So is it just me or is everything there days getting chopped, diced and sliced into ever smaller chunks for our entertainment consumption? Seems like we’ve become a nation of instant gratifiers – give it to me now, give it to me quick, gimme, gimme, gimme.
So back in the good ole days our forefathers had single-moded recreation. They listened to the radio. Or watched TV. Or bowled. Nowadays our diversions stream at us deludgelike and we process information and experiences multi-modally. Meaning, we blog, text, chat, watch Youtube and bowl all at the same time. Television comes at us via snaky cables and ubiquitous satellites with a specific channel for every perversion. The internet fractures our attention even further. We get bombarded with messages like we’re in some sort of primordial multimedia soup.
And back in the day we actually moved our schedule around to accommodate our entertainment and not vice versa. Do you even remember back to the time when you waited for that specific time for your favorite TV show – you know, Thursday night Seinfeld’s. These days with Tivo, YouTube, BitTorrent and internet TV, we watch what we want, when we want to view it. And don’t get me started on lascivious content.
Speaking of which, in the past, our recreation broke distinctly into either high brow or low brow. You either sipped highballs and watched opera or chugged Pabst Blue Ribbon while ogling women wrestling in mud.
Nowadays the demarcation between high and low brow culture has been blurred. Heck I think they’ve even got a mud wrestling opera cable channel now but I could be wrong. At a minimum everything these days gets sexed up. I mean sex sells, yes, but scantily couples hawking toilet paper …
and vacuums …
Jeesh.
And then there’s blogging. Who has time to read – God forbid – a novel. I mean I break out in hives when I see the polysyllabic length of a USA today newspaper. Give me short snippets of wisdom, entertaining nuggets of laughter, in short, give me blogging or give me a lobotomy.
I figure in time our collective attention spans will shorten to that of the common goldfish – which is to say, 3 seconds.
Not what were you saying …
The ever shortening American attention span
On May - 14 - 2008
15 Responses
Sorry could not focus on this blog watching scrubs and listening to a youtube
ha! JD………………good one
Posted on May 14th, 2008 at 11:55 pm
i love scrubs
main character is JD
Posted on May 15th, 2008 at 1:00 am
So first, I love this one….pointing out the blunt truth of our American culture over here on Blunt Wit. All of it DOES indeed ring true. Especially in the blogging part…..which is why I will never understand why some people continue to write novellas in a blogging forum. I mean c’mon…if I wanted to read a novel, I’d do it the old-fashioned way and pick up a hardback!
So I recently heard the same thing about goldfish, about their attention span….and that the only thing they will ever ‘know’ and ‘feel’ is death. If they’re happy they feel like they’ve been happy all their lives, and if they’re dying they feel like they’ve been dying all their lives….their last fleeting thought is their current feeling, which of course is always going to be death, because that is the last feeling before the metaphorical lights are turned off. How sad.
Oh and I’m impressed, albeit a little shocked, you’ve gone a little on the risque side with those accompanying pictures….
Posted on May 15th, 2008 at 7:03 am
Yes but a lifetime of blissful fishfulness versus a microsecond of death. I think goldfish might have something on us!
Posted on May 15th, 2008 at 11:01 am
HAHA… JD! How TRUE! I was just discussing, well, trying to TELL my daughter to chill out when it comes to her needing to do a million things at once. Or, she asks to do something and I help her het it all set up and she’s done in a time frame shorter than what it took to get her ready. This causes me to SCREAM! I’m not sure as that she gets it from me. I still read books (a lot of them)and watch TV on the TV… I think ALL kids are ADD/ADHD and it’s because of their enviornments. Who can help it? I feel ADD all the time! There is just so much to do and not enough time… or is that the way we make it???
So, more my speed, I’m digging that vaccuum cleaner pic. That’s the way I need to learn to vaccuum… or rather, delegate vaccuuming
Like Mags said, nice pics!
Posted on May 15th, 2008 at 1:23 pm
I can’t believe Photobucket nixed the toilet paper pic – it ran i magazines for christ sake
Posted on May 15th, 2008 at 1:24 pm
I have no idea what I just read. I heard a bird chirp and then received a text that I read while I was reading.
What did you say again?
My son has one lonely goldfish that he won at a fair. He sees no other fish and I feel bad for him. But he’s going on 3 and I think 3 is old for a goldfish, so he must be happy. I had a similar fish at his age. Not only are fish forgetful, but they can be easy to forget… which reminds me to feed the fish!
Thanks JD!
Posted on May 15th, 2008 at 2:37 pm
ah yes if you don’t feed the fish
they float to the surface
Posted on May 15th, 2008 at 2:38 pm
um,…I still ogle women wrestling in mud. lol
Posted on May 15th, 2008 at 6:22 pm
i bet you’d jump in there with them …. lol
Posted on May 15th, 2008 at 6:37 pm
I know what you mean. I think we’ve actually screwed ourselves out of pleasure. Maybe it would be a good thing to be dirt poor again.
Posted on May 15th, 2008 at 7:32 pm
Yes, your right. Americans need to s-l-o-w down. You only get one live so enjoy!
Posted on May 23rd, 2008 at 9:01 pm
yes
slow down
and smell the coffee
Posted on May 23rd, 2008 at 10:12 pm
Love the blog. and yes, I totally agree on the speeding up, chopping down. The thing is – the shorter, smaller, more dissected info. we get, the more overwhelmed and rushed I feel. Do I twitter/ meme/ del.ic.io.us / digg/ reddit? Do I read in bloglines or google reader? Do I friend people whose blogs I read and like or bookmark them?
eh, never mind, pass the pbr.
Posted on May 25th, 2008 at 10:31 pm
white wine with red fish or red wine?
tell me about it …
Posted on May 26th, 2008 at 6:14 pm
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