New Developments

Here is a nice little rant from my friend xlogicx. I though what he had to say was quite interesting. I feel that now that I have abandoned the corporate media spewing box and turned to the internet for my entertainment and information. I feel as though I was a very uninformed person before the freedonm of the interenet.

"I’ve avoided most television for a while. I know there is a lot of debate on whether television is good or bad, and arguments about it depends on what you watch and how much. I really don’t care about those arguments; I’m mostly looking at the results that I’ve experienced over a period of time.

For a while, I have that part of me in the back of my mind saying that I’m cutting myself off from society by not watching television. The dominant thoughts that I have may be unpopular, and the popular thoughts that all society knows may be unknown to me. That kind of sounds bad.

Here’s why it’s not. Granted, I’m cutting myself off from ‘pop culture.’ I’m not threatened by it because this pop culture is generated from television content itself to begin with (because there is money to be made by influencing culture). I’m cutting myself off from something fake, even if it is what everyone else around me knows. By cutting myself off from that, I plug into authentic things, even if they aren’t popular. I talk to other people that are also ‘cut-off.’ We are part of an authentic culture, however small it may be, at-least it is real, and our own.

I occasionally am in an environment where there is a television on, and literally within minutes, I feel incredibly insulted by it’s manipulation. The fact that many others are not is frightening to me. Not all television programming is bad, but I have a computer, I can get it in other ways. Even if I get it in ‘un-ethical’ ways…I don’t mind stealing from people like that. That is not an argument for why it’s ethical, just why I don’t care about being less ethical…’ethical.’

I’m interested in what other people think, I know I’m not the only one. Who knows, maybe I’m overreacting (I don’t think so though)."