Every minute some forty-eight odd hours of video are uploaded to Youtube.
Every minute, hundreds of songs are written.
Ever minute, thousands of blog posts are posted.
Every minute, hundreds of thousands pictures are taken.
Every minute, millions of thoughts, ideas and opinions are exchanged.
With this in mind - how come we constantly see the same reruns on television, hear the same songs on the radio, read the same old recycled opinions in the newspapers, see the same stock photos everywhere, and on the whole fail to be confronted with all those things that were not always-already the default mode of the mainstream media?
How do the radio stations get away with playing the same playlist over and over and over again? How on earth does the mainstream media get away with limiting their repertoires to the ridiculously narrow array of repeated repeated repeated? How is it possible to maintain this information underload?
I do not understand this.
Originally published June 7, 2012
It's easy; we are people of habits. Most of us likes to do the same things every day, listen to the same music everyday. Or eat the same thing everyday ;) In variations yes, but with the same theme.
ReplyDeleteThe mind gets exhausted from doing new things all the time. Even the nomads don't move every night. They stay as long as they can before they move.
If every time you woke up you knew you had today to eat yet another kind of meal, listen to yet another kind of music, meeting yet another new person you'd be terrified. We all would.
And in times with more instability people will tend to want their habits even more. This is why you see refugees wanting their old habits, meeting people from the same country and culture, keeping their old religions and so on. They try to recreate what they were used to.