16

I’M MAD AS HELL AND I’M NOT GOING TO TAKE IT ANYMORE, (WELL MAYBE JUST A LITTLE BIT MORE).

   How many people remember the movie “Network”? The above title, (well most of it anyway), comes from the movie. The main character, a newscaster I believe, finally snaps over the absurdity of the world and the role that television played, (and continues to play), in shaping it. He coins the phrase “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore”, a phrase which soon catches on like wildfire. His main message was to turn off the TV and start living in the real world. His crusade becomes so popular that the TV builds a show around him which becomes absurdly popular, thereby defeating his own purpose. When his message finally sinks in and people start to turn off their sets, they assassinate him, live on TV and achieve an all time high in ratings. Even though you just had a short synopsis of the movie it is definitely worth watching.

   His message was to turn off the TV, (reality shows), and join reality, (the real live, make it up as you go, reality). Too much of our time is wasted in front of the tube. We rely on it for too much of our information, thinking that the news stations have no agenda of their own
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   They have the same agenda that any other business has, to take money from your pocket and place it in theirs. You buy product, the advertiser pays the station to air the ads, from your pocket to theirs just like that. This is the reason that ours news tends to lean toward the sensational, useless information, that we have no real need to know, information that is usually bad news, which seems to peak our interests more than good news. Maybe we need to feel that someone, somewhere, is having a worse day than us.
The use of television, (and indeed all forms of media), is to manipulate consumers into consuming more, and thereby generating cash flow, the scary part is when they use the media to influence your opinions by slanting the news. This is most noticeable when the programming is of a political nature. The TV stations tend to slant things a certain way depending on the political preferences of the respective owners, unfortunately in our modern day world there are few owners, (most broadcasting is controlled by a small handful of the “rich and powerful”), and therefore the viewpoints expressed tend to be narrow, and basically lean toward politics that favor the interests of the owner.
  This is very noticeable when they keep you informed on the latest polls/surveys; the surveys are done in demographic areas that favor the results they want, and the polls tend to sway people by telling you who’s winning, (with a ±3, 4, 5% error factor), and since no one wants to be on the losing side we tend to jump ship as the polls shift up or down. This, of course, also depends on who, conducts the polls, where they conduct them, and how they interpret the results.
   Newspapers run along the same lines, advertisers pay for the cost of printing, the sensational news makes the A page, corrections to misprints, acquittals and such get a slot on D page. Magazines are just one big advertisement, especially the specialty mags that cater to out vanities. Basically every form of media is there to sell something, or manipulate your opinion on something, when you get that through your head the ads, (even the subliminal ads), have less affect on our decision making process.
The use of subliminal techniques, (visual, audio, tactile, and olfactory), has been around a long time, but with current research, the techniques are being perfected. By perfected I mean they are harder to detect and extremely effective and you are being assaulted daily with hundreds of subliminal attempts to sway your thinking. A short list of links on the subject can be found at http://www.poleshift.org/sublim/ or just type subliminal in any search engine. I should also point out that subliminal advertising is not illegal as most people would like to believe.


(later)”wtanbo”