Tuesday, April 17, 2007

Desensitizing

I watched once a Spike Lee movie about crack in the inner city. There was a scene where a kid was playing a video game where he was riding around on his bike killing people with a gun or something, then later in the movie he did kill someone from his bike (or something bizarrely similar to the video game).

I will never rail on this stuff, I will never start an activist group over it, but it seems pretty clear to me that for the same reason athletes visualize themselves winning, violent images, behavior, music, hate speech, hateful or violent media of any sort has an effect on peoples brains in not such a good way.

I am not saying that Ozzy is telling kids to kill themselves.

But it seems naive to think that when one loads themselves up on a certain kind of input, it won't desensitize them.

People think advertising doesn't work on them. That's the devil of it. For that exact reason (and more), it does work on them. The power of suggestion is real and there is a correlation to advertising dollars spent and consumption of a product. The biggest target is teens, who consider themselves way beyond being able to be swayed, but are also the largest consumers of media.

I would suggest additionally that our habits will also influence who we are. Whether it is eating habits, habits in loyalty, habits in how we spend time. Habits in how I spend time, meaning its time to get off the computer now.

peace out.

4 comments:

Mrs. T said...

Are you suggesting that blogging is kind of like crack? Because from what I know about crack, which isn't much, blogging is way better. And much more addictive.

Unknown said...

Haha I hadnt made that connection but I am glad that you did. Yes, now I walk around thinking stuff like "I should blog about that neighbor of mine who puts roundup ALL OVER his front yard once a month" but then I think "who cares?" and that is where it gets left usually.

HappyChyck said...

Here's a question I've pondered about myself: How has teaching desensitized you?

Unknown said...

Hmmm...

Desensitized me to what? is my question here...

I dont take student behavior personally anymore.

I really don't care about the school rules, but I do enforce them. Because I feel like it is part of my job. I am desensitized because if a kid drops the f bomb toward me, I just think "sheesh what a hassle this little runt is" rather than "Oh my gosh! What do I do?"

did I answer the question?