Monday, November 1, 2021
Episode 186: MFA An Internal Scarcity of Contentment
Play Now!Jerry Mander's 1978 book still packs rhetorical punch, enough that reviewing the notes I took on it lead me to realize a cause, perhaps, of today’s extreme political sectarianism. I'll dive into that in Episode 186: MFA An Internal Scarcity of Contentment.In this Episode, I read from: a Harvard Business Review article called "Advertising Makes Us Unhappy"; and Jerry Mander's 1978 book, Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television.Musically, I play: Jahzzar doing "Invisible" (which was perfect backing for all of Jerry Mander's content I was not going to mention). Brian Kaller mentions the anger McNuggets on their phones, backed by KMFDM; and I close today with Mistle Thrush doing "It's All Like Today."
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I just had a realization which made me quite uncomfortable.
ReplyDeleteSo media --all media, but particularly audiovisual media--, has great capacity to manipulate. Whether that is to get us to buy some shit or to subscribe to some Idea. This is especially true for advertisement media. This, we know.
As a consequence, at least partially*, a subsection of the population have decided to try to counteract this manipulation. Either they block ads, or look more critically at the motivations that might be had to show them this media, or they simply close their eyes and go "LALALALALA I CAN'T HEAR YOU" whenever a commercial break starts. In essence, they try to filter the media they absorb, to greater or lesser success. So far, we still alrealy know this.
What my realisation was, however, is that this filter goes both ways. Not only do critical people filter out the ads, the ads also filter out the critical people.
*for the other part, people block stuff just out of annoyance
Hey, Pim,
Delete"The ads also filter out the critical people." I take it you're saying that the critical spend as little time in ad-sponsored media, including news, right?
Which, getting to your uncomfortable realization, almost necessarily means that, after the critical have bolted, the people left are less critical, perhaps more credulous?
Did I get that right?
—Jim
Yeah, exactly.
DeleteI'm not sure what exactly the implications are, but it doesn't sit right with me.
DeleteThere's only one thing to do, Pim: a show on this very question.
DeleteI confess that, though I've been mulling it over for the last few days, I haven't come up with much more than mulling. But what the hey. Look for a mull-fest next Tuesday!
—Jim, Currently Contemplating Some Mulled Whine