Spontenaity and Our Media (American)

[NeverAmI]

In children's shows, we understand that repitition assists learning. Children love to watch the same thing repeatedly, it has shown that doing so is vital to learning.

I was thinking about our media, how it is so spontaneous and random. Our culture in general, as it moves more towards disposable objects, seems to infer a symbological disposability in our lives. If one is shown enough times that spontenaity is good, or even essential, what does that do to our ability to learn?

Do we abhor repitition because our cultural influence shows that it is better to move forward, to constantly change, to adapt, and to ugprade?

How detrimental is the consumerism in America to the average person's ability to learn? If we learn that being 'stagnent' or not being stimulated enough is detrimental, and as such we see the repitition needed in order to learn as too inefficient a process, do some then infer that learning is bad?

To what extent do you think consumerism has affected our symbological state of mind? Does this insatible need upgrade, adapt, move forward, strive for something in a material sense end up overflowing into our understanding of symbological relevence?

Does the consumerism overlap into our lives to the point where, if a human relationship is not constantly adapting, changing, moving forward, then it must be upgraded?

 

[Moxie]

To your last question, yes, sort of, but to the rest I'm not sure.

I do think we have a throw-away standard in our society, but I'm not sure it's consumerism based. I'm not sure that it's not either, but that being said, we've learned, somehow to want more, to expect better, and that nothing we currently have is good enough. Whether that's the sole fault of consumerism, I'd hesitate to agree with, although I do believe it's a contributing factor.

I don't think our media is all that spontaneous or random either. In fact, I think it's the same old stuff recycled in different ways. And I don't agree that we hate repetition, because media is mostly repetitive to me. We have the same characters recycled over and over again in different ways. The loner guy, who is smart but kind of antisocial, the snarky, sexy woman, who seems unavailable, but is she? The cougar or MILF, the vampire, really stupid guy who ends up doing or saying smart things accidentally, the fat or ugly girl who is secretly beautiful. I don't know, we have an awful lot of repetitive stereotypes.

That being said, consumerism has brought out the worst and the best in people. We try to buy wealth, health, beauty, sex appeal, status symbols, and anything else that society tells us that we need in order to be 'successful.' But it's also brought out good things - the drive to not settle for a job or lifestyle that makes you unhappy, the urge to be the healthiest person you can be, the willingness to go the extra mile to take care of your loved ones. Not black and white, but shades of gray.

 

[Ecton]

Wow, that's an interesting question.

My thoughts are, fittingly, a little scattered on this one. I'll do my best to give my viewpoint but it is a little rough around the edges... I feel like repetition is still there, but it has been reduced to memes and sound-bytes. The 'chaos' of continuous media serves to superficially mask the INCREASING repetition.

In the case of memes, the same memes are produced over and over again such as the following:

Sex scandal, Love to hate celebrity, Stay tuned for the scary thing that affects your health, Political Scandal, The Weather is more EXTREME than ever before, Murdered BLOND girl, Technology to Make you Whole, Local Student Inspires Hope, etc, etc

These meme repetitions are a form of learning reinforcement and begin to affect our behavior in many ways, one of which happens to be to watch more news on TV. In the end, apparent chaos is used as a means to support increasing levels of consuming repetitively the same things. In order to keep gulping it down, the INTENSITY is turned up.

I also feel that political speech in the news is loaded with highly repeated sound bytes. In the US, the two headed dragon party (Republicodemocrat) makes sure to have each head repeat the same sound bytes over and over as a collective group to try to establish the arguments of its supportive constituency (reinforcement) and counterargument protection (inoculation). That is also a form of learning through repetition.

That's just my take and I'm completely winging it.

 

[Sloe Djinn]

You know, the way I see it we have to take into consideration....OMFG ZOOBOOMAFOO IS ON!!! ZOOBOOMAFOO!!! Do you have any bagel bites!? Tony Hawk eats them and he's cool! What were we talking about? Oh, right. [sarcasm] God, this question is sooo yesterday. [/sarcasm]

 

[Ecton]

To reiterate Moxie's point:

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFicqklGuB0&feature=player_embedded"]YouTube- Academy Award Winning Movie Trailer[/ame]