Sometimes we read a book, or watch a movie or even read a comment in a newspaper, and we get an new understanding on that subject or person. We might have an "aha!-experience," and then we takes this new understanding with us further in life. My goal for this essay is to give a little more information about how literature, films and digital technology will help us understand other people.
Social media helps us understand other poeple by kind of letting us into their life. Maybe it is conscious or maybe not, but by texting, sending snaps or write comments on pictures, articles, facebook- or tumblrposts, we can understand how people feel at that moment or about a certain topic.
How a person texts can give us hints about what kind of person they are, or how interested they are in the conversation, example: if a person only responds With "K" or uses a lot of emoticons, it can give us some hints that the person may or may not be very intrested (can depend a bit on the emoticons, some emoticons can be very positive) or this person can be a bit lazy since she/he only responds with "K". However if you get an answer right away (almost before you sendt your text) it can show that the person have their phone with them all the time (which can be both positive and negative) it can indicate that the person is always available.
When you read a facebook- or tumblr textpost you get an insight in how they think and therefore also an understanding of how and why they think that, and maybe you will agree, maybe not, but anyway you have gotten an understanding of how people think and hopefully will you respect other peoples opinions.
Films can easy show us how diffrent people react to subjects, example in the film Disconnect the diffrent persons deal with diffrent kind of negative internet causes, which ends in one suicide, one damaged friendship and strengthened love. Documentaries are wonderful ways to show us how other people live and what they live for, this again can get us to understand them. The TV-series Criminal Minds is a criminal series like CSI and NCIS, but instead of focusing on the team shecking evidence, investigate and doing autopsies, the team in Criminal Minds investigate and figure out why the murderer murder.
Literature can help us understand other people by giving us different opinions with diffrent books, because when the athour writes he or she gives the readers an understanding on the Author by studying how the writer writes and what the Author writes about, however if it is an biography we will get Direct "contact" with the person the biography is about and therefore also Direct contact With his or hers oppinons on different subjects. We can get the same effect by Reading an interview.
So to sum up there is many ways we can get an understanding of other people, all from Direct and sometimes a bit harsh opinions in comments or textposts on social media to more intricate oppinions which might try to make the readers belive the same, in books and interviews.
Sources:
The film Disconnect
My own experiences on social media
Snapchat
Facebook
Tumblr
