Story Lab: Ted Talks

For today, I pursued the Story Lab route. The two videos that I watched, were The danger of a single story by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Imaginary friends and real-world consequences by OU's own Jennifer Barnes. I really enjoyed watching these videos, especially the one by one of OU's own professors. Her talked stimulated me to think about the potential downfalls of forming fictional relationships.

In the talk Imaginary friends and real-world consequences, Professor Barnes talks about how people develop relationships with fictional characters that they see on TV, read in a newspaper, or in books like Harry Potter. She even went on to state that as an overall society, we have spent just as much, or even more time reading about these people compared to the time since the dawn of man. This blew my mind! She went on to express that we form these types of fake relationships because in some ways they can help boost our self-esteem and confidence. Another stat that she presented also bothered me. When comparing the grief felt by people losing one of their favorite fictional friends to a distant acquaintance; people were more grieved by the loss of a fictional character! Therefore, this made me wonder about the potential consequences of becoming too close to something that isn't even real.   

In the talk, The danger of a single story Chimamanda talks about stories in her life of how she has been affected by "single stories." She goes on to explain that as individuals when we do not read all the stories that are present, we can become somewhat narrow-minded in our views. For example, she told a story of how she gave a talk at a university where a student mentioned to her his apologies of how "all the men in Africa are abusive and he knew this from reading one story." She responded by saying "she has read the book American Psycho, and she was sorry that all middle-aged white men in America are killers." We as people must not downplay anyone, culture, or society as one thing. If we do, that is what they will become in the eyes of the youth.

Be Creative: Wikipedia