And Bullwinkle goes, “Me, Rocky – save me first!”
Yes, we expect that dates us a little, though maybe readers will just assume we’re thinking of the recent movies and not the original TV cartoon.
But we, like the cartoon characters, can become accustomed to taking things at face value. Like the e-mail we got recently, from the director of the FBI himself, Robert S. Mueller, III.
In his best Dudley Do-Right impersonation, the imitation director assured us that the money transfer we’d been arranging to receive from Nigeria had been thoroughly investigated by the FBI, so we could in full confidence proceed with the transaction.
What a scam!
Millions of dollars clearly belonging to someone else, or admittedly skimmed from some government account, just waiting for us to pick up and, presumably, spend lavishly on ourselves. Of course, we do have to send a few hundred dollars for the storage or exchange or duty fee, and provide some personal banking data, but then our future will be secure.
Do these schemes work? Do people really send them money? Evidently, enough do to keep an endless number of con artists busy out there in Cyberland.
But what’s scary is that we’ve caught ourselves actually thinking, “Gee, it could be true. Maybe I’ll respond to just this one.”
Somehow, it seems we’ve been worn down by the repeated inquiries, by the slight variations that make such solicitations seem routine. Let’s see – isn’t that called “advertising”? Frequent exposure to anything makes it familiar and reinforces its acceptance or even necessity.
But in this age of information overload, with hundreds of television channels and hundreds of daily junk e-mails, the customary filters of incremental cost (i.e., postage) and sequential access (i.e., one thing at a time) are gone, and we can become inundated with unwanted, even dangerous messages.
Body image for women is a concern frequently raised. Television creates an impossible standard for girls and young women to reach, as do the dozens of magazines that feed the myth. It isn’t so much that the women consciously say, “I have to look like that,” though some do, and try. It’s more that their self-esteem can be challenged, aware as they are that they can’t conform to the appearances that they believe are expected.
Frankly, we’d add promiscuity to the list of characteristics that can get bored into our brains as “normal.” Watch TV on most any channel other than Disney or Discovery, it seems, and everybody is bedding, has bedded or will bed someone else.
Or add titillation. One feels like a voyeur all too often when the TV is on during prime time, or any time, seeing steamy interactions that a generation ago simply weren’t aired or even filmed for TV.
Or violence. The teasers between TV shows you might watch with children explode with weapons, fighting and blood. Life isn’t like that; that’s not how problems are solved in everyday life.
Let’s be clear that we cheer the proliferation of choices. As adults, we have the freedom to watch or not watch, to surf or not surf, but we’ve realized how easily we become accustomed to something that would have shocked us before.
Unfiltered information, even as entertainment, can be too much of a good thing; we risk coming to believe everything we read or see. In our view, its healthy consumption depends on being selective.
