media

[rowens]

TVs, internet and video games use to be for entertainment but now more of a commitment or addiction. Which isn't necessarily bad because it does allow interaction and being connected to the rest of the world, but it does cripple us when it comes to human interaction and actually getting out into the world instead of logging on. As far as the media it tends to glamorize every situation like teenage pregnancy (teen mom reality show) I don't believe that, that was their intention but it is what it is. News media makes a spectacle out of every tragedy or story instead of just informing, news has become a drama. Instead of reporting they go into this trying to be the first to get the scoop then get the wrong information then replay it over and over, while not reporting anything else that's happening in the world. I think everything in life has it's upside and a downside. I believe the biggest downside of the media is what people will get from it like it's okay to get pregnant at 15 because you can be a reality star. While some things have a little left to the imagination other things are not politically correct. Such as the man who murder all those kids in Connecticut isn't a monster, he suffers from mental illness...according to the media everyone who has done something terribly wrong has a mental illness, so it makes it okay. Overall, I think the media downplay certain things and turns other things into a free-for-all.

When I was a teenager I was affected by the media a lot. Music and movies and comedy and wrestling. I was a collector of merchandise, and I left home to try to do all those things. But the people that work in those areas of entertainment have to do exactly what they're told, and I can't do that without feeling embarrassed. And I lost respect for many of the things I used to admire.

But that's not the only problem I had. "the man who murder all those kids in Connecticut isn't a monster, he suffers from mental illness...according to the media everyone who has done something terribly wrong has a mental illness, so it makes it okay." It's hard to understand 'mental illness'. In most cases people that are considered mentally ill don't kill people for that reason alone. There are people considered 'criminally insane' that aren't insane at all, they simply have no use for the morality and compassion most take for granted.

The reporters and the people they interview speak what's on their mind when they're thrown into these live situations, and use words like "monster", and then they have doctors and mental health researchers come in and try to clarify things, but they stumble over many issues. I think that with certain mental states, people are cast to the margins and feel excluded to the point that they start to shed their moral understandings and start to find that their compassion results only in disparagement from others. So people like that are in danger of becoming like the "criminally insane" 'psychopaths', and then kill themselves after they go through with horrible actions. A psychopath is a psychopath like a shark is a shark; it's just a crude fact. And the psychopath is usually someone that appears normal, compared with the socially awkward people with mental problems.

My sense of space dimensions is distorted. It got worse in my twenties. I have to use my imagination to experience things around me as others do. So obviously I come off sort of strange to people that see me. And I realize how others use their imaginations too, and equate strange with dangerous. I can't drive so I have to walk everywhere, people find that strange in itself, and since my sense of space is off I walk kind of funny. That in itself has people uncomfortable about having me in their neighborhood.

It's a hard issue, and I've been in behind-the-scenes situations with radio broadcast reporters, and they laugh and talk shit about the people they report about when they're off the air. They dig for all this personal information on killers and victims, and when the microphone's off they laugh and make jokes about all the lurid details they can't talk about on air. And the hosts are the same. Most people are when given the chance to make light of others.