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Many of them are Baby Boomers or Gen Xers who were exposed to plenty of education and critical thinking as they were growing up. However, there's the idea that in the information age, we are bombarded with so much information and stimulation that it is hard to begin to filter out the junk. It becomes much easier to simply pick a single source of information and label that as "trusted", than to be constantly scrutinizing all the information you get from everywhere.
This phenomenon was predicted as far back as the 80s, with the rise of cable TV and mass media advertising. There's an interesting part of a book called Amusing Ourselves to Death (https://www.amazon.com/Amusing-Ourselves-Death-Discourse-Business/dp/014303653X) where the author proposes that modern governments don't need to limit the amount of information their citizens have access to in order to control them. All they have to do is overload them with nonsense, making them unable to effectively process the quality information they do receive.
I am hopeful for the future, because our current generation was raised in the Information Age, and we've been exposed to this environment since our early years. We are more adept at navigating the internet, and therefore investigating the reliability of our sources of information. Our relative youth makes us less stubborn than people in their 50s or 60s.
They did an updated version that came out in 2015 for the 40th season. So that explains where I read it.
Does anyone have an opinion on the quoted book?
Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business By Neil Postman
IMO with very few exceptions, journalists have done a good job of reporting every blip but a piss-poor job of helping people understand what those blips add up to. They have made the public savant-idiots: we have heard so much about everything -- blip! blip! blip! blip! -- that we end up knowing nothing at all.
That is exactly why I came to this sub-reddit in the first place, and why I've ended up participating: to try to sort out what is indisputable fact, what is interesting speculation, what is interesting but non-essential, etc.
I have found Seth Abramson's work in my personal sorting-out process to be extremely useful -- and far more useful than the confusing "battle of the talking heads" that goes on at CNN, for example. The coverage at The Atlantic has been stellar, but it tends to be siloed where Seth finds interesting and revealing bridges across silos.
I thoroughly agree that we are at a moment when truth is under daily, cynical assault. But I think Abramson generally does a better job of separating "this is true" from "this might be true" than most of what passes for journalism these days.
P.S. Used carefully, digital as a medium is far superior to TV for purposes of sorting out truth from speculation. CNN, MSNNC, Fox et al are mostly useful for Amusing Ourselves to Death.
Abramson isn't perfect, but he's light years away from spreading Pizzagate-like nonsense. I think most of us can read what he has to say without getting carried away.
https://www.amazon.com/Sopranos-Sessions-Matt-Zoller-Seitz/dp/1419734946
Essays on every episode, interviews with David Chase (1 per season), very insightful and added a lot of behind the scenes stuff.
For example, David Chase confirms that Ralphie did start the fire, and the shot of the goat was meant to symbolize Ralphie as the devil who caused it.
Yep. I've been recommending Postman's book for years:
>What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one.
https://www.amazon.com/Amusing-Ourselves-Death-Discourse-Business/dp/014303653X
I had to get my sunglasses to read this hot take.
If you don’t like to read that’s cool, but I got a suggestion that could change it (if you watched The Wire).
this book interviewed everyone in The Wire and has a very cool behind the scenes of the whole series. It has lots of great stories.
One thing, w/o spoiling, is that they actually filmed in West Baltimore.
https://www.amazon.com/Amusing-Ourselves-Death-Discourse-Business/dp/014303653X
The title in the comment was a joke.
You’ll enjoy it. It’s about the way media has been deliberately dumbed down to the point where actors and idiots are now treated as serious sources of information, and how that process has poisoned modern life and politics.
Just look at the reviews on Amazon!
I listened to a few episodes and the bullshit/good content ratio was too high for it to be worth my time.
Do yourself a favor and read The Sopranos Sessions instead.
I think Neil Postman should be required reading.
https://www.amazon.com/Amusing-Ourselves-Death-Discourse-Business/dp/014303653X
You should check out The Sopranos Sessions
https://www.amazon.com/Sopranos-Sessions-Matt-Zoller-Seitz/dp/1419734946
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The author very much examines the show in the way you are referring, even doing an episode-by-episode breakdown.
To be honest, I think the other post linked by u/ChitlinNoodleSoup very much is on point.
