Ghost Train RadioKill Your TV
A holiday tradition in my family is a little like the Seinfeld Festivus episode – a funnier version of “The Airing of Grievances” scene. We used to get together and the conversation would always turn to how my twin brother screwed up when we were young.
I have made it a point not to “go there” this year and start a conversation with that age old theme, but it was so funny when my brother offered such stories. That’s when I realized how no matter how embarrassing or weird or even wrong – we humans like controversy. I guess its like rubber necking on a hi way where traffic slows down because we are drawn to such carnage. Is it because it breaks up what seems like a quiet, repetitive and mundane life?
Around the year 2001 or so, I stopped Cable TV – I think because of CNN and watching planes hit the towers in NYC. I also found that beside one or two TV shows that I liked, TV was total crap. MTV with its crappy “reality shows” just sucked badly. I got back into Ham Radio as an antidote and perhaps a nostalgic way to step back into a simpler time in my life.
Fast forward to Social Media, the Internet and YouTube. Add in a dash of podcasting and here we are again – rubber necking the daily car, train and plane wrecks.
I got off Twitter and Facebook in 2016. I used it successfully to market a Ham Radio expedition and its fund raising. That was the one good thing I saw in it. I did reconnect with old high school friends, but when my best friend from high school started getting weird arguing about how great Trump was I killed Twitter and Facebook.
A professor of media and communications explained that now a days, its all about going way over the top and “going viral”. You are ignored unless you are ultra provocative. These purveyors of bullshit don’t believe a word they are saying, but sadly, far too many buy into this crap.
Its not a Holy or Civil war, its just noise – just like constantly watching 911 clips on CNN in 2001.
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