by Maia Chung
Is it me or is the world in a hurry to hate and negate...more than normal ?
Scroll through the web, your television, your newspapers and scramble the radio channels - and be bombarded by a plethora of negative views, news and lies, gossip, trauma and drama inducing coverage and commentary.
This is both from the producers of the content and consumers of the content. Life has been so evoluted that, as soon as the content is disseminated the consumer can feedback. And whoa are they feeding back!
The day's content dissemination has such pretties as -: "Why do 13 year old girls hate Selena Gomez?"
"Elin One Ups Tiger...Buys Bigger Mansion!"
I found this response to a video of Pastor Joyce Meyer , they take a piece of her video and show her talking with her hands, a very female thing and say she is showing the all seeing eye - a sign of the Illuminati.
So someone not in agreement with the "assessment" of the video posted this -"so....do I understand you right? Because this woman (Joyce Meyer) talks with her hands she is somehow demonic??? And the founder of the ASL (American Sign Language) is also satanic???? I wonder how the deaf community feels about that? Should they just not communicate at all because of certain signs that can be misconstrued as satanic? Here is a word for you......IGNORANCE!!!!!!".
Now this is some scary sheeit! If everything and everyone is evil, what then? What are we supposed to do. No one purporting the evil of everything and everyone has ever been able to answer me that part.
Also if the world will end come December 21-2012, so what? You either get saved and live for God or die. So what does knowing now do, unless it actually spurs us all to a higher purpose before we end?
Meanwhile, still on how the world loves a negative; did anybody get to see that video by that American kid Rebecca Black? She's 13.
The video came off, like a family trying to encourage their daughter who has a dream of singing, to me.
But twenty million comments after it was posted, the number of comments belittling the young girl was logged at 76 percent! This log was given by the American morning show Good Morning America.
Then in an interview on Good Morning America to discuss the wave of hate her video ignited, Black's lip quivers when she tells the interviewer, "the worst comment I saw was someone saying I should cut myself and die".
By the time her song had been heard by 24 million people, one popular gossip site carried a story that said something to the effect that; Rebecca Black plans to steal Justin Bieber away from Selena Gomez and if I am not mistaken wants to replace Demi Lovato, as Disney's number one star. DWL!
This sucks. Am I alone being so scared of of this venom, its everywhere.
One of lately come queens of being hated, Megan Fox released two movies last year Jonah Hex and Passion Play, the latter has been relegated to limited release; while the former is being panned by industry critics and everyone who has seen it to date who has access to the web.
Fox I gather is the anti-darling of everyone, because she says anything that comes to her head apparently, but check yourselves...who doesn't these days. I gather her greatest sin is being hateful, so she is hated. Wild right?
Isn't life already dark and disheartening that we people, or humankind could sorta try to lighten up, by not really being so harsh with one another. And not seeking to make everything in the world no matter how seemingly nice into shit?
And I know I am risking my street cred by saying these things. What street cred ha ha.
In another spin on the same negativity news rules idea, in the world of the modern day man the 'bashment' topic is king.
What is a bashment topic?
I find these as articulated in the popular media of Jamaica to be: crime, politics, the politics and the harm or lack thereof of skin bleaching, anything salacious, titillating and depressing. Anything that can spiral into the dramatic, nasty, uncouth - disgusting rules!
Raising a great kid, haven't seen any column inches on that in a while. How to save your marriage...yawn. Go to church more often...what you talking bout Willis?!
I am sure these are the topics many cite as the touchy feely things of this world. Or Soft News/Human Interest.
Discredited from the realm of "serious" or interesting.
Anything that has to do with caring, stopping harmful acts, promoting development and fair treatment you know the "human interest" stuff.
Now I have thought about this supposed, "human interest" factor a lot! It is one of the more moronic classifications I have ever come across.
Can someone tell me what in this world, exists now that is not of interest to humanity and cannot be defined as having a human interest component?
Or hasn't got its "interest" rooted in humanity?
Every topic can qualify as "human interest".
In journalism these bore fests are usually called "Soft News" and are usually assigned to women or gay men,
My informal definition of soft news is a story which ...
is not cool or front page worthy, like speaking of caring for the less fortunate, the disabled, the Autistic (tee hee), upgrading women's maternity clinics - the inconsequential less serious things that can make up a day - you know.
Think of Soft News, as very in tune with the rhetoric mouthed by beauty queen wanna-bes on stages, where we women are put to compete on the basis of our physicality and are deemed more or less worthy; as graded by people you have never seen before in most cases and will only see again if...wait for it: you look good!
To date I have not heard of a hetero-sexual beauty contest for men. It's not something I crave either to see.
If you don't care for my anecdotal spin on Soft News, or "Joy Reports",
the Free Online Dictionary.com gave this definition, - "n.
News, as in a newspaper or television report, that does not deal with formal or serious topics and events".
