One of my favorite Ted Talks is Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s Ted Talk called “How craving attention makes you less creative”. It is a short ted Talk covering his own experiences as an actor and the powerful feeling of getting attention for your work, that almost no one is truly immune to.

With Twitter and Instagram, getting attention for your work has never been easier, and it can get easy to get caught up in thinking about how your work might attract attention, instead of thinking about how you should be paying attention to your work. As Joseph says, to him, creativity is that feeling of ‘flow’ where your mind focuses only on one thing and nothing else. However, he also has given in to the powerful feeling of social media attention many times. As he recognizes this and is self-aware, he tells the audience how as an actor he doesn’t look at his actors as competitors for attention, but as collaborators in creation. That is when he finds true creative fulfillment and happiness.

I think this particular Ted Talk was highly engaging. The concept itself is quite simple, but the reason it is so impactful in this Ted Talk was because of Joseph’s delivery and anecdotes. He mixes in many personal anecdotes about his own shortcomings, since he was a kid and how it has led him to improve as an actor and a person. The stories are heartwarming and humorous. Listening to a successful actor speak about these topics makes the subject matter more credible and impactful. His self-awareness is contagious, as the audience sees how an actor can also be critical of themselves without great fear of judgment. His humorous quips also lend to the overall enjoyability of the Ted Talk. His delivery is also very fine-tuned, with very limited verbal filler and a strong, level tone.

In regards to topics I would like to explore for my Unit 2 assignments, I am very interested in looking into the shift in South-Asian stereotyping and representation. This would possibly be a good idea for the Ted Talk and the paper both, but a Ted Talk may be a better fit as I would be able to bring in personal stories and observations as well. Other topics I was interested in exploring, especially for my paradigm shift paper were paradigm shifts in feminism, especially in regard to how social media has shaped feminism. In both the topics I mentioned above, I feel there is scope coupled with the fact that I have a lot of passion for these topics.