Week 12 Lab: TED Talks About Story Telling

This is Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, deliverer of the TED Talk that opened my eyes further to dangers of only reading one story. 

The first TED talk I listened to was "The danger of a single story" by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. This story hit me hard - she talks about how only telling on story and stopping there, or only reading and looking for stories told from one perspective is not only dangerous, but generationally destructive. Especially in today's world, where it is so easy, and often encouraged, to surround yourself only with perspectives that support what you already think, it is too easy to only tell one story. And when only one story is told, it leads to the subject of the story fulfilling it, sometimes in small ways, but more often in major ones.

She gives a personal example, talking about how the issue of immigration in the US became so closely tied to Mexicans, with the pervasive images portraying dejected, broken refugees, detainees at the border trying to cheat the American people of their jobs and tax money. She talks about her total immersion in the media portrayal of Mexicans, leading her to be surprised when walking around Guadalajara at seeing so many people living normal lives. She realized she had bought into the single story told about Mexicans, and saw the damage buying in that way causes.

She says that how "stories are told, who tells them, when they are told, and how many stories are told are really dependent on power." A common saying that supports this idea is "the victors are the ones who write history." All of this shows there is true power in stories - told in the right way, they can empower an entire people and lead to centuries of greatness. Told badly or falsely, as so many are, they give the first push along destructive, devastating trajectories of entire countries or even continents.

Also mentioned is the danger of starting a story with "secondly." What she means by this, is that stories should be told from the absolute beginning. Instead of starting the narrative in our history books with the failures of the African states, we need to start with the invasion of the Europeans and others who broke up states and formed new ones to suit their own trade goals, disregarding cultural groups that were based in centuries of native Africans.

In conclusion, it is of paramount importance to tell all the stories of a people and culture. Just telling one - just focusing on one group, one action, one member - is counterproductive at best, and continent-destroying at worst. We've reached the worst.

Jennifer Barnes delivered a TEDxOU talk, discussed below. 

The second TED Talk is titled "Imaginary friends and the real-world consequences: parasocial relationships" by Jennifer Barnes. She discusses our fascination and love of fictional realities - why do we spend so much time on them, and why do we care so much about them? And what does all that time spent and emotional investment do to us? She talks about how we can have these parasocial relationships with not only fictional characters, but also with real people like celebrities. We combine all of the input we have on them and develop pictures of them for ourselves. Logically, we know that most of the subjects of these relationships don't know us, and that we don't actually know them. But sometimes it feels like we do, and we are deeply affected by these relationships.

Historically, before all of these types of media, the only way we would have interacted and received information about people as much as we do about celebrities or fictional characters would be if we actually interacted with them that much. Thus, we have a subliminal tendency to feel as though there is a real bond.

This talk did not have as much of an impact on me, but it was still interesting to learn about how our brains bond so closely to things that don't exist.