"pseudomodo" <sinohegemon@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message
news:f-WdnaiAY_xssYLVnZ2dnUVZ_rqlnZ2d@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> My friends & I have been talking about media stampedes,
> especially about the recent hoarding of rice in the USA
> and Canada. The headlines scream "rationing" and
> "shortages," but in America all that means is people are
> being limited to buying two 50-lb bags of rice at Sams or
> Costco.
>
> It's no news that the rate-of-cycle on news stories has
> increased dramatically in the past twenty years along with
> a general shelf life decrease in all media. I see this
> going hand-in-hand with an increased use of
> anxiety-inducing media techniques, from screaming
> headlines to a broader negativity in popular arts and
> culture. The advertising profession is renown for
> employing anxiety-inducing imagery (status differential,
> solution-to-problem) to appeal to unconscious motivations,
> to reify in the mind of the consumer "need for product."
> These techniques have evolved to a dark art for quite a
> while (from the almost inobtrusive "Burma Shave" ads to
> the insidious "Get laid with a quadruple-blade razor"
> images on TV) and are now firmly planted in
> attention-grabbing statements in politics and media.
> Remember the Reagan-era concern about the use of "hot
> buttons?" It didn't go away, it was simply flushed down
> the memory hole.
>
> Anxiety is the hardest-to-identify of our base instincts,
> it's integral to the problem-solving and risk-*****sment
> engine of ego - the grand mechanism that defends the
> elusive specter of Self. Gotama used a didactic style to
> address this, through long discourse employing empirical
> disproof (not this, not that). It's a method of bring a
> mental feature into starker relief against the background
> noise of the those infernal and distracting aggregates.
>
> The implications for a civil culture are clear when
> societies might rush to a premature solution against a
> perceived threat, but it's also problematic in the
> sciences where the regime of falsification is required to
> decouple evidence from belief and professional ego.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Informational_cascade
>
> OK, those are your talking points. Now lemme see
> watchugot.
>
> /leebert
funnily enough, our gov't got a real kicking from the
electorate (those who voted) in the local elections and
london.
what happens next may depend a lot on how the media play it,
although patience is wearing thin there too...
the conservatives are heartened...and it's ironic that new
labour stole their pitch on the economy, and the tories may
steal labour's concern for the poor... heh heh! there's
talk of toffs and the old school tie...plenty of fluff, but
looking like only a miraculous rabbit from a magic hat can
save brown...
there was a drama on tv tonight - a disaster movie of london
flooded by storm and tidal surge...hundreds of thousands
dead...
afterwards, there was a (water authority) phone-line number
for people worried about flooding to ring...presumably the
sad and the not too bright...what is this? concern for the
disturbed? a legal cover-ass just in case? a phone
racket?... 0:
then the news...10,000 feared dead in a cyclone in
Burma...aid not getting through...and a series of stage
managed news clips that were just for the camera...eg man
chops tree with a chain saw..."but electricity may have
failed elsewhere" ...what was that for?
then princess royal giving medals to her nephew, with others
who served in afghanistan...adding to the vague toff thingie
blowing around...no government ministers kids out there,
after all...
and the US elections...obama's progress halted by bad
minister publicity... it was starting to look like cardboard
cutouts...not even slick...
i gave up at the football...
possum
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