We've been so warped by the media

We really have.

Look at what is seen as beautiful now.. anorexic, fake hair, trout lipped, high cheekboned, tanned models.

there is more plastic surgery done today than ever before. its like a new race of people. plastic, all look the same.

since when did people's view of beauty become so warped? most of the things people want to change about themselves are the very things that make them the most beautiful.

I guess it just makes me sad to know that we can't look at beauty in a different way.

I've known too many models to count and they are ungodly skinny and perfect in every way and yet they still say their agencies want them to lose another 10 pounds and get a tan.

The world has got to change. Its on a disgusting, fake path full of money, excess, plastic, and all the real things in life have been forgotten. Real beauty, the simpleness of riding a bike or walking instea of driving. The beauty of a hike in the mountains rather than going up the elevator of a skyscraper. The beauty of having a homecooked meal and having it taste better than any meal you could ever buy in a restaraunt.

The media has distorted us into thinking we need the newest appliance in order to make our lives more fullfilled, or that we need to look or act or dress a certain way.

Look around you, you already have everything in life you could ever need. Money and posessions are a false sense of security and happiness. Having the best clothes is a false sense of security and is hiding your uniqueness and making you just blend in with every other wannabe. It goes on and on.

Its gotta end at some point. People need to learn on their own what is important in life and that medias portrayal of perfection is completely false.

I do not agree. Not that we are living in fake plastic reality, this is where i think you are correct. But this is not really media's fault, media is only factor, multiplier. People who could afford it used luxuries even in ancient times, no media there. Now much more people can afford a lot of unneeded stuff, thus the huge rise in consumption of whatever plastic reality we can afford. And it is driven by greed. Jealousy.
Media is only a tool. If in ancient times role female models were queens, princesses, famous courtesans - now it is what people can see in media. If there would be no media again, then there still would be role models that call the fashion.
On the other hand, Diogenes and tub approach is also hardly a wise choice. Middle way is the golden one, as usual. We are part of society, so we can pay attention to what it accepts. But we certainly do not have to.

i agree in some ways... but the media takes it all to a new level.

everyone looks the same now. i dont see anyone incredibly unique or different anymore.

people buy crap they dont need because they see some commercial for it or see it online as the hot new thing to buy.

like the ihpone. i yell at my boyfriend all the time for getting one. its for the laziest of lazy. you have every amount of information right at your hands.

we've become a society of convenience. its unnecessary.

We have not been warped by the media. We have been warped by our desire to fit in, whether or not that desire ultimately is a creative or destructive force in the world. We have been lazy, and rather than appear foolish (as we internally have believed we are) we would rather latch on to an ideology, unquestionably. It is a way of avoiding the jarring moments that come with truly honest, unbiased reflection. We have allowed ourselves to be twisted. It is up to us to return to original form.

Edit: I know that what I am saying might sound harsh, but it is a process I have seen played out in my life and others. I am convinced, at the present time, that it is a natural process. Oh, and all that being said, the media does warp us when we are unaware of our choices. It warped us all at some point in time. I guess I am just trying to shine a light on the fact that once we see it as we are allowing ourselves to be manipulated, then the manipulation stops, at least to a degree.

[edit on 8-8-2009 by orwellianunenlightenment]

[edit on 8-8-2009 by orwellianunenlightenment]

I'm going to also disagree. I don't think that the media is completely at fault for everything. We can only blame the media for creating a false perception of reality that people are only just starting to wake up to. What we can do is start seeing for ourselves how this reality the media put before us is false and what we can do to start perceiving it in more accurate ways.

Not all of us are so warped.

I gave away my TV set about 30 years ago, and haven't watched TV since. I don't listen to the radio or read the newspapers. People say I'm not learning what is going on in the world around me. What is really happening is, I'm not being fed the propaganda everyone else is getting. Mark Twain said, "He who reads no newspapers is uninformed. He who reads the newspapers is misinformed".

What news I get is from the Internet, on sites where there is little or no advertising. And of course, I understand that the "news" on the Internet is about as reliable as it is in the National Enquirer (but not nearly as entertaining). I don't take it seriously.

So, very little exposure to the "media", and even less exposure to their advertisers. One of the reasons I did all this was exactly to avoid all the brainwashing that goes on, during commercials and during ordinary programming.

