You'd Think That By Talking That Much, Their Jowls Would Be Significantly Smaller

They're reaching into the dark now, plumbing the depths of the reptilian brain, probing for triggers in all of us. The game has regressed so far from what it once was that it is no longer a game, but rather an all-out cash grab. Consumers are woefully and purposefully ignorant, the media machine bends and twists them to whichever direction gets them to spend more money. Leeches, for demographics.

If you make a statement like "all data is good data", then you must be prepared to deal with the idea of dilution, and the limits of the human attention span. For if it's true that presenting every single piece of information, as innocuous as it may seem, is inherently a good thing, then how could it ever turn out bad? With human interaction? Surely. Any system that takes into account people that put cheese in their crust will be inevitably skewed, and probably toward the dumb side. So if info is good, then why is it bad?

It's bad because it's not a vacuum... it's presented in the same way a gameshow is. It's given to you over the same medium that you use to see images of places you'll never go, and beautiful people you would never meet. It's consumed like a talk show, like the People's Court, like Big Mike's Money Making Bonanza. We eat this information like the lunch buffet at Keith's Kettle. And that's just it. It's a blur, this info. It comes in with other pieces of meaningless trivia, and it's up to the old head to sort it all out, to prioritize.

The old head ain't so good anymore.

If you were to take in 5 pieces of "news" each day, you would have very little difficulty assigning them the appropriate importance. "Hmm, oil is trading for 145 dollars a barrel, which is more than 10 times what it was only 5 years ago. BUT WHAT'S THIS, THEY'RE CLOSING THE CULVERS?!?!?!" It shouldn't be that big of a problem. But now it's coming non-stop, the machine constantly bombarding you, like a drug dealer, cornering you, exploiting the weaknesses, closing the deal. So you don't watch CNN. Don't worry. Blogs will shove the inane down your throat. Think you can get away from MSN? Just try to open your email. Digg is rife with campaign propaganda, ESPN caters to the lowest of the low. In what they disguise as the race to get more info out, they have exposed themselves to the world as huge conglomerates with financial interests in nearly every nefarious act you could conduct in the field of journalism.

That's not the real shame though. Oh no.

The true shame is that we're just barely smart enough to see it happening, and definitely not motivated enough to do anything about it.

A teacher of mine once explained that no matter how stupid an infomercial seemed, no matter how useless the product was, that he could guarantee people were buying that product. He said the evidence was the fact that it was on television. If absolutely nobody was buying it, it would be pulled from the airwaves. And in fact, the most annoying ones, the Ron Popiel gadgets, were the BEST sellers, because they were ALWAYS on.

It's like that now. It's not necessarily ESPN's fault that they run a 30 minute piece over what Brett had for breakfast at the Steak n' Shake (hint: not what YOU would have). It's the consumers who are eating this shit up (not literally). It's the dolts who are going around blogging about it. It's the morons who are talking at the office about it, saying how "silly" it all is, and then dissecting it anyway. I've heard this exact conversation: "This whole Favre thing is getting ridiculous. I just want it all to go away. (pause) So who do you think he'll end up with?" I wonder why even complain about it? If you're going out like a zoo-fed lion, you might as well do like they do and accept it. They sleep 20 hours a day and get their steaks hand delivered. They don't pretend to be interested in doing anything else.

There is no shortage of examples of how dumb this country has become (see: Our President), and it's no surprise to see people revel in their ignorance and play the hand that the media deals to them. Just look at television programming, for fuck's sake. I sometimes think the only positive of ranting about this is to shed some light, however small, on the fact that it's HAPPENING. Hell, I don't even care about anyone else, just me. I just need to know that *I* am still smart enough to see it happening. I have to cut my brain on these thoughts, to organize my mind tracks into a workable playlist.

In the realm of brain laziness, I have to work out.

Of course, none of it matters anyway, because the long slow slide will bring us down to the muck eventually. Along the way, we're getting fewer and fewer things that make us happy, and even basic elements of life are now far too complicated for many people. When it costs 90 dollars a month for a decent cable package, something ain't right. But don't worry, because if you watch enough, and consume enough of that news, you'll be able to share something better than money. You'll have social currency.

Unfortunately, that's only worth as much as the people you share it with. And chances are, they're not very smart.