RE: Why does the news want so much theatre?
First of all, would you go out and buy a book with no conflict in it? Of course not.
I really think that it's all about the drama that brings people to their TVs, their newspapers, their websites. The more drama -- the more excitement. The more people come out and read their newspapers, the higher the ratings on TV and the higher the readership for everything else.
For some, it's a neverending soap opera.
Actors? I don't know about that. Actors in the US are typically treated like royalty (unfortunately) so there's a case to be made, but I think even the best actor would fall apart on the international diplomatic stage.
| WHY does the news always complain about how the president doesn't do this shit? This is | | |clearly manipulation of their viewers.
It's about money. It's always about money. Not that this is a bad thing, but in this case, you see the news media on all sides pick up the day's drama and use it to gather people in. Everyone puts their own personal political spin on things and people go check it out.
I dunno...I read War and Peace once. I dunno if that had any conflict in it, because it was so boring that I could barely get through it.
I'm sure I've read plenty of books without conflict in them. Most of them were on computers. :P
But you make a good point. People do like conflict and drama.
I guess it would likely be a whole new class of actors. In a way, a lot of politicians are actors. But they're more of the class, like skit comedy actors, that have to act and react on their feet, with possibly little to no prep time. Some are really good at this.
For example, many politicians are actually good friends with people that we think they're in conflict with daily, because we only see what they put on TV. We only see them arguing about various political issues, not when they go and have drinks together at the end of the day, and laugh and joke about various things.
|I dunno...I read War and Peace once. I dunno if that had any conflict in it, |because it was so boring that I could barely get through it.
|
|I'm sure I've read plenty of books without conflict in them. Most of them were |on computers. :P
Simply because you don't know what the conflict is in a book doesn't mean it has no conflict :) But I congratulate you on getting through that monster. I read Atlas Shrugged once... parts of it were interesting but Rand made it more about explaining her philosophy than leaving it to the reader to figure out.
But I'm betting you didn't choose to read War and Peace, did you? Was that for a class or something like that?
We do only see what is on the television or on the Internet or in a newspaper -- but it's not the politicians who decide on what gets on tv. Not many people sit down and watch C-SPAN on a regular basis.
I think that we -- meaning all people -- need to acknowledge that our news is skewed by perception and bias and we need to learn to watch the news with that in mind. Critical thinking is something that should be taught at every level of education because, you know what? I don't think it is right now and we're merely putting out sheep for the machine to keep going.
Sadly no, it was my choice. It was horrible. So long and boring. At the end I had no idea what it was about, because it was so long and boring. Like one of those movies where at the end you have no idea what you just watched and can't say anything really about it, because it's like it was just a long drone.
Yeah...you're right.
One thing I've been hoping for a while with the internet is that we'll get a lot more choice in who we watch and what we get for the news. It's a little better than it was. Now I can watch news from multiple sources one after the other and skip the stories I don't want to hear about, but it's still a bit hard, because they don't want people to be able to watch every story from the day instantly on YouTube or wherever, because the advertising isn't there fully yet, so they don't get as much.
People have been brainwashed to seek this drama over years of programming through mainstream media. It's all a big circus to distract from the battle taking place within the state the same way Rome used their amenities to distract their citizens. Now it seems like there's been an overdose of drama in our politics and the children of the lie lose control of their mind as soon as it's brought up in any fashion. Notice the immediate emotional response when you bring up an argument opposing the mainstream media's narrative. It's heartbreaking to see...
Bread and circuses, man. Bread and circuses.