I Hate Network News

One of my biggest pet peeves is when people (generally older) see something on the news or on the "world wide web" and try and generalize how terrible the world is turning into. Typically, when I hear someone try and claim that, I make two critical judgments about them. 1) They are not very well educated about the history of the world and 2) it's probably not worth my time to try and convince them otherwise. When you look throughout the history of Earth, today undoubtedly is the best time to live in. Granted, maybe certain things have gotten worse. The glaciers probably aren't the most thrilled with humans at the moment, and, yes, certain diseases such as cancer have become a much scarier threat. Overall though, I'd much rather live through the unintentional consequences of human development such as global warming and child obesity than having to worry about being shipped off to Germany to fight Nazis or wondering whether the Russians are going to end all human life. However, the real issues such as global warming typically aren't even the examples people claim when they argue the world is going to the dogs. They wouldn't use the ozone layer or fat middle school kids as examples, because those are actually their fault. The baby boomers. The real problems that these highly evolved individuals point towards are the really hard hitting issues that shape our world's future. Things such as kids playing too many video games and random ghetto kids attacking people for gang initiation. And what's to blame for them believing this. 24-hr news.

Yes. News networks love to blow anything and everything out of proportion. It's what they strive for, because they know that there are millions of uneducated people that will gobble it up like a fat kid on the last cupcake. The news is no longer about focusing on the important issues or making people question relevant topics that need explaining. It's about ratings and views. Granted, some networks and news sources are better than others, but the majority of them are interchangeably useless. News will latch onto absolutely anything and rant about it for weeks and weeks making it seem like judgment day. Why?? Because most people don't care and it gets them ratings. Do these networks really care about this random Malaysian flight that went missing? No. They couldn't care less, but there's nothing else interesting enough to the average layman for them to change the subject. There's no big war to talk about, Justin Bieber has kept out of the lime lite, and the controversy with Russia and Ukraine is too complicated for them to want to delve into that mess. Explaining a celebrity DUI or a disappearing plane is much simpler. My favorites are when they latch onto whatever troubling teenage fad is going on at the moment.

A few months ago, when the whole story broke about the whole "knockout game", everyone over the age of 40 were losing their minds over it. Here's a video if you don't know what I'm talking about.

I actually even got a phone call from my mom asking if I've ever heard of anyone playing this stupid game and warning me to be careful. No Mom. People I know don't play that because I don't live in Detroit or Compton, or it's the fact that it is not a normal activity. The fact of the matter is that anything that being reported on the news is not normal or regular enough to worry about. If it was worth stressing over, it wouldn't be on the news. I guarantee it. Why can't the news networks just do something constructive by maybe trying to figure out the cause of the activity such as an spike in urban poverty and make that the focal point of the discussion? Maybe because that's just too complicated of a question to try and answer. Fear mongering is much less complicated.

The fact of the matter, and the reason for this long winded post, is that with the structure of today's news networks being 24-hrs a day, you have to take the stories that talk about with a grain of salt. Think of it as if you're sitting in a 12 hour interview for a job where everything you say matters. At some point, you're gonna run out of things to say and just latch onto anything you can say to keep appearing interesting, and only the interviewers that are still conscious are going to call you on your bullshit.