nichole 1-17

The idea came up in class today that everything is here to scare us (remember the class examples: hand sanitizer, bird flu epidemic and Doc Rog’s parentals watching the nightly news and being forever traumatized!). We learned in CMC 100 that we see 5000 advertisements daily; a fair amount of which scare consumers into thinking that if they do not buy a certain product then (you’ll contract this disease, you will be mugged and in all likelihood, you will DIE if you don’t get product X today). I suppose, then, that this doesn’t really surprise me that people are so scared all the time in our society.

Going back to one of the examples above regarding protection against getting mugged, another point came up in class about the current theory that newer always equates to better. Newer technologies allow us more protection from the things that the media has made us fear. If you buy this new BMW, higher security comes standard so you can reduce some of your fears, which the media has ingrained in our minds, WHILE at the same time get the fabulous new car (and we all know that newer is better).

It is kind of wild that the media has shaped us so drastically. We are on this never ending circle beginning with fear (a result of news stories regarding murders and new research that somehow seems to contradict what has previously been said (does splenda cause cancer or not??) ) . Since people fear so much, new (and therefore better) products are made to protect against disease or robbery etc. AND SO, we are now stuck on this never ending circle compliments of the media age. Naturally, because of the new way in which we live, we can see that the reality that we live in is so skewed from what it used to be (Doc. Rog)