But for me just watching it, it makes me think of Rhonda & Jimmy's doin-it scene in S1. Apparently, in the book All the Pieces Matter, Deirdre Lovejoy (Rhonda) says that the scene was hilariously directed (by whomever the director was), where he would have them like, moan in sync, and then he'd suddenly scream, "CLIMAX NOW!!!!!" And then everyone on set found it absolutely hilarious, so someone put that phrase on a T-shirt and gave it out as a crew wrap gift lol.
From thereon out, any sex scene in the show, I can't help but think of that director screaming that out.
But to answer OP's Q, def felt like release of tension for more than one character, and it was an economic way to show two types at once. For one, frustration, and fighting against something that isn't gonna change. For another, kinda new and hopeful. And the juxtaposition/ contrast between the two types of tension-release.
"Amusing Ourselves to Death" by Neil Postman. Check it out. It's going down in real time and we're all eating it up. Times have changed slightly since then, as Postman was mostly exploring the negative impacts of television media. But modern changes have only exacerbated the problem, looking at the onset of meme propaganda and social media.
https://www.amazon.com/Amusing-Ourselves-Death-Discourse-Business/dp/014303653X
They talk about it a little in the book All The Pieces Matter.. it was a conscious decision by the show to put him in the bar, but they never got around to developing the storyline further. Well, save for the toilet graffiti I guess.
This just helps put America's obsession with "celebrities" on full display. We rarely care enough to get the names of those not famous unless it was somehow entertaining, and this could be for better, or worse.
I'm really sorry she was shoved to the ground. I'm really sorry that America continues to show why it is a country with deep-rooted problems that no one wants to really delve into because we're too busy amusing ourselves to death.
> Seiun's comic awards
I'm going to look at those awards for the past 12 years.
2010:
Guin Saga is a Fantasy, Definitely not a high tech Space Age Sci-fi with amazing futuristic machines.
2011:
Kyonen wa Ii Toshi ni Narudarō has no documentation on it and it's a novel not translated into english.
2012:
Tengoku to Jigoku, sounds like a generic fantasy title, "heaven and hell" doesn't sound like a book with amazing tech that geeky people would buy an in-universe manual for like this.
2013:
The Empire of Corpses: Was made into an anime in 2015, but it's Victorian themed, not geeky futuristic.
Kiryū Keisatsu: Ankoku Shijō: No english translation and not animated
Hon ni datte Osu to Mesu ga Arimasu: Not translated and the Deepl Amazon description says it's a multi-generational story that has the future in it, but it also has the meiji era, doesn't sound like something with a central futuristic theme like Gundam or Outlaw Star.
Beatless: was made in an anime in 2018, but I like stories themed around ambitious people in their early 20's, but that world doesn't look very futuristic, I don't like the minority report screens and I hate how they still use Helicopters and don't have something like an anti-grav dropship or something.
I'm going to stop it right here, I think I described what I like in Sci-Fi and how I don't see it anymore.
The invention of the telegraph.
Neil Postman wrote Amusing Ourselves to Death. It's not a historical piece per say. It's about communication theory. One argument he makes is that the way we ingest the news/information suddenly changed once far off, clandestine information could be shared immediately following the invention of the telegraph.
​
Information is power, and virtually all other technological progress after its invention would have been impacted by the telegraph. Engineers could talk across the country. Investors, bankers, and wealthy persons could react to news within a week or two of it occurring. Military incursions were felt immediately by a nation. Suddenly, our world became a lot smaller and collective action became a lot more feasible. It doesn't matter how you spin it. Electrically-transmitted information fundamentally altered the way we engage everything.
​
Moreover, everything that defines the "modern" information era is a product of the telegraph and the technologies that evolved from it. Its winners are those with the best information and influence as opposed to those with the biggest military, strongest religious argument, deepest pockets, etc. The best possible example? Elon Musk doesn't own amazing companies. He's wealthy as hell because he created a brand that persuaded/influenced people to invest time, effort, and (most importantly) money into his companies, enriching himself. If Twitter didn't exist, Elon would not be half as wealthy as he is today.
I watched it for the first time a few years ago and I read Sepinwall's book at the same pace (the book goes episode by episode, and then has a season wrap up with an interview with Chase). I highly recommend the book as a companion piece. Also, as a bonus Chase accidentally gives away a closely guarded purposefully unresolved plot secret without realizing it.
https://www.amazon.com/Sopranos-Sessions-Matt-Zoller-Seitz/dp/1419734946
Check the manual and see:
I'm not saying nobody can like indie and pop. I am saying that different genres and styles of music appeal to different sorts of people. This is true with all art; the qualities that make one work or piece interesting to some people will make it unappealing to others.
