The main reason for me to choose these artifacts is because they perfectly fit the topic I want to talk about. I think that people’s minds and thoughts can easily be changed or manipulate. One of the most common and useful ways is through media, such as news. This particularly interested me because I come from a business family, one of the lessons my father always taught me is that I need to have my own value and point of view on everything because the thing I see can be fake or only partially true as well as it can be manipulated by others who want it. You might be surprised, in Taiwan, you can use a really cheap price to buy a report on our news channel. And it can almost be anything as long as is not too over(such as the nudity picture). It usually is used to help that celebrity to wash out their behavior, for example, they will buy the news to give out a positive image and use it to change the public opinion. If you want it, you can actually buy the news and just expose yourself and be famous. Lots of people in Taiwan did that, you can see a random girl just been called something like “The Asian version of xxx” “The most beautiful nurse in Taiwan” and the news will show a lot of their Instagram pictures that are full of filters for like 15 minutes. I really think that is a serious issue of what information the news can give. That’s why I want to address it.

The relationship between the two is that the first one addresses the issue of credit issue of the news, in a lot of cases we might not really know if the information is true or did the news hide a part of it from us. The second artifact shows that the media can always select the part they want you to see and put it on. It highlights my point on how we can be manipulated through media these days if you let the media make our decision and judgment.

The rhetorical situation the artifacts want to address is that the news and media a lot of time are been manipulated if we can’t have our own judgment we will become a tool to the people who manipulated us, and think we are the ones actually think that.

Credit:

The first one is from Newseum ed.org (https://newseumed.org/cantdupeme) 2019)

The second is from https://afoninpublishing.wordpress.com/2015/07/10/definition-of-propaganda-media-bias/ 2015

For this post, I want to talk about the influencer called Jeff Nippard. I think he is the first one really apply professional science knowledge into the video and make it easier for normal people to understand. In his video, you can see the knowledge of kinesiology and anatomy in the video. The best part about his video I love is that he always supports his point with actual paper that has been published and proven by the professor in the field he shares.  Watching his videos allow me to use my spare time to learn something hard in an easy way and makes me want to keep dig into the fitness field. In addition, he was the reason I took a kinesiology class at Penn State. 

One biggest influence Jeff Nipparf brings to me is that I should really go check out the new information. No matter how basic the knowledge might be. Things can change frequently these years, it is always important to update our information. As I said, lots of his videos are about applying science to work out; to maximize the workout performance, an important thing I had to learn from him is that I don’t need to reach to failure every rep in my workout. The marginal utility to reach the failure is not significant as we thought in the old day. Leaving some gas in the tank could be safer and give me a longer workout career.

The next thing he changes me is how using technology can help me in my performance. He had a series called Technique Tuesday, he will teach people about using different forms according to their own situation. I remember one video is teaching me how to use my back properly in order to maximize my growth; he taught me about different grip and bodiesposition. The video also include every questions and problem I had.  After watching it and excuse it I finally solve all of them. Just by doing that saving me tons of money to hire a coach in the gym. I really feel like having the resource these days make lots of amateurs like me have chance to get valuable information with basically no cost. In sum, Jeff Nippard helps me to use a more scientific way to train and finding an efficient way for myself.

I was overweight throughout my middle school and my early high school life, thereby been fit become an important goal of my life. I want to have a healthy lifestyle and body, and that is the reason I started to work out and jogging. In the future post, I will talk about how my favorite 8 YouTuber/Ig influencer taught me in my path of fitness. They help me a lot on my way to improve myself and learn a lot of new knowledge.

The first one is probably the most famous fitness YouTuber in the world, and that is Jeff Cavaliere from ATHLEAN-X. He is the first one giving me clear information about working out and proper form, instead of just doing lots of hard exercises and showing their body like others. Jeff is the one that taught me the foundation of the field. The part I like the most in his video is how he uses colorful markers to draw on the muscle part he is demonstrating. This really helps the noob like me, in the beginning, to understand which part of my body I should be using. In addition, I had learned how to make a workout schedule because of Jeff, he not only teaches people how to do a certain exercise but also gives out a schedule that allows us to adjust by ourselves. He will share with people the pros and cons of a routine and giving out advice according to it.

More importantly, is that Jeff is also a professional sports physical therapist and strength coach. His content is mostly about how to train like an athlete instead of just getting big and buff. This was an important factor for me because I like to play basketball and do sports, he provided ways to enhance our sports performance and still be lean. By learning with him I became fitter and start to really build out a workout routine rather than just do push-ups or sit-ups the whole day.

So this is the man who helped me a lot at the beginning of my workout process, for my next PAS post I will talk about another Jeff, Jeff Nippard, the one who gave me knowledge about diet and training.

Ever since the covid happened I notice on the news that lots of people in America started to be really criticized Asians in general, such as the Asian(Chinese) virus, leave the country, and not to mention the attack on the subway this March. The racism on Asians suddenly rises at the highest the past year to now. I think this is serious for society now, lots of people tend to just blame others while they might have nothing to do with it. To be honest, I was really nervous about come to the U.S due to this issue. Luckily the hate and not understanding I received are way less than I expected.

Speaking on the not understanding, I think it is quite reasonable, lots of people only know the virus came from Asia and just make an assumption on Asian people are carriers. This creates fear and makes people start acting aggressively. However, these are pretty wrong, Asians are the victim of this disaster as well. I once heard a saying during the Black Lives Matter event, and that is “How can you like rap, our cuisine, and culture but hate us ” I think it can be used on Asian hate as well. For example, people like boba (btw Taiwan is the place that invented boba tea 🙂 ), sushi, and Kpop in the U.S as well. How can they treat us like a threat at the same time?

It is really important to understand other cultures before acting disrespectful. Even if you don’t like it at all you shouldn’t harm any other people. We should all think before our act, a lot of time the media and news are not giving 100% truth to the people. We must process the information ourselves in order to have our own perceptive of the world. I think the Asian hate behavior is also a sign of lots of people lack the ability to independent thinking. Of course, taking the information straight from news and Instagram is easy, but when we do that more often we are losing our own point of view and let others decide what we think. Think more, do research about the topic you see, and come up with your own idea is an important way for us not to be manipulated by people.

At last,  I want to say that PSU is really an amazing place,  people here are super friendly and treat me as one of them. I am grateful for everyone to provide a safe environment.