Update: Reading 3 Bulls, I find out the slanderous anti-internet crap is even worse than I thought.
How about “Cable news watcher becomes serial killer”.
Message: Unless you’re all for child molestation, it’s better to throw out the computer and go back to your old habits of just feeling alienated and disempowered in front of the TV news.
Sometimes I think that if it weren’t for clips on Crooks and Liars, I’d probably never see a minute of cable news in my everyday life, which sets me up to be really appalled when I do watch it for any length of time. Yesterday was no exception. I was sitting in an airport watching “American Morning” on CNN and occasionally reading a novel, and a story about a pedophile caught lurking around daycares came on. I wasn’t too interested in the story, except for being annoyed that what seemed to me to be strictly a local interest story was being elevated to a national platform for sensationalist reasons, until they mentioned that the guy had chronicled his obsession online. At this point, I tuned in with interest, because I knew that somehow, someway, they were going to use a story about a guy who conducted himself in what you might call the traditional pedophile method (hanging out where children are, hoping to snag one) to raise some more brainless hysteria about the evils of modern technology.
Being innocent, though, I thought that surely they wouldn’t go further than fuss over the fact that pedophiles use online tools to distribute child pornography to each other, instead of using the mail as they probably did in the past. When it comes to the vile nature of cable news, though, I am but a babe in the woods and so was genuinely shocked and pissed when they instead made the rest of the segment about the danger your child faces from pedophiles because she chats online with her friends and has a MySpace page. They threw out a lot of statistics about how many kids use social networking tools and implied that the major threat comes from here, all in a fairly brainless manner, probably figuring that the audience is already familiar with “To Catch A Predator”.
In other words, they used a story about a guy who is accused of lingering near schools to grab little girls—no computer technology on hand—to warn against the dangers of letting your kids use computers. Who cares if the story has nothing to do with social networking software? The main thing is driving home the point that the internet=pedophiles through repetition, regardless of the facts. I swear, if they showed the movie “M” on TV now, they’d make sure to add some scenes (using computer technology, oh the irony) where the pedophile is shown whistling while he cruises MySpace, because we all know there’s no way that pedophilia existed before the modem was invented.
It was hard for me not to draw certain connections. First of all, this was the show that canceled my appearance within minutes of me appearing on MSNBC, and it’s hard not to imagine that part of the decision had to do with my unwillingness to play into the storyline that posits that bloggers are a bunch of unwashed crazies, and because I criticized the mainstream media for playing loose with the facts. Second of all, I finished my novel and started to read Everything Bad is Good for You by Steven Johnson, and that book has some interesting theories about how the internet is making us smarter. First of all, the amount of criticism and attention and FAQ sheets on the internet about certain TV shows is making TV itself smarter—it’s a pretty elaborate but convincing argument, and well worth reading the book to get to it. Second of all, internet itself makes people smarter, which I suppose is no surprise to anyone here. As Johnson points out, even though most kids just use social networking tools to chronicle the minutia of their everyday lives instead of participate in extensive political blogging, they are engaging a lot more of their brains to do so than kids in the past did while dwelling on the same minutia. The number of blogs you can read in a day compared to the number of letters you can handwrite and shove in a friend’s locker alone points to a situation where the brains are working harder to chronicle the information intake than they were before. More interestingly, the existence of hyperlinking and the fact that most internet interaction is two-way creates the assumption that information exists to be influenced and engaged instead of passively absorbed, and that I think is the major reason that TV types tend to find the internet extremely threatening.
We talk back. More importantly, kids these days are growing up assuming that talking back is part of the process, which means that the power of those who dispense information from on high and don’t really want to hear the recipients dish back is really going to be threatened as kids start growing up and obtaining power. I don’t think it’s a conspiracy against the internet or anything, but since the mainstream media is so wary of the internet, they’re chomping at the bit to promote their own image of it as a place where the rabble runs around molesting kids and forgetting to shower, because they don’t want to face up to the fact that it could in fact be something much scarier to them, a place where the people are sharing with each other, sharpening their critical thinking skills, and directly threatening an establishment that would prefer us to be separated from each other and passive recipients of information.
35 Responses to “In which the resident blogger continues to be appalled every time she happens to watch cable news”
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I can’t find a link, but I highly recommend everyone check
out the “Paedegeddon” epsiode of Brasseye by Chris Morris
(Brasseye is a downright brilliant British parody of Hardcopy, Dateline, and so similar shows).
