mass comm

John Green and Mental Health Advocacy

  • Public Persona and Criticism

    • "Don't forget to be awesome" (DFTBA) is a popular phrase associated with Green.

    • In 2015, Green faced online accusations from a teenage girl about being manipulative towards his audience.

    • Despite criticism, Green values honest discussions about mental illness.

    • Expresses a desire to discuss mental health openly, without shame, to inspire others.

  • Approach to Mental Illness

    • Green emphasizes that living with OCD presents ongoing challenges, rather than being a one-time hurdle.

    • He aims to avoid romanticizing mental illness or suggesting it fuels his creativity.

    • His quote highlights the importance of using creative outlets as a coping mechanism: "a way out of myself."

Insights on Young Adult Literature

  • Understanding Teenager's Perspectives

    • Green is known for capturing the intensity of teenage emotions.

    • He recognizes that teens face profound questions regarding love, grief, suffering, and the search for meaning in life.

    • Acknowledges that teenagers believe their conclusions on these matters are significant, which he affirms.

The Evolution of Books as Mass Communication

  • Historical Context of Books

    • Books emerged as a mass communication medium, surpassing previous forms like sermons from the Catholic Church.

    • Allowed for the dissemination of ideas and the standardization of language and culture.

    • Played a crucial role in social and religious revolutions such as the Protestant Reformation.

  • Writing: The Foundation of Books

    • Writing is believed to have originated around 3500 BC in regions like Egypt or Mesopotamia, making it roughly 5,500 years old.

    • The advent of writing enabled the storage of information, reducing the reliance on memory.

    • Initially, reading and writing were skills reserved for elites known as scribes, which conferred them power in societal structures.

Forms of Early Writing

  • Evolution of Writing from Pictographs to Ideographs

    • Early writing began with pictographs, simple images depicting objects.

    • This evolved into ideographs, which are abstract symbols representing objects or ideas.

    • Languages such as Chinese continue to use ideographs, presenting a challenge of learning thousands of symbols (e.g., Literary Chinese has over 50,000 symbols).

  • Cultural Implications of Written Language

    • Writing not only facilitates communication but also influences cultural and societal structures through preservation of stories.