CUT AND PASTE GENERATION

Found this link on a late night search for internet horror. No.. not porn. Horror. Really.

I'm a cynic, but this story, far-fetched as it is, managed to somehow unsettle me. We already live in an age where information is sensationalised, where things are perhaps spun out of all proportions, without respect to those actually affected, just for ratings.

Case in point? The tsunami disasters. I'm not saying that the victims didn't suffer THAT much, that we're just making a big fuss over nothing. No. That's not it. They have suffered beyond my my wildest imagination, and my imagination is a bucking bronco. To have lost loved ones, no, to have WATCHED them swept away to certain death is something I pray I shall never ever have to experience.

What I'm talking about is the news coverage by CNN, BBC and Sky among others. Yes, these people are suffering, we know that, we should do something about it, give money, give energy, give your special skills as a doctor, engineer, whatever you can do. Or at the very least, pray that their sufferings are alleviated. What you DON'T do is to spin the whole thing around just so you could get better ratings, showing the same images of death and destruction every five seconds just because, let's face it, death and destruction sells. What you don't do is to have a small clip showing an on-site reporter perusing through a collection of wet blackboard chalk drying in the front yard of a Sri Lankan school, telling the sad story of destitution, and THEN, just before the clip cuts back to the studio with the newscaster looking terribly concerned about the whole thing, the bloody reporter proceeds to throw the chalk dismissively back on to the drying mound.

Do we really care? Or is it just something we produce because that's what the world wants to see?

If the answer to the latter is yes, are we then really much better off than the cut-and-paste generation in the Flash movie above? Is it better to have sub-human beings also known as tv ratings executives deciding what should be told to the masses, or to have an automated machine deciding so, based on our spending patterns and our demographics? Yes, we may end up being so narrow-minded that we can't distinguish the woods from the tree, but aren't we like that already?

"mankind is governed by pain and pleasure". Unfortunately, I tend to agree with Mr. Bentham on that.