A Place For Everyone, But Not Everyone Stays in His Place in The Me-Me-Media

In this month’s Readers Digest, there was an article about the new personal media – iPod’s, blogs, personalized news, satellite radio, cell phones, e-mail, text messaging and the like. RD cited one University of Chicago professor (there’s always one) who predicts that if people have the capacity to filter out stuff they don’t want from their media experience, then we’ve created a recipe for extremism. Dr. Sunstein calls it the “echo effect”. The theory is that if everything we see and hear is an echo or reflection of our own opinions and preferences, then gradually we slip farther and farther from the mainstream and into a fractured collection of fringe groups. Many media pundits are predicting a return to tribalism if the trend continues.

I respectfully disagree. Here’s why:

1. In order to personalize your media choices, you first have to hunt around for things to put into your iPod or bookmark in your browser. You see a lot of opposing ideas and opinions, new music and cool stuff while you’re figuring out what you want to include in your personalized media universe.
2. The next thing is, in order to support one side of any argument, you pretty much have to, at some point, listen to the other side in order to know what you’re against and don’t want to hear. Despite this pundit’s gloomy prediction that we’ll all become narrow-minded drones only listening to ideas we like, I’m seeing out there a whole lot of guys who listen to both Rush Limbaugh AND Al Franken, if only to shout at the radio in frustration at things they disagree with. I’d be willing to bet there are a whole lot more people out there with increasingly eclectic tastes. I made a “soundtrack of my life” tape the other day (one of my kids had to do one for a college project and it looked like fun – it was!). My CD includes folk protest songs and the Eagles’ “Get Over It”. It’s got Bing Crosby singing “Would you like to Swing on a Star” AND “Mad Dogs & Englishmen” (the Noel Coward version, not the rock n’ roll one!). A real mix of themes and ideas. A lot more people are like that out there than you think. People get tired of the same old thing after a while and move on. My son’s CD was a lot more homogenous musically, but even he threw in some bluegrass with his rap anthems.
3. I believe the new media opens doors for all sorts of creativity. The new tools can make anyone a pundit or a producer. If you spend any time at all surfing the net, you can find some wonderfully creative communities that pop up spontaneously around some theme or idea or event. Remember the “Star Wars Kid” series that turned an embarrassing moment caught on film into a whole string of delightful promos and spoofs and made the kid a minor celebrity. There was even a huge Internet petition going around that demanded George Lucas give him a part in one of the Star Wars movies – I think it was a form of collective guilt over everybody making so much fun of the kid. It was fascinating to watch. Oh and have you ever seen the “Trunk Monkey” commercial. Try googling that one – very funny!
4. Finally, I believe humans are all tribal by nature anyway. Some of us huddle in small geographic communities. Others create virtual villages where a guy from East Texas can share ideas and interests with people from Australia, Brazil, Israel and Japan if they can find a common language. Slot car racers have a community. I didn’t even know anyone still did that. I dug out my custom designed 1/32 scale Mustang GT and plan to visit the local track I found listed on a slot car webring. I found another for luthiers and learned enough from the guys there to rebuild a damaged Goya Guitar (the kind Willie Nelson plays with the hole in it) that I got for $35 on the Internet. I couldn’t have afforded a guitar like that for years, but thanks to personalized media and eBay, I was able to pull it off. I refelted our old pool table last Sunday thanks to instructions I found on a billiards community on the net – saved myself about $250. Just because we live in a tribe, doesn’t mean we won’t visit other tribes – especially not now that it’s so easy to get there!

I think what the professor worried about was that Americans (well, for that matter, anybody in the world with access to what she called the Me-me-media) wouldn’t receive the benefit of the opinions and influence of all the really smart people that have controlled the networks news and programming for all these years.

Well, that’s arguable. I took two years of graduate psychology courses. One thing I learned that really startled me was that there were as many smart people out there as there are stupid people. For everyone whose IQ is below 100 (the average score), there’s one above 100. So there are as may geniuses as there are mentally challenged out there. Even if you limit your definition of who are the really smart people to just 2% of the population, that’s still 20 people out of a thousand that are really super bright. In a town the size of Tyler, (around 100,000 now) that means there are 2000 really smart people – as smart as the average TV anchorman or smarter. So, Dr Sunstein, if we make it easier for all those smart people to get their own blog or to put their film on the net or create a site about something they really love and are passionate about, doesn’t that mean that the new media makes even more smartness available to us all. Sometimes I wonder if this is not just the pundits merely protecting their own turf? What threatens a paid pundit more than one who is every bit as erudite, but who isn’t charging a massive speaking fee?

