Blog post for "February"

"Thus, social reality is constructed - it is made and not given. It is created interactively" (Palczewski, Ice, and Fritch 12).

When learning about societal construction, it's not so much a "wow, everything makes sense now moment," as much as it's a, "Aha, I suppose that's true" moment. So to say, you've already realized it, but you didn't know how to quite phrase it before. Society is the way it is today because of people that acted a certain way and held dominance over the culture as much as the people who sat back and let it happen. Though, certainly there are cases where people attempted to stand up to stop something from happening, and were promptly silenced for their ventures. "History is written by the victors," as the saying goes. As such, it's difficult to look back at the past and figure out how the result of a conflict came about.

I think there's quite a few factors that go into shaping a society. One of the big ones is media. Everyone has celebrities or idols that they look up to. It's increasingly easier today with videos of everyone famous on the internet being rampant to look up anyone and find out nearly everything about them. A big example is Logan Paul. Regardless of your opinion of him, he has quite a following of impressionable teens. In his videos, he promotes and wears his own merchandise, which kids are bound to wear. One of the big things he does is dabs. Dabbing is nothing new when it comes to pop culture (and is a bit of a worn out meme by now), but Logan Paul dabs all the time. What you end up with is impressionable teens that dab "on the haters" and are influenced by this internet celebrity.

This is just one example. There are countless examples from women admiring and wanting to look more like Marilyn Monroe, or even as far back as children playing with sticks wanting to be knights in medieval times. I think, given all the media options we have, it's increasingly easier now than it was then. These media idols have an influence upon society. Ultimately, it's just one of the aspects that shapes society in the past and the present.