Now, I don’t know if this little tale counts as media consumption, but I’m gonna say that it does.
About two weeks ago I saw the trailer for a film called “Me Before You” everywhere, Facebook, Tumblr, Youtube – everywhere. Watching the trailer the first time made me well up with lots of sad emotions, I wanted to hit myself for falling into such a cliche version of myself, but hey the trailer was damn good! To fully understand how this happened you just have to watch it. Scrolling down into the comments I saw heaps of people (mainly girls) sharing my sentiments, but more interestingly the book that inspired the movie came up. Many people commented about how the book “ruined them” or how they “couldn’t stop crying for a week” after reading the book. I thought to myself, well I gotta read this book, because who doesn’t wanna put themselves through such a fun filled ordeal! I forgot about it for a while, and then the second trailer came out, and I was a mess. I mean, I was a cliche x10. Then I said to myself, I’m getting this book. So that afternoon I went and purchased it. Starting off I wasn’t exactly hooked by it, but something compelled me to keep reading. Fast-forward to three days and 481 pages later, the youtube comment predictions came to life, I was bawling my eyes out. My mother, who avidly avoids any type of art that is remotely sad, volatile or disturbing said to me “Why did you read it if you know its going to be sad?” to which I replied she didn’t understand. But she had a point, why did I read it? The trailer told me it was about a depressed quadriplegic, I mean how happy could the story be? There were fantastic moments of love and friendship, but ultimately you couldn’t shake the fact that within those moments was a man tormented, which is shown even in the short trailers. I guess what I’m saying is, this one trailer was so powerful that it sent me off into this three day whirlwind of emotions. I was compelled by a novel. Without the extremely emotional and powerful trailer I never would’ve wanted to read the book, plus I couldn’t wait till June (the release date).
A couple of days ago at uni, I walked out of building 9 and saw a girl leaning against the wall reading the book. I couldn’t help myself, I went up to her and said “I finished that book last week, it ruined me, good luck” and walked away. I WAS THE HUMAN EMBODIMENT OF A YOUTUBE COMMENT, and there was nothing I could do about it. The power of media folks.