But you can't blame the "media" for their behavior. They are catering to our whims. They do what they perceive will bring them money. Fake hair, trout lips, and anorexia are "in". Real people are "out". That's what we choose to watch, and that's what makes the money for the media. It's what we pay for. They're giving us what we want. Not what we *say* we want, but what we actually spend our money on.

But you know what happens when you step away from the media brainwashing? You become an outcast. You no longer have the same knee-jerk reactions as other people have. You don't react in the ways others have been taught is the "right" way to react. You wind up, for example, seeing terror as what it is: A horrible act of violence that kills fewer people than preventable illnesses. You say that there's not much you can do to prevent some nutcase from blowing you away, but you *can* avoid lifestyles that cause diseases you're hundreds of times more likely to die of. No one wants to hear that, because they know from the media) that terrorism is a terrible problem that must be stopped, yadda-yadda-yadda.

Independent thinking is highly over-rated, unless you like being a pariah.

reply to post by calihan_12


The Media is a reflection of the American public. We've become less educated and more shallow as a nation and THAT is the true problem in this country. There is good reporting and information out there but you have to dig through the nonsense to find it. That nonsense sells which is why there is so much of it and something only sells when there are people there to buy. Media and information are vital to a functioning democracy and I believe that it's ignorance on the part of the public that is the bigger danger. The quality of the media we get is dependent upon what the people want and they'd rather have news about Paris Hilton than news about why our economy collapsed. That's too bad too.

The media is merely an arm of a body. A tool, or weapon, if you will. It is not the source. Rather, the obsession so conditioned into us that luxury defines wealth and happiness. THAT... is what makes me throw up!



-Ze'Jesta

EDIT: spellinh

[edit on 8-8-2009 by ~ATS~]

Not to be harsh nor blunt but ... Isn't this thread a broad example of what this website signifies ?

I'm surprised to see so many basically defending the media.

Maybe memories are short ?

Who remembers wholesome family type tv shows: Father Knows Best, Leave it to Beaver, Gilligan's Island, The Lucy Show, the Doris Day show, even McHale's Navy ?

If so, do you remember the big female stars of the day: Donna Reed, Doris Day, Lucy, the girl from Get Smart, etc.? If you do, you'll remember a time when women were portrayed as funny, intelligent, romantic, clever, entertaining.

Then along came the breast-fetish again, launched by that group of men who suffer from what in the US in the 50s and 60s was known as 'momism' (which implied they suffered from arrested development .. who fixated on breasts .. possibly because they came from a regressive, misogynistic culture which regarded women as fit only to be sex objects, as secondary beings, as something to be 'used').

The greater the power of that particular group of people within US politics .. the more they began coming out into the open instead of hiding behind Anglicised surnames and false family histories .. then the more they pushed their attitudes, sickness and depravity on the American public and the world. As a sideline (profitable too) they also published 'Nazi comic books' in which big-breasted Nazi women pursued and raped them.

They drenched the American viewing public in tack, in their own depravity. At the same time, they commandeered film and tv censorship and drove it into the ground. Gone were family-type tv shows of old, the ones that made you chuckle and which encouraged girls to have spirit and humour, yet to maintain a sense of chastity and decency.

Now we got the Porkies movies and the filth which spewed from the mouths of the tools used by the men of the particular culture in question, such as Robin Williams and that entire brigade of potty-mouths.

But those guys were funny. And the shock of hearing them spew filth within their comedy routines caused a sensation. People were disbelieving, but, having seen the stuff on tv and in the new teenage-sex obsessed movies, people thought to themselves that this must be ok .. it must be kewl .. it would get attention for them in the same way it had made millionaires of the gutter mouths. And so Americans changed, and gradually, so did the rest of the viewing world.

Movies were filled with heavy-smoking, foul mouthed 'celebrities' .. De Niro certainly paid his dues in this respect, in return for 'stardom'. On the way, he managed to defame and entire nation (Italy) and he and the producers who used him were careful for the American/world public NOT to know that the majority of murderous gangsters, those foul swearing hoodlums in movies which glorified bestial violence, were in fact, Jewish Italians, something few people realise even today (until they go online and discover that millions of Italians are now learning of their original jewish roots, who're learning that at one time, approx. 50% of all Sicilians were jews).

