Twisted Media Intrest of the public

[kipperthefrog]

Originally posted by toms

Its something that has me permanently intruiged as well.

 

 

I think the issue of people's interest in "real issues" is a slightly different one though. Its partly down to the short attention spans people have today. They don't want to have to think about or understand an issue... they want to be told what to think. Which is why biased tabloid style news is more popular than balanced serious news... and why simple "black and white" political messages are more popular than realistic ones.

 

I'm not sure if there is anything that can be done now to reverse the trend... unless people start thinking more as part of a community and less about just themselves.

 

I'm sure people's attention spans and interest will change when people loose their jobs andeverything else. Just like in the depresiion, people won't take it lightly when their families are too poor to live decently.

[toms]

I wouldn't count on it. In general people in the west are much better off than they were back then.

 

Even the poor these days are much better off than they used to be (eg: not starving), its just that the gap between rich and poor has gotten much bigger.

That and the fact that the media constantly tells everyone about all these wonderful things that they "need"... so even poor people want/have tvs, playstations etc..., or feel deprived if they don't have them.

So they spend all their time "consuming" , lapping up a diet of celebrities and then only later wondering how to pay for it, and why they ddn't do anything with their lives.

 

At the moment, most of the west's affluent living is based on the REAL poor people in the third world who work for far less than even the poorest in the west... and, currently, don't have the expectations of things like tvs that people in the west have.

 

The interesting thing is going to be when people in those countries start demanding the same standards and lifestyles as people in the west (its already begining to happen) and suddenly there is no-one willing to do the cheap labour that our economies are based on.

I suspect that then either the western economies are going to fall/get overtaken.... or the poor in the west are suddenly going to find that they are screwed. Then you might get a real depression type scenario. But only for the poor, the rich will be so isolated by then that it won't affect them.

 

but if it does happen, people will be too busy watching the latest Celebrity Xtreme Plastic Surgery Makover Detox to notice until it is too late...

[kipperthefrog]

Originally posted by toms

I wouldn't count on it. In general people in the west are much better off than they were back then.

 

Even the poor these days are much better off than they used to be (eg: not starving),

 

I mean when people loose their jobs people will be starving.

[Spider AL]

Just thought I'd interject with the point that a certain proportion of people I know who read tabloids, watch cheap reality TV etc... are fairly intelligent.

 

The reason they watch them? As far as I can tell, it's not that they don't care about larger issues, it's just that these vile papers are merely... entertaining to them. Just as we might play a game to while away half an hour, they read the Sun. Or watch Big Brother.

 

But why do they find such tosh entertaining at all? I always find it insulting to my intelligence.

 

Maybe that's the key. Maybe it's an issue of pride. Perhaps I have too much self-regard and pride in my own good taste to be caught watching what everyone knows is retarded rubbish. Perhaps as Sith implied, our best defences against the dumbing down of society are our egos.

[toms]

I will admit i used to get a certain pleasure from reading the daily mail (my housemate got it on some sort of student offer) because i didn't agree with ANYTHING they wrote. Not sure why getting irritated was fun, but it was.

 

I'd never actually BUY it though.

[Samuel Dravis]

Personally, I've never found tabloids the slightest bit interesting. Everything on the covers are always either so obviously fake or deal with something I have no interest in (the lives of the stars, etc). I'll use the internet if I want something like that - at least people here will lie to me for free.

[El Sitherino]

Originally posted by Samuel Dravis

I'll use the internet if I want something like that - at least people here will lie to me for free.

And we make it more interesting.

[kipperthefrog]

Not long ago, I saw on the front page of USA Today that Britney Spears was pregnant. It is a shame they print crap like that.

[Lady Jedi]

Celebrities don't really interest me. I've never been awestruck by the sight of one (and I've been in the presence of several), nor have I become so consumed with one that I just had to know everything about them.

 

The tabloids have always seemed ridiculous to me. They are obviously false in the majority of what they say, yet people buy it because they can't wait to find out what the 'stars' are doing now. FAH!

 

I seriously don't understand why some people consider it to be so imprtant to know so much about stars, who, in reality, are just people. Just because they are famous, doesn't make them another species...with the exception of Michael Jackson of course.

[kipperthefrog]

Originally posted by Lady Jedi

Just because they are famous, doesn't make them another species...with the exception of Michael Jackson of course.

 

you said It:D