Blog#0
Going into this semester being told that I will be doing a bunch of blogs as a good portion of my grade was not initially positive thoughts. Before taking the time to look in to all the different blogs out there, I will admit I had an unjustified prejudice against them as most these days may when they hear the word “blog”; “nobody does those anymore”, “why would I read all that when I can just watch a YouTube video on it?” Or any other millennial/gen z comments of resistance to things that appear “of an older outdated time”.
Now that I have taken the time to go through various
blogs, understanding their beauty, I feel differently. They give you the
opportunity to more intimately learn about any given topic that you choose. You
can’t just pop on a blog and get the information visually or audibly. You must
stop all you are doing and focus on this one thing that you are interested in,
otherwise, you won’t retain any of it. I can see why it is less appreciated
these days, but still has a true community “dedicated to the cause” so to
speak.
The first blog I chose is from the website JoBlo. It is a movie
review site that I originally heard about by watching their YouTube channel,
and only today found out that it is originally a blog that has been active
since 1998. I am a massive movie fan, and these guys do a fantastic job of
bringing awareness to potentially forgotten classics that fully deserve a
watch. Basically, every movie coming out these days is just a terrible remake
of an amazing classic that’s coasting on prior success and not making it its
own project that stands on its own. It’s great to hear from a group of people
that have similar and more experienced tastes to find what to watch.
Figure 1: https://www.unilad.com/film-and-tv/little-mermaid-remake-original-comparison-517856-20230602
The specific post that I read for this assignment is “Shoot to Kill: The Best 80s Action Movie You Never Saw”. It is an awesome example of the sentiment I was speaking of above. You can tell in this post, and all their others that these guys have a true passion for not just watching great movies, but spreading awareness on pieces of entertainment history lost in the overload of content we have since the inception of smartphones in the early 00’s.
I’d say their posts format is a mix between personal
and professional. It is very well punctuated, with proper grammar, sources
sited, and it just looks very professional. The content itself though, is
mainly the opinions expressed by the author about the movie, and how it has
managed to stay timeless after all this time, well worth checking out. He does
still present a lot of information without his opinions like the summary of the
movie in the beginning with actors and other random facts about the film.
Figure 2: https://www.joblo.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/shoot-to-kill.jpg
There is another side of blogging that I am personally
not the biggest fan of; pop-culture related blog sites. Hollywood Life
is the second blog site that I chose as my “didn’t like” example. As I scanned
through this site, and found it to be very obnoxious, and just plain bad for
anyone to see. Every single post is about the personal lives of basically in
celebrity in and around the “Hollywood scene” of people.
The photo below is a screen grab of what you see on
the home page of the site. At any given time of the day, it gives you access to
articles about oddly specific parts of these (strangers to us) lives. Now I can
appreciate a fun story about what Brad Pitt and Adam Sandler think of each
other’s careers every now and then, but what this site does is cater to a very
negative side of society with the rise in screen times over the last decade and
a half. That new song by Justin Timberlake is very good though. He’s still got
it.
All
my opinions aside, it is a high-quality built site, and all the posts seem to
have lots of hyperlinks, and all their photos and references sited in one way
or another.
Overall, this introduction has made me excited for
these blog assignments instead of thinking it was a stupid assignment like
before, and well worth my time as someone who loves writing and wants to
continue to grow my skills in this area.
Hi Aidan,
ReplyDeleteI agree I thought the assignment was going to be boring and uninteresting but I was wrong I'm finding myself more and more invested in the assignment as I wrote about movies for my latest post and I enjoyed writing about it because I love movies and am majoring in film too so it was nice to talk about movies and analyze them and also that's the best thing about blogs is that there's a balance between professional and personal and it's beneficial because it can connect with people and people are more likely to understand and empathize with your point you're making.
I also am not a fan of pop-culture blogs. I think getting insight into celebrities lives is kind of pointless. But, like you said they do have their website set up pretty nicely.
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