Stuff I Like

This is Melanie Martinez. I like her work and she is an inspiration to me because she uses childlike themes with dark undertones. Many of her songs have cute titles but express dark subjects. For example, Teddy Bear tells the story of an abusive relationship and how her partner went from sweet and nice to obsessive and hurtful. "You were my teddy bear. You were comforting and quiet. How did love become so violent?"

I learned of Lucas Samaras in photography class when we were given an assignment on researching different photographers. We just had names to pick from and I picked his at random. Once I started looking up his work, I was very intrigued because there is a lot of abstraction in there. My favorite series of his are his Polaroid shots because he dismantles them straight after taking the shots to make them disfigured.

Rise Against is my favorite punk rock band. I like their music and what they stand for. They're hardcore and look like they're edgy and horrible but they care about issues like global warming and abuse and animal cruelty and acceptance. My favorite music videos are "Make It Stop (September's Children)", "Prayer of the Refugee", "Hero of War", and "Re-Education (Through Labor)".

This lovely trio of middle-aged men is my drive and happiness in day to day life. They are YouTubers and have different types of content and are very close to each other. Through their daily videos, they upload silly lets plays (videos that document playing a video game while giving commentary) and from time to time they talk about things in the YouTube community and do charity live-streams to help organizations like Save the Children. Markiplier (left) has struggled with a friend who committed suicide and tells his viewers that any little act of kindness can brighten someone's day and you should believe in yourself. Jacksepticeye (middle) gets through to the heart of the people and tells his community that it's okay to not be liked by everyone and there's always someone who's going to try to drag you down. He reassures people that everything will get better eventually and to follow your passion; to not be afraid to chase after your dreams. Pewdiepie (right) is the current king of YouTube and his channel is mostly satirical to the beliefs and issues in the internet and trendy community like Net Neutrality and YouTube's recent demonetization.