I started paying attention to the internet in fourth or fifth grade...I guess around 1998? I used to browse around it on the afternoons that my mom would take me to work with her after she picked me up from school. I don't think my family had an internet connection in our house until the summer of 1999.
I think it's fair to say that our generation grew up simultaneously with the internet. The features of the net that are commonly considered to be the most offensive are easily avoidable. For instance, I get very little junk mail because whenever I sign up for a service (facebook, blogspot, etc) I am very careful to uncheck the options that say things like "YES! I would like for cosmo.com to send me monthly updates!" However, for some reason, I absolutely cannot stand the animated advertisement banners one would find on sites like Myspace that make claims such as "Shoot a moving target and win a Wii!" or "Which celebrity is this: A) Paris Hilton, B) Lindsay Lohan, or C) Axl Rose? Win a free Coach purse!"
These banners get under my skin for several reasons. First, with the invention of the pop-up blocker, advertisers missed an opportunity to redeem themselves by finding a way to get my attention without giving me a migraine from the movement and flashing colors. Secondly, it's a way to sell information to anyone who might want to purchase it. (I don't know if any of you have actually clicked one of these things, but it turns out that once you achieve whatever insulting task the banner asks of you, you have to type in a bunch of people's e-mail addresses and convince them to sign up for the promotion as well).
Based on what I've read thus far, I'm not sure that Wallace could have forseen the new advertising techniques that have resulted from the internet. She mentions no environment that is completely relevant to flashy, animated banners. She does, however, briefly talk about free e-mail accounts that are paid for by the advertisements we are forced to see on the page. Like free e-mail sites, Myspace, Facebook, and any other number of websites (not just ones used for social networking) are paid for by these ads. So rather than a new environment, I think these ads would be contained as a sub-environment of any type of free website environment.
Okay, thanks for reading!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
I agree that the advertisements get very annoying. Not only are they in the way, but I hate the fact that they are directed to 1st graders. Showing a picture of George W. Bush and asking viewers to pick if the picture they are looking at is a picture of George W. Bush, Brad Pitt, Bono or Derek Jeter is a little ridiculous to me.
However, sometimes, and by sometimes I mean very rarely, these such ads happen to come across me in a state of boredom, so I play along. Granted I know that I am not actually going to win anything, but sometimes a little positivie reinforcement telling me that I am "CORRECT!" puts me in a better mood.
On the other hand, there are also advertisements that can be useful. Facebook has done an excellent job of posting advertisements for events going on around campus, apartments for rent in Collegetown and other such useful information. While I do agree that the hundreds of ads that we are constantly bombarded with get tiring to look at, there are at times and in certain situations when using the internet for advertising can be extremely helpful. After all, you never know the type of people that might actually follow through with upgrading to get a "FREE RAZR PHONE" if they only spend ten dollars on a belt clip attachment.
Post a Comment