Neck Deep

So here I am, only inches from being totally being submerged in perpetual research for this monster of a paper. I do have to say that the only thing about doing this paper that I'm not especially fond of is the time commitment and balancing this assignment with all of my life's irksome obligations. Everything else is currently working out okay. Since I've began I've found nearly twelve sources. About ten books and two online journal articles. My two biggest fears about this assignment have totally subsided. The first one was just simply getting started. The other fear (and more detrimental fear) was that I was going to hit a dead end in my research and figure out that the topic I committed to was not going to work. This is definitely not the case. I've been enthralled with much of the insightful analysis on the issues surrounding consumerism in contemporary societies. I'm loving the feeling of developing and organizing one robust work. Hopefully it continues to go well.

You can run but you can't hide

So I've jumped face first into researching for my upcoming research paper and I can say its nothing short of refreshing to be able to find so much material on the subject of consumerism and the psychology of the modern consumer. There's been a considerable amount of research on the topic and the career field of marketing research in itself plays a substantial role in the hidden underlying psychological thought processes of the American Consumer.
I feel like another part of the beauty of my topic is that examples of my topic are not just limited to some elite research journal but even when I go somewhere to take a break from my work for a few hours (particularly this research paper), I as an American consumer feel like I'm perpetually berated by images that try to influence my desire to feel like I need a product. For example, my fiance and I went to the movies this weekend and not only did I feel overstimulated by the advertising from the time we walked from the parking garage to the theater, before the previews we sat through at least 15 minutes of commercials that propelled sound at us that was characteristic of a class 4 tornado. Sometimes it feels like the only way to escape consumerism is to either go camping in the middle of no where or lock yourself in your house all the while distancing yourself from any media outlet. It's simply everywhere we turn.

Finally Blogging

Hi everyone, I feel like I'm the class laggard at blogging but I'm finally on board. When brain storming for ideas for my research topic, I knew that I wanted to tackle issues of modern day contemporary American culture. You know, something that's a relatively modern phenomenon that we see in almost our everyday lives but don't pay too close attention to. One of the first things that came to mind was the practicing of new age religions i.e. Crossroads here in Cincinnati. There was also the potential topic of media bias but I kind of felt that this is a subject that's been done to death. However, there is one subject matter that I can never seem to get over and that's how much of a consumer based society that we are. Recently I watched a George Carlin stand up special in which he stated "Baseball used to be America's past time. Now it's buying s@#*". It often befuddles me the lack of emphasis people (families in particular) place on creating their own recreation, and as a result it seems that countless people default to packing up the car and driving to the closest outlet malls and spending money they might not actually have on things they don't really need. America seems to have lost it's romanticism. A time in which a family would take a country drive and have a picnic. In my paper, I intend to delve into such issues as consumer psychology, exploration of marketing and other underlying consumerism issues.