| Did Taylor Swift join Travis Kelce for his birthday yesterday? Will she attend his game this weekend? Heinz has created a custom sauce in response to a viral photo of her at a recent Chiefs game. Their friends say she is “really enjoying getting to know Travis” and that he is “completely smitten” with her.
Now you know everything I know and don’t know about this “pop cultural moment,” as the NFL describes the couple and its coverage of their reported romance.
Now consider these headlines on this morning’s Wall Street Journal website: “Violent Crime Is Surging in DC”; “US Jet Shoots Down Turkish Drone Over Syria”; “GM Has at Least 20 Million Vehicles With Potentially Dangerous Air-Bag Parts”; “Army Plans Major Cuts to Special-Operations Forces”; “China Is Becoming a No-Go Zone for Executives.”
Which story would you rather think about today?
A world that is all about us
In Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business, the American writer and educator Neil Postman warned that television was transforming our engagement with the world from one in which we process information actively to one in which we experience entertainment passively. He argued that a particular medium can only communicate a particular kind of idea. Print is essential for rational inquiry and argument, in his view, while televised images are most useful for evoking emotions and entertaining viewers.
He pointed to television news as an example, with its use of theme music, journalistic actors, and highly produced images and videos. The result for viewers is less that they are informed than that they are entertained and thus susceptible to consuming what is being advertised, which is the real goal of such programming.
Postman issued his critique in 1985. What would he say of a culture dominated by social media and TikTok videos? |