>People that are so hardline about not listening to music outside their curated aesthetic are fucking losers and I thought we were done with that after high school. Lol.
Yeah, I keep hearing about these people but I don't know anybody who does this. I think different people like different music, IDK.
>I'm talking about how leftists enjoy tearing down mainstream things to virtue signal about how good of a leftie they are.
Who does that? The only example I can think of are when Brihana Joy Gray and Jamie Peck both shit on Ro Khanna for liking Hamilton. I thought it was bizarre, but I don't perceive it's reflective of the left.
What I have noticed are rightists who shit on people for being cultured or educated, even if they may have had elite educations themselves. For instance, Sean Hannity ranted on how Obama was an elitist because he ordered mustard. A common talking point on the right is how pop culture promotes liberal ideals. Shapiro even wrote a book about it.
Look, lets assume there is a 'pure' media and a 'pure' entertainment outlet.
They are both operating for profit, the majority of what US consumers consume is controlled by 4-5 corporations. That is the problem. The only difference is that all news media is explicitly written on the backs of advertisers.
You may find the book "Amusing Ourselves to Death" interesting and also Ben Bagdikian's 1983 book "Media Monopoly", wikipedia entry here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Bagdikian#The_Media_Monopoly
> "This gives each of the five corporations and their leaders more communications power than was exercised by any despot or dictatorship in history."
Yeah what you posted sounds like a more realistic version of that Graeber article.
> but fail to see that widespread automation has the ability to grant the freedom of not having to work to a large part of society. People losing their jobs because their labour not being needed anymore is not a bad thing, but opens a path to a utopia of widespread freedom
I am not sold on the idea that it would lead to a utopia. Like, I think we should utilize technology to automate the jobs we can, and provide basic Universal Income that covers housing, food, and rudimentary entertainment to all the folks that lose their jobs. Allow the Capitalist system to work, too, so that people who either have some skill or a desire to own yachts can muck about in the revenue generating game.
But I think Vonnegut's Player Piano does offer a reasonable insight to a realistic problem. If a person does not have a job, and their basic needs are met through government assistance, then what do they spend their time on? Either we get Vonnegut's projection where wide swaths of society sit around drinking gin, or a good chunk of the human race just Amuses ourselves to death.
Like I'm all for automation and UBI and freedom, but I do not imagine that even in that society things would be swell.
The Enterprise and Millennium Falcon had one, the Roci needs some love too.
Counterpoint: you're not just simplifying your presentation, you're simplifying your thinking, which stands to make your thinking worse. Some things really are just complicated. I feel like I've seen something written by Scott Alexander, or maybe some other rationalist, talking about how complicated aerodynamics is, and how it really doesn't lend itself to simplicity ("the air travels faster over the top of the wing, generating lift" doesn't explain airplanes that can fly upside-down)--this potentially applies here.
University students often struggle through prose and would prefer to simply see bullet-points. But sometimes wrestling with prose is as much the point as any single bullet-point you could derive from it. Or in other words: efficiency often comes with hidden costs.
Oh my, I looked it up and he did write that too.
And even funnier: in the Customers Also Bought section, I see he just released an "updated for 2020" book called "Facts STILL Don't Care About Your Feelings", which is sure to sell like Dennis Prager-manhandled hotcakes.
https://www.amazon.com/Primetime-Propaganda-True-Hollywood-Story/dp/006193478X
I said it's a cornerstone of knowledge, not that it has a good ending.
It's essential for people to read books like this against tyranny. There is no other medium that is so densely-packed with information and lends itself to the formation of abstract concepts than the written word. I recommend Amusing Ourselves to Death for a detailed account of the neuroscience of why TV and other mediums are vastly inferior for learning and building knowledge.
My Barnes & Nobles around me are all nice and well kept. The problem is they sell books for $27 that you can get for $14 on Amazon and they don’t even price match their own website
I have a resolution to read more, so I went on Amazon to look at books and found they just dropped a book on the history of The Sopranos and I am all over this.
It counts as reading even if you are reading about your all time favorite TV show