Category: Two Hours Spring 2022

By Anonymous

As I begin my one hour of media consumption, I started by hopping onto Facebook as there’s something always being talked about on some social media platform. While I scroll on the platform, I come across several mindless yet interesting videos. The first I watched was a 3 minute long DIY craft video. The creator did a range of things such as, making slime in his car, which he then used to clean up the crumbs in his car. Similarly, I came across another DIY video, but this time there was a man making the most ridiculous faces and reactions as he was attempting to disprove any of the DIY life hacks made by a different channel. Another video I came across was about a photographer on TikTok, who utilizes his camera to take videos of food and other objects at a microscopic level. In the video I was able to see the microscopic level of a cup of coffee, a kiwi, a leaf, and a piece of wood. After the video, I continued to scroll on Facebook, I came across an ad about a local fundraiser at a chipotle for a high school swimming team, another about a new roller coaster opening this summer at Busch Gardens, and several movie trailers popped up as well. I ended up getting bored of Facebook, so I moved along to google. I found and read an article about the revitalization of the plaza near Lake Anne at Reston, sadly it seems like the $37 million dollar plan is having trouble actually coming to life. Another article I read was about the owners of Buschs Gardens attempting to buy and take Kings Dominion, which I find interesting because I love going to both of these amusement parks. I then came across an article from the Loudoun County Animal Services about one of their newest cats now open for adoption. According to a blog, there’s this amazing stairway on a hiking trail in Virginia where you can see a waterfall, Crabtree falls, from all sorts of different angles. As I got bored again, I moved over to TikTok. I finished my one hour watching the most ridiculous video, which I feel is not even worth mentioning. 

Now moving forward, I began my one hour of “nature consumption.” I started by walking over to my local park, Briar Patch. Since I was completely unplugged from technology, the 10 minute walk was almost in complete silence. For the most part all I could hear was the nearby construction, cars driving by, and birds chirping all over the place. As I made my way to the park, I walked over to a nearby bridge built over a stream inside the park. The small pond formed at the beginning of the stream was completely frozen over. In the ice, I could visibly garbage all over the place, ranging from gatorade bottles to amazon packaging. I sat down by a nearby bench, sat in silence and simply observed the small pond. I tried my best to see any form of life in the pond but the only thing living were the cattails growing and sprouting out of the frozen water. I then walked further down and made my way to a part of the stream that sounded alive and healthy. I could hear and see the water flowing, which I found completely relaxing. Right next to the stream, I saw several birds flying around and foraging on the ground, camouflaging with the trees and leaves on the ground. Although I would’ve loved to stay longer, that’s how I concluded my one hour of nature consumption. 

My experience with this assignment emphasized the insignificance of what is shared online. After scrolling online for an hour, I found it almost difficult trying to remember what I watched and read. I only really processed what felt like about twenty percent of the information I found on Facebook, Google, and TikTok. The only information I truly processed was the information I related to, enjoyed, or felt passionate about. Everything else was forgotten. I usually do not go on social media that often because of work and school. But on top of that I find social media to be tiring and boring most of the time. I find nature to be relaxing and calming. When I went on my stroll, that’s exactly what I felt. The experience and the information I found throughout my stroll felt more real and permanent. I was there experiencing it first hand rather than reading and watching someone else talk about it. I feel that society needs to take a step back from technology and learn to balance learning from nature and media. Through this balance, I believe that it would improve the mental and physical health of all individuals.

By Anonymous

Mediated Environment:

A twenty-year-old man on Reddit pleads for help- his girlfriend is pregnant, and she wants to put the baby up for adoption. He is vehemently against this and wants to know what legal action he can take to keep the baby. Reddit suggests registering with his state’s punitive father registry and to get a family lawyer, but also cautions against becoming a single father at such a young age. The man gives an update- he is not the father. His girlfriend cheated on him with a married man, the same man who was going to adopt the baby from her. He tells the married man’s wife, and she quickly files for divorce. The baby was born, and the formerly married man and the ex-girlfriend now share an apartment together.

A forty-seven-year-old mother asks Reddit if she was wrong to forbid her daughter, Sara, from using the money allocated for Sara’s college tuition on her boyfriend. Sara is a bright young woman who received a full ride to the university of her choice. She told her boyfriend excitedly, only for her boyfriend to ask her to stay in town and live off his parent’s support instead. He told Sara he didn’t approve of her going to college so far away, and the fact she had a clear path for her future and he didn’t was emasculating. Instead, the college fund should be used to support Brian’s dreams. The mother, after hearing this, tells Sara she cannot use the money on Brian, and gently asks if she can truly see a future with Brian. Sara cries and says no, before breaking up with Brian. The mother feels guilty for the breakup and asks if she did the right thing. Reddit overwhelmingly says she did. The boyfriend was later arrested for assaulting a police officer, after he was caught blocking Sara’s car with some friends.

