Thursday, May 10, 2012

Reality TV Addiction Interview

Maya talks speaks to us about her Reality TV show addictions. The shows she watches and what draws her in to continously keep watching these type of shows.



Throughout the semester I have conducted four seperate interviews after each individual made the decision to abstain from the social networking website Facebook, for exact one week. These individuals included Calie Donnellly, Greg Orenstein, Daniel Simon, Bobby Brace and Lindsay Vanderheof.

Calie Donnelly is a twenty one year old student living in Barcelona, Spain. Being abroad she reminds herself to check Facebook as often as possible, but has other priorities and in reality will log in maybe four times a week. She admits to having 534 friends, but only contacting about five of them continously. She finds Facebook beneficial and a care free way to hold a strong contact with her loved ones and will post statuses on her upcoming travels and events she is attending. She also posts many photo's of such things. Although she is engaged in Facebook she doesn't pay much attention to things like Groups, Facebook Apps etc. After abstaining from Facebook for a week, it really didn't bother her much and she spend the week traveling in Milan, Italy. She does admit, after sometime she would not so much miss Facebook, but the ease of always being connected to her friends, and she would miss talking to those people.

Greg Orenstein is a twenty year old student attending University at Albany and studying Business Management. He has 547 friends on Facebook but say's he's not actively engaged, he prefers to spend his time on other websites such as Tumblr or Stumbleupon when spending leisure time on the internet. He will check Facebook about twice a week and talks to 5-10 people constantly through Facebook. These people are usually his close friends at school or close friends from high school he wishes to stay in contact with. He does not make any status updates, or posts, but he did admit to being addicted to the "Farmville" Application at one time. Although he doesn't use it much, he finds Facebook incredibly beneficial to stay in contact with friends he doesn't to talk to on a regular basis. He finds no one is engaged in their email or messaging accounts, and Facebook is the best and simplest option to do such things. He didn't mind or notice abstaining from Facebook for a week, but he would never delete it in fear he would lose his means of contact with his long distance friends. While spending his time away from Facebook he spent his time being a good student and studying more and doing his favorite activity, hiking.



Dan Simon is a twenty six year old residing in Coldspring, New York. He is actively engaged in Facebook and has to check it at least once a day. He has 622 friends and say he talks to at least twenty of them, even if he never talks to some of them in his day to day life. He says he gets so much feedback because he posts very oftenly. He posts everything from pictures, to status updates, even music and youtube videos. He doesn't however have any Facebook Applications and isn't engaged in the Facebooks Groups. Abstaining from Facebook was a hard task for Dan, as he usually has it connected to his iphone. After spending a week away from it he says he realized how addicting it has become, he has always felt a need to go "check" and see if someone has contacting him. He finds being engaged with people through Facebook as exciting. However, after spending a week away from it he also realized how it can be a complete distraction, as he gotten a lot accomplished throughout his week. Dan is very interested in cars, and is infact a mechanic. Although he spends most of his time working on cars, he never could find the time to enhance and work on his own very car, until this week where he spent his time taking his entirely dark blue WRX and making a black and white WRX. After he had gotten this accomplished he realize he had felt better about getting all the thing he wanted done and is rethinking how much time he should be putting into this social networking Website.



Bobby Brace is twenty two and resides in Somers, New York. He checks his Facebook everyday and considers himself to be very engaged. He has 362 friends but will talk to only about ten or so. He posts many statuses consisting of lyrics from his band, and youtube videos. Being involved in a band he see's the benefits of Facebook as it can be a great networking tool to get people who usually get the opportunity to listen to his music, to have a chance to do so. After leaving Facebook for a week he realizes how people tend to take their personal Facebooks and their virtual ego, "too seriously". Although he finds Facebook to be highly beneficial he thinks people need to remember, it is just a website, and it is not your life. While Bobby also works on his music, he is also an avid collector, specially for PEZ. He spent his week enhancing his PEZ collection.