Gephyrophillia | Not An Update #10

Originally Posted on 03/03/2009 by Jeff Harris

This is not an update.

It's a slight deviation that discusses the arrogance of the media towards people that use other media. Mostly, the arrogant parties are those who are on television, the radio, and in these strange, three-dimensional things with printed type and pictures known as newspapers and magazines.

I'll admit it. I Twitter. I got my account shortly before my computer died and recently reactivated it because I wanted to find and reconnect with old friends. It's fun. But there are some that there are some that question the need for such technology. News readers in New York and radio entertainers from Florida are confused and terrified that Twitter is going to somehow replace them. Big Media types, especially those still thinking the medium should continue to party like it's 1959, are often confused and terrified by things they didn't create or understand.

The internet confounds them. DVRs confuses them. Broadband baffles them. Digital television perplexes them (see, here's the thing about the DTV delay you didn't know about; it was Big Media, not the government, who wanted the delay because they had no idea what to do with the vast channel space the industry is about to get as a gift of sorts).

So, what does Big Media do to things they don't understand? They demonize them and those that use them. Remember Napster? I barely do. You Tube is still seen as the boogieman in diapers, though it's folks like Viacom left crapping their pants not because of what they ARE doing, but rather what they COULD be doing. Apparently, there are soothsayers at Redstone Manor forecasting the future for them.

Now Twitter is this big bugaboo that Big Media is fearful of. Why? It's little bits of information limited to 140 characters. Nothing really important in life can really be expressed in 140 characters. Okay, that's not true. "War is over, and we won" is pretty important, especially if it came from this guy's account. Still, it's nothing that should scare, frustrate, or intimidate folks that own networks, newspapers, and magazines. It's just people being people.

Big Media feel the same way about blogs, vlogs, and plain old webpages dedicated to an assortment of topics. Those that do a good job in promoting their wares, they'll support. Those that criticize them are often blacked out, boycotted, or banned from the company servers. There are plenty of sites that criticize companies, and employees of those companies are very unlikely to read them at their job. I know that first hand. A lot of people criticize the media on a daily basis, often presenting viewpoints that aren't readily availiable in a newspaper, a magazine, on the radio, and on television. Like, for example, Time Warner is the most poorly-ran entertainment company on the planet. You won't see Fortune, Time, or CNN talking about that. TMZ, maybe, but in a very snarky yet overt way. I can present facts that led me to that conclusion, but I can only get my message out to a select few, namely those that find it either by word of mouth or by chance, maybe somebody looking for big pictures of the cast of One Piece.

But then again, who am I? I'm not connected to a media oligarchy nor a political party. I'm not out there able to express my views to a mass cable television audience. Just to the folks that happen to stumble across my site looking for Naruto pictures or something (but I thank you just the same). I'm not talking about things in a rectangular box shouting with an obnoxious host or mugging in front of the camera mocking those in power or think they're in power. I could do that with a few keystrokes. I think what it is that annoys newspaper and magazine columnists across the nation, news readers (real and fake) in New York, and loud-mouthed, backwards-thinking louts polluting the radio waves is that, overall, a lot of people are reading blogs, Twitters, and overrated sites like mine without compensation and do it because we do have a passion about life and the world around us. It is hard to make a point with 140 characters, but radio, television, and print media gives us a myriad of characters that we have to deal with, but they're becoming to the point of irrelevence at an alarming rate, and that scares them. Not us, mind you. The people are taking back the media.

This is not an update. This is a motion for everyone to take back the media. Don't let the acts of a select few discourage you from expressing your views. Fight back. Demand change. Insert buzz phrase here.

Jeff Harris,
Webmaster, The X Bridge.