Reality TV - Opium for the masses, or just another facebook page?

You may have heard references in the past from conspiracy theorists about this thing or that thing that have been served up for public consumption by 'the establishment' to keep the masses under control by drip feeding them brain numbing drugs (in the added fluoride don't you know), sub conscious messages or whatever the latest pseudoconspiracy.com site says is the flavour of the month for mind control.
For your consideration, tonights offering from (most likely) your local commercial TV channel which may be centered around any number of the following:

1. Cooking
2. Dancing
3. Singing or other 'entertainment'
4. Some kind of strange matchmaking or dating arrangement
5. Renovating a condemned building or series of rooms
6. Losing weight
7. Locking several people into a remote location or somehow isolated house
8. So called 'celebrities' that you may never have heard of
9. Any combination of the above

For example - you may be about to experience the ultimate in televisual entertainment as a 'celebrity' you have never heard of, in their aim to lose weight, waltzes across your screen on ice (the drug most likely, but possibly frozen water) whilst singing and tossing a pancake, looking for a wife and all presented for your delectation from a remote jungle location.

What has happened to imagination?

I heard a similar phenomenon years ago at the time when commercial radio started to become franchised. A song you hadn't heard before would be played several times during a short period via a number of commercial radio stations, because it appeared on a list that decreed it would sell product X. It was the beginning of marketing overtaking taste.

Now we see this formulaic TV production because it appeals to the masses and of course - the advertisers.

I get to meet a lot of people during my working day, and have exposure to social media in my free time. I get to overhear a lot of conversations within the workplace and via facebook about how someone 'had been so good - I was brought to tears' or how 'so and so was really good, did you see the programme last night - you must see the next episode' (or EP as they are now called as we are all so busy we can't find the time to say the full word any more).

On the odd occasion when I have been sucked in to a colleagues enthusiasm, and actually consented to watch a segment of one of these programmes, I have been totally underwhelmed by the thing or person they referred to, which has often been repeated ad nauseum in the trailers aired in every ad break, for next weeks thrilling installment.

I don't know why this stuff doesn't appeal to me. I feel joy. I cry. I laugh.

I refuse to be manipulated by a programme editted for maximum reaction with a musical soundtrack designed to provoke some kind of emotional response in a world where we are all so numb we have to be spoon fed stuff like this to tell us how to feel.

If reality TV of this kind isn't presented that way, then it's often a modern equivalent of a freakshow.

In a world where we have to respectfully say RIP to every poor bugger that has died whether we've heard of  them or not, and public outpourings of grief have become the current style since the death and subsequent funeral of Princess Diana, I think people should show a bit more respect to themselves and not feel that they have to follow the crowd when it comes to their emotional responses.

Read a book or listen to some mind expanding music, and decide for yourself when to laugh, cry or whatever rather than being manipulated into doing it by some poor 'so called' entertainment. Go to the pub. Get involved in your own life, instead of being told how to think and react by others.

I guess this is yet again an example of my cynical nature. Ben Elton has written a couple of good books based on similar ideas showing how people let themselves get manipulated into the cult of so called celebrity. Often people who are famous for having no apparent talent other than self publicity and so forth.

I don't know if there is a link here or not, but our parents used to deal with problems by tackling them in whichever way they thought would be most effective. Small problems were not blown up out of all proportion because they didn't know the appropriate emotional responses to a situation - they had never been led by media - just peer group and family. A drama would not be turned into a crisis.

While I'm on the subject, how long until the next social media development, where by using our mobile phone with integrated camera we can all be online, all of the time, sharing our highs and lows with others who only really want to show you their highs and lows.

I'll sign off now by quoting one of my facebook friends status updates:  "May your life one day be as awesome as you pretend it is on Facebook....."