We constantly fill our lives with entertainment, and we justify our obsession with escapism by convincing ourselves that we’re not wasting time but actually staying “informed” or “in-touch.”
We say we read newspapers, watch TV news or F5 our favorite news sites to stay educated about the world around us. What we’re really doing is wasting time that could be spent on actually educating ourselves or on another form of entertainment where we’re not fooling ourselves into thinking it’s bettering us as people.
Rarely does anything “new” actually happen in the world. Instead, the same type of pretty girl is murdered, anonymous children get kidnapped, two groups of people continue to hate each other, a black man is executed, the politician is a hypocrite, one stock falls as another rises, B-lists celebrities die predictable deaths and much, much more of the same. We simply watch it to be entertained by a story.
When there is no actual news – around the entire world – how can there be even one 24-hour news network, let alone influential ones? Because news is now a form of entertainment. People think they’re getting smarter when they’re staying informed, but they’re being informed about something they already know.
I say the same thing about social networking sites – they’re only entertainment. I don’t dislike the mediums themselves, but I hate that people think that they’re sustaining some kind of relationship with another person when they’re reading the summary of a person’s day or seeing pictures of the same people doing the same things.
These networks are little more than another marketing tool and someone else’s business (albeit a business you enjoy hanging out in for hours). And unless you’re going to follow Bill Hicks’ marketing advice, people should “devalue” these networks and use them as marketing tools. Why not? It’s not like these are socially redeeming enterprises and nobody rides for free. Just like 24-hour news: “This continuous coverage of the BP oil spill — day45 of nothing else happening — brought to you by Busch Light. We’re all going to die anyway, why not do it with a cold, refreshing Busch Light. Busch: Fresh as a mountain stream.”
So I have no problem using Facebook to not stay in touch with people; when I want to talk to someone and share a part of myself, I’d like to use more than two sentences. Instead, I use Facebook in some feeble attempt to promote my Hick book, penned by my fictional creation Rufus “Junior” Hickman Jr., someone who is not real, who has no friends, someone who promotes everyone living a free lifestyle independent of each other within a community, and his lifestyle is to be unshaven and usually black-eyed. Someone who likes to get high on marijuana or smoke ditchweed out of spite.
You might imagine my surprise when Rufus got a message today from someone who thought she knew him:
“Are You The Rufus Hickman That Lived In Reserve,la, And Garyville,la You Were Orignally From little Rock Arkansas?”
Of course, no, this is not the same Rufus, but there’s little doubt that this Rufus would hate that Rufus just based on geography.
I think that in our world of constant contact and information overload, where we skim facts off of a truth and choose to consume the skim, it’s getting more difficult to create original characters – it’s too easy to discover that these characters already have original counterparts in real life. This gal didn’t know anything more about my Rufus except for the name and cool hat and shades, but it was enough for her to think that this fictional person is quite possibly this real person she remembers.
Did I figure someone in this world was named Rufus Hickman? I thought it was possible, but not very likely. But if he did exist, I thought, he probably lives in the backwoods of some southern swamp. Maybe creativity and storytelling is now more akin to predicting what probably exists in life.
I’m sure if I start a LinkedIn page for Richard Hlava I’d probably get contacts from people who thought they worked for him at HlavCo Intl. (and I’d really have a laugh if the contact was from former puppet employees).
Possibly the same would happen if I went around starting pages for Terry Dugan.