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The Media Could Destroy Us All

An ever decreasing circle of falling attention spans and meaningless content is potentially eroding everything.

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I’m consistently disappointed by modern media, as I’m sure you are too, in many ways that are far too numerous to mention in a single article.

Their coverage of everything from the ridiculous sham of modern day politics to their now classically dumbed down clickbait sensationalism of science often makes me clench by teeth and struggle to avoid punching the screen in front of me.

Of course, it’s difficult to work against this properly, as attempting to openly debate some anti-something-or-other True Believer on social media is like wrestling the proverbial pig in mud¹ and taking on media institutions regarding their lacklustre faux-compelling coverage is an exercise in abject futility. You’re just one voice in the wilderness.

The Great Goujon Machine

Media, for the most part, has become an exercise in the aggressive boiling down and subsequent concentration of news stories and events into the smallest, most easily digestible, yet most controversial bite-sized pieces possible.

Consume, don’t think.
We’ll tell you how to react and then keep you coming back for more.

Stories themselves have become the bland mashed-together grey meat akin to an expanse of abused and soulless chickens fed en masse into the grist mill of the great goujon machine, and spat out as bite sized pieces of cheap tasteless unsatisfying comfort food.

It’s all too easy to get sucked in, to stand with torpor, our mouths open and ready for the globs of flavourless information fed to us by the machine content houses of misery and contention.

The great competing goujon machines of [mass|online|social] media always have their alluring packaging, their attractive links and buttons to click, so that there’s always another chunk of worthless content for your to consume.

Pavlov would have been so proud.

A Propagation of the Meaningless

Newspapers have shrunk both in literal size and in actual circulation and have been replaced by quick-click websites whose real…

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Dr Stuart Woolley
Dr Stuart Woolley

Written by Dr Stuart Woolley

Worries about the future. Way too involved with software. Likes coffee, maths, and . Would prefer to be in academia. SpaceX, X, and Overwatch fan.

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