At this point, four minutes have passed

I continue onward, scrolling through reddit and Instagram and reading the various stories from people all over the world. The Canada truck protestors are demanding food from homeless shelters, as businesses will not serve them without a mask. A Tumblr user whose post has found its way to Instagram, explains the concept of super modernity and junk spaces- area with no identity or emotional connection existing to fulfill a single purpose and nothing more. They discuss Marc Auge and Rem Koolhaas, both of whom have addressed this concept in their own way. An Instagram post brings attention to fast fashion and advocates for treating clothing purchases like tattoo purchases, in the sense that you keep them forever. I scroll for longer, reading post upon post, story upon story. I encounter so much knowledge- however, at the end of the hour I’ve hardly retained any of it.

Naturalistic Setting:

I walk around George Mason University, taking care to stay near more naturalistic settings such as Mason Pond. I typically walk with my headphones in, listening to YouTube videos or music. However, today I walk with nothing- just my mind to keep me company. I circle around the pond, admiring its beauty. I’ve walked by here plenty of times in the past, usually on my way to the local Giant. I’ve always loved the path next to it- surrounded by trees, to the point where you can almost ignore the surrounding buildings. I look at the snow covering the ground and think of how pretty it looks. But then I find my thoughts drifting to my responsibilities. There are still dishes in the sink- I should really take care of them. What projects do I have this week? Am I still ahead? Should I have dropped that class? No, it’s important for your major. I should do laundry when I get back. Or should I just clean the whole apartment? Can’t be a slob, after all. Am I doing things right? What if, ten years down the line, I discover that none of this is what I wanted. Am I a failure?

Like so many times before, thoughts come rushing in. I usually surround myself with a moat of music to keep them at bay, but this time there is nothing. I force myself to think of a distraction, to not succumb to anxiety. I succeed, finding a daydream and thrusting myself in it. The thoughts fade away, waiting until they can return in a moment where nothing else is present. I walk around longer, listening to the music in my head before I turn and walk back towards the dorms.

Summary:

This experiment emphasized what I already knew about myself- namely, the fact that I need some sort of stimulation to truly enjoy what’s around me. Silence and loud noises make me anxious when I’m not in control of them- it either feels like my skin is crawling from the lack of stimulation, or my head is going to explode from too much. It’s why I always keep my headphones near me- I need to feel like I can control how much noise there is around me, otherwise I panic. Not to say it’s like this all the time- there are moments where I can live comfortably with the world around me. But they’re a safety net, should the need arise.

Even before this assignment, I knew I relied heavily on my headphones. I struggle with shutting off my thoughts by myself, most likely because I’ve used escapes such as music and video games for so long. Instant gratification is easy and plentiful, but it doesn’t make you better in the long run. However, like McKibben says- neither lifestyle is inducive to a happy life, and there will always be some sort of balance. For me, I think that balance will come in the form of limiting my time listening to music or podcasts. When I go for walks, I’ll take half of it walking with music, and half of it walking in silence. Maybe at some point I’ll be at a place where I am comfortable with my thoughts and don’t need the distractions. Maybe it’ll come by letting myself think, rather than pushing everything away. However, that point will come in time- for now, I will continue taking baby steps to end the deafening silence.

By Katheryne Grundy

Today I will be doing the same experiment Bill McKibben did of one hour of consuming media and one hour of being in a natural environment with little to no use of technology. McKibben explained his experience in his book, The Age of Missing Information. For my hour of consuming media, I decided to be on TikTok because I go there when I want a laugh. I saw a video of dogs being dogs and another of a Dunkin Donuts worker explaining his experience with a rude customer. I was able to relate with the Dunkin Donuts worker because I work at a restaurant, and I have similar experiences with rude customers. I also learned a new word, dolonia. Dolonia is the fear felt when people genuinely like you. But the last 10 minutes I went to my mailbox to check out ‘theSkimm’. It’s an email subscription and it explains the main news in the simplest way, and they explain it neutrally by just giving facts not opinions. It’s about how the US death row is being dismantled. The California governor is planning to put an end to California’s death row. At the end of my hour of media consumption, I wasn’t surprised that time went by fast.  

