An A+ Blog for a Mixed Up World

It's been a while since I posted a review, and since I have been busy studying lately, I give you a review I posted on my LJ back in April with some small changes:

So I've (fairly) recently discovered the blog Sociological Images.

I really enjoy it, for several reasons. On an intellectual level, it presents a lot of interesting ideas that tend to be on my mind often. I often find myself checking the blog to find an video or an article relating to something I had just been speaking to my friend Drew about. Also, a lot of the time the posters just post the video/image/article and either leave it at that or write a sentence or two to give you some background. Their opinions usually aren't plastered all over the place (unless you count the subject matter of the media, in which case the opinions are kind of clear). You can just view the item and think about it. I like it a lot.

The subject matter of the blog varies from post to post. Some posts are devoted to the depiction of gender in the media while others focus on society's misconceptions about race. One recent post put up pictures of billboards with contradicting ads juxtaposed next to each other (e.g. an underage drinking PSA next to a Bud Lite ad). While on any other blog, posts like this would be funny, Sociological Images makes one reassess the use of mixed messages in American society.

On a more shallow level, I really like the layout of the blog. I have a weird phobia of opening up new pages. I think it's a leftover from the many years my parents continued to have dial-up internet long after DSL made its appearance. I don't like having to navigate away from the page I'm on. I usually have 5 or so tabs open at the top of my Firefox window so that I don't have to constantly be pressing the back button. That being said, a lot of the videos are right there on the page, and even when there are links, they usually lead to another part of the same website, making it very easy for a freak like me to navigate their way back to the original page. I make this point because Feministing, which I'm a very big fan of, is usually riddled with links to other pages and the whole thing makes me anxious.

So if you have some time on your hands and you need something to think on, visit the blog. I like what they're trying to do and it will spark some interesting conversations with your coworkers. Unless you're coworker is Tim the Pharmacist, whom I beginning to suspect is actually a Republican. But that's another story for another time.