Among other gems, they manage to get a member of Parliament tell the audience that children are being molested by “penis-shaped sound waves
sent via the internet” every day.
My favorite ZOMG TEH PERVERTS AND THE NEWFANGLED TECKNOLOGY reporting was a Fox News piece about how perverts will use a Nintendo DS to molest your children. Because DS comes with a built in chat program that has a range of maybe 50 feet. Note: this chat program isn’t always going, to use it you have to *not* be playing videogames, which means that most kids fuck around with it for five minutes and then start playing Metroid. It’s funny and sad to watch the reporter get hysterical because the kids who he was introduced to by their parent then go upstairs to their bedroom and chat with him while he’s inside the house at the bottom of the stairs and answer the questions he asks them about where they live. The scenario! It’s so real! Your children are in danger! It’s like the perfect intersection of how horrible videogames are with the intersection of how horrible chatrooms are!
I’m afraid that post has practically forced me to spam this silly song: http://eclectech.co.uk/dailymailpicnic.php
I think you’ve nailed the reasoning behind content providers–especially traditional ones–trying to make the internet more video friendly, more streaming, etc. Any thing that can make the online more passive, more like television, has to be good for their paradigm. I am of the generation that came of age with the first expensive, clumsy personal computers–the Commodores you had to stand on one leg and sacrifice a chicken to open a file on–so most of my friends in high school were less that tech savvy. But today? The kid who doesn’t have access is the exception rather than the rule, and I think they’re going to be better off for it in the long run. After all, my generation is the last one (sorry!) to be more conservative than liberal.
Don’t forget the general anti-intellectualism — the internet is suspect because of that as well.
There’s a “public service” message that claims 20% of all children are sexually solicited online; but I wonder about that statistic. How did they gather it? What counts as “sexual solicitation”? And, most importantly, what counts as a “child”?
For instance, suppose a 17-year-old flirts with another 17-year old. Does that fall into the rank of their stats? Suppose it’s a 17-year-old and a 19-year-old? What then?
Foleygate aside, claims like that strike me as being more about shock value than transmitting any actual, useful information.
I also think that 20% stat, if honest, probably comes a lot from the fact that massive number of teenagers are excited to experiment sexually, meaning that you see a lot of young teenagers actively looking to be solicited by adults online. Usually “adults” in situations like that means older high school and college kids.
Granted, it was the mid 90’s, but I spent a lot of time in “adult” chatrooms around the ages of 14 and 15, looking to hook up. It never got beyond IM, and nothing unsavory happened.
I’m not sure how this plays out a decade later, now that chatrooms are passe and social networking sites, which encourage you to mingle with people closer to your age, are the new thing.
Bushco have been all over the internets shit since they took office. It seemes to me that in the first year of our boy kings term, the internet was the dwelling of pedophiles and cyber terrorists.
We had Gore who claimed to have invented it, or so they say, and a president who did about anything he could to encourage the new economy, etc. There was even talk of internet 2 during the end of the Clinton years, if memory serves.
My wife calls me paranoid, (I made a good living developing for the internet up until 2002, when the market collapsed) as I suggest that the old economy, namely oil, had alot to do with screwing up the nets image. Online shopping? No way, jump into the car and go to walmart. Call me crazy, but I really do believe that.
I want to join in the favorite-tales-of-network-news-nuttery!
This was a few months ago, and it was aired repeatedly for several days promoting an upcoming segment on a network news program in DC. I can’t remember the specific wording, but it was along the lines of “Do you know your child is really yours? Tomorrow night, we take a look at paternity tests — and why maybe you should too.”
I swear to god, that was the gist of the news lede. I couldn’t believe it. As if there aren’t enough crazy MRAs out there who love to suggest at the slightest provocation that child support and all the rest is unfair because we all know women are lying, whoring bitches who can’t be trusted to accurately identify the fathers of their children … here was a network news program just blatanly suggesting that, and even adding that maybe if you hadn’t thought about whether your children were really yours yet, you should now.
Remember Keith Olbermann–most of the rest of cable news is pathetic, but he’s very good.
As Amanda points out, the internet is ushering in a new age when the unwashed populace actually pushes back. Since the power structure would necessarily dread such a pushback, it makes sense it would try to demonize the internet — using the well-worn tactic of concocting a Moral Scare to be piped into America’s collective corpus through the umbilicus of the gravy-train-slurping Mass Media. (Jeez, how many metaphors can I cram into one sentence?)
In this light, the Republicans’ aversian to YouTube is especially revealing. Okay, okay, I’m nattering on about glaringly obvious stuff here, but these are interesting things to consider.