I was heading to Lake Accotink Park in Springfield, VA. When I got there, I put a timer for one hour on my phone. I placed my phone in my pocket and started walking on the trail. There was a large body of water in the middle as I walked around it. I noticed on the edge of the lake there was a bit of trash. It was disappointing to see litter in the water. As I continued walking on the trail, I stopped at one of the information boards. It explained that Lake Accotink Park is in a watershed and that it receives anything from higher grounds; this explains why it has litter. As I continued to walk by, I noticed other people walking with someone, a person running, and another riding their bike. It’s nice to see people go to parks to unwind and get away from the busy, noisy cities. I heard some birds chirping and a few squirrels running around. When the timer went off, I turned around to head back to the parking lot. As I was leaving, a few more people came to the park.    

This small test was fun, but it didn’t really teach me anything because I’ve experienced both things. But it mostly just reminded me to step outside when I need a break instead of being on my phone. I guess that might have been the point of this test is to remind people to go outside when you need to unwind. Humanity is too busy catching up in the fast-paced world that we forget to take a meaningful breather. When I take a break, I go on my phone which I’ve noticed doesn’t feel like I took a break. When I spent an hour in a natural setting, I felt energized when I got home. I felt better like I wanted to keep moving. So, I actually started doing things on my to-do list that I kept postponing like cleaning my room.  

By Anonymous

An hour online can go by in a blink, the endless stream of information can numb a mind. Youtube is the first site to open in the browser, a homepage full of so called “content” that spans from hours long videos compiling car crashes, to 10 second educational shorts. The first thing to grab my attention is a documentary about sulfur mining in Indonesia, miners work within an active volcano killing their bodies to make a few dollars a day. The video sparks a wide array of emotions, pity for the workers stuck in the situation, guilt from viewing this story as entertainment, and a sense of doom stemming from the unnecessary work being done as there are many other ways to produce sulfur without the exploitation of impoverished workers. After barely enough time to process these emotions, the next video kicks on, a direct recommendation from the website, another documentary doubling down on the failures of human development. This one is focused on the opioid epidemic, a peak of western capitalist exploitation in which millions of people have had their lives ruined in the drug companies pursuit of profit. An hour has already gone by.

My boots crunch on the icy remains of previous snowfalls that remains on the forested trail. There isn’t an abundance of nature within Fairfax county, but the cross county trail serves as a minor escape from the hustle and bustle of suburbia. The trail starts as asphalt, cold and unyielding under my feet, but eventually turns to gravel, a somewhat more forgiving path. A creek follows the trail for awhile, a thin layer of ice on it’s surface. I lean down to look into the water hoping to spot some life, but only trash greets my view. It is far too cold for fish to be out and about anyways. A lone goose flies overhead, honking into the sky with reckless abandon, perhaps it’s lost the flock. Maybe it decided to go it’s own way. Nature struggles in Fairfax, it fights to live in narrow strips of woods behind rows of houses being filled with discarded good and being forced to adapt to them. A firetruck siren begins on a distant road, nature has no room to truly flourish here, the level of development is far too great and it will always make itself known.

It is a high task to stay positive about nature in current times, there is a constant flow of information from those online sources and from active observations of nature that tell you there are issues. Every creek I’ve been to in the last few years has been inundated with garbage, and every article online feeds you more global tragedies. It is almost too much for a person, and I know many who have quit most forms of media, disconnecting from the global brain that is the Internet. Perhaps this is a good thing, helping them be cognizant of the issues surrounding them, issues that they can actually do something about.

By Anonymous

In the nature environment I spent my time at the Mason Pond. It was definitely chilly and cold, but it was really pretty seeing the pond in the winter time. I ended up sitting at a bench that faced the pond and looked at how the sunlight made the pond shimmer, especially on some of the cracks that it made. There were some birds squawking in the distance, which made me think they were in the nearby trees over where the little cottage was at that also faces the pond. I managed to capture a picture of the pond with the shimmering ice that is shown below.

In my normal type of environment, I would watch Youtube on my phone while sitting on the fluffy rug in my dorm room. Mainly I watched makeup tutorials and “panning” projects. The concept of panning is using up makeup or skincare and the pan portion is hitting the bottom of an makeup product that is in a compact or eyeshadow palette. It always keeps me motivated to finish what I have already in my collection instead of buying more, which also helps with my carbon imprint. On instagram, I would also scroll through makeup related content, as well as pages that foster kittens and dogs that come from local shelters.

From these two experiences, I learned that there are a lot of things in the media that can end up overwhelming and anxiety-inducing, but also it can sometimes cheer you up on a sad day. Being in the natural environment without being on my phone, except to take a picture of the pond, was very calming and chilly of course. Unplugging from the media was very nice to do since it was a stressful day and I would do it again once the weather warms up again.

