In Real Life – Review

in real life is a documentary by Beeban Kidron about the internet and how over the years it has changed/affected the teenage generation for either better or worse. in my opinion i believe the documentary did have its points of both the good and bad but lent down towards the negatives and how the internet is really bad for the younger generation of today by showing in the film some really upsetting scenarios. the main topics that are covered/talked about are gaming,Online dating, Pornography, Cyber Bullying, Social Networking, YouTube and General Internet usage.

Pornography

they start the film with meeting a teenage boy who enjoys watching porn on a constant basis and describes it as ‘a routine event’. he explains the reason of why people watch porn and he says its “for the pleasure” but it is also to find the ‘Perfect girl’ and see what to expect from her. the boy also goes through all the categories of porn on their websites and how he has watched everyone of them and then goes on to say how whenever he and his mates are talking to girls on webcam they play a game where who can get a girl to take off the most piece of clothing and for every piece they get a point. later on the boy goes on to say that porn can ruin your chances of love and having a relationship because after watching a lot of porn a boy is more likely to expect those same sexual things from every girl due to their belief that a relationship is more about sex then love as well. Finally, the boy goes on and speaks about the ‘Slag’ theory. He explains by saying if a girl wants to prove to a boy that she likes him she will go ahead and do those porn related activities to him and then the girl will be slated as a ‘slag’ and then the boy doesn’t want t go out with a slag so their relationship goes no further and in the end the girl has gain a bad reputation about herself and the boy is comes out fine.

Internet/Social Media

This chapter started off with some facts and figures e.g. ‘We look at our phones 150-200 times per day’ and ‘90% of the worlds data was created in 2 years’ which is real interesting and throughout the film it goes on to make google a scary thing by people saying that “YouTube knows more about you then your own mother” and that it can remember what you searched up 2 years ago on a particular day and time whereas you wouldn’t remember that far back

After that it moved onto a 15 year old girl was addicted to her social networking device and always on it, e.g. update her status more than 10 times in one day. The girl went on to say how she lost her phone one time and she got really depressed that her mum bought her a new one. After the girl went on to talk about a shocking story about when she was on a train and a gang of boys came up and took her phone and she wasn’t going to let them get away with her phone so followed them to get back but they said they would give her back her phone if she went back to a house with them all and she did and ended up doing anything they wanted just to receive her phone back. This just shows the extent of not everyone but what some people would go just to get their phones or any technical/social media device .

Gaming

This part of the film was about a 19 year old boy who got A’s in A levels and got into Oxford who thought he could beat the system of his uni by playing video games more than doing his work which he then revealed that the university kicked him out for not completing the work but he thought he didn’t need to and that it was optional. He admitted he plays 5 hours of video games with another 2 browsing videos on YouTube. He went on to say that he wouldn’t call it an addiction it’s just he hasn’t got anything better to do which he did have being uni but he don’t have that anymore.

Then it went on to some more e.g. the attention span between adults and teenagers is completely different by teenagers more likely to find a definition of something in 1 line and that a 4 line long definition would be long and they couldn’t be arsed.

YouTube

This topic went on to focus on a well know and famous YouTuber named Tobuscus who posts spoofs, animations, songs or blogs. He then starts talking about subscribing and how it means that not every subscriber will watch his videos but they would have fought “yes I like this video please make more of them”. They then show Tobuscus having a meet up in the park where all of his fans that watch his videos get together to meet their idol and we also see other YouTubers but not as big filming themselves getting ready for the meet up and upload the videos to their YouTube accounts.

Online Dating

This part of the film was following a boy named Tom who came out gay on Twitter. It follows how he came out and what it was like after telling his parents and how they reacted and how he has a boyfriend who lives a long way away but they text and Skype each other every day. He explains that he has never had a boyfriend before and that he has never met up in person with his boyfriend. This then brought up, is it a relationship if you have never met the person in real life? But then it ended with a nice awkward meet up when they finally see each other for the first time in person.

Cyber-Bullying

The final story was a brief one about a young boy called Thomas. Thomas was getting bullied online for a real long time and he was also bullied in school. The bullying got so out of control Thomas couldn’t take it anymore and hung himself in his garden to be then found by his dad later the evening just before he went to work. The story ended with one more fact that “80% of people believe they can get away with bullying online”. Thomas was only 14 years old when he died

 

 

Here is a link to the trailer – InRealLife Trailer

Podcast Sound

for my podcast the task was to record a 1 or 2 minute recording of a space/location and the place i decided on was Costa Coffee inside the Anglia Ruskin University where there is alot of sounds of people in the background so its public place but also social because where i was which was the Costa students and teachers go there to catch-up and talk.