Happy New Year: Don’t Let the Media Ruin Us… Our Essence
I am lucky to have a Facebook news feed filled with, what I call, “Changemakers Propaganda.” And I don’t think it’s a bad thing, and I don’t think it’s propaganda — it’s a consciousness. For the most part, my Facebook reproduces ideas, articles, theories, and sentiments about the world and the state of our cities, nation-states, and communities that I agree with. Of course there are always those few statuses from acquaintances or people who I don’t really know that highlight the ignorance and narrow-mindedness of our world; but thankfully I just ‘unfollow’ that person, ‘de-friend’ them, or ‘hide’ them from my newsfeed and everything is right in my world again.
Although I believe there are serious issues with having a newsfeed you are looking at multiple times a day that constantly and consistently reproduces your view of the world, especially if you are a jerk or Donald Trump. However — in my case — it turns out to be a good thing. I happen to be friends with changemakers, activists, musicians, artists, explorers, dreamers, academics, and intellects all over the globe who have a hopeful, critical, beautiful, and unapologetic view of the world. Even those on my newsfeed who vehemently critique the state of the world (like myself) and the places they live still do so with more than a tinge of hope that world can and will change. As my father said to me and my best friend at our college graduation: “the world can change because I’ve seen it happen.”
The media, especially and specifically mainstream media, does its best to make us feel like it’s hopeless while at the same time desensitizing us to violence, abuse, misuse of power, war, weapons, isolation, mental illness, etc. We are bombarded on a daily basis with news emphasizing violence and despair as well as focusing too much attention on celebrity drama and news about people we don’t know whose lives are supposedly more valuable and interesting than ours. We live in a world where media is supposed to be another thing people use to feel liked and valued, rather than solely a means of expression and information.
How many shares? How many followers? How many views? What kind of comments? Will it go viral? I once stumbled on a site called Stop Trying To Be Famous, which of course is a hugely popular site even if the author and founder did not intend it to be so.
We are all fighting. Fighting the inequality, injustice, unfairness, messiness of the world. Simultaneously we want to support sites like Stop Trying To Be Famous because we agree with the statement and the value behind it, at the same time we want to be heard and valued through our blogs, websites, photos that — in many ways — confirm why there needs to be a site called Stop Trying To Be Famous. There should really be a site called: Stop Trying To Be Famous, Express Yourself But Your Value Is Not Defined By Superficial Made Up Media Terms like “Likes!” But of course that’s too long of a name and we know this anyway.
The media is trying to ruin us. The news wants to stagnate us. The media indirectly tells us that the world is hopeless, inequality is reality and nothing can be done. We are made to feel small, powerless, disempowered. Those of us who are marginalized, minorities, women, in poverty, of certain races or ethnicities are used to these feelings… but the media blows them up in our faces and pushes them down our throats every hour. The media wants us to think we cannot transform the world.
The media will change when we do. The focus will change when ours does. Don’t let the media ruin us. I want my newsfeed to continually be drowned with critical assertions of society, with new year statuses that tell us to continue to fight the good fight, with photos of happiness and smiling in the midst of all of it. Does the news ever report on how many happy photos we see on a daily basis from people we are directly or indirectly connected with in the midst of all the bullshit in the world? I want to keep seeing the funny moments and videos of cute animals or angry babies side by side with articles about #blacklivesmatter and the UK government explaining consent by using tea.
I want us to create our own media where we see, consume, and produce what we want to see, consume, and produce in the world. I want critical, expressive, creative, hopeful, change-making, brilliant music, inspiring movements, humanity fighting together to combat those who want us to lose. We did not lose in 2015 and we will not lose in 2016. I will take my Changemakers Propaganda Facebook Newsfeed over any mainstream news station everyday, everyday, and everyday.
It’s a New Year! And, luckily we will have a few more New Years this year for those people who are not on the Gregorian calendar. Thus, if you didn’t start your New Year on January 1st (like I didn’t because I’m suffering from severe jet lag, have slept through most of the first few days of the New Year, and should be asleep right now) there’s still time to start your New Year how you want it to be and with what you want to see in it. We’re not going to let the media ruin us, our essence, or our consciousness… We are going to create what we want to see in the world.
Are you with me?
[P.S. January 2016 is the best month to see the planets in the sky. Right now outside of my window in Brussels I can see a brilliant shining Saturn. Look to the sky this month, it’s a good reminder of how small we are in this amazing vast universe.]