I think the ultimate goal is to wrest some kind of government control over the whole internet enterprise — as they do in, say, China, though it’s hard to say with how much success.
I noticed this at my local bookstore last weekend that plays into the same trend Amanda is talking about. It’s called, and I kid you not, “The Cult of the Amateur: How today’s Internet is killing our culture”
http://www.amazon.com/Cult-Amateur-Internet-killing-culture/dp/0385520808/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/105-3577045-2008450?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1187197205&sr=8-1
Pretty much non-stop hysteria about “amateurs” on the internet pushing out the “professionals” of the MSM. These talking-heads are terrified that they will become obsolete, and fail to consider that it would probably be a GOOD thing for that to occur.
Warren, I think when Auguste wrote about this general isuse a while ago it was mentioned that the 20% includes kids looking to meet other kids. So flirting via MySpace with the cutie who sits next to you in geometry would count for that figure.
I hadn’t thought much about this being part of an anti-internet push, though that makes sense. After all, I was “solicited” 100% of the times I walked from home from the BART during rush hour, but I haven’t seen any PSAs on that.
It’s such a narrow view, too, this internet = danger idea — convieniently leaving out the benefits of the internet *and* the danger that lurks for most kids within their families.
Cable news. It reminds me of the time a while back when a friend popped over. He assumed control of the TV and put it on some cable new show. He then started popping off names and in complete wonderment about that girl that had disappeared that time on that island. He was totally wrapped up in it. That’s when I realized that I had totally disconnected from the cable news world except for the crap that is critiqued on the blogs. And Keith Olbermann.
Yes, or more specifically, these talking-heads are part of a clubby little world of power and, upon finding the peasants revolting, they find the peasants revolting. Their egos require that they regard themselves as fearless purveyors of truth, deflaters of power, but in reality they’re in it for the free hors d’oeuvres at heady locales, and powerful people make them pecker swoll up. All those hours of study and the years of devoted, blind ambition so that I could do my fellow man an important service my rubbing mine pecker against powerful Senators, and now some HVAC repairman from Hoboken wants to cut in on my dance?
This is oversimplifying their position, but only in the interest of clarity.
The internet is a nice, faceless threat rather than “Uncle Tom” and his multi-coloured lollipops. Oh, and pedophilia is a new thing that didn’t exist before the world got wired. The news media needs to get its act together because it is the culture that is most at risk of going extinct.
If anyone missed it - this whole thing is directly connected to The Assault On Reason, discussed less than 4 days ago. The mass media’s obsession with certain topics and the use of those topics to scare the piss out of the dumb or inattentive are pretty well laid out.
Also, I think the “20% of all adolescents are solicited for sex online” thing ought to be taken with the fact that online spam is so common now, that figure really should be up around 90-95%. Who hasn’t been asked if they’re long and hard enough or if they’re looking swing partners in the local area?
Great Minds Despair Alike! I just blogged on exactly the same topic (plus the slut-shaming) in regard to a different news story.
Ditto. I remember when my family first got internet access in the early 90’s, when I was 14 or 15. All we had was CompuServe (ah, the memories), not the vast internet of today, and I used to check out chat rooms out of curiosity, because it was a completely new thing to me. I often received private messages from guys who wanted to have sexual conversations, and I willingly participated. These guys would tell me they were 16, 17, 18, occasionally a little older, and at that time I was naive enough not to question whether they were telling me the truth. Looking back now, I’m sure some of those guys (if not all) must have been dirty old men looking to chat with a teenage girl. But what harm did that cause me? None — it was just chatting. (As creepy as it is to think about my 14-year-old self having a sexual chat with a 40 or 50-year-old dude instead of the 16-year-old I thought I was chatting with, I really can’t see the harm in that.)
Point being, whatever scary percentage of “online solicitation” of children somebody claims exists, it’s not necessarily so scary, even when it is adults soliciting kids.
Ditto. I remember when my family first got internet access in the early 90’s, when I was 14 or 15. All we had was CompuServe (ah, the memories), not the vast internet of today, and I used to check out chat rooms out of curiosity, because it was a completely new thing to me. I often received private messages from guys who wanted to have sexual conversations, and I willingly participated. These guys would tell me they were 16, 17, 18, occasionally a little older, and at that time I was naive enough not to question whether they were telling me the truth. Looking back now, I’m sure some of those guys (if not all) must have been dirty old men looking to chat with a teenage girl. But what harm did that cause me? None — it was just chatting. (As creepy as it is to think about my 14-year-old self having a sexual chat with a 40 or 50-year-old dude instead of the 16-year-old I thought I was chatting with, I really can’t see the harm in that.)
