Television Displaced as Propagandist Wetdream

Jul. 12, 2022 [technology] [history] [books]

It sure is fun to beat up on television watchers. But when we cast that moniker upon a target of ridicule, is that to infer broadcast television as their source of ignorance? Increasingly not. It no longer stands alone as ruler over the minds of the masses. Before we get into the implications or causation, more needs to be understood about the wider class of malignant squawkboxing that conventional television belongs to.

Is the device itself a problem? Possibly, according to Jerry Mander in his work Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television where he argues that scanline CRT helped to lull passively sitting viewers into hypnotic trance. Display technology has since changed and state altering effects are hardly the most evil thing about it. The real issue lies in the content delivered through the television medium along with the way it is delivered.

There is a dichotomy of mass media delivery between the old world “push media” and the newer “pull media”. Any medium where information is shoved into the viewer’s face with no possibility for them to provide input, such as radio or newspaper, falls under push media. Pull media has only recently come into prominence with the web along with all its interactive possibilities. No longer does Joe Public need to sit passively absorbing the unquestionable truth from expert consensus. Although, sadly, most still choose to do so.

That is seen in the phenomenon of the many who proudly proclaim “I don’t watch TV!” as if to ward off the ridicule of being an info zombie. Unbeknownst to them, many of their choice replacements are mostly run by the same people, using both new and familiar tricks and with the same motivations, only in a flashy new package. Narrative is still imparted to an audience in suspended thought who go on to spread the “news” to their peers. The cycle remains unbroken.

And not only does the spirit of television remain, but it’s metastasized beyond anything envisioned in Orwell’s 1984. These new screens can do more than quietly probe feedback. They know what you looked at, how long you looked at it, what excited you and what upset you. They coorelate it with where you consumed the media, at what time along with sites or searches conducted before and after. An entire profile is built which helps craft tomorrow’s narrative and how best to enrapture the attention of all others. The propagandists of yesteryear would have killed to have such a complete arrangement.