Winter Darkness and Media Slaves
First off, it’s that time of year again — time to choose nominees for the annual Bloggies.
Second off, you know what? I’ve discovered how totally out of the mainstream I am. I’ve discovered how totally un-American I am. I’ve discovered Yahoo!’s top 20 search terms of 2001.
Britney? WWF? What the heck is wrong with this country? Why can’t people think for themselves? What is this hold that the mass media have over people? Why do people fall asleep at night watching CNN? Why do people go see “Pearl Harbor”? Why do people read John Grisham novels?
I don’t get it. Teenagers see awful movies and watch fake wrestling and play shiny videogames. And suddenly all these things transcend adolescence and become the Number One items in their respective categories for people of all ages. It’s like the entire nation lives in one big Peoria shopping mall patrolled by AOL security guards who carry Quidditch broomsticks and live off McDonald’s hamburgers. What’s wrong with everyone? And what’s with the Britney-mania, even now? Everyone becomes obsessed with these powerful, beautiful blond bombshells and nobody steps in to tell them they’re all becoming media slaves.
Oh, by the way, have I mentioned how I’m totally getting into “Buffy”?
Um. I watched episodes three and four today after taping them off a nationally-carried cable channel owned by a major media conglomerate.
Oh, yeah, “The Lord of the Rings” movie was cool, too.
Both times.
Ahem. Anyway.
Today was my first day back at work after a five-day mini-vacation. January is so depressing. Why can’t Christmas be the start of the holiday season instead of the end of it? It’s not fair. For a month we see all these beautiful Christmas lights and colorful decorations and throw holiday parties and eat sugar-filled foods, and it all leads up to this big blowout at midnight on December 31. And then suddenly you wake up on the morning of January 2nd, and you have to go back to work, and just like that it’s gone. The holiday season is over, and there’s nothing ahead but a long, cold winter, devoid of light. And my hands are so dry that the skin on my knuckles is starting to crack.
Cruel.
Why can’t people just keep their Christmas lights up through the end of February?
I want to go bury myself deep, deep under the earth. Wake me when it’s April.
Or when you find me a boyfriend.
Whichever comes first, really.
Oh, I almost forgot:
I was hanging out online last night. While in a chatroom, I found myself chatting with this gay Jewish New York lawyer guy. He sent me his photo, and I recognized it. See, if you’re a personal-ad-website veteran like I am, you come to recognize certain people after a while; the same people start popping up everywhere.
So we were chatting for a while, and he told me where he went to law school. Something clicked inside my head, and I told him I knew someone who’d gone there, too, around the same time he was there. I told him the guy’s name, and it turns out he knows him.
The guy I asked him about was Scott. It turns out I’d been chatting with someone who knows Scott.
I didn’t tell this guy any of the story, but yeah — he knows Scott, and apparently he might know how to contact him, too.
Now that would be interesting.
I think, generally speaking, Americans have a misconception about the intellectual caliber of foreign nations.
Americans are not, on average, less educated, less informed, or lesser anything culture/knowledge wise than most other peoples. What we are is more removed from other, foreign cultures than other nations; Those damn oceans.
Look, if you ever sit watching a football match let out in London, Sydney, Cairo, or where-ever-u-choose, you’ll see tons of drunk, uneducated, ill-informed, and entertainment-obsessed citizens… Just like if you were to examine the crowds leaveing a WWF match in Stamford, or peek in on American’s yahoo searches. People are not very different, at their core, culture to culture. You know that, you’ve just been sucked in to American media’s attempt to artificially raise our self-expectations.
Americans just think they’re less informed because (of oceans) we’re not forced to interact regularly with other, foreign cultures. And, when we are forced to interact, look at how we acclimate… I mean, when i was a child no one in my circle of friends knew anything about Latino or Chicano culture. That has dramatically changed in the last twenty years.
Japan and the Far East are no exceptions. How many pints of alcohol per week does a highly educated salaryman drink per week? Or, better, how many hours of play time do they spend with thier kids per week? Or, maybe compare the smoking rates for university educated humans in East Asia against uneducated AND educated US citizens.
Americans are unexperienced, but they are not stupid. Given the same challenges and opportunities as other nations, Americans will generally rise higher above the situation than most peoples, given our expectations that we are below world standards by mere default.
Now, in contrast, i’d be the first to admit that Americans are (by far) the most self-loathing of all the nations.
And that’s why we’re the globe’s over-achievers, and winners.
.rob
Rob (how do you do, my name’s Jeff) has a good point. A recent news report on NPR (I’m a junkie for that stuff) said that German students’ test scores were lagging behind the rest of Europe. They were even lower than those of students in, guess where? The United States. (We ranked somewhere in the middle.) This was presented in a way that implied that Germans must be shocked that they’ve fallen behind “those Americans.”
As a Buffy addict, though, I’m not going to throw stones when it comes to media slavery and cultural inadequacy. I think Rob’s right about our self-loathing, to a certain point. Reacting against that may explain why American per capita productivity is among the highest, if not the highest, around the world. (However, I for one would be willing to trade a little productivity for an extra week’s vacation….)
By the way, I enjoy reading your weblog. Have a happy new year!
I’ve had the pleasure and the “experience” of working with Greeeks, Italians, French, Spanish, Portugese, Germans, Dansk, Svensk, Russians, etc.. By and large their work habits, productivity wise, fall well below the working habits of most Americans i’ve worked with (blue collar and white collar).
I think this primarily is a result of the cultural optimism of America… something that is truly lacking most elsewhere. One need only walk around the streets in the US and Europa to see the marked difference of peoples’ expressions. We believe tomorrow can, if given enough effort, be better.
Most europeans would consider this notion hopelessly naive.
(and no, Ayn Rand is not my adopted mother)
.rob