The Modern-Day Molech Machine - Part II

 About a dozen years ago I wrote a Blog post titled "The Modern-Day Molech Machine" about how distorted ideas about beauty were distorting us, and our children, in the name of the almighty dollar.  Well, here's Round 2, this time about Media, and particularly Social Media.

My Bachelor’s degree is in Mass Media and Organizational Communication, and I have been a lifelong student of Media and Society. Most people (myself included) do not use media wisely, especially Social Media. A tool that can (and should) create connection between people instead created division and contentiousness. I’d like to explore some of the mechanisms behind that.

The primary thing that one has to remember is that the product of the Media, whether print, broadcast, streaming, or social is NOT the media itself. Content is not the product. You and I are the product, or, more precisely, our attention.

Media content is a farm, and the crop is eyeball/seconds.

This fact drives all of media, and business decisions in media. Remember “soap operas”? Originally, those (radio, at the time) shows were actually produced by the advertiser, generally a laundry soap, hence the name. They didn’t do so to entertain housewives, but to get their attention, and to present a world where any housewife who was worthwhile used the advertised detergent.

Of course, this was at the time when advertising hadn’t passed much beyond the “billboard” stage, where the advertiser didn’t know much about the audience. Today we have “big data” of which A.G. Nielsen was a big pioneer in the media world.

You know Nielsen if you’ve ever heard about “Nielsen ratings” which is a measure of how popular a program is, and that is a direct measure of how big a “crop” the “farm” has. However, Nielsen’s audience research goes far beyond just counting eyeballs.

Nielsen developed audience analytics, where “how many” is important, but “what kind” is equally important. Nielsen began early on characterizing the audience, so a show would have a rating, and a view of the demographic of the audience. Certain shows were more popular with certain advertisers, because those shows drew an audience that the advertiser wanted. That particular “crop” became more profitable, so that kind of show proliferated.

A sidebar: Many Conservatives have decried “liberal media bias”. I’m sorry, but that’s a thing. Media as a whole has developed a liberal / progressive bias. While many think that this is a vast conspiracy, I see a simpler, and more likely¹, cause. People on the liberal / progressive end of the political philosophical spectrum are more likely to try something new, including trying a new product. Advertisers will pay more for an audience that will, on the whole, be more likely to buy. This creates a natural financial push towards that political philosophy, which creates a hiring bias (after all, you hire people who will make you more money), which leads to newsrooms filled with people who think alike. Those staff writers grow up to become Editors, who hire people who think the way they do, and the newsroom becomes an echo chamber. 

This isn't a conspiracy, it's financial incentives plus human nature. For more on this, I highly recommend the book Republican like Me, written by the former President of NPR.

That also explains Fox News, because some products are favored by politically and fiscally Conservative people. Fox News and other conservative media draw those advertisers.

Nielsen created “audience segmentation”, and it affected every aspect of broadcast programming, even the news. You have probably seen the internet meme about Walter Cronkite, and how he “just read the news”. Well, there was media bias and market segmentation back then, too. “Uncle Walter” appealed to political conservatives, and this was a result of on-air demeanor, how the stories were written, and what stories were reported on, and for how long. Liberal / Progressive households (like the one I grew up in) favored Chet Huntley and David Brinkley, as well as PBS for news. Those in the middle, tended to watch ABC news.

The social divisiveness we see today is a natural progression from audience segmentation, and it’s logical extension into Social Media, where the “audience” is also the “content creator”. Social Media faces the same financial pressures as any other form of media, and responds in the same way, with audience segmentation. Audience segmentation in social media, becomes audience polarization. Again this is a natural outcome of the financial pressures and the business model.

However, with social media, the process of audience segmentation is automatically performed by the algorithm. Remember, making money is driven by getting, and keeping, attention. The algorithm is designed to identify the content people are attracted to, and presenting that content to them, on an ongoing cycle. This self reinforcing process (feedback loop) creates polarization, because what people see is more and more biased towards their preconceived notions of truth and reality.

