culture

The Debate Died Early

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The Obama/Romney debate was unimpressive (big looser?  Jim Lehrer).  From what I hear about the Stewart/O’Reilly debate it was livlier but uninsipriing.  Everyone’s already talking Twitter, Facebook, and how that impacts the debates.  Big Bird is a meme, the Stewart/O’Reilly debate’s technical glitches are being discussed, and the debates kind of fade away.

I miss the idea of good, substantial debate.  Catchphrases, bumper stickers, and blatant lies aren’t exactly the substance of great historical import.  Neither is statistics diddling or mathematical games.

So I began speculating that perhaps the internet is replacing debates.  There you can post length discussions and link to numbers.  There the dialog is ongoing.  There things happen.

My answer to this is, possibly, yes.  But I don’t think the internet killed the debate.

I think that it died a lot earlier in our media.

Everything is turned into media sound bites, spectacle, and sensationalism, and our supposed politics and policies aren’t much different.  It’s an age of sensationalism and catchphrases, of what makes audiences angry over any kind of discussion, of what sells ad time.  Politics is entertainment – it’s always been, but it’s pretty much merged as far as I’m concerned, accelerated by television, media empires, and 24-hour news cycles people have to fill.

Worse, it’s a mix of advertising and reality television.

To put the final capper on it, it’s been entertainment long enough for people to imitate it.  You’ve heard the catchphrases bubble up in people’s political discussions.  You know the people who ape their favorite media-news pundits.  This reality-TV politics has infected us.

So debates are dead.  We just started killing them early – and I think the internet is replacing the gap.

Even if that gap sometime is using LOLCats as template for political discussions.

– Steven Savage

Steven Savage is a Geek 2.0 writer, speaker, blogger, and job coach.  He blogs on careers at http://www.fantopro.com/, nerd and geek culture at http://www.nerdcaliber.com/, and does a site of creative tools at http://www.seventhsanctum.com/. He can be reached at https://www.stevensavage.com/.

Media Awareness 9/15/2012: Social Patterns

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Continuing my media awareness experiment – essentially watching how I consume media and what I see in media consumption, and what I learn from it.

Since I gave up on cable, I’ve noticed my socializing patterns have changed.  It’s stunning to me how much of our socializing is centered around media – television shows, movies, etc.  Sure this is understandable, but it seems almost dominant, and also seems odd when there’s so much else in life that such a great deal of time is devoted to media.

This also makes me think that, when people study media, we’re often overwhelmed by “there’s so much” and forget to ask “what’s it all for.”  As soon as I began noticing the prominence of media, especially big media, in our culture, the “what for” question kept popping up – and there’s no one answer.

However I think we’re unaware of how much of our lives are influenced or driven by television, movies, and publishing.  At an age where there are more media choices – and more ways to choose them – we may be in some pretty seismic shifts as peoples awareness and choices change.

That also means changes in social patterns.

– Steven Savage

Steven Savage is a Geek 2.0 writer, speaker, blogger, and job coach.  He blogs on careers at http://www.fantopro.com/, nerd and geek culture at http://www.nerdcaliber.com/, and does a site of creative tools at http://www.seventhsanctum.com/. He can be reached at https://www.stevensavage.com/.

Media Awareness 9/10/2012 – In The Habit

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My media awareness experiment continues – simply, keeping a journal about what I consume media-wise, and why, and seeing what it teaches me about culture, media, and psychology.

I noted earlier that we’re just saturated with media.  The flipside is that our media consumption is very, very habitual.  Just watching oneself – or others – will make you painfully aware of how we access media habitually, and at times mindlessly.

Sitting down and flipping on the TV just because.  Surfing the web on your phone just because.  Lining up for a film premiere just because.  Watching something just because you do.  We’re putting information into our heads and playing games for no given reason just because we do.

There are doubtlessly good reasons for some of our habits.  I suspect many of them also are the result of larger forces as well, and ones that don’t always have our best interests in mind.  That’s something to address later, but the sheer FORCE of habit really amazed me as I began watching my own media habits.

It also got a lot more amazing as I watched other people.  I not only saw their habits clearly, but how they were like mine.  Very humbling in a way.

Just consider:

  • How often people will schedule time around a particular TV show – even with timeshifting.
  • Watching the end of a series even when it jumped the shark so hard it flew into orbit.
  • Surfing the web on a phone just because its there.
  • Surfing netflix or tv even if there’s nothing on, just searching the channel buffet for something.
  • Lining up for any “event” on TV, games, etc.

As I said, we’re pouring a lot into our heads just out of habit.  I suppose it’s a lot like eating-based habits we may all have.  Note they’re not necessarily bad or destructive – but they are unconcious.

I found myself that I had a lot of time-wasting media habits that had evolved for good reasons – most, interestingly enough, connected to my desire to keep up on news and technology.

Unfortunately, these habits also mean that we’re pumping things into our heads without knowing why – and frankly, wasting time because it’s easy to fill space with media.

We even have new ways to waste time and get new media habits with each gadget, gizmo, and streaming service.

I suspect some of this – perhaps most of it – is really because we’re not used to thinking about or media consumption in any large-scale way.  We’ve got so much of it, so much of it is good or amazing (or at least mediocre) and we haven’t had this much media stuff in all of human history.  It’s not a situation that easily leads us to go “hey, what are we doing here?”

More as I think about it.

– Steven Savage

Steven Savage is a Geek 2.0 writer, speaker, blogger, and job coach.  He blogs on careers at http://www.fantopro.com/, nerd and geek culture at http://www.nerdcaliber.com/, and does a site of creative tools at http://www.seventhsanctum.com/. He can be reached at https://www.stevensavage.com/.