We have the media we want
I know they are coming for my stuff. I read the Telegraph.
Aboriginal, gay, unemployed single mothers stalk our streets. Refugees flood our beaches. Transgender porn fills libraries and small businessmen weep in the street while being beaten by communist Union Officials. All while Vietnamese, Chinese, Indonesian and assorted other hordes are all poised. Plus, Aboriginals want my suburban block.
But even so. We have the media we deserve. It has been created to sell us what we want. To pander to our particularly vacuous modern brand of fear and loathing.
In 2018, Steve Bannon observed that: “The Democrats don’t matter. The real opposition is the media. And the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with shit.”
But this seemingly pithy observation serves to distract from the actually tragic reality. Namely, it is impossible to flood the zone with shit. It is already flooded with shit. Well before there was a right-wing media the modern broadcasting landscape was already a barren wasteland studded with noxious cesspits. Yes, in one far corner there is a rarely accessed little door that is labelled ‘The real world and rational commentary’. But nobody is interested.
So, while we attack ‘the media’. The reality is that we already have precisely the media that we want. Our media is full of very sick and perverted ideas and people because our society is full of sick and perverted people. We only like to pretend we are ‘nice’. (Get over it.)
As a baby boomer, like all my peers, I respond instantly to fear and loathing. Our generation was going to change the world. We would forsake the military industrial complex that had enslaved earlier, less enlightened generations. We would tear down hypocrisy, religion, and bigotry.
Yet while the dream lasted just a fleeting childhood, it has haunted us all ever since. We cultivated a phantasm of hip skepticism and now all we have left is disenchantment and disbelief.
The new millennium has thus been especially difficult for boomers. We had corporately pledged to live fast and die young and pure – until we inherited. Then we caged the chickens and set aside actively believing or not-believing. It was complicated. After all, why go to all the bother of believing in things when you have cable? It is much easier to occupy a shallow and fleeting attention-span with porn, action movies, and lectures on the need to be terribly, terribly afraid.
So – we are the media. Every caricature you see selling hate and DazzTM on the tele is just a pale reflection of someone living on your street. Television is full of horribly ill-informed and shallow creeps simply because society is full of horribly ill-informed and shallow creeps. There are few deep thinkers simply because we don’t spend time thinking. We are not a population of thinkers. We collectively crave for distraction and entertainment; not information.
We like to think that we are good scholarly people, who like to watch and listen to ‘good’ media, but we are not. In fact, we are a bunch of morally and intellectually corrupt creeps – and so our media is jam-packed with morally and intellectually corrupt creeps. But they are photogenic and charismatic creeps.
Yes, right-wing media channels are fashioning output carefully tailored to a receptive audience. But so are the rest. So, if ‘the media’ is atrocious, it is because we – collectively – are atrocious. Moreover, if we want to continue with an actually democratic system, where everyone has both a media and a voice, then we will always have a media that is chaotic, partisan, and flooded with ‘shit’. Until we become some entirely other sort of animal that is not snarky, horrible, ill-informed and intellectually corrupt. In other words: something entirely non-human.
Until then: Viva la chaos.
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8 comments
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Andrew Smith -
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Katie -
RimeoCharlie -
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Clakka -
paul walter -
Bill
Return to home pageNot dissimilar in US, UK and Australia after a generation of consolidation via dilution of regulation and political leverage, with oldies, baby boomers and GenX are the dominant audience, while catching up on digital channels inc. sharing of content globally (NewsCorp).
On content, related to the above audience it’s sport, FIRE/real estate, dog whistling anything centrist or left inc unions, elites, woke, education etc., then refugees, migrants and population growth acting as eugenics proxies and deflect from fossil fuels, politics is about personalities and polls, much content follows imported themes, too much is scraped from social media and/or embedded sponsored or paid PR without acknowledgement.
Sure as night follows day locally, the big three of our RW media cartel NewsCorp, 7W, 9F (and their regional proxies) will scream for state support when they hit any permanent financial headwinds; too easy when they have been allowed by the LNP to dictate the rules through fear.
Pingback: We have the media we want – In my own opinion
OH. MY. GOD !!!! Can these dumbed down, short-sighted, xenophobic racists get worse? This nation was BUILT on migration! As usual the disgusting, Z-rated, talentless hacks in the disgusting, internationally-condemned Murdoch press are continuing to spread dysfunction, misogyny and racism throughout Australia (and around the world) in order to sell Mudoch’s revolting papers that THRIVE on hatred and intolerance! Truly, the despicable Murdoch dynasty is one of the most despised, degenerate, self-serving and corrupt families in history! The ONLY fit purpose for a nauseating Murdoch rag is on a nail hammered on the inside of a dunny door! The sooner that truly vile, wrinkled old psychopath (Murdoch) does the world a HUGE favour, carks it and takes his rightful place next to Beezlebub in hell, the better!
