Assignment 7: Nonobvious Observation

Group Video
The video we created as a group was repeated trials walking from the Zacary Building on campus to the McDonalds across the street. Everyone agreed to order food if they wanted, but ended up having all of us doing so when the predecessor before us came back with food. During the trip to McDonalds, we had to cross a light pole, several people going home from school, as well as the McDonalds staff when we were ordering our food. The most interesting responses from people near us were in regards to the camera attached to our head. We weren't allowed to hide the camera so it sparked people's interests, and in come cases worried them about being on film. We tried to make it as hard as possible to distinguish from one another, but I froze up during mine and made my own mistakes. Other people had defining traits on their arms and legs that would surely give their identities away as well. I've notice that no matter how hard you try to be the same, people's inert attributes about themselves are naturally given away.

Article Readings
We were assigned to read an article and chapter in regards to nonobvious observation. From reading the articles, I actually found myself really immersed in the topic. The articles started out a little boring but I eventually laughed as I noticed me noticing a lot of things in common with the author. She pointed out that pronouns can be used to find a person's type of personality. More so, she found that people were more prone to depression if they used negative words and talked about themselves/others all the time instead of mixing the viewpoint up. I found this the most interesting. People complain about their problems to people in hopes of making themselves feel better but usually end up doing the same thing the next time something occurs. They don't reflect upon it and look at the situation from an outside view.

I think I could tell a lot about people in how they write (rage, sad, happy) as well as using the content to figure out if they are looking at their problem from a critical view. Although some things can be taken out of context (satire,sarcasm, jest, etc), most people are usually blunt and straight forward about what they write to strangers.