No.

 

But what it signifies does.

 

To me it seems to be incontrovertible proof that our economy and our values system is completely broken. Seacrest stands in front of a camera for a few hours a year on American Idol and goes "Here's this person going to sing this song, hooray" and not only that but he does it without distinction. He's not particularly energetic or funny or interesting in any way. I think most people would agree with that assessment too, this isn't some wacky outsider opinion. And he takes home 15 million a year.

 

In a world that is so imbalanced and unsettled, you can teach or work to save lives or be a policeman etc etc and struggle to make ends meet. But if you entertain people in a fairly indifferent manner, it's possible to take home 15 mill a year and everyone thinks that's fine. Don't blame the company that pays Seacrest. They wouldn't pay him this if the population wasn't pouring their attention and money into him. People could decide not to do so, but they don't.

 

Our professed values system is a lie and this kind of thing proves it. We espouse values that we don't actually reward. We tell everyone to be selfless and humble and to do real things to help people, but what do we actually reward and encourage? Entertainment. That's all we want. Something to stave off that creeping sense of windows closing all around you, that makes you feel it's OK to be a bit useless and irrelevant yourself because these successful people are useless and irrelevant too.

 

Here in New Zealand, they're shutting down Channel 7, a Channel dedicated to intelligent, quality television. The programming on it is excellent. Nobody watches it. Everybody talks sh*te about wanting to be informed and mentally stimulated and so on, but the fact is that the overwhelming majority of the population just says this for appearance. They really want vapid little distractions that confirm things they already think so they don't need to worry about having an inadequate worldview, that reassure them.

 

We need to give an honest revaluation of what it is that people care about because so many of us are continuing this fantasy narrative of how our society desires things that it makes no effort whatsoever to bring about. One of the things stopping us from bringing these things about, is the fairytale that we're already trying to.

I am certainly not defending that evil evil person, because he helps subjegate our children into oversexualization by creating and promiting reality television shows, most of which include horrible behavior by the cast, and this terrible behavior is thought to be normal by someone who has not been exposed culturally yet, like children. When a 13 year old girl sees Kim Kardashian (all their shows are produced by Seacrest), she has NO CLUE that Kim Kard is a terrible terrible, succubus of a human being. Instead, she emulates her behavior. What a bunch of HORRIBLE SCUM RUINING THE MINDS OF OUR YOUTH.

 

But honestly, he is not the main one to complain about. If you want to comlpain about someone simply making too much money, try Tyler Perry, , Dr Phil, Ke$ha, Bieber, Drake, Lil' Wayne, etc. These people make way too much money and instead of working 14 hour days like Seacrest, they don't do jack crap.

In short, the world is a hellhole I hate everything.

No matter how, no matter what kind of brain-social engineering you come up with to modify people's priorities, a fireman who saves a person or a doctor who cures another one will never ever generate the same revenue that one of this famous people can, therefore they will never be paid as much. 

I know it's sad that more people watch the Kardashians than a cultural show in PBS (the US' public channel, which, curiously, is one of the better ones) but that's how life works. Most people want to be entertained after their days of work and just prefer some extremely idiotic show. Many people have never known anything about what you deem quality television that have been catered to the elites. Most people are average people, stupid and redundant as that statement sounds. You are an exception. 

 

I will once again say that when my wife and I decided to get rid of our TV, it was one of the best choices ever. It took a whopping 2 weeks to not even miss it. I'm not bragging, it was a simple experiment and it worked. I'm just telling people to give it a try.

 

The money system makes everything stupid.

 

 

 

We eventually (about 5 years in to the process) bought a desktop with a big screen to watch movies.

 

 

But I will tell you, if you haven't watched video with commercials for several years, it will disgust you.

 

Again, just try it. See what happens.

