The personification of the media

[riddler 0]

This is my third recession as an adult. It's always the same - the media starts talking about a recession about a year before it happens. After a while, people start to believe them, and it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. Then after the media gripes about the recession for a bit, they start hyping a recovery. It takes about a year or two, then people start to believe there's a recovery, and the economy gets better.

Today, I saw the following headline on CNN's website (see attachment). I think a better title might have been "You're not buying recovery talk, are you?" My first response was "not really".

I feel like I want to name the media. Maybe Joe Media, or something, because it seems more and more like he's talking to me, and I want to talk back to him. I expect future headlines to read something like this:

"Hey, Riddler, there's a recession coming, you know?"
"Remember that recession thingy I mentioned earlier? You may want to review your 401K"
"Are you listening?"
"That giant sucking sound. That's your lifesavings being converted to Renminbi."
"Well, we're kind of in the thick of it now, let's kick back and play some video games."
"It's really bad, but hey, the government might bail us out. Let's go to the bar and get a drink."
"Did you see all the new job postings on Craigslist? Things might be getting better."
"Hey, you might want to consider getting out of bed before 10 AM, because the mortgage company keeps calling. Try to look busy."
"Things are definitely looking up."

Ad infinitum.

Trapped on the surface of a sphere. XKCD

[quade 4]

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After a while, people start to believe them, and it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy.

Correlation does not equal causation.

"The Media" talks about it because it's their job. If in your original post you took the word "recession" and substituted "war" or "election" you'd find the exact same correlation in them talking about the event, but I seriously doubt you'd be able to make anywhere near the same conclusion.

Unless, of course, you were some right-wing whack job that just wanted to blame "The Media" for everything anyway.

quade -
The World's Most Boring Skydiver

[billvon 3,111]

Another term for this is "echo chamber" - a system where a meme gets bounced back and forth so much that it takes on a life of its own, and the media reports on the echo of that meme, not what caused it or what its effects will be.

>Maybe Joe Media, or something, because it seems more and more
>like he's talking to me, and I want to talk back to him.

That would be mischaracterizing the media, I think. That would imply a singular opinion, desired result etc. The media is something of a hive mind; it's made up of thousands of people, with their own biases, skills and viewpoints, connecting with other people in the media. Jack Cafferty alone has no more influence than Sean Hannity alone - but together with everyone else in media, they send an aggregate message out to the world at large.

This power is very attractive to political operatives, and thus "playing the media" becomes one of the most important parts of politics nowadays. You see it today with the "death board" stuff. There is no better political success than for a deather to get on the front page of CNN, and they will do anything to achieve it.

You also have the viewers, who are the _real_ controls. They control the money, and thus there's an evolution of sorts; the outlets that don't give people what they want wither away after a while. Which is why you see more about Michael Jackson than about supercollider research (even though in the long run there's no question about which is more important to humanity.)

So you have people trying really hard to game an entity that has no central intelligence, just a general purpose that it tends to try to accomplish. It leads to some very odd behavior at times.

[ErricoMalatesta 0]

Naive Quade and Billvon.

Don't you realise it wasn't a massive stumble and almost crash of the global economic order but rather collective negative thinking by the domestic US media.

[billvon 3,111]

>Don't you realise it wasn't a massive stumble and almost crash of
>the global economic order but rather collective negative thinking by the
>domestic US media.

That may well be a part of it. But it's an emergent behavior, not a deterministic one.

[quade 4]

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Naive Quade and Billvon.

Don't you realise it wasn't a massive stumble and almost crash of the global economic order but rather collective negative thinking by the domestic US media.

No it wasn't. It was some greedy fucks that created bogus financial instruments that encouraged more greedy fucks to make loans to people that couldn't support them. In turn, other greedy fucks bet money that their fellow greedy fucks would be around to pay them if any one of them got too greedy to support the system. In a world wide circle jerk of greed, it was only a matter of time before it fell apart.

It was a chain of events that had nothing to do with "The Media" at all.

quade -
The World's Most Boring Skydiver

[ErricoMalatesta 0]

I know both of you didn't just miss the underlying tone of that.

[billvon 3,111]

> In a world wide circle jerk of greed, it was only a matter of time before it fell apart.

While I agree that the system was pretty much a mess when it collapsed, the media was one of the factors that modulated when it fell apart. Had no one known about it, there would not have been people as many people selling their MBS'es, and the whole thing could have floated for much longer. It may have even landed more softly.

It is ironic that some of the more prosperous times in our country were based on similar bubbles. The most successful bubble of all is a bubble that gets big enough to float a lot of people's boats, but never so big that it spooks investors or collapses under its own weight. (To put it in more prosaic investment terms, that investment in the instrument creating the bubble never reaches the "greatest fool.")

[quade 4]

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I know both of you didn't just miss the underlying tone of that.

OIC, you were trying to be ironic.

We really need a tag for that.

quade -
The World's Most Boring Skydiver

[riddler 0]

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You also have the viewers, who are the _real_ controls.

Yeah, I guess that's the part I was thinking of primarily. It seems that new media formats will determine which stories are read based on who clicks on a headline. The short, attention-getting headlines will be the most read, most profitable and most prolific. So I'm experimenting with ways to combine news stories with information that people want the most. Here's some of my conceptual headlines for current events:

"The economy takes off it's bra"

"You, Riddler, are going to die today, say healthcare reformers"

"Strike it rich with illegal immigrants"


I think if I saw these sort of headlines, there is no way I could not read the related article.

Trapped on the surface of a sphere. XKCD

[JackC 0]

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Another term for this is "echo chamber" - a system where a meme gets bounced back and forth so much that it takes on a life of its own, and the media reports on the echo of that meme, not what caused it or what its effects will be.

A meme only exists if it can be sucessfully communicated and the vehicle that provides that communication is the media. How else does Joe Schmo get wind of it? And the media start memes just as much or more than they echo them.

Like it or not, journalists are powerful people and they know it. They decide which news is worthy of publicity, they can voice their opinions to thousands of people, they can decide who to make their darling and who to vilify. They tell people what to think. When the media is on yor side in public ilfe, you're unstoppable. But when they turn on you, it's only a matter of time before you sink.

The media may be an unruly mob with only half the facts, little understanding and virtually no morals, but they have influence. And plenty of it.

[billvon 3,111]

>I think if I saw these sort of headlines, there is no way I could not read
>the related article.

So if you got an email saying "You, riddler, just won TEN MILLION DOLLARS!" you would click on it?

The media tries to get people to read their stuff. But people also adapt to the media's tricks. I tend to ignore pretty much all the sensationalist stuff when I'm looking for a specific news story.

Prediction - within a few years, Google will have a search feature that will look for news below a certain level of sensationalism, and without keywords that identify the piece as extremist (left or right.) Of course, this will only work until journalists learn to spoof it, but it would be cool for a while.

[kallend 2,146]

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It was some greedy fucks that created bogus financial instruments that encouraged more greedy fucks to make loans to people that couldn't support them. In turn, other greedy fucks bet money that their fellow greedy fucks would be around to pay them if any one of them got too greedy to support the system. In a world wide circle jerk of greed, it was only a matter of time before it fell apart.

Nice summary. Concise and accurate.

...

The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

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[quade 4]

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The media may be an unruly mob with only half the facts, little understanding and virtually no morals, but they have influence. And plenty of it.

Just ask Glenn Beck, Bill O'Reilly and Rush Limbaugh.

quade -
The World's Most Boring Skydiver