"The Medium is the Message"

The medium is the message. Most people would have no idea what that meant, and that’s because they never think about what’s so important about the mediums they are using. In my opinion, the term “the medium is the message” means that the medium we decide to deliver content tells a lot about the content we will be delivering.

But how else can the medium itself be the message? To explain this, I’d like us to look at a kind of media called the Retraux. The term “Retraux”, is a portmanteau of the Latin word "retro," meaning "backward" or "in the past," and the French word "faux,"(pronounced as foe)  meaning "false." The Retraux is a media that intentionally harkens back to a previous decade of media. It is common in video games, with a prominent example being Shovel Knight, a 2D platformer that resembles platformer games from the late 80s.his atmosphere gives a lot of people nostalgia, but it can also give people unfamiliar with that kind of media a glimpse of the past. A lot of people look forward to constant advancement and forget that older media also have their qualities. Retraux media lets people remember the past through a modern lens, changing how we view the past. So by making a retraux media, the message is that past media can be just as good as current media.

The importance of this concept cannot be understated. The different kinds of media that we use all have some sort of underlying message to them. So how does this work with social media, and its popularity? Different platforms have different messages. For Twitter as an example, the message is that short is sweet. Most posts that go viral on Twitter are easy to understand and easy to digest. But I think the primary message of social media is that connection and engagement are key to life. We connect with other people through their posts and content and engage with them by viewing, liking, and sharing that content. So the best way to use social media is to create content that others will connect with, and hopefully engage with. Whether that be through meaningful content or hot takes, the kinds of things posted on social media rely on being engaging to be popular.

With all that I’ve read, I strongly agree with Marshall McLuhan. The many different mediums of today have very different messages. A comic book and manga are presented in similar mediums but they have different messages. A manga usually has a message viewed in the Japanese lens, compared to the Western lens of a comic book. So just the label of manga and comics can tell you a lot about the content before you even know what the content is.

From my personal experience, I think modern society is ascribed to technological determinism. Yes, a lot of today’s society has been influenced by recent social movements, such as feminism and socialism. But a great manner of technological events, such as smartphones or video games, have changed how we view society. New technologies are adopted into modern society at blindingly fast speeds. It no longer matters what kind of technology it is, it’s more the unique features of the new technology. Why for example rely on banks for your money, when you can make sure your money is safe by using randomized codes on the internet? That’s the appeal of cryptocurrency, which quickly became used everywhere. Society now adjusts to the appearance of new technological developments more so than social developments.