By Anonymous

1. After finishing my homework for the day, I celebrate by numbing my mind to social media. Tik tok provides the perfect escape from reality. Animals doing funny things, people cooking interesting recipes, jokes and silly skits…everything you need to dissociate from reality. Time flies by as I scroll through video after video. Each one may be only a few seconds or minutes long, but it feels much longer. Impatient, I skip through some videos to the end, not even wanting to wait ten more seconds. Although the amount of information being consumed is extensive, I feel relaxed. I send some videos to friends so that we can laugh about the content together later. To some friends I send videos of cute animals, to others videos about decorating apartments, and to some I send videos of people doing stupid things with the message “this is you”.
2. It is cold outside, I do not like the cold. I would normally go inside as soon as possible if the weather is under fifty degrees. Sometimes my knees even hurt when it’s too cold outside, but not today. I sit on a bench outside my apartment building, watching life around me. Although the busy street is nearby, I notice bird songs and the sound of wind in the trees. The more time I spend out there, the more I notice that I hadn’t before. Animal tracks in the snow, squirrels running through the trees and digging for nuts, the sun reflecting off of the ice, even the crunch of humans walking through the snow is a lovely sound. But it is too cold just to sit around and observe. I try to keep active and walk around until I go inside.
3. Overall, this assignment has taught me to spend less time on social media/the internet and more time exploring the “real world”. While media may provide a temporary escape from reality, it becomes overstimulating and can eventually cause stress. In moderation I believe media is a healthy outlet, especially if you seek out useful information rather than nonsense. For example, some videos I saw taught me new recipes and cooking techniques. There is nothing wrong with media if you are consuming useful information and/or consuming in small quantities. Even though I dislike the cold, it is still an enjoyable experience to be outside in nature. This exercise also made me think about how we as a society view nature. Most of us take for granted all the things that occur in our environment. As someone who enjoys hiking and camping, I realized that even in those situations we focus on getting to the destination rather than enjoying the journey. When we take the time to notice all the little details it’s not only enjoyable but also educational. Animal tracks in the snow can be traced back to the type of animal, where it’s headed, and much more. In the past noticing these tracks could mean the difference between no dinner and a hearty meal. Maybe this is not necessary today, but the focus of all of our senses on the world around us allows for new experiences and a heightened sense of appreciation.

By Gustavo Rodriguez

For the first half of this exercise, I spent my time in the food court area of the Johnson Center. I put my earbuds in and watched/listened to a youtube video of renowned psychologist Jordan Peterson. As I listened to his perspective on many aspects of our society, I went on instagram and quickly got bored. I was inundated with ads and suggested accounts for things I was both interested and uninterested in. I looked around at my surroundings, and noticed the immense amount of people in the food court, walking around, waiting in line, student organizations with their tables, etc. Even with the earbuds in, I could still hear conversations around me, and the intense overall noise of a few hundred people being in the same area. As I approached being there for an hour, I was anxious and ready to leave, I needed some peace and quiet in order to focus and not feel overwhelmed. It was much harder to actually gain anything from the video I had been listening to.

For the second half of this exercise, I spent my time in a forest on the outskirts of my neighborhood. I approached the treeline, set a timer for an hour, put my phone on silent, and took my first step into the forest. I wanted to immerse myself fully for this hour, I let my thoughts wander the same way I was wandering through the forest, I let my eyes wander to view as many details as I could. I had nothing distracting me, and thus my thoughts were clear, I felt much more analytical of my surroundings, much more intuned because all I could do was be a part of nature for this hour. I noticed the finer details, I looked at the patterns of tree bark, the occasional chittering of squirrels, the songs of birds in trees, a rabbit family running to their burrow. These are small details that add to the overall bigger picture of nature, these finer details give that big picture an intricate and awe-inspiring beauty that is unmatched by anything unnatural. This time in nature gave me a greater appreciation for nature, from the small harder to notice things, to the things that are obvious. Disconnecting from technology, and immersing myself into the forest community, made it easier to focus, to feel serenity.

This expierience of both environments was very interesting. Both parts of the exercise were polar opposites, and I personally enjoyed my time in nature better. However, technology although distracting, is necessary at this point for humanity. I had a realization that I immerse myself too much in technology, and material and societal things, rather than also things of the natural world. I had a change in my perception, I need a balance between technology and nature. They both have their pros and cons, but if I can take from the pros of both, I think I could be a more efficient person in the things I want to work towards and achieve, as well as a better overall quality of life.