Those who view the mass of people as too stupid to think for themselves may believe unsupervised personal media is a threat to society. Of course, most of those guys believe they are in the top 2% by the way – not at all surprising that they should feel threatened. Before we go further I want to assure you that I am well aware there is a lot of bunk, falsehood and just plain hooey out there. Dozens of nuts claim Nutra-Sweet is a deadly toxin. Hundred believe (and post on websites) that George W. Bush is Beelzebub’s personal representative on Earth. But for every crank out there, there is another genuine expert, easily accessible, who will teach you how to cook brownies to die for or how to rebuild and sail a catamaran. There’s Wikipedia, potentially the largest encyclopedia anywhere, built by thousands of individuals who know something about something they think is important and who are willing to research and create tens of thousands of useful articles to post on the site. Often the articles are the work of dozens of contributors correcting and updating information constantly. The system is amazing and Wikipedia is now a tremendous living information resource.

So rather than fracturing and dividing us, I think we are creating a more diverse set of communities than ever before, but ones that are even more connected to each other than before (behold the hyperlink if you don’t believe me) . In the age of personalized media, I don’t have to watch or like or be what everybody else watches, likes or is. If I collect toy soldiers, I don’t have to put up with my family of non-collectors badgering me all the time about my hobby around the old barbecue pit. Instead I’ve got ready access to a community who takes the hobby seriously too. Okay, maybe I don’t keep up with reality TV anymore. So, I won’t do well on pop culture trivia because I don’t care who won on Survivor this year. I tape or Tivo my favorite shows no matter when they’re on and watch them when I want. I choose to make differences of opinion part of my personal media package because it’s stimulating. Bloggers, surfers and micro media personalities contribute to the incredible diversity in today’s electronic media.

Computers have taken us to a new level. Freedom of the press used to be limited to people who could afford a press. The new media makes press ownership affordable to everyone. Brains and talent is ever more becoming the primary criteria for getting your opinion out there where once financial resources acted as the filter. I think that’s healthy.

Two decades ago they said AM radio was dead, but they’d never seen anyone like Rush Limbaugh before. This almost unknown, bright ex-Dejay/sportscaster raised AM radio from the grave, linked it to the Internet, got onto the Internet, into podcasting early and made himself very rich in the process. People include him in their personal media universes because he says things they want to hear, he’s witty, intelligent and entertaining. Almost as often, ironically, others listen because they hate and despise everything he stands for. Surprisingly, he’s almost got as many people listening who hate him as he does listeners who love him.

Here’s your homework: I want you to make yourself a CD on your computer. Imagine you were making a movie about your life. Create a soundtrack CD like “Sleepless in Seattle” or “50 First Dates” or something. Make it so the music complements the scenes you see in your head. My first track is Tennessee Ernie Ford’s “Sixteen Tons”.

Born on a mornin’ when the sun didn’t shine,
Got up early went to work in the mine.
Loaded sixteen tons of number nine coal.
The foreman said, well bless a my soul…

It was the first song I ever learned the words to (at age two). Since then, there have been lots of others. Here’s the play list if you’re curious:

SONG ARTIST
1. Sixteen Tons..............................Tennessee Ernie Ford
2. Would You Like to Swing on a Star..........Bing Crosby
3. Right Field.......................................Peter, Paul & Mary
4. Feelin’ Groovy................................Simon & Garfunkel
5. Oh Very Young...........................................Cat Stevens
6. Fire & Rain................................................James Taylor
7. Morning Has Broken.................................Cat Stevens
8. My Sweet Lady........................................John Denver
9. Catch the Wind...................................Donovan Leitch
10. Java Jive.................................................Greg Brown
11. In the Mood............................................Glenn Miller
12. Ballin’ the Jack......................................Danny Kaye
13. Mad Dogs & Englishmen.......................Noel Coward
14. Dona Dona........................................Donovan Leitch
15. If I had a Boat.........................................Lyle Lovett
16. Superman Song.....................Crash Test Dummies
17. The Happy Wanderer........................Brave Combo
18. The Dinosaur Song.........Trout Fishing in America
19. Get Over It!............................................The Eagles
20. The Hand Song....................................Nickel Creek
21. Lookin’ Out My Back Door ......Creedence Clearwater Revival
22. Don’t Fence Me In............Bing Crosby & the Andrews Sisters
23. Happy Trails.......................................Roy Rogers & Dale Evans

I defy you to find a disk jockey that could even imagine programming an hour that matches my playlist or for that matter an hour that matches your soundtrack. If you’d like, type up your own track list and post it in the comments section of this blog. I’d love to see what’s on your soundtrack. I've never seen a personal soundtrack yet that didn't have at least one surprise in it.

I think the Me-me-media is just a lovely idea. It could be the best thing to happen to the media since television and FM radio. Sure a few highly paid guys may lose their prestige and not be able to demand those 10 million dollar bonuses any more, but isn’t the idea to spread the wealth around a little anyway. Hasn’t the media been criticizing corporate greed and corruption and damning overpaid business executives for years? Then, shouldn’t we start the proposed leveling of the playing field with the media industry? I mean, if we’re going to do some redistribution of wealth, let’s let the entertainment industry lead the way -- you know, show corporate America how it’s done. Money where your mouth is so to speak. More actors and news guys and pundits would be able to work that way wouldn’t they, albeit at somewhat reduced salaries?

I say, “Viva la’ iPod!”

Just one man’s opinion…..

Tom King