Man...

[lithera]

I had a very long post about some stuff here and I killed it accidentally. I'll see if I can find it again in my head.

So. Somethings serious and not so serious. There have been a few things coming up again and again over the past few weeks and my brain has found a way to put them together with some other things.

I'm going to start out on the not so serious side of things. I've done reading reality shows and how they do horribly in syndication. That's where networks make most of their money, is in syndication. I'll agree with that they were saying though, most reality shows have next to zero replay value. At least for me. I've only ever actually /liked/ two reality (The Amazing Race and Mad, Mad, House) shows and I wouldn't really ever want to see either one in reruns. Once I know what happens, how the people interact, I don't need to see it again.

There is this trend in reality shows, since they have to get all of the viewers they can the first time around. There is this trend towards making them "more extreme" and we're heading into some strange and potentially dangerous territory with this stuff. We're starting to see how far people will go for money and putting them into some pretty crazy situations. I start to wonder how long it will be until we start getting things like the Milgram Reenactment, the Stanford prison experiment or to draw a 'more extreme' idea, The Running Man.

I know, I know I'm taking that to extremes some but this is where the connection is made in my head to what is happening in Abu Ghriab. I'm not saying that they're directly related anywhere but in my head but those experiments up there show that you can't take ordinary people and put them into situations like that. They show that people, most of the time, will follow what they think authority figures want of them, either explicitly or passively. There needs to be training for that sort of situation and there need to be outside controls and oversight. From what I've been reading, in the places there were either of those, they were woefully insufficient.

There are plenty of historical examples of what people in authority can get people to do because they're in authority. And there are plenty of of examples of power (any sort of power - money, fame, position of authority) really mentally screwing up the people who are unprepared for it. Let us all remember that passive cooperation is still cooperation.

This all reminds me of a few lines from The Fifth Element, which has been on TV a lot recently. That or I've caught all of the showings because it always seems to be on when I'm watching TV.

Leeloo: I don't understand humans. Everything you create, you use to destroy.
Korben Dallas: Yeah, we call it human nature.

I don't know if I'm making any sort of point here. All of this has just been spinning around in my head and I had to get it out. I think this might have been what was keeping me from sleeping last night. And I know I wrote it more eloquently the first time I wrote it out. I made my case better, I think.

There were other things I was going to add to this but they don't fit with what I'm talking about here and I've spent way too much time on this as it is. Yeah, though I feel tehre is more I should say here, I can't think of it. So, this is what there is. Maybe I'll come back and edit it later.

Comments

[mizkit.livejournal.com]

Pretty much since the first Survivor hit the air I've been comparing the reality shows to The Running Man. I can all but hear Philip K Dick saying, "Toldja so."

[lithera.livejournal.com]

And Stephen King. Yeah.

[jameel.livejournal.com]

I'll buy that for a dollar!