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Fucked Up College Kids File 387
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= F.U.C.K. - Fucked Up College Kids - Born Jan. 24th, 1993 - F.U.C.K. =
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"Can Apathy Die? (or "Earning your BS in BS")
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Above is my attempt at a text-based moment of silence for the stupid,
needless, and tragic loss of Princess Diana. When I first heard the news
about this, I was struck with disbelief and grief. As the reports
continued, this was replaced by sadness and sympathy. Now, after almost a
week of media throughput, I'm to the point of barely caring if she's been
buried or not.
Before folks start flaming be back to snail-mail, I want to preface this by
saying that my first reactions are still the most honest and sincere. I
still view this as a tragic loss. Nonetheless, I've had my sympathies
systematically replaced with apathy by the relentless coverage.
If it helps, think about it this way for a moment: If a bird flies into
the glass of your bedroom window, you would likely go "Oh, that's so sad!"
The next time it happened, you may still feel bad for the poor creature.
Now what if 10 birds a day started smacking into every window of your house
for two weeks straight? Wouldn't your original sympathies be replaced by
"Stupid @(*$^# birds...."
A perfect example is when I moved to Colorado. When I got here, it was
unfortunately at the same time as two locally beloved polar bears - both
raised
from cubs here at the local zoo - were being shipped away. For the entire
first
MONTH I was here, this was the extent of the news on EVERY single channel.
By the time they left, I thought the evening news would go off the air for
lack of stories to report on.
Here's how it got even worse: A few months later, two more cubs were born
at the local zoo. A few days or so later, one of them happened to die.
Not only did it die, but the mother actually ate the young afterwards. Not
only did she eat it, they actually had footage of this. I was still so
jaded from the previous set of bears, the only emotion I could find within
me about
this was a twinge of sadness they didn't show that footage more often....
THAT'S what's happened to my emotional threshold thanks to the media.
Does anyone find this happening faster than ever before? I mean, it's not
like there are MORE sad and tragic things happening in the world today. I
have come to worry that my own personal jadedness and cynicism is being
tempered all the further by the increase in media coverage. If you're even
remotely as cynical about things as I am, you know the fact it's worsening
is FAR from healthy.
In the past 2-3 years, how many of these events can we count with little
need for recall? OJ, Jon Benet, OK City, Anthony Kunanan, et al; and
that's without any real effort. Think back not so far - perhaps only ten
years ago. Now how many can you think of? The Pan-Am crash in Scotland,
the Gulf War, the Challenger disaster....I'm running dry already. Even if
these events carried the same degree of emotional impact and media coverage,
it says something else sad and pathetic altogether that they have faded so
fast from memory.
I don't want to get off on an already well-beaten tangent about the abuse
and almost surreal proliferation of the media. Exempting some of my
existing criticisms about the media, I'm still reasonably happy with
network news and CNN. What I find unfathomable is the amount of the tabloid
media shows, such as "A Current Affair" and "Hard Copy", that report on
nothing other than the "sensational" stories.
The reason I don't want to get off on a tangent about this is because we
are all readily aware of this fact. Most of us even complain about how bad
it's gotten.
"Why don't they let it go?"
"Can't they give it up? I'm SO sick of hearing about this!"
While this doesn't apply to all, I'd like to answer this question for the
majority of the armchair media critics out there. You know why there is SO
much coverage for SO long? Because, stupid, YOU STILL WATCH IT!
I can safely say that this applies to most people because of a little
something called the Neilson ratings. Yes, that's right, we actually have
a running tally of you @$#&! MORONS that keep watching this crap you
complain so much about. Why am I sure there are so many? Because if there
weren't so many, they wouldn't show it!
I only took a few classes in media, but it's real simple folks: TV is
based on ratings. Why did shows like "Cop Rock" and "The George Carlin
Show" get dropped so fast. NO RATINGS. No one watched them. So, if none
of you - or even few less of you - weren't watching all the endless coverage,
it wouldn't be on.
I finally came to a conclusion why this is. Some people, either through
education or study, are considered experts about planes, birds, antique
tables, and even ancient Mongolian side-dishes. These are the people who
can hold attention at a party with their intricate knowledge; the ones who
testify at trials with key pieces of information to offer; the ones who
educate us with documentaries on A&E or Discovery; and those that are the
only "qualified" individuals to write volumes on their particular area of
knowledge.
What about your average couch-monkey? What about that poor sap that felt
more in touch with Archie Bunker than his own dad? What about that
lifeless, media-entranced moron that actually dog-ears pages of the TV
Guide lest they forget particularly significant episodes on Fox? What do
they have to offer to conversation, let alone to the social collective?
Well, they can be ed-u-cated about OJ.
Yup. This is the only thing I can think of. The only reason you can get
away with a trial like that being on tv everyday, recapped on the news
every night, and still have the cumulative ratings to stay on the air.
There are enough of you
shmucks out there that need to know EVERYTHING about some murder, some
trail, or some tragedy, that you will catch every snippet of info or detail
fed to you. This has to be it, or the @!&%# books ABOUT everything on tv
wouldn't do so well. I'm sure if they had a trail about the trial, we'd
have a'plenty of expert testimony.
When was the last time you met an educated, successful person who talked at
length about what the gardener for the Ramsey's had to say on "Dateline"?
Face it: If you have even half of the information about a sensational
story from the past two years, I'll bet dime-to-dollar you have nothing
else but a head full of "Jeopardy" trivia as an educational background.
For those that turn off their tv when these stories are on, bravo. Even if
you're just watching part two of the "Brady Bunch" when they're in the
Grand Canyon, kudos for at least not supporting sensational media. For
those that still actually honestly grieve at the tragedies in the world,
my infinite respect for you - and somewhere within me, I grieve with you.
As for the rest of you, I'm short on witticisms and analogies, and lord
knows they'd be wasted on you anyway. Instead, I'll try to put in a
context you can understand: If you chimps actually were monkeys, you'd
still only have enough of a brain to throw your own feces at yourselves....
- capone
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