Author: aaronbanyard

This writing task will teach me more about why writers do and say what they do and what they say in their work. Every sentence and word a writer uses is there for a reason. The assignment will hopefully make me more refined in identifying these reasons, and in turn allow me to apply them in my own writing.

The topic I chose to write about is the effects of competition, be it through sports, mental sports, or esports, on the mental health of youth. I believe that those who grow up with or have competition as a major part of their lifestyle, whether alone or as part of a team, are better fit to handle struggles and lows of life.

This assignment will be read by my professor and possibly other classmates. As young people, mental health is important to them, so they would be interested in this topic. They would be interested in the possible correlation and expect to know why it does or doesn’t exist and how the author conveys this information.

The writing will be mostly formal. This is because it is a class assignment and they tend to be formal just about all of the time. And, like with the previous sentence, there will be numerous times where words are added simply to extend the length of the project to meet the word count.

Today, I will be doing on an analysis on the Twitter account of rapper Lil Nas X. Unlike most other artists and celebrities, Lil Nas X’s Twitter page consists of (genuinely) humorous content with extremely little context or premises. Most often, he is the subject of his own jokes, and he often interacts with users who take part in these jokes with him. He also puts humorous captions to viral videos and memes popular at the time.

His reasoning for doing this is likely because the internet is the reason he’s famous, so his internet savvy fanbase would enjoy this type of modern yet bizarre humor. Old Town Road, his first popular track, became popular because of Tik Tok and other social media platforms where sharing and recreating memes is are common practices. This was because the lyrics of the song were seen as humorous as well as easy to act out or recreate in short videos.

His recent twitter posts poke fun at himself through old photos and videos. The most popular/frequent one as of late is based on a picture of him on in an army uniform. The picture was reposted by a twitter user using the caption “support our troops.” The tweet was already gaining a lot of positive attention, and even more so when Lil Nas X himself quote tweeted the post saying “this guy looks awfully familiar.” Lil Nas X frequently responds or interacts with fans, making his twitter account all the more popular.

Another part of his twitter consists of copypastas – paragraphs, quotes, or emoji graphics that are funny solely because they get reposted in random situations or when deemed as an appropriate reply. As a recent example, Lil Nas X posted a series of slashes to form a road, and in that road he has police cars and sirens. The caption was asking for producers to email him beats, with plenty of loud emojis scattered throughout. While the message itself is attention grabbing for artists or producers with actual beets, it also appeals to his internet savvy fanbase that finds this kind of out of the norm posting to be hilarious.

I am going to write about the color purple. Purple is a very soothing yet cool color to me. Whenever something is available in purple, as the case of my current school laptop, my favorite jacket, my bedsheets, I will always go pick the purple option. Even when I was very little purple was always my favorite crayon to use even when it was not even close to being related to whatever I was drawing or coloring. When I play competitive games, the color purple usually brings good luck for me. In Super Smash Bros, my character Olimar depends heavily on the purple pikmin I endearingly dub Monique. In the same game I also play a character Rosalina & Luma with a wonderful looking purple alternative costume. I’m also a competitive Pokémon player and greatly lean towards poison types, which are represented by the color purple.

I feel a sense of personal attachment to the color purple. I feel like when I own, wear, or have something in that color it is a further representation of myself. The color and I are both friendly, cool, bold, and unique. I could also say that seeing the color gives me confidence in myself, which would be a cause for why I lean toward it in games as well. When I see the color I just feel cool and powerful and reminded that I’m a strong force of joy and good.