Point being, whatever scary percentage of “online solicitation” of children somebody claims exists, it’s not necessarily so scary, even when it is adults soliciting kids.
[Sorry if this posts twice.]
BTW … pedophilia isn’t the only thing that pre-dates the internet. So does paranoia about it.
Not that pedophilia isn’t a horrible thing, but I remember that when I was a kid there was this rash of news reports about kids getting picked up by strangers and getting molested. These reports would always show the “pedophile” (in dramatization, I guess) driving the same very light grey, almost white van. As kids we called them “child molester vans”.
The sad part is, from this sort of thing, to the hubbub over “terrorists”, to the fact that the media seems to have everybody in my parents’ generation or older afraid to go to malls because of “gangs” (*), the media keeps selling this stuff and people keep buying (much to the pleasure of those who profit monitarily from our fear and even more so to those who profit politically).
As FDR once said “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself”.
* for some reason a lot of people my parents’ age or older have a habit of going on and on about “I can’t go to the mall after a certain hour … it’s gang infested”. I presume they get this informaiton from the news as how would these people even know how to spot a “gang-banger” unless they were like the gangs in “West Side Story” (and that well choreographed)? But what’s the gain in making a bunch of alter-kockers afraid of gangs (unless the media is conspiring to get Rudy Giuliani elected president)? I know who looses — the malls and similar places! I’m surprised they don’t band together and sue for slander!
If anyone missed it - this whole thing is directly connected to The Assault On Reason, discussed less than 4 days ago. The mass media’s obsession with certain topics and the use of those topics to scare the piss out of the dumb or inattentive are pretty well laid out.
The problem is, as 6079 pointed out, that Gore didn’t take responsibility for perpetuating the pearl-clutching hysteria problem with the war on rock music in the 80s.
It’s a common mistake, but the phrase is actually “champing at the bit.” Great post.
magda:
If that’s the case, the numbers are far, far too low.
I made the mistake last year of blogging on Nickelodeon’s insipid Partridge Family warm-over, Naked Brothers Band, and ever since then I’ve been getting some truly awful search hits, the least obnoxious of which include “phone number” and “really naked”.
Most of them are coming from starstruck teenage girls. How do I know? Because a few of them have taken me to task for daring to suggest the show is inane; and because I’ve actually had kids try to post their personal, real-world information in an attempt to get in touch with members of the band.
It’s cooled down a lot since last year, but assuming Nick puts out a second season I expect the hits to pick up again.
Meanwhile, the point is that if these stats include kids looking for kids, 20% is off by about 75%.
the opoponax:
Ah, but the PSA does not specify that these “20%” are being solicited by adults. We’re left to make that inference ourselves.
It’s got to the point now that if I happen to catch at ad coming on, I mute the sound or change the channel. It just infuriates me.
My latest comment got bounced into mod. Is there a way we can have a list of words that are verboten? Getting kicked into limbo without warning is kinda frustrating.
Best-guess repost attempting to circumvent the mod engine:
magda:
If that’s the case, the numbers are far, far too low.
I made the mistake last year of blogging on Nickelodeon’s insipid Partridge Family warm-over, N4k3d Brothers Band, and ever since then I’ve been getting some truly awful search hits, the least obnoxious of which include “phone number” and “really n4k3d”.
Most of them are coming from starstruck teenage girls. How do I know? Because a few of them have taken me to task for daring to suggest the show is inane; and because I’ve actually had kids try to post their personal, real-world information in an attempt to get in touch with members of the band.
It’s cooled down a lot since last year, but assuming Nick puts out a second season I expect the hits to pick up again.
Meanwhile, the point is that if these stats include kids looking for kids, 20% is off by about 75%.
the opoponax:
Ah, but the PSA does not specify that these “20%” are being solicited by adults. We’re left to make that inference ourselves.
It’s got to the point now that if I happen to catch at ad coming on, I mute the sound or change the channel. It just infuriates me.
My favorite media B.S. along these lines was a story in the Kalamazoo Gazette, that had a large, scarified graphic of a computer and the headline “Dangerous Net” about the dangers of the net. The story used the news hook of a recent case where a teenager from the Kazoo area took off to Indiana with 30-something ex-con and supposedley plotted to murder of her parents.