Pingback – I disagree; The distribution of Murdoch rags has dropped significantly proving that the revolting gutter rags owned by Murdoch are becoming more and more despised. Research has shown that the huge majority of discerning X-Y Gen and Millennials are refusing to purchase the spiteful, vindictive, character-assassinating Murdoch rags so, hopefully, the treacherous, traitorous American citizen, the predatory psychopath known as Rupert Murdoch – and his vile network of talentless hacks – will be kicked into ignominious obscurity.
Not the media we want, the media some of us deserve. There are enough of us looking to alternative sources of information (dare one suggest HERE) that we can afford to ignore the MSM, the commercial TV and radio stations with their (mostly) vacuous shit — but I watch 7 when it shows Carlton games ( and the Matilda’s). For my sins I still watch some of the ABC. I believe the final vote in favour of the voice will show that enough of us are not influenced by the poisonous lies and disinformation of the Opposition and the no-voters to show the waning influence of their media boosters.
“The new millennium has thus been especially difficult for boomers”…
Has it? With all due respect, boomers will not be around when the world burns and climate catastrophe hits, at least in any meaningful way, perhaps only as the contents of an urn, or worm food… Their children etc will…. I wonder how they will feel about the legacy the older generations have left them to clean up?
Although it is wise to learn from past mistakes (and previous generations’ ones too) it seems this is a lost art, with humanity continually doomed to repeat them. At least in the echelons of power. Progress is being made, on some levels, but at such a snail’s pace, that further degradation of ecosystems is pretty much a given.
Good intentions are all good and well, but concrete action is what’s needed.
Instead of venerating nature, governments focus on “the economy”, constantly. You can’t eat money, your progeny can’t roast their inheritances to sustain themselves, either…
On a positive note, it’s nice to see the older generation acknowledging their faults, and not just spouting “you’re too young to understand” rhetoric.
I’m running a tad behind schedule, so I’ll resort to re-using some of my comments in response to John Lord’s The Times they are a Changing:
I’m mindful of Sartre’s proposition of living via ‘magic’ and the vicissitudes of fear, angst and wonder.
When futurizing, contemplating progression and taking action, a few matters come to mind:
Whether it’s families, tribes, states, nations or corporations we can understand that cooperation can lead to more efficient and affective outcomes, however, when those efficient and effective outcomes have run their course, the next usual recourse is to competition. And competition at its most absolute can eventuate to elimination of opposition … to what end? Often the stupidity of unilateralism. It may be that rules are fashioned to make play between cooperation and competition, but luddites and smart-arses will find a way to go straight to the end game – kaput.
Was it James Lovelock that proposed humans had a built-in fatal flaw; that they predict events via a lineal projection, rather than an exponential projection (as actually occurs in nature and the now proven mathematics)? After years as a practitioner in this field I can vouch for the latter. The flaw gives rise to complacency, “She’ll be right, mate”, and fatal inaction or brinkmanship.
Will these idiosyncrasies ever see us understanding the good and achieving it, or will we be forever burdened (by luddites and smart-arses) in a wasteful cycle of wreckage and repair?
Yes, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. When the Chinese embargoed Japan for releasing Fukushima waste, no one had the guts to come forward and back them.
Do folk f eel the war between the Ukraine and Russia has been misreported?
Admittedly, China’s proxy Russia is involved, but the US and & Ukraine occupy the same configuration. Why nor just admit that the media “war” is a proxy war in a “Big Game?
Too me, not enough real reportage (ie belt and road initiative) too much propaganda, The idea of stacking nukes within several hundred miles of Russia must have been incredibly provocative, like the Soviets in Cuba back in ’62., something the US would not itself tolerate.
Well written James. MSM has taken a turn for the worse and abandoned it’s role of presenting balanced reports (assuming it had that role). The result: more people switching to alternate sources of analysis of current events. If I feel like a broader perspective I check indie websites, Rumble or Bitchute for insights. A monthly visit to Off-Guardian, Technocracy News, The Great Game India, The New American, The Phaser etc is enough to have a diverse diet. If something I read is rubbish, it’s soon shat out. But there are also gems. For example, someone had left a link to a doco by Oliver Stone ‘Ukraine on Fire’. Because it had recently been banned on YouTube, I thought I better check it out. I came away with a broader understanding, something never encouraged by the muppets of mainstream. Another example of an unexpectedly good find was someone linking to an article written by Dale B Lindon ‘Retired Judge Spills the Beans’ (What the BAR will never tell you). Reading that article cleared up a few things I was curious about.
On the topic of ‘creepy’ things, anyone seen the real estate ad where 2 people with American accents are driving the suburbs, stop to stalk a child on a bicycle, asking him about the price of houses? Sometimes I wonder about the sanity of content creators in the PR industry. It’s a big club and I’m happy to not be in it.