08-12-2016, 10:20 PM
Now for something different. I am getting some secretive program flooding my computer audio with tales of "celebrities" that I have gotten sick of. The tone is of the style of Entertainment Tonight -- assertive but empty. Kardashian sisters... Lindsay Lohan... Caitlyn Jenner... but I can't find and disable the program delivering this mindless, irrelevant stuff. All that I can do is to turn off the audio, which means that I can't enjoy music on YouTube.
I understand of course that much content comes with advertising, as is the norm with television or radio. Having to see an ad for car insurance before seeing a news feed, a documentary, or an extended music video (for example a work of classical music on an extended scale) is acceptable if one does not want to go to pay-per-view, low-quality personal video, or outright propaganda.
I try to imagine it on the other side. Getting an intrusion of Brahms' Sextet Op. 18 while hearing a tale of some starlet fornicating while breaking rules of rehab would be similarly obnoxious -- if one were as enthralled with celebrity 'news' as I am turned off.
I understand of course that much content comes with advertising, as is the norm with television or radio. Having to see an ad for car insurance before seeing a news feed, a documentary, or an extended music video (for example a work of classical music on an extended scale) is acceptable if one does not want to go to pay-per-view, low-quality personal video, or outright propaganda.
I try to imagine it on the other side. Getting an intrusion of Brahms' Sextet Op. 18 while hearing a tale of some starlet fornicating while breaking rules of rehab would be similarly obnoxious -- if one were as enthralled with celebrity 'news' as I am turned off.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.