These two sometimes used the Internet to communicate during their star-crossed affair, so that was meant to show the dangerousosity of the net. However, the story mentioned at the bottom of its summary of that particular case that teenage girl and ex-con met in church and saw each other several nights a week there.
This was several years ago and I still have not seen a similar graphic and store about the dangers of church. Maybe a dark and stormy church, where the front door looks like a mouth. An evil mouth.
I guess I should just wait longer.
The thing that gets me most about those types of stories is that all they do is instill fear. Whether or not that fear is reasonable is one thing, which you covered. But even if/when it is reasonable, these news stories rarely give good, solid advice for dealing with it. All they say is stuff like “watch your children” or “don’t post pictures online.”
Speaking of the disgusting clubbiness and endemic corruption of the media, have you ever read this little anecdote from Jonathan Schwarz?(As H. L. Mencken, a heck of an elitist himself, said: “A few months of associating with the gaudy magnificoes of the town, and they pick up its meretricious values, and are unable to distinguish men of sense and dignity from mountebanks. A few clumsy overtures from the White House and they are rattled and undone. They come in as newspapermen, trained to get the news and eager to get it; they end as tin-horn statesmen, full of dark secrets and unable to tell the truth if they tried.”)
pedophilia isn’t the only thing that pre-dates the internet. So does paranoia about it.
You’re telling me.
I’m currently reading a book on the history of dissent in the medieval church, and apparently one of the most popular things to accuse heretics, Jews, and witches of was pedophilia, along with similar crimes like orgies and child abduction/murder.
Amanda, you just about gave me a heart attack.
Then I realized it was what you were reading, not writing.
Yeah, I don’t think I have the fiction-writing skills.
The Internet is just people. Good, bad, smart, dumb, but just people. Sure, it’s largely (but not entirely) anonymous–but so is much of offline life, if you think about it. How many of the people you pass in the grocery store or share the highway with do you know by name? Even your neighbours are likely to be “the guy with the blue sedan in apartment 217″ or “that thin blonde girl, I think she goes to my daughter’s school”.
Hi Amanda,
My first book just came out, and it’s a collection of essays about internet communities, friendships formed on the ‘net, and some of the good that comes out of being able to create a large collective (tribe) that isn’t determined by geographical borders.
Like you said in your post, the media hysteria that creates a portrait of the entire net as a cesspool of pedophiles who want to rape your children, steal your identity, and then hack you to pieces is absurd. My favorite part of these cable show hit pieces on the net is when the gloomy newscaster says without irony, “…for more information on (whatever reason why the net will instantly kill you), please visit our website at…”
Anyway! Your post hit a nerve. On all but one radio of the radio interviews I’ve granted, the interviewer just wants to discuss pedophiles. I have no idea what to do with it, except to say, calmly, “everyday, millions and millions and millions of people use the internet, and nothing bad ever happens to them.”
There’s an essay called “The Internet Wants Your Daughters” in the book, which is about the absurdity of the hysteria. But no one ever wants to talk about the weddings, the charity collections, or the comfort I’ve seen. I write about the generosity of strangers most often. None of that is ever covered. All they want to discuss is the legion of wolves hiding behind every URL for Little Red Riding Hood to innocently join a Justin Timberlake fan listing so they can POUNCE and eat her all up.
What can you do? What’s the appropriate response?
Hi Amanda,
My first book just came out, and it’s a collection of essays about internet communities, friendships formed on the ‘net, and some of the good that comes out of being able to create a large collective (tribe) that isn’t determined by geographical borders.
Like you said in your post, the media hysteria that creates a portrait of the entire net as a cesspool of pedophiles who want to rape your children, steal your identity, and then hack you to pieces is absurd. My favorite part of these cable show hit pieces on the net is when the gloomy newscaster says without irony, “…for more information on (whatever reason why the net will instantly kill you), please visit our website at…”
Anyway! Your post hit a nerve. On all but one of the radio interviews I’ve granted, the interviewer seems obsessed with pedophilia. I have no idea what to do with it, except to say, calmly, “everyday, millions and millions and millions of people use the internet, and nothing bad ever happens to them.”
There is an essay called “The Internet Wants Your Daughters” in the book, which is about the absurdity of the hysteria. But no one ever wants to talk about the weddings, the charity collections, or the comfort I’ve seen. I write about the generosity of strangers most often. None of that is ever covered. All they want to discuss is the legion of wolves hiding behind every URL for Little Red Riding Hood to innocently join a Justin Timberlake fan listing so they can POUNCE and eat her all up.
What can you do? What’s the appropriate response?