Friday 17 June 2011

News


To have some sort of idea of whats going on in the world you are suppose to be watching the news every bloody day of your life. When the chances are you aren't -not really. When were you supposes to start. And when you do start watching it, you are shocked by the discovery that you do not understand what the hell is going on.

Every story comes with a complex back story consisting of a million tiny events, of countless shades of right and wrong, of mistake piled upon mistake, success and failures, injustice and struggles.To truly understand a major news story often requires real effort -more than many people are willing to give, which is why most of us know more about celebrities than say the Israel -Palestine situation.

Because you have fallen behind, its like tuning into episode 987 of the worlds most complex and detailed soap opera ever made, one that was running for centuries before you started tuning in.

And to add to this, it has become less of an easily digestible summary of events and more of a grotesque reality show - moving towards soundbites and frazzle dazzle. With heavy emphasis on emotion and sensation - another rolling TV show, whose meaning has being lost somewhere among the babble. Sometimes its happy, sometimes its sad, but somehow it isn't real.

Tuesday 17 May 2011

You may have media saturation fatigue..

Today, there are more books and films and TV shows and video-games and websites and magazine articles and blog posts and emails and text messages, all of which hanging around, competing for your attention.
Without leaving your seat you can access virtually any piece of music ever recorded, download any film ever made, order any book ever written. And the end result is that you hardly experience any of it. It's too much. Too much choice to make your head spin.

If you have reached this point, then you have media saturation fatigue - a real sickness, look it up. Here are some of the symptoms if you are unsure of whether you are at this point.
  • You feel like you want to be told what to read, watch and listen to if you are If you agree with these points then read on.
  • You want all your TV channels removed and replaced by a single electro-pipe delivering one programme or movie a day
  • You want all mp3's deleted and replaced with one unskippable radio station playing one song after another
*If this is how you feel and want to make sense of it all, then read the rest of this blog to alleviate symptoms*

Tuesday 10 May 2011


'You' and the 'News'


Might sound like old news, but the relationship between the news and what I like to call real people , has shifted through the years.The news use to consist of a guy telling you what had happened that day, with the help of some reporters, graphics and a irritating weatherman. The news basically consisted of a bunch of facts.


Real people, i.e.. us, didn't get much of a look unless we witness something important happen. But in late 70's and 80's, this began to change and real people began to have more of an input.More and more, it became true that real peoples questioning of facts could help move stories forward for the journalists. From this point on there opinion where solicited, whether interesting of not.

Looking back at old vox-pox, its striking how unemotional and objective people sounded-, perhaps because the public thought thats what the news expected of them.That situation gradually changed and more and more the public emotion became the central focus of a story itself.

Inadvertently, what the news was doing was driving a wedge between normal people and emotional demonstrative and some might say reactive people. And its this group that has had an effect on the news agenda.

In affect the journalists and the public have swapped places. And instead of offering factual summary of events, that we can form an emotional opinion on, they are asking us for our emotional opinion and then incorporating it into there factual summary. That's why we are now asked more and more these days for our opinions.

* There you go something to be aware of when you see some rambling moron giving there opinion on a news vox-pox*


Everyone wants someone to love them. Even though no-one knows what love is. Do you know? Now I don't want to go into a rant here but...

When you are trying to work out whether you are in love or not, its' natural to compare how you feel, with what you've being taught and about how being in love feels. And who taught you about how being in love feels? Well, without ever trying, the television[Media] bombarded you with misguided notions about romance, the moment you were first naive enough to swivel you eyes in its direction.

According to research when it comes to getting information about love, most turn to television, while some ask mum and the rest ask dad. But the plug-in parent is a liar[and to an extent,so are your mum and dad], and the fictional world it portrays seeps into you skull, setting a misguided framework.

Entering relationships with wildly unrealistic expectations is a guaranteed way of sabotaging your blossoming relationship. Studies have shown that there is a link between the amount of television that people watch and the likelihood that they will believe certain unhelpful relationship myths. Chief among these myths is the notion that there is a singular 'soul-mate' out there in the world for you. The thought that out of the billions of people in the world, theres only one that belongs to you seems really, really, really, really stupid. But then again it isn't. But it is.

Television[ Media] has warped your notions of physical beauty by parading inordinately attracive people in front of you , morning, noon and night. Thus raising your expectations to an unsustainable high, while simultaneously making you feel inferior.Its telling, when you encounter someone attractive in real life, they seem faintly unreal, as if somehow photo-shoped into your world by the media. And of course most of the people appearing in the media have being photo-shoped, tweaked and so on.

In adverts, attractive people are often presented as tantalising prizes, drawing admiring glances wherever they go. And unless you look like that, which statistically you probably don't, the unmistakable conclusion is that you don't match up. No wonder so many of us, simply don't know what to do when confronted by people we fancy in real life.

Then again, this is just an opinion, It could be wrong. Let me know what you think.
SOURCE/RESEARCH *HOW TV RUINED YOUR LIFE*

Friday 6 May 2011


I Hate or Love Television?!?!?!?

Human culture arose as we conquered the basics of survival. Once we no longer had to struggle, we almost immediately grew bored. We spent a huge amount of time creating entertaining distractions.Enter TELEVISION...[From here on in referred to as 'TV' as I've being rendered lazy to use 4 syllable words - an after effect of progress in current society]

What is a TV? Simple defined, it is a box for watching pictures on. Another definition would state that its a devise which inside electromagnetic fields guide electrons towards a phosphorous screen covered in thousands of minute coloured dots. Which the human brain, interprets as a moving picture.

This electronic device has transformed our lives, our society and in extension our world. It yields tremendous power. Less and less of us read books or newspapers, most of the information we get is from TV. Put another way, it is the gospel, the ultimate revelation - the most awesome God-damn force in this whole godless world. What about the Internet I can hear you thinking -NO, you are wrong.For now anyway.For you see there is something special about TV that you may not realise.[Will allude to what this is in a bit]

How We Watch Television

One of the best ways to relax after our daily struggles to obtain clothing, food, shelter and a mate is to watch varied simulations of others in those same struggles. TV sometimes draws us together by giving us a pretext to socialise with each other, but in a larger sense, it serves to keep us apart, by immersing us so thoroughly in fantasy that it seems more fun to stay in.

A flick of the switch, and you're sucked into a smaller than life world controlled by unseen forces. The existential crisis that was filling your brain is instantly soothed, and the burden of free-will, lightened and crystallised into the simple dilemma of whether or not to change channels.

The unique character of TV is this, it is a 'Trojan Horse' ,a friendly offering turned vicious within the privacy of peoples sitting room. It now resembles an amusement park, a circus, a carnival with story tellers, dancers, singers, side-show freaks and football players. TV it seems has become all we know, and people are beginning to believe the illusions that it spins. People believe that the tube is reality and that there own lives are unreal. Some dress like the people they see on TV, while some raise there kids like what they see on TV.Its fucking mass madness.We sit there day after day, night after night, all ages, creed and colour, while this invader from the public domain, disseminates an endless stream of potentially corrupting programmes.

*So there you have it...what to do about it is up to you. Of-course This is an observation and therefore just an opinion. I could be completely wrong. Let me know what you think or don't.*

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