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originally posted by: TheKnightofDoom
a reply to: LadyGreenEyes
Would you bake them a cake?.
originally posted by: RedCairo
I have noticed that when people repeatedly run into media where someone is talking about their religion, that many are offended. "Get out of my face about it!" they feel, and often say. Even though that televangelist is not hurting them. They get more and more upset the more they "encounter" people who are displaying their religion. They feel it's being pushed on them just because it is "so around them." They feel others just won't shut up about it, and they don't want any part of it personally, so it makes them feel 'hounded' to 'pay attention! notice me! be like me! join us!' Conceptually I mean; people may not say those things literally, but I see the emotion triggered as if they were.
The whole LGBTQ or whatever seems to have a similar effect with the same circumstance. Though I notice many people who would vehemently defend this, behave exactly the same way about religion in our culture. Or vice-versa.
Now consider:
I thought about this recently as I was re-enabling an ad-blocker somewhere. The reality is, ads are not "hounding" me. They are not personally pressuring me. They are just taking up a few inches on my screen and I am welcome to ignore them. There are other pictures on my screen I am not suppressing, so why should I feel the need to suppress them, just because I personally don't want what they are offering? Why should I deny them space to be an ad rather than a pretty photo? If I don't want it shouldn't I just ignore it? If I go to a page and there are (image, not popup etc.) ads all over the place, do I feel slightly 'hounded'?
Why yes, I do in fact. I feel like, "Get outta my face with this crap! Fine, sell your products, I don't care, but I'd rather not look at your ads all over my web page. Here, I'm going to add this software that excludes you from my web universe." I disable ad-blockers only selectively for some site I like that asks for me to do so, for the sake of their income and I'm getting a free service from them I want to support.
How is it different? Some people feel hounded by televangelists and people gushing about being saved. Some people feel hounded by transexuals and people ranting about gay rights. Some people feel hounded by website ads and flashing boxes advertising tax services or viagra or -- I don't even care what they advertise, they are "an ad" which has a sort of level of offensiveness all its own to me, even though in other contexts I like ads fine.
What I am saying here is that there is a psychological response to media-in-your-face-about-topic-X that people "react" to and feel pressured or hounded by.
Is someone hounding me to be religious? Maybe not, but if they're on my TV all over and I watch TV where it's seen in passing even without my turning to 'those channels', they are in fact "in my living room going on about it." The same for LGBTQ, the same for advertising. Basically, topics like those "become" advertising -- whether intentionally or not.
I don't care about either topic much -- people are what they are, none of my business -- but I don't like web ads. And, like I explained above, I think psychologically the "reaction" those topics invoke is a little bit the same.
It doesn't make a person an angry bigot who dislikes anyone who might be christian, or gay or whatever. It just makes a person someone who starts to feel a bit psychologically assaulted by the repeated hammering of a given thing in their media. It is an effect of media that is doing this, at least where I'm from. It is creating an "incitive" reaction. It is even possible to feel resentment about even inanimate objects and services (e.g. Viagra), never mind groups of people.
It is not necessary for other human beings to personally walk up and flick you in the forehead to feel 'hounded.' Psychologically, media done a certain way, even in accidental-collusion en masse via its underlying hyperbolic nature, can achieve the same result.
RC
originally posted by: RedCairo
Well, you are having an armchair discussion about it on a forum, so maybe it should cross your mind. I don't think I need to re-make my point since it was in English but you still missed it.
The OP has a right to state her feelings; I just opined on why I observe other people feeling 'assaulted' by such things, even when obviously nobody's personally doing that to them. Media is "in the room with us" and if strident and extremist and annoying (as it is), can make people feel rather assaulted about all kinds of things -- even silly non-human things. I consider this one way in which media is literally harming our culture, not helping, by creating division everywhere that seems possible.
I can see that you are very angry. I don't personally have the issues of the OP. But then I pointedly avoid most media, too.