 

Back off, this is my fantasy. Haha

 

And yea- commercials BRAINWASH children. They teach you that if you don't get certain things, you are going to be unhappy. Children under the age of 7 are not good at determining the difference between advertisements and real life. WHAT THE HELL DO YOU THINK IS CAUSING ALL THIS AUTISM AND ADD? ITS NOT THE FLOURIDE FRIGGIN TEAPARTY IDIOTS. ITS THE COMMERCIALS AND THE CONSTANT STIMULATION THROWN IN FRONT OF THE CHILDREN THAT ARE LEFT IN FRONT OF THE TV ALL DAY.

 

 

I saw this commercial the other day, and some girl walks up and asks the friend how her and her boyfriend are doing, but the boyfriend died or they broke up or something- And the commercial was aimed at teenagers. "Dont miss out on the latest updates from your friends and be left out." BALHALFBHABKLALF FRIGGIN STUPID.

 

So suddenly you're a social outcast because you didnt check twitter TEN MINUTES AGO??? What sort of culture are they attempting to create? I hate everything. I'm not even kidding this sort of stuff brings thoughts of suicide because I KNOW I WILL NEVER BE ABLE TO STOP IT. I worry about the problems of the world constantly, things I know I will never change. My mind just really really desires to escape all of it.

 

 

Wow, I'm really angry. Haha.

How the does everyone see all these issues and problems and not have frantic mental convulsions? Someone teach me to not care.

 

There are countries in Europe that have effectively banned advertisements aimed at children under a certain age. Some children's shows are not allowed to even have advertising during the show. I wonder how much differently their children are growing up? I remember advertisements being a thing that kids paid attention to. Everyone could sing 'that song' from a commercial but had trouble remembering the words for songs in choir.

 

I feel like it creates an entire different culture.

 

I'll put my n=1 against yours. I wanted to go to those amusement parks and eat those cereals when I was a kid.

 

Advertising works and as evidence I would just say that the capitalists wouldn't waste their money on it if it didn't.

 

 

You can't kill anything by holding it down. You have to starve it, or by doing bloody violence to it. Starving is easier.

 

 

In other words, just turn off the darn commercials.

I mean if we look at Justin Bieber, what role does his actual music play in his career. Very little. Not many of his fans would be able to launch an eloquent defence of his musical output in terms of his production, songwriting, performance and lyrics etc. The whole thing is just marketing ploys used to make it seem as though products with his face on it exhibit a magical aura that will make your life more exciting. (One sees the parallell to religion.)

 

It would actually be fascinating to understand what the difference is between people who are suckers for ads and people who aren't. Being immune to advertising is invariably a good thing and a sign of intelligence.

 

Advertising is essentially an evil practice as it is literally about making people feel bad. You can't sell products by making people feel like they're good the way they are- you have to make them feel insecure and inadequate so they need to buy what you're selling so they're not lame or missing out.

 

You're totally right about reality TV.  One of my friends just wrote a 20 page paper about humiliation in reality television, and it really opened my eyes as to the way in which TV trains us to enjoy the debasement of fellow human beings.  Producers fabricate embarassing stories and drama with editing, half-truths and bribery, humiliating the contestants and driving some to breakdowns and even suicide.  If you read the waiver you have to sign for the American Idol auditions, you'll see a clause that gives the producers the right to humiliate you, as well as one that gives them the right to reveal any personal information - factual or fictional.  I don't think I'll ever watch one of those shows again (occasionally I see half of an episode).  I don't watch much reality TV (or TV in general) but the things I hear about shows like Toddlers in Tiaras makes me want to barf.

 

There is no proof that advertising works because the data is unreliable - products sell with and without advertsing and they fail with and without advertising - when the correlations are positive then madison avenue claims a victory, when they are negative they blame the product, or the market, or the recession, though I'm sure some will find reason to blame the ad-men:

(needless to say, Dasani is no longer sold in the UK)

 

Advertising is like hypnotism - it cannot coerce you into buying something you don't want, it can only influence your decision to buy something you do want ... if there is a free choice of two otherwise equal products that you have heard of (let's say Pepsi and Coca-Cola), advertising will probably not influence the decision - whatever influenced brand-loyalty with the purchaser, it is deep-seated and developed over time - advertising may have started it, but choice of brand was a free one based on experimentation (you tried both, preferred one); whereas if there is free choice between two equal products, only one of which you have heard of, then advertising will probably influence the decision to buy, but if you didn't want either it won't.

