Is the lesson to create 'our own' mass media?
Well, I don't think so - partly because all mass media are vulnerable to being destroyed by the new multi-level nature of deplatforming, in which everything from financial services to the law (via the police as well as lawyers), is weaponised in defence of The System of evil bureaucratic Leftism.
There are So Many ways a mass organisation can be destroyed - and the Left controls all the major social institutions.
'We' might create media, but they cannot be, will not be allowed to be, 'mass'. As soon as they get mass - become visible - they will be clipped. It takes a lot of work to build a mass medium, but it is trivially easy to destroy one.
(I've seen it with this blog; whenever it starts building up official page views - something-happens - and overnight the page views plummet. I'm expecting another such, as the current page views are over 2500 per day, which seems to be something of a threshold. Back when I used to edit Medical Hypotheses, the journal was safe until I had built it into a success; at which point I was swiftly sacked and the non-peer-reviewed journal was destroyed - while keeping the same name. There can be 'alternative' media, but these cannot be 'mass'...)
No, the true lesson of deplatforming is not to make new (supposedly better) mass media, but to stop using mass media.
A Media Strike!
A mass consumer strike on mass media; because it is crystal clear that The System wants us addicted to mass media; wants us to attend-to, be engaged-with, the MM 24/7.
Since we cannot and will not get the mass media we want and need; we should stop using mass media. Permanently.
It is ot necessary, and is in fact imnpossible, that the strikje should be complete - since a 100% withdrawal cannot be attained due to the penetration of media into public and workplaces. And the usage of other people around and about (and in the home).
But any significant degree of reduction in media usage would be effective - 50%, 75%, 95%, 99%... and such withdrawal of attention would be felt by The System as an axe blow at its roots.
As usual; any significant positive action, such as a consumer strike against mass media, will do harm in the short-term before it does good in the long term.
In the short term a strike would (if it happened, which seems very unlikely indeed!) mean that the evillest mass media had it 'all their own way' without any 'alternative' opposition. This down-phase should be anticipated, and weathered as a necessary price that must be paid.
But in the longer term, the reduction of influence of mass media would be A Good Thing. Indeed, since the mass media is vital to the secular-Left totalitarian project, it would a strong blow against that project.
But as always, it is about inner motivation. The reason for a media strike must be the right reason; which is a recognition that the mass media is - overall and overwhelmingly - actively and strategically evil. And therefore ought to be eschewed even though some parts of it are tending to good.
Therefore, such a strike would need to be something arising from a mass of individual decisions; and Not be some-thing institutionally organised. And it would need to be permanent. An institutionally-led media strike would be just another part of The System...
Indeed, regardless of the mass consequences of a mass strike, the individual decision to embark upon a media strike is itself perhaps the most valuable effect of all.
7 comments:
Well, I think this is already happening, but slowly over a longer time as it is the result of individual decisions. All major German newspapers and magazines are selling fewer and fewer copies (this is a severe finacial problem for the whole industrie). Fewer and fewer people are watching the news on TV.
@Karl - I disagree. Old media are secondary. Mass media consumption is massively increased via social media; people are visibly plugged into media in every 'spare' moment - sitting down for a few seconds, walking around... The pattern of behaviour shows clearly that this is addictive.
Do blogs count as mass media? Or only very popular blogs?
@William - Everybody must decide for himself; I would say it depends on stuff like subject matter (e.g topicality), style, spirit.
The most pernicious kind of mass media, pornography, is a prime example of why there is no sense competing with the mass media in terms of scale. Tens if not hundreds of millions of people (or even billions?) are addicted to pornography which is easier to obtain for practically anyone of any age than drugs or even alcohol. Assuming the fundamentally evil nature of the mass media, it is easy to see how its non-stop broadcasting of suggestive and outright sexual imagery is meant to lead viewers directly to explicit pornography and consequently jeopardize their soul to damnation by committing this mortal sin.
Your advice is difficult to put into practice for someone who has been saturated in mass media for years but it is very sound, the more mass media you consume the more influenced you will be towards evil in its various forms: lust, sloth, greed, gluttony, etc. The wise suggestion of a priest in his homily that I heard last year sticks in my mind, "when viewing any type of media ask yourself whether it is ennobling your life or demeaning it, if the latter, stop consuming it."
The big lure of the mass media is the capability to effectively transmit information to a large number of people with minimal effort, but this capability is an illusion -- attempts to exploit it are thus usually a form of greed on the part of the person transmitting.
With small group communications -- one-on-one in person, phone, lectures, small blogs, etc -- the receivers can ask questions which reveal problems in the reception that the person transmitting can correct, leading to "closed loop" communications. Here, for example, someone can post a comment of the form, "Oh I get it, BC means X" and then Dr. Charlton can respond with "No, that's not it at all! You are confused, I definitely mean Y."
With the mass media closing the loop is almost impossible, and the person who is transmitting cannot actively ensure that the receivers got the message correctly.
Audio and video mass media are worse than text because the receivers will try to multitask while processing them, leading to increased probability of error from distracted attention. Worse, with sufficient exposure the receivers will at least subconsciously believe they have a friendly *relationship* with the sender, where of course none exists, thus making the receivers vulnerable to all manner of manipulation.
Note how frequently Jesus was attempting to escape crowds. I suspect this was because the structural nature of trying to communicate with a mob was often inappropriate for what he was trying to teach at the time. Note that with true discipleship, one can get high-accuracy transmission of wisdom to maybe 10 people at a time, which means that the entire planet can in principle learn within 10 steps, without any need for the mass media!
-- Robert Brockman
@RB - Yes, your comment on the possibilities of *exponential* direct personal transmission is one I have often pondered.
If ever there was something that everybody wanted to communicate and know, it could be spread across the whole world population extremely quickly, in just a few days - even if it began with just one person.
The limitation is not on speed or spread of communication; but that people don't want to know, don't trust the source etc
Post a Comment