Monday, April 9, 2012

The Media Complex

It's interesting to observe how we all react on a daily basis to what is displayed by the media and it's related press. Every day, millions of people tune into the news to get up to date news on the current events of the world, most of those people never even bat an eye or begin to question whether or not what they're being told is true or not. The old, sarcastic saying "well it's on the internet so it must be right" applies just as equally for the same reasons to the news and related medias.

I was never really raised with the impression of question what i saw, read of was told. I was always raised with a strong, finite set of ideals in which i was punished strictly if i strayed away from. To me, it was the way i was raised, to others it makes me a pathetic person for having never questioned anything i was spoon-fed for so many years. It wasn't until late 2008 when the 2008 elections were going on (as well as a very turbulent period with my hormones and relationships) that i began to question media around me. I noticed the people who had raised me began to contradict themselves. talking about how war is the only option one day and then how they demand world peace right now the next. It was quite a paradox and to add insult to injury, it had been going on since the day i was born and had never noticed it.

I began to tire of people repeatedly preaching their opinions onto my "impressionable" mind and started analyzing what they were saying. It was nothing malicious... honest, i mean it. It was just that i was a teenager tired of being told thing i already heard 4 times before and was in a shitty mood to begin with. The more i analyzed what people said, the more i became disgusted with society. The more i became disgusted with myself. I realized that even so much as feeling disgust for them and not for myself was hypocritical and that had become something that i swiftly hated. If there is any one thing i hate in this world over all other things it would be hypocrisy. People who preach it but refuse to practice it.

I'll tell you right now that the following months after this realization were the most turbulent of my life. I spent a great deal of that time trying to figure out who i was. It didn't help very much that my girlfriend of 3 years had just broken up with me after cheating on me and telling me about how bad she felt for doing it then continuing doing it, but that's a story for another time. I was in a genuine state of emotional turmoil. I locked myself out from the outside world and began to re-sculpt the very fibers of my being into something i could live with. Don't get me wrong, it took a very, VERY long time, but i managed to do it, and even though i am still hypocritical, i have learned to pick up on it and i have learned that correcting myself immediately is much better than just sweeping it under the carpet like the rest of society does.

The multi-million dollar monster that we have created and called the media has been molding society any way it wants for generations and very few people have noticed it. Many people fail to grasp the concept that if the media were to come on tomorrow and say that being jewish is a genetic defect that is plaguing society and needs to be exterminated, that there would actually be hordes of people slaughtering any person of jewish decent for weeks maybe even months before it was placed under control. And the government wouldn't blame it on the media for releasing the story because that would be in violation of their first amendment rights. they would simply arrest the people who committed mass homicides and be done with it.

Don't get me wrong, anyone stupid enough to blindly follow that intensely should be arrested to protect themselves from themselves, but the media is just as much to blame as the people committing the crime. They're the ones inciting the riots. They know they have the public in such a malleable state yet they continue to manipulate it in any way they wish.

The true heart of the matter can be best underlined by example. When was the last time you think you heard a 100% true, unbiased story on your local news stations? If you can come up with an answer regardless of the amount of time it takes, you're lying to yourself and you need to stop. History is written by the victor, those in power. And the media has more power than the president himself. If MSNBC, Fox News and CNN were to all band together and say that the Obama Health Care Reforms were in the publics best interest and list 5 bulleted reasons as to why? There would be significantly less opposition to run it through. The alternative is equally true, if all three of those stations were to air that it was the worst bill conceived, the bill wouldn't stand a chance.

I'm not vouching my personal, political opinions into the mix, i am merely using the Obamacare bills as an example. So what can you do to stop it? Question everything you're told. Hear something on the news that influences you in any way? go to the internet, research both sides, research the "on the fence" arguments, and research the indefferent arguments. Research until there is nothing more to research, and then formulate an opinion for yourself based on what you've learned and what you know. Will you still be biased? yes, absolutely, without a doubt. Will it still be as bad a bias as just blindly following anything you hear on the news? Absolutely not.

We're all opinionated scumbags. We all have our individual reservations. It's the steps we take to turn our reservations into educated opinions that makes us better than the rest. What has tipped you off as suspicious in the media recently?

3 comments:

  1. Like, everything? Heh but seriously I hear you.

    ReplyDelete
  2. o.o very interesting...some good points there :P

    ReplyDelete
  3. Everything is pretty fucking suspicious..

    ReplyDelete