Then the in-your-face breasts and crotches. The obligatory simulated sex scenes. They became common and then accepted. And at an ever quickening pace, Americans minds were being transported to the gutters, in the name of 'entertainment'. Some fought it, but by then Congress was thoroughly corrupted and the zios owned the print and tv media and were touting the filth as evidence of 'genius' as well as awarding Academy statuettes to people who'd done little more than swear and bare their enhanced body parts on celluloid.

It was the same print and televised media which informed the viewing public that this or that clown was 'beautiful', was 'talented', was 'worth millions of dollars', was highly sought by Hollywood.

The empty-content idiot shows, such as Pop Idol, Dancing with Stars, talk shows, etc. reaffirmed endlessly that fake breasts, lips like swolen labia, bottled tan, liposuction, fake everything .... was 'sexy'.

Women no longer wanted to be 'attractive' in appearance and personality. That wasn't enough. You had to be 'sexy' ... grossly, animalistically 'sexy'.

And the stunted bonsai men who controlled the mass media and who produced the tack posturing as 'entertainment' only knew one type of 'sexy' ... that which is gross and overstated, and in poor taste, and cheap and tacky. They sold it. Idiots without a clue bought it. Not all, thank God.

The public has been seduced by the purveyors of grossness. Sold by those for whom everything must be 'bigger' -- big hair, big gold, big mouths, big false teeth, big noise, big 'looka me', big claims, big lies, no taste, no discernment, no class little Napoleons with their stunted frames and stunted intellect. But, their mothers told them they were 'geniuses'. And that's the claim made by and on behalf of these filth-peddlers to this day.

Yes they used the media

Used it like a tool of destruction



Now it's up to people to take back their sense of judgement and give the message to the filth-peddlers in the only language those mommies-boys understand ... the slammed door and the 'no thanks, get out of my house'.

reply to post by calihan_12


The only people that are being warped to the point that they want to get plastic surgery, change their face, they are in my opinion the dumbest crop of humans, they only live for today, so they worship youth, superficial beauty, if what they worship is a passing fad they deserve what they get, so few people even question what truth is anymore, so few stop to meditate, all they care about is their new iphone, and following every trend known to man, I know a person like that, even attempting to have a conversation with someone like that is embarrassing, they know so little about the world it's insane, but it's their choice, and like the lemming they are, they will eventually jump off a cliff.

[edit on 8-8-2009 by Razimus]

Originally posted by Razimus
reply to post by calihan_12

 

The only people that are being warped to the point that they want to get plastic surgery, change their face, they are in my opinion the dumbest crop of humans, they only live for today, so they worship youth, superficial beauty, if what they worship is a passing fad they deserve what they get, so few people even question what truth is anymore, so few stop to meditate, all they care about is their new iphone, and following every trend known to man, I know a person like that, even attempting to have a conversation with someone like that is embarrassing, they know so little about the world it's insane, but it's their choice, and like the lemming they are, they will eventually jump off a cliff.

[edit on 8-8-2009 by Razimus]

You're proof that there are still those around whom the tools can't warp.

Good post

reply to post by chiron613


I agree with your post. I've given up TV as well and it's a very lonely journey now. I thoght I was awake before I quit watching TV but I was only partially aware of the total picture. The problem is though the world is in such a deep trance that I'm almost completely isolated now. It's a very weird place to be and only seems to be getting worse.

reply to post by calihan_12


In some ways! yes I agree!

But you have a natural beauty, so these things are easy for you to say!

I actually gave you S&F because you're very cute and have beautiful eyes!

Naah! kidding! - great post! - the media have more influence on people's lives han some wanna admit!


[edit on 9-8-2009 by Chevalerous]

reply to post by calihan_12



It's called free enterprise. If you don't like what the media is selling; start your own production company and promote your own aesthetic. There is still plenty of venture capital available for those not afraid to put forth the effort. Make your own movies, write your own scripts. If you have an idea how it should be.....

Stop whining and get to work!!

The same goes for you St Vaast....crybabys make me sick!



No rules, No Limits, No excuses!

S&F because it is a worthy topic

[edit on 9-8-2009 by whaaa]

reply to post by St Vaast


So... if I get this straight everything that's wrong with the media and Western society is down to the Joos?

I took a look at some of your other posts and this seems to be a common theme among them.

Just an observation