No, really. I don't mean that in the sense that we only watch the news in the morning or catch an hour or two before bed; I mean we don't watch television. I don't know who Kim Kard-de-whatsername is, other than famous. At the grocery check-out line, all those tabloids may as well be written in another language, the faces mean nothing to me.
The exception to this rule is in hotel rooms, and then only to a point. On this trip I came to a bizarre realization as I was simultaneously dumbstruck and disgusted at the tube; many of the people I encounter during an average day are acting like people on television. You know how in grade school and junior high (and arguably in college for some) people tend to act like their friends? People share mannerisms, expressions, even aesthetic and fashion choices with the people they hang out with most. It struck me that a lot of people must "hang out" primarily with television, and mostly so-called reality shows at that. We've created a feedback loop of culture, where the more people see mediated reality, the more they act like mediated reality and the more distant and strange daily reality becomes. I find this discovery profoundly disturbing on a fundamental level of my consciousness.
Because exploration is often serendipitous, I checked in on some of my weekly blogroll this morning and found this post by Edward Winkleman. Read it. Watch the video by artist Ryan Trecartin and tell me if you see what I'm getting at, what I wonder if he is getting at as well.
I remember a time when television broadcast would come to an end each day. The channel would play the National Anthem and then it would go to colorbar or blank. Within my lifetime, we had huge swaths of time when we did not have access to media. I wonder if a 24-7 world is a good thing or not.
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