Good News and Bad News

Today in class, after watching an episode of ABC News, the story that I though was more serious and well-researched was the one about the trained terrorists that snuck into the United States by pretending to be Iraqi refugees. This news is not only serious because of the danger behind the topic, but you can tell it was taken seriously by the news cast. In Klosterman's reading, he said that a lot of the time, the stories the news anchors tell is a matter of who calls them back first or who is willing to make a comment. If nothing is given, then they sort of just have to bull-shit their story and milk whatever they can out of whatever information they have to fill the time slot and still get some news out to the public. I do not believe that was the case with this story, though, because they had many clips showing different people commenting on the subject, which means they got a lot of different points of view. Also, a lot of the people who were interviewed were saying the same things, so this helped make what they were portraying to the public seem more likely to be true. On the other hand, a story that didn't seem as well-covered as this one is that of the 85 year old war veteran who was kidnapped when merely sight-seeing in Korea. The reason this story seems sort of "fluffy", as Klosterman would suggest, is because there wasn't a single interview shown by anyone who directly saw what happened, and just generally not very much information on the subject. One of the news anchor's said, "We all know one thing, he sure is the talk of his retirement home." Since this comment seems pretty irrelevant to anything the public would really be concerned about, it seemed as though the anchor was just trying to fill the time slot for this story by adding something...anything. I definitely will be looking more closely when I get my news for this kind of "fluff" and make sure it comes with a variety of perspectives and some type of notable attempt at bringing forth as much accurate information as possible.

What Defines the Millenial Generation

The Millennial generation, like any, has its good traits and its not-so-good traits. One big example of the not-so-good traits might be that, since technology is so prevalent in every aspect of our lives, we are somewhat technology obsessed. People our constantly posting pictures or commenting about their lives on social networking sites and the majority of these posts are things that other people really either have no business in knowing or don’t want to know. Such things are like: where you are at right at this moment, what you ate for dinner, that you are mad at someone, and so on and so forth.  Now days, people almost obsess over keeping up with their latest dramas or news on these social networking sites and can often lose touch with things in the real world that really matter. Although this example is very important and is seen happening to kids, teens, and adults just about everywhere, I don’t think it is what defines the Millennial Generation. I think a major event that would define the Millennial generation, which just so happens to be one which harbors a “good trait” would be the election of our first ever black president, Barack Obama. Although some people don’t necessarily agree that he is even a good president, I think his election was a defining moment for our generation because it shows the progression of acceptance of diversity in this country and how much we have grown in this sense. Now, not only are people more accepting to racial diversity, but diversity in sex (like at the work place), mental\physical abilities, and romantic partnership as well. This will be a general good for our future because hopefully it will help lead to equality and acceptance amongst all people in future generations, and help reduce a lot of the arguments and fighting that still occur amongst the minority of people who still haven’t caught on to the change.

I think the major point Klosterman is trying to make by saying that real people are starting to act like the archetypes they see on television is that people are becoming one dimensional by watching television shows like The Real World and expecting those characters to be one dimensional as well; that is: not having anything unique about them to set them apart from others and conforming to a norm. I think this is a very strong idea because it is true. Anyone who would actually believe that the people on this show didn’t have anything deeper to their personalities other than being the “struggling-to-be-accepted black guy” or the “gay guy who likes to talk about being gay,” etc, would be just as one dimensional as these characters are forced to be…and yet we still watch them. It almost demeans our intelligence to be entertained by such ridiculously simple means, especially when these patterns of character personalities are repeated season to season. Like drones, we watch and watch and don’t even question why there is always a drunk guy, a preppy girl, a nerd, a muscle man, and a misfit in many of the shows we watch, who never seem to embody any other character traits besides  what’s stereotypical of these archetypes. Are we not complex enough ourselves to be entertained with complexity? As we follow shows like The Real World and become obsessive fans of something just to be in the know of something popular, are we not conforming to an archetype as well?