I don't remember if I've mentioned that I have become completely obsessed with podcasts recently. I basically don't even listen to the radio or look at google news anymore, because I now get my news from the sources and on the topics that I've pre-selected. I'm also actively pursuing selling my TV, and may join a DVD rental club to be entertained entirely by pre-selected programs on my computer.
However, I'm a little scared. I was not permitted to watch television as a child, which made me even more of a misfit than my personality and genetics had already set me up to be. I had no idea what the other kids were talking about and rarely got the mass-media-referential jokes. I would laugh anyway, but they saw right thru me. You know how kids are. So, I'm wondering now if, by self-programming all my media inputs, am I isolating myself yet again? Or is this something everyone is doing? And if it is, are we isolating ourselves from each other?
I don't remember if it was the last national election or the one before that when a lot emails went around about how we, humor me as I call us the Educated Class, have no idea what's going on in the minds of the rest of our country. Because if they were privy to even the smallest amt of knowledge and information we were, how on earth would we, collectively, have elected That Man as our President? We all vowed to talk to our distant friends and relatives who might be Republicans or even just live not on a coast, to share information, to promote Democracy. I've tried to do that. At the same time, now, I'm setting up my own little self-programmed universe where everyone I talk to less than once a week is getting their information from absolutely, completely different sources.
This hints at the concept of brainwashing, and the effect media has on culture, but I'm in no mood to go there right now. I know you want to hear about Alaska, and I'll tell you all about it... later.
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