News fast

[LotsaBadKarma]

I've had to do the fast thing myself because I could actually feel my blood pressure increase as I watched the shows.

I'm kinda repeating myself here but it seems a reasonable contribution to the thread: The above is actually why people who make a habit of watching "the news" do it. It's not about being informed -- if you wanted to actually be informed, the last thing you'd do is turn on the television.

We select our television programs the same way we select which movies to watch. We decide, usually subconsciously, which emotional state we'd like to be in, and then we select accordingly. If you want to become happy you'll select a comedy or some other genre that will make you happy. If you want to become agitated (for the hit of adrenaline and cortisol) you might select the news or an action movie. And so on. We use the tube as if it were a mood altering drug. And in this here information age, we can do the same thing via the internet.

Paying regular attention to "the news" is, in this dude's opinion, very undude. There's no point to getting all jacked up on stress hormones while you're safely parked on your sofa in your comfortable home. It's just uncool to harsh your own mellow. 

You're throwin' rocks today, Dude! Mark it 10!
As I read that my initial response was to tense up a bit and THAT made me realize that you are EXACTLY right. As soon as I felt my resistance start to build against your statement I was able to monitor myself and understand that the reason for my gut reaction was that your statement threatened my desire to get jacked up by the so-called "news". Fuckin' A, your summary really pulled this thread together. Kudos!

[RevKHyler]

Brilliant post, man! Like your style! Always the same ol' shtuff happening on the news anyway... 

[RighteousDude]

You're throwin' rocks today, Dude! Mark it 10!

Thankee! 

Fuckin' A, your summary really pulled this thread together. Kudos!

Thanks some more, Dude.

I've known some of the folks who make the decisions about what gets on the television, and they know that their job is to give you the feelings you want to have so you'll stay glued to the screen. They don't give a shit what it takes to do it -- the content is not the product; you are. The broadcasters don't sell programming. They sell market share. I used to party with a guy who was an A&R guy for MCA, and he put it this way: You don't have to like the taste of the bait as long as the fish do.

In the immortal words of Peter Finch's character Howard Beale in the movie Network: "We'll tell you any shit you want to hear. We deal in illusions, man! None of it is true! But you people sit there, day after day, night after night, all ages, colors, creeds... We're all you know. You're beginning to believe the illusions we're spinning here. You're beginning to think that the tube is reality, and that your own lives are unreal. You do whatever the tube tells you! You dress like the tube, you eat like the tube, you raise your children like the tube, you even think like the tube! This is mass madness, you maniacs! In God's name, you people are the real thing! WE are the illusion!".

[LotsaBadKarma]

This reminds me of something I heard back in the 70s while working a temp mailroom job at an ad agency in Chicago. I got to know one of the guys that dreamt up the ads and he told me about an ad that they came up with for spaghetti sauce. They had consulted with some shrinks about this and they designed the ad to be as fuckin' annoying as possible. The theory was that even if people hated the ad when they went to the grocery store looking for sauce the ad would stick in their mind BECAUSE it was so fuckin' annoying. So when you had someone who was considering a choice between 4 or 5 different sauces that person would pick the sauce with the fuckin' annoying ad about 75% of the time simply because it was the only one they remembered. And it worked. That sauce is still a big seller 40 years later.

When I thought about that a few years ago it struck me that the people who write the ads justifiably have almost zero respect for the mentality/psychology of the average American consumer. And it is because we ARE consumers, almost ahead of anything else, that the ads we see today show so little regard for our ability to think.

Just take that one step further and apply it to the news.