Christmas leaves me with a veritable plethora of opportunities to engage in mindless digital bliss. I rarely work over the winter break, and this semester happens to be a member of the norm, where I greatly appreciate the fact that I have, in fact, almost nothing to do. My PSP has seen more of my face than my cats have. Jamie Cullum pours ceaselessly out of my laptop speakers. A new movie beams into my room every night.
Ironically, it is not until I have time enough to sit on my rear for three days straight do I actually see some of what cable has to offer. What was mere background noise for my fall semester has presented itself as a possible pursuit in my digital routine. And the truth behind this phenomenon? Cable news has proven itself approximately fifteen times more useless and truthless than the average Reddit submission, word-of-mouth interaction, or British RSS feed. My time is better spent doing almost anything else.
reddit.com/r/worldnews/ provides me, among all the community hoopla, which is sometimes welcome and sometimes merely annoying, a terse and consistent snapshot of the things happening in the world today. It is sorted by category, metered by relevancy, and filtered for usefulness and interest. By the time I have mustered the willpower to reach the website, the information there is already prepared for my viewing. A story that takes other methods of communication up to half a freaking hour to cover thoroughly is in and out of my psyche in literally seconds, when I am capable of navigating to the stories directly in the manner only sites like Reddit can provide.
If this kind of technology is only one step above child’s play by today’s standards of technology, then why has the world adapted this kind of media outlet so slowly? Reddit commands only as much as .02% of the internet’s total attention…if their ‘product’ is superior (accurate, speedy sources of information), then why does a company like CNN boast much more revenue and viewers? Does the power of the television as a medium of content delivery really make CNN and its other numerous partners in crime the superior choice for fast, up-to-date information?
No sir.
A computer does not function without a person’s input. I must click and type on a computer to make it talk to me. I must tell my laptop to navigate to Reddit.com to give me the information I want. Meanwhile, any television may be turned on and left indefinitely. This explains, certainly, how a TV channel must function differently than a website- channels must repeat information to reach viewers that were not focused on the broadcast- but does it really provide the most accurate and efficient method of gathering information? What you receive instead, minute for precious minute, is a stripped-down, drawn-out version of information, designed to appeal to many and twisted to have the most emotional impact possible. I could sit watching cable news for an entire afternoon and receive literally nothing that is cite-worthy, nothing that is speedy and robust…absolutely nothing useful.
A computer’s demand for user input is what makes the difference between the LAZY American way of life that television embodies and what I consider to be a more respectful, useful ideal…a quick, accurate study of what the world has to offer, then a return to the work or play at hand. If a person takes the effort to view Reddit, they probably also possess the willpower to locate the kind of information they seek, and also the thriftiness to let Reddit work with them to get this information with the path of least resistance. This kind of attitude is one I admire very much- with the human condition so capable of great things, an indefinite complex of laziness is the most disrespectful action imaginable. When a perfectly healthy, simple, efficient way to find information exists through the internet now and today, why does television even stay in the vernacular of information distribution at all? It carries not the aesthetic beauty of an old newspaper, nor the dark coffee-like pulp of an intellectual conversation.
Cable news- a complex that exists beyond practicality because the government and private companies more powerful than ourselves need it to educate the proletariat, when in actuality, if intellectualism was more the norm than the exception, society would have bid it a tear-filled adieu a decade ago.
