Looking back on this blog and Critical Thinking as a whole, I can see that I have gained a lot from this assignment, though perhaps not in the expected areas. My understanding of media has not changed too greatly, as much of what I learned about it I already knew to some degree. This may come in part from attending a Waldorf inspired school and having parents who are quite aware of the problems media can pose. I do have a more complete picture of how advertising works than I did before the semester, but I don't think this class has or will cause me to significantly change the way I interact with media. However, I believe this blog was quite important in approving my writing ability. It gave me a chance to practice a style of writing (namely casual persuasive writing) which I have greatly enjoyed reading in the past and frequently employ verbally but have not really tried writing in. Not only that, but it provided an excellent example of how a school assignment can actually be enjoyable (*dramatic gasp*). In fact, I have liked writing these enough that I'm considering continuing to use this blog as a repository of my thoughts on media for future me to view at some point (since I highly doubt anyone else will once they don't get points for commenting). If in the future by some miracle I am somehow working in the field of pedagogy this blog will have taught me a valuable lesson about how to make an assignment engaging: it is vital to allow the student to actually express something of their own choosing. I have enjoyed this assignment because to a significant degree I was able to make it what I wanted it to be. My understanding is that the intent of the blog was primarily that we would write about advertising and the negative effects of media on society, but the directions were open enough that some of the time I could talk about what really interested me: the construction and analysis of fictional narratives. Finally this blog may prove to be invaluable in another manner (which was in fact previously mentioned if you were paying attention). For as long as Google's servers exist (which, let's face it, they probably will until the heat death of the universe) a record will remain of what I thought about media and how I expressed those thoughts through the medium of a blog. I have no doubt that if in middle age I remember to go back and read this blog, it will provide both great insight into my past self and a great deal of hilarity as I laugh at how ridiculous I was when I tried to be funny at the age of sixteen.
Recently, to go along with its annual awards, Steam (a platform for buying computer games) released this list of their most played games of 2017. While perusing said list, I came to a somewhat depressing realization: all nine of the games with more than 100,000 peak simultaneous players consisted, at their core, of walking around a 3-dimensional environment and shooting people to death. To some this may fit completely with their view of video games as mindless entertainment which promotes violence. But to me it was jarring, possibly because not one of the twenty games in my Steam library adheres to this formula. In my experience video games can be a fascinating artistic medium, but it is difficult to find the gems in the teeming horde of first-person shooters. The overwhelming popularity of this specific genre has distorted the general public's perception of video games, obscuring the fact that, just like other media such as books or movies, they can be used both to offer an easy
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