The American Heritage Dictionary- defines human interest/Soft News as: "presenting people and their problems, concerns, or achievements in a way that arouses interest or sympathy: a human-interest story'".
Why does any topic that involves the things that preoccupy human beings have to be presented in a sympathetic fashion? Shouldn't we have sympathy to anything that concerns the human race? That seems logical.
Example of Soft News, " Elderly Woman's Cat Stuck in a Tree". Now it is pretty amazing to see that we are so hardened to everything, that the plight of a senior citizen, possibly abandoned by all the children she raised, turning to animals for companionship at a trying stage of life is deemed...wait for it...not serious! It's serious to her. But she ain't human right coz she old, so its not even human interest.
With a common place journalistic tendency being, to treat Soft News and Human Interest as very similar, you find media houses anywhere in the world; that specialise in news and current affairs specialised source - pretty much feeling honour bound, to carry topics only which meet what is termed a Hard News criteria.
And you guessed it Hard News is the inverse of Soft News.
That being defined commonly as - " news that deals with serious topics or events", as stated by Dictionary.com. Sadly this seems to be heavily confused nowadays with what I cited early, negative, salacious, vindictive seeming. Maternity health can be serious, write about it people - I promise.
Listen to many of your more credible news houses, how they always make things seem, like a drama filled misery. I am a journalist by trade and it always used to bug me, when people used to criticise my craft. Always dissing, saying journalists can't carry anything positive?
I am wondering of it is the influence of this ongoing, spinning of information; that requires drama and negativity to make it serious, as dictated by the news trade - that has led the wider society to almost crave the bad tidings. Bad tidings that have become the stock in trade, for every wanna be "critic" of the modern age. Who feels, "have opinion that is negative...does matter".
Isn't every component of current existence valid enough to hold our interest without a maudlin spin being placed on its dissection.
Does every situation no matter how innocuous, (see Rebecca Black's Friday video courtesy of Ark Music via You Tube.com) deserving of this malicious outpouring that is everywhere!
Am I even now undermining my own piece by being so bitter?
But I digress lol.
I read with interest the weekly utterings of our Jamaican press/media commentators, dealing with the unending stream of: who is a criminal, who uses the Gaza as a metaphor for a deeper truth...lawd have mercy!
Where are the tomes about the need for man to assert the now almost absent/extinct virtues?
The kindness to your neighbour?
The care for your fellow man?
The need for civility among our people in daily normal interactions with each other; to re-establish a positive values system ...that may help us ride out some of the extremely rough spots in this modern Jamaica.
A Jamaica, that is so riddled with corruption and violence and social bankruptcies... that I may have to roll out if it gets any more untenable.
A country that is bomb rushing nastiness in a wholesale fashion, like there is a yard sale on in the universe - bargain prices abounding for that disgusting commodity.
Its appalling to me how much column inches are given to deeply profound issues like, "she seh she wan' hav a pretty son" - quote from a Kartel song. Who gives if people want to write about stupid things, let's not fuel the fire by writing more about it!
This nation and sadly the wider world seem to be out to create the perfect space for garbage, negativity and hatred ...apparently for no reason. Oh my bad these are agents of the Devil or the Illuminati right.
Just look around your sources of information and tell me how much you can find on something uplifting.
Something which incorporates as many essential informative and properly ventilated topics; that will feed the development of those who have access to that source.
How many of the CXC aged students know how to apply to the colleges in this country? And the colleges in other countries where they are welcome?What are the appropriate methods to start building a resume while in still in high school? What are the new options in the professions market?
If you run through the columnists of our land most of them are lettered professionals who have a wealth of experience to share, in many areas that could act as a mentor-ship tool to a youth populace sinking deeper and deeper into a morass of not being taught any better; by anyone...anywhere.
Even as these writers and radio and television commentators - address the hard news issues (read hating of some kind), they could do well with dedicating a few of their columns, (oh gosh even one) out of their weekly allotted schedule to; shedding light on some of the developmental opportunities needed to make a better Jamaica.
And we the 'Constant Content Consumer' - why do we continuously click on the sites, or buy the magazines or change the channel to the content that is headlined: "Justin Bieber Confesses He's Gay" or "Baby Gets Eaten by Lion Caught on Tape" or in one lately classic I saw recently: "Michael Jackson Isn't Really Dead click here and decide!"
What is inside of us, that we want to see the humiliation of others and when we do, take pleasure in making it worse not only by consuming it, like some Vampires of sorrow - but in many instances passing it on to any and everybody.
Do we feel driven to further ensure that the world is just that much worse off, through anything we can do to help; and that means sending the smut a little further.
I really hope that I am reading the levels wrong and that its not that people are seemingly obsessed with sheeit! I hope I am clicking on the wrong sites, picking up the wrong editions of papers, I hope I am reading the thing wrong.
And I also hope that people were not attracted to reading this piece because they thought I was on a diatribe about my Haters. Gotcha! :)
maiachung@yahoo.com
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