The natural tendency and outcome of these processes is to divide us. Resisting that outcome takes effort, because tribal identity is so easy and comfortable.

But resist it we must.

The Modern-Day Molech Machine

We have a piece of equipment in the gym I work out at called a "Jacob's Ladder"  It's like a treadmill, except it is a continuous chain of ladder rungs that you climb.  It is exhausting, and you can pack in a serious cardio workout in a very few minutes.  On a good day, it turns me into a dishrag in 10 minutes.

This morning, it made me think about similar ladders in life, where the climb is constant, and will go on as long as you endure it, or tolerate it.  Because of a conversation I had with my daughter, I began to think about the pursuit of "beauty" as a Jacob's Ladder.

OK, bear with me here.  It's pretty well established that we (in our public media, advertising, etc., etc., ad nauseum) are teaching our girls and women a hideously distorted idea of beauty.  For that matter, we're teaching it to our boys and men, too.

It is equally well established that we are teaching our young people to continuously pin their self-worth to achieving a distorted, humanly impossible, unhealthy, physical standard.  (I refuse to call it an "ideal", because it is far from ideal.)

I think we need to take a step back and understand the "Why?"  Who benefits from this?

Think about this for a second.  Who benefits the most from a generation of people trained to pursue a goal of physical appearance that cannot be attained?  Who stands to gain the most from our young people expending themselves trying to rise higher on an eternal ladder of beauty, where every step just brings another higher step into view?

The fashion industry, the makeup industry, every business that makes its almighty dollars from keeping that ladder running.

And.

They.

Don't.

Care.

• They don't care that they are killing relationships, because none of us is ever going to achieve that goal, but we're coming to expect it in ourselves and others.
• They don't care that they are killing imagination by stamping out dreams. 
• They don't care that they are killing children who have given up hope of ever climbing "high enough."
• They don't care that they are killing the classmates of the children who have given in to the despair.
• They don't care that real beauty is extinguished, when "plastic beauty" is the goal.

Here's another view of the problem: If you think about it, a plastic surgeon is a Photoshop expert who works in living human flesh.  I don't intend to demean the profession, because there are some plastic surgeons who have dedicated their careers to curing actual deformity, healing, and improving life.  However, we've all seen the hideous and ridiculous excesses of plastic surgery that is increasingly becoming the norm in Hollywood.

Is this the future we all have to look forward to?  I hope not, for such is the theme of more than one dystopic Science-Fiction novel.

So how do we prevent that future?

Now I have a crazy idea here, if we want to stop off the flow of distorted beauty and body image that is becoming the "norm" in our culture, we need to do one thing:

Cut off the flow of money that feeds the machine.

• Teach our children to spot the BS, ignore it, and not buy in with either their minds, or their money.
• Teach our children to understand true beauty, and buy into that with their hearts and minds and dollars.
• Grab ourselves, as adults, by the scruff of our collective necks and refuse to purchase or consume any product that is sold via a distorted body image or view of beauty.

Whatever it is.  Magazines! Websites! Cars! Furniture! Clothes! Makeup! Perfume! Laundry detergent! Food, wine, beer!  Period.  Don't buy it.  Buy and use alternatives that are advertised based on reality, real beauty, real function, real quality, and let the manufacturer know why.

If we don't model the decision for our kids and young adults, they won't believe it.  Words are a start, passion is good, but they aren't enough.

Slay the dragon by starving it to death.  Stop feeding ourselves and our children to the machine.  Can we?  I, for one, will try.

Here I am, the son of an advertising executive, advocating telling most of the industry to stuff it.  Sorry, Dad, but this is your granddaughter and her friends we're talking about here.  I know you'd understand.

Words, and people who abuse them...

Okay, everyone uses words. Some of us are better with them than others, but like any other tool, there are some uses that are just wrong. Some uses, while possible, damage the tool and the work, and pose a risk of harm (or at least ridicule) to the tool user.

Which, I suppose, is a fancy way of saying that some things people do with words just honk me off. With that idea clearly in mind, the following is a list of things that people just shouldn't do with words.