 

People don't buy Pop Idol / Your-country's Got Talent or anyother promoted 'Pop' products just because of the marketting - they buy it because they like it - whether that makes sense to people who would rather listen to 90 minutes of drone is immaterial, they are not going to buy maudlin of the Well or Delusion Squared no matter how heavily they are marketed.

Let's move on from Ryan Seacrest and have a look at Jon Stewart, who I'm sure most people would agree is one of the better hosts in recent television history. Now how much does he make a year? Bet it's a lot less than Seacrest, right?.... Well wrong, Stewart's annual income is.... wait for it.... $15 million.

 

So given that I think Stewart does a remarkable job, am I less outraged over his salary. Well yes and no. There's less ire because what Stewart does, even though people hate this word, is "edutainment". He exposes people to important things going on in the political world that they would otherwise miss. Yes, it probably would be better for them to go to actual news sources, but it's better they find out from The Daily Show then that they not find out at all. For this reason, Stewart justifies himself better than Seacrest.

 

However, Stewart still doesn't warrant anything like $15 million a year. Hell a lot of us would probably dream of doing that for $50k, sitting at a desk talking sh*t and mocking politicians. It's still evidence of how we as a society do not action the priorities we say we have.

Perhaps a prog website could do something like this as an online only thing where the videos can be stored, viewed and voted on by the faithful/hardcore, but I think it's unworkable as a mainstream product.

True, but that doesn't justify reality TV for giving us that outlet.  Just because humans naturally tend to revel in the humiliation of others doesn't make it right, and reality TV just encourages us to sink deeper into the filth we already wallow in.  I believe that the pleasure we get from watching the humiliation of others is a result of our fallen, sinful nature, and we should be shunning those sinful pleasures, not indulging in them.  Murder goes back thousands of tears too, but that doesn't mean we should have gladiator games to satisfy our violent impulses.

For a classical music snobbish elitist pricklish (oops, nearly for forgot the "L") afficionado it shouldn't matter - once a performer steps over the line from "serious" to "popular" they cease to be classical. Crossover-classical isn't classical music, it's pop music; just as all those 3minute classics by Andre Rieu or Vanessa Mae are "pop" music, or Nut Rocker by B Bumble and the Stingers or ELP, the Sabre Dance by Love Scupture and Dance Macabre opus 40 by Ekseption are pop, not classical.

The T wrote: But even in this case when my contempt for reality tv is fueled for other reasons, if people want to watch it, people will watch it, and if thus it generates lots of revenue and therefore the stars of the show get paid enormous amounts of money, that's how the world works and nobody should complain. Those who say "things should be this way" are sometimes the reason why eventually people get to power who decide to make the world their way, no matter what.

Come the revolution brother we'll line them all up against the wall and force them to listen to Roger Waters. Power to the people!

 

 

Priorities.

 

I was playing the Fallout games and wandering this landscape with echoes of civility and intellect that are distorted by filters of savagery and destruction and I got to wondering if this is what it's already like in some people's minds, the great achievements of culture embedded in their heads left smouldering, half-remembered husks by the bombardment of the nuclear warheads of shallow, self-interested consumerism.

Textbook wrote: Priorities.

-------------
https://epignosis.bandcamp.com/album/a-month-of-sundays" rel="nofollow - https://epignosis.bandcamp.com/album/a-month-of-sundays

 

And there's nothing moral about values that come from religion anyway. People follow them in pursuit of a higher quality afterlife, heaven and hell is just carrot and stick.

 

However, the problem is that the academics and intellectuals who seek the end I describe above, are in competition with producers of material goods, who want us to be thoughtless and impulsive so that we throw money at them in return for next to nothing. They have already successfully established the notion of learning=bad, wasting money=good in popular culture and reversing that is an uphill battle to say the least.

