<aside> 💭 Prompt: For most of us, media plays a meaningful role in how we make sense of everything. We have all sorts of options on what to consume, each helping us orient in different ways. Lately, it feels like we're captain hog at the media buffet.
Write about the forms of media you're enjoying or any you've put aside. Changes you've noticed in how you're consuming, a voice that's been particularly potent, fear you're running out of episodes of Alf.
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By Dan Kricke
I don't claim to be the first person to say this, but I am firmly in team "There's WAY too much [insert media type here.] When I was a wee lad, there were like three good TV shows, around a dozen worthwhile movies a year, and a half dozen good games to play each year. And music...you couldn't really afford to get more than a handful of CDs a year anyway, so it didn't matter too much.
Now, just keeping up with EvErYtHiNg is practically a job in itself. My DVR is bursting with tv shows I'd like to watch, my backlog of books, video games, and podcasts grows every single day. And I have pretty much every single record in history at my fingertips whenever I want it.
The best thing about these COVID Times has been getting to dig into the backlog and clear some of these media out. I just want to sit around and catch up, pretty much. I've been working on clearing out old shows on the DVR, primarily Queen Sugar, a show about a family of folks in Louisiana that take over their dead grandfather's sugar cane farm. I somehow got three seasons behind it even though I liked it very much once upon a time! So that has been fun.
But I have also definitely made changes to my media diet. I am a psycho Twitter user. I like it for a few things, but mostly for being connected to news as it happens as well as the absurd comedians constantly showcasing dumb bits. In early March,I was lapping up every COVID related story that hit my feed. But as the situation became more critical in my backyard, I've abstained from diving deep on the subject. As someone who is immunocompromised, I don't really want to read a ton about the 20-year-olds in perfect health who are dying from this thing. And reading daily about how the president ignored it for months on end just makes my brain crazy. So I've dialed hard off news for a bit.
Back to Alf for now...
By Angela Black
That title doesn't really apply much — I just wanted to use it, okay? I also played with 'the medium is the message' and remembered reading The Age of Missing Information by Bill McKibben in college. It was one of those books that made me realize we should be teaching Media Studies much earlier in life. Same goes for understanding money. We take in so much media before we ever stop to think, what is this all doing to me? Anyway, I was a die-hard fiction fan up to that point and it opened my eyes that MAYBE non-fiction reads were worthwhile too. Who knew?!
As for my habits, I have noticed that I don't feel like watching TV. We have netflix, hulu and prime and no cable TV services. Maybe it's because I watched everything I'm gonna already, but I just scroll and scroll through options and then turn it off. My TV screen time is mostly Animal Crossing which I do enjoy for long stretches because it's nice there.
The rest of the time I use my phone to look at Instagram (both the feed and Explore) and Twitter. As a person who needs to know what's going on, I tend to look at the trending topics a lot. It's mostly real dumb. I said that when we moved here I was going to remove it from my phone and just enjoy my small local life. But that was when I thought I'd be busy roaming the central coast looking for whale friends. It does help bubble up info that I've used to help keep us safe, so it stays for now.
Having said that, my rule for what I take in these days is, what if I just believe it by half? The information changes on the regular so I don't fully buy in or dismiss it outright. When I saw toilet paper in the CVS in LA, I bought a pack. They still had Lysol Wipes so I bought two. Same goes for covering my face and washing all of my groceries. Do I need to do it? Can't say one hundo pee but if I believe it by half... then survey says do it. It doesn't mean I'm out here hoarding and building a lead bunker but simply letting a little extra caution guide my way. The same goes for media intake.
As for entertainment, I still do listen to a podcast or two. My top is Whale Nerds though I feel for them not being out on the water. They are two marine biologists and a wildlife photographer who normally natter on about their weekly sightings out on Monterey Bay. It's fun. Outside of that, my latest way to amuse myself is listening to new house sounds. Right now it's windy and pouring rain. Oh and, there are still things to unpack. Yesterday I put on a mix starting with Tears for Fears and let the music of my time pave the way. It's all my knickknacks so I'm having fun figuring out homes for all of my planters, vases and ceramic whatnots.