“Should Stanford rapist Brock Turner be a lifetime registered sex offender?” – Global News
“Recent fatal collision on Perimeter Highway sparks safety warning from Manitoba RCMP” – Global News
“Police canvassing Swansea neighbourhood for information in recent shootings” – CP24
“North Korea fires 3 medium-range missiles near Japan” – Global News
Many people nowadays prefer to know very little about the daily news. They would rather skip the part where they watch the news in the morning before going to school or work. I, for one, am one of those people. Can you blame me? Just a quick look at the above headlines makes you depressed! It is true that in our current day and time, it may be easier to cope with the existing injustice by going on about our lives quite blindly.
By turning our backs to news and reality, we have been relying on the non-existent fictional world to shut down some of the noises from our reality. Among the many bad habits acquired by this generation, one of them seems to be our obsession with the media and fictional movies or TV series; this seems to be our potent drug of the day, or another coping method to put aside thing we don’t want to face for a later time and day.
What are the reasons for this dangerous truth? Well, for one, we have become so immune to the cycle of misfortunate events occurring around us that we simply do not care enough to stay up to date with national and international hardships. Another reason may be our inherent fear of unpredictability which gets reinforced by the oh so unpredictable daily news; hence, our preference to stay ignorant to all news as a rule of thumb.
That is why we decide to turn our attention to movies and T.V. shows, where we can better predict the plot. By a plot, I mean we know there must be a beginning, a climax, and an ending. And with the recent sappy fictional movies, we can be sure that they usually have a somewhat happy ending with the least number of main characters dead, unless you are watching Game of Thrones, that’s a different issue!
Why do I think these fictional shows are the most popular “drug” on the market? Because just like a drug, we get addicted to them. When we start to watch a TV show we get so hooked and can’t wait till we watch the next episode. We talk about it before, during and after the show. Likewise, when we finish with a movie, we move on to another one. We abuse the idea of fictional movies and shows as a leisure activity. It has become a big factor in our daily lives, and it is hard to cut down on them. We would rather watch these than return to our frightening realistic world of news.
So what is the solution to getting cured from this addiction? Is there even a cure? I’m not sure, especially in this world where we are constantly persuaded to watch such things! I mean the media doesn’t exactly make it any easier on us either. Perhaps, by acknowledging the implied dangers of the ignorance that we may fall prey to through a distracting and artificial world, we may become more conscious to this fact and try to face the problems of this world head-on. It’s going to take some time, but it has to be done!
Image Sources
http://giphy.com/gifs/reaction-news-excited-PvdjYHPDgh6W4
http://www.reactiongifs.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/need-help.gif
https://media.giphy.com/media/Aw7UMkVYI8syk/giphy.gif