Popular media a bad thing?

[Warforger]

Is what the popular media focuses on a good thing? Music artists, actors, and sports figures? I don't think that 8 year old kid with pictures of basketball and football stars is idolizing people who matter sports stars/musical artists/actors/hot chicks who don't really do anything at all (Kim Kardashian and Paris Hilton) don't actually benefits society as much as they leech from it, as they show off there sexy bodies to show what a man/female should look like lowering self esteem in less pretty people, they also are idolized because of there talent which doesn't help people. I'm sure most people can name 10 music artists, but they probably can't name the person who invented the TV, most people can name local sports teams, but they probably can't name the CEO of the company which provides them electricty. Far less even want to be these kind of people, building contractors, electrical engineer's, politicians, or other professions and instead want to be music artists or sports figures, the fact that among youth expressing interest in a topic in education is a bad thing amazes me, yet when they focus their time mainly on a sport, its a good thing.

Then we have video games like Call Of Duty, which simulate wars from the last 70 years to the present day, this actually helps make people thinking the army is "cool" and motivates them to join it, I heard this from a friend on xfire who said half of his main friends on his list on Modern Warfare 2 went to go join the army. People shouldn't go to war because its "cool" they should go to war because they want to defend their homeland, defend their kids education, defend their kids home, not because it would be really badass to go out and shoot some diaper wearing mountain tribe people's screaming "ALALALALALALLALALLAALALA" although this coupled with sports does bred a good army.

Then we have the disability it gives to kids, its not cool to care about politics other then which candidate your going to vote for, anyone who does is a loser, its not cool to actually study the topics that there going to have to cover like foreign diplomacy, energy, social services, budget plan etc. and instead people care more about what the President wears and likes, about his personal relationship and judging his/her administration based on that (even though if those same people read history, good leaders often had bad relationships with their wives, but hey no one needs to know that!) not even knowing the specifics of things. Hell I bet most rappers don't even know anything about Obama's policies when he was getting elected, just that they back him up because he sounded good (of course not all rappers did back up Obama, IIRC P.Diddy and Prodigy of Mobb Deep backed up McCain). Simply put, more people look up where their favorite celebrity bought their clothes, or how much an artists sells or their relationship with other artists, then people who looked up how the Vietnam War was fought, the track record of a politician, or foriegn relations.

All of these factors combined you have indoctrination, IMO a social dictatorship, don't question what your told or no one will like you, its socially acceptable to idolize people who don't matter, don't care about politics other then the basic info, and join the army, its cool. This extends to both Conservatives and Liberals, for example; Sarah Palin, more people talk about what she represents for the reason they like her then her actual plans for the presidency, even then the TEA party itself protested its own Convention in Nashville because it was for the elite, which is what the TEA party is against (admission tickets costed thoasands).

TL;DR IMO Popular Media is what controls people, CNN, Fox, MSNCBC all are their own private social dictatorships because of how society started working around entertainment.

[orangebomb]

Popular Media nowadays is trying to be entertainment, generally appealing to the masses, just for the extra ratings and the almighty $$$.

As for the youth that doesn't understand politics or names of CEOs of major corparations, what do you really expect? Most people my age really don't give a damn, they're more concerned with what to wear, what team they root for, what college they want to go, etc. Unless there is a major election, or something bad or weird happens, you don't see a lot of kids engage in a political "think tank", much less watch the news all day.

Oh and NG is not a political "think tank", in case you were wondering.

[Warforger]

At 3/22/10 12:34 PM, orangebomb wrote: Popular Media nowadays is trying to be entertainment, generally appealing to the masses, just for the extra ratings and the almighty $$$.

Exactly, thats why we have fucking idiots running around with white slavery signs

At 3/22/10 12:34 PM, orangebomb wrote: As for the youth that doesn't understand politics or names of CEOs of major corparations, what do you really expect? Most people my age really don't give a damn, they're more concerned with what to wear, what team they root for, what college they want to go, etc. Unless there is a major election, or something bad or weird happens, you don't see a lot of kids engage in a political "think tank", much less watch the news all day.

And? Thats the point, networks like E! are the definition of the lowest of our society because they care waaaay too much about things that don't matter

At 3/22/10 12:34 PM, orangebomb wrote: Oh and NG is not a political "think tank", in case you were wondering.

You didn't read the forum did you?

[Love]

Television has become to biased. Seems more like we only know what they want us to know (and that has never been a good thing). But, sadly I don't foresee a change in this system. The news is filled with propaganda.

[MultiCanimefan]

Popular media is what keeps people from thinking about ANYTHING. People care more about who's going home on American Idol than who's being elected. People bitch about taxes and everything else, but what it really boils down to is so long as they get their daily fill of irrelevant pop drivel, it's all good man. Right-wing and Left-wing "news" stations both drill into the heads of their viewers "The other side is biased" and that everyone is out to get you and precious tax dollars. Does anyone care? No. People think the issues are just too complicated these days, and if any effort to think about them is greater than what it takes to flip through a T.V. Guide, forget it.

But hey, what else can you expect from an overly-consumptious, spoiled, and individualistically extremist throw-away culture?

[Elfer]

But when I was a kid I thought Bill Nye was pretty cool. Pop media can't be all bad.

[Warforger]

At 3/22/10 10:29 PM, Elfer wrote: But when I was a kid I thought Bill Nye was pretty cool. Pop media can't be all bad.

Bill Nye is at least still played in classrooms. Still you gotta wonder, his show got canceled, yet Spongebob still lives on, it seems to be pretty bad, and since Disney has realized that if they submit to being the kid version of E! they can get more money, instead of actually helping kids learn about science, history or math.

[Elfer]

To be fair, Bill Nye did run for a hundred episodes. Not bad for an educational series. Also I can't be too mad at spongebob because the humour in that show is substantially more complex and layered than in most other kids' shows. Like the powerpuff girls, it's one of those shows that's much better than you'd think it should be.

[NOTunowned]

all media is bad, but the worst is the medium
from printing press onward, writing manuscript to this
read up on marshall mcluhan,
it shapes your perceptions, a lot of it being illusions, the standards seem to be much lower, a rise of violent sports,
well i guess its the people who control the television, are they aware of what they are doing, probably not

theres no use asking what the people who share these perceptions think about it, which is most people. they've never been outside the box

to drop the illusions, think originally (creative), all achieved via drugs, meditation, spiritual practice

before a bunch of machinelike nutcases who purchase makeup with hyperreal altered images on the cover destroy the planet, while naive intelligent people stand-by since they all adhere to a similiar reality tunnel

[Warforger]

At 3/22/10 11:01 PM, Elfer wrote: To be fair, Bill Nye did run for a hundred episodes. Not bad for an educational series. Also I can't be too mad at spongebob because the humour in that show is substantially more complex and layered than in most other kids' shows. Like the powerpuff girls, it's one of those shows that's much better than you'd think it should be.

Is there a modern version though? Spongebob isn't each really complex anymore and it doesn't really teach science. I mean the last attempt was some blood cell and a pill where they taught kids how the body worked and diseases, but even that was canceled.