thoughts on media [was: nevermind]

[Queen]

...

 

[Gary68]

curiosity is killing this cat now

 

[Wanderer]

I learned that to do such, means I must accept the consequences.....

I have had lots of fun when I did it...a bit of pain too....

 

[VanKitten]

Huh?

I realize the stress I am under may be making me a bit slow.....but.....Huh?

 

[rvpopeye]

I'm with Kat ^^^^,,,,whaaaaaaaat?
Wanderer
Did you read this before it was deleted ?

I'm just going with what Queen said after,,,,,,nevermind !

 

[GotSmart]

...

Mama said there would be days like this~~~

 

[Queen]

Good lord. It was just a post about my thoughts on media, I copied it from a blog post and the formatting was all screwed up, so I deleted it.

 

[BradKW]

I learned a trick not long ago that works around the formatting bug that won't go away. You can't use "quick reply", but if hit Reply or its a new thread, paste in the text, then highlight it, then on the icon bar select the "Remove Formatting" button...looks like a capital A.

 

[Queen]

Great tip, Brad, thanks!  It was a mess and really not legible the way it showed up.  

I'll try that and re-do my deeply brilliant and insightful post.  

 

[Queen]

Here it is, deep I tell ya!


The Purpose of Media

As a young woman, I naively believed it was to inform, or educate, or entertain.  Now I see how misguided I was; it's sole reason for existence is to sell us something.

The things up for sale are products, fear, anger, resentment; as well as dissatisfaction with our lives, our bodies, our "station", our neighbors, our country...

What to do, what to do?  I guess we could recognize these things when we partake in media, or we could eschew it altogether?  But "they" (the ones who designed our media) have managed to tie all that misery in with the ease of staying in touch with friends and family.  Very clever, these puppet masters.

I normally try my best to offer solutions to the questions I pose, but other than awareness or cord cutting, I got nuthin'.  Anyone else have a suggestion, I am truly all ears.

 

[rvpopeye]

Mama said , Mama said........


(I told you guys they just start playing in my head!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)

 

[highdesertranger]

take everything with a grain of salt. highdesertranger

 

[AngryVanMan]

Herman and Chomsky's propaganda model is the most useful theory I have seen for developing a framework of understanding for mass media presentation of official doctrine. If your model of understanding is based on the indoctrination you've received over a lifetime, mass media's presentation goes more or less completely unchallenged internally. The advent of the Internet and its (so far) continued neutrality of content delivery allows for people to be exposed to dissenting opinions and unapproved frameworks of understanding that do not adhere to the official propaganda model - creating ripples and challenges for the current status quo. You can see them grasping for eyeballs like madmen by turning the dial on sensationalism up to 11 in recent times.

The propaganda model is covered in detail in the book Manufacturing Consent, its accompanying documentary, and this talk that provides some clarification for the model based upon the replacement of the communist cold war boogeymen of the late 80's in the book (published in '88) with the War on Terror boogeymen of this century, and the role the consumer version of the ARPANET (the Internet) has had since the time of original publication.

 

[Gary68]

if in media you mean the news channels,i simply had to quit and the head exploding rage episodes are down significantly ,weather is the only thing i pay attention to any more

 

[GotSmart]

if in media you mean the news channels,i simply had to quit and the head exploding rage episodes are down significantly ,weather is the only thing i pay attention to any more

With perhaps the exception of the weather, almost all TV shows comment on the media bear the slant of their writers or sponsors.  

Look at the Bugs Bunny cartoons.  They were all extremely slanted~~~

The gatekeeper has become the puppet master.  :dodgy:

 

[TrainChaser]

It isn't just the news media, look at the swampload of advertising that washes over us on almost every single site! I read somewhere a while back that product advertisers are frustrated that their victims are ignoring them, and are looking for ways to solve that problem.

For instance, WalMart: When you click on an interesting-sounding article (news or informational), it is often preceeded by advertising. I usually have my cursor positioned to mute it as soon as I see it. Now, WallyWorld commercials are set up so you CAN'T mute it at the site, you can only mute it at the little speaker symbol at the bottom of your screen. Or you can flip to another page and flip back after a bit to see if the article you wanted is playing yet, and you might miss the very beginning.

If the WWW was created by the Puppet Masters, they couldn't have done a better job than what is flooding our brains now. RESIST, RESIST, RESIST. Remember to think for yourself.

 

[Queen]

Agreed, I will not watch advertising at all, I mute, change channel, or simply close my laptop.

A buddy of mine is one of the people who designs and implements the tracking software most places use, he is pretty upfront about the fact there is no privacy as long as you are anywhere on the internet.

 

[GotSmart]

[font=Arial, sans-serif][size=x-small]“He who steals my purse steals trash, but he that filches from me my good name robs me of that which not enriches him, and makes me poor indeed.”

―Joseph Heller
Read more at http://izquotes.com/quote/236460[/font][/size]


A commercial is the price we pay for watching free thing online.  MEH~~~  Small enough price, I play solitaire until the commercial is over. 

At this point in my life, I laugh at the futility of someone tracking me to figure out my thought process and direct marketing specifically at me.  If someone wants to steal my identity, his must indeed be crappy. 

 

[AngryVanMan]

The propensity to tune out, mute, or avoid exposure to overt advertising is one of the main reasons native ads have taken over print/online and video media business. When your local newscaster inserts the ad directly into the newscast, very, very few people in the audience realize they are watching an advert. When the ad appears directly in the normal news segments of your favorite online source without the common trigger words, "sponsored content", "paid advertisement", "promoted by" etc, there is very little indication to the average consumer what is happening. Native ads often serve more as a tool of peddling influence rather than functioning strictly as a sell product x to consumer y mechanism. Coupled with data metrics it's a winning combination without ever needing to show you a 30 second spot with crappy acting and a bad sound track that is 3 decibels too loud.

Less than 8% of people were able to identify when they were reading or watching a native ad vs. a news story in a study recently conducted by Grady College.

For anyone unclear on the use and purposes of tracking and big data, I'd simply recommend security researcher Bruce Schneier's book Data and Goliath. This book is also a good read for anyone who you've ever heard utter the colloquial stupidity "I've got nothing to hide" like it's somehow en vogue to be a willfully passive ignoramus. Greenwald's No Place to Hide and Assange's Cypherpunks: Freedom and the Future of the Internet all offer broader treatment of the modern surveillance state in general. I mention this because the traditional framework of selling ads to be viewed by consumers of media has been flipped, to selling predictive data metrics about those viewers, and addressing abstaining from viewing ads without addressing big data exposure would be naive.

Five years ago one would probably not often conflate "thoughts on media" with "tracking and/or surveillance" - only in the era of Wikileaks and post-Snowden western culture have people come to even begin to realize not only how interconnected they are, but also how ever-present and pervasive they have become in "freedom-loving western democracies". I don't intend to delve in to politics or political systems, rather the intent is simply to discuss the social and mechanical systems that serve to influence our sphere of users. Propaganda and mass surveillance have always served the same ends for both the public and private sectors - I'd say Edward Bernays is considered the modern father of the first notion, and Larry Page and Sergey Brin that of the latter.