But more on topic, I suspect this "people in the past were naturally more polite" thing is bollocks. One, people always lionise the past. Two, I'm not sure they were polite, more deferential to those they believed to be superior and/or concerned with what others thought/said about them, which caused them to behave as though they were polite.

 

The Occupy Movement seemed to be something of a reaction against the rat race mentality, though an ineffectual one.

 

*Yes, yes, I won't be surprised because it's impossible to be surprised at something not happening in your lifetime as it requires you first be dead, thanks Epignosis.

 

Remember that back in the days of the Wild West, people were routinely shot for cheating at cards. This is because at the time, many of the traveling gunslingers could not or would not find steady paying jobs, so cards were a serious source of revenue and by cheating at cards you were threatening their livelihood.

Nowadays we don't shoot people for cheating at cards so I guess we've become more peaceful. Or is it that circumstances have changed?

 

There's more road rage because there's more traffic.

 

Textbook wrote: Remember that back in the days of the Wild West, people were routinely shot for cheating at cards. This is because that at the time, many of the traveling gunslingers could not or would not find steady paying jobs, so cards were a serious source of revenue and by cheating at cards you were threatening their livelihood.

But you are speaking of a certain violent class of people who might behave that way.   There were horseriding dacoits earlier but they have now disappeared.  Doesn't mean everybody back then was just a dacoit.   The underworld was very active until about 10 years back in my city and there were routine 'encounters' with the police.  Doesn't mean people like us who depended on steady, respectable jobs had anything to do with the underworld or harboured delusions that we could behave like gangsters.  But lifestyle and money makes the man arrogant and inconsiderate.  You are what you are, not what you wear or eat but these words may well have no meaning left today. 

 

Textbook wrote: There's more road rage because there's more traffic.

Not really, at least speaking for 'my' reality.  The density of traffic has gone up but it moves a little faster than before so the average time taken between two places is more or less what it was before.  What has changed is the make-up of cars that people drive and the most imperceptible scratch on an expensive car can still provoke a fit of fury.

 

Today, I don't think the mainstream is "cool" with people getting shot for cheating at cards or any game. Violence is like energy, it doesn't grow or shrink, it just moves elsewhere.

"In a bizarre incident, a housewife called up the police and got a few kids in the neighbourhood sent to jail for the crime of playing cricket to pass time during their summer holidays."

 

This is obviously not what happened.

 

Housewife: Hello? Police? Some kids are playing cricket to pass the time. Arrest them at once.

Police: RIGHT! OFF TO JAIL YOU LOT.

 

There's clearly some context missing. Could you link to an article describing this case?

 

And they were not "arrested for playing cricket" but for making inappropriate noise in an inappropriate area. Whether they really were doing that I don't know, but that's the actual charge.

But more importantly, why are we discussing this incident? Do you think annoying old biddies or thoughtless thugs in uniform are a new phenomenon?

 

The earlier part of our conversation brought this to mind:

 

 

I note also that you moan that no one obeys the law anymore in the same breath as saying that the law is enforced too harshly these days.

But I agree on most points. Civilization is at a tipping point. We live in the information OVERLOAD age. There is now documented computer evidence of some people's bowel movements, and if you respond to this evidence, companies are going to use what you say and what you said it about to sell things to you. Things are not completely ok. The world's moral compass is NOT going haywire though. Remember, it's no longer legal to kill black people or rape women. So just saying the world is getting worse in every aspect is silly. On the other hand, everything is getting worse... but it's not... but it is. Damn the 21st century is confusing.

 

A really good speech is in the first season of Weeds by Shane Botwin. Sure, it's a fictional TV show, but I related to it a LOT when it came out.

 

 

Maybe you would take the burger job I wouldn't, even though I also enjoy being in a kitchen - I (and I suspect you) would soon want the restaurateur job because it is more interesting, more challenging and more satisfying (regardless of how much it paid).