The extent to which we N.C . State students absorb ourselves in music, movies, TV and video games is terrifying. Instead of spending our leisure time conversing with one another about substantial matters like current events, or cultivating our minds with non-fiction, we chatter frivolously about the latest pop song or reality television show.
Games like Call of Duty allow us to kill time while killing one another in online combat simulations. Television shows like Jersey Shore encourage us to believe that all daily activities ( “G.T.L.” ) should serve as preparation for successful solicitation of non-intimate sex. Despite our clout as viewers over the type of programs and games created for us, we continue to allow our primal infatuation with violence and sex to obstruct our consensual aspirations for cultural improvement.
Rather than pondering the consequences of our addiction to these destructive forms of entertainment, we naively sponsor their growth. When we could turn the channel or better yet turn off the television, we choose to watch. When we could play a different game, we do not.
It seems that our affinity for familiar sedatives encourages us to remain loyal to the violence and sex that unfortunately continue to serve as cornerstones of modern “pop” entertainment. The captivating idiocy that dumbfounds us as first-time viewers simply renders us dumber each subsequent time we tune in. Eventually, we become so desensitized to the foolishness espoused in television, music and video games that we begin to mistake it for normalcy. No longer astonished by the barbaric content of such programming, we become diseased subscribers spreading its infectious stupidity.
That’s right, we become contagions of stupidity when we engage in conversations about the nonsense that we see on television, hear in a song, or play in a video game. Words spent obsessing over the bogus drama on the screen or the glorified belligerency made available to us in video games are words wasted. Truly it is more honorable to endure an awkward silence with someone than it is to speak about the plot of Jersey Shore or any of the many shows like it.
We do society a disservice by allowing ourselves to appreciate such material. Even by accepting their classification as “entertainment,” we perpetuate the harmful effects that such programming has on our culture. As the consumers, we have allowed the word “popular” to become synonymous with the most abysmal human behaviors.
In our continued submission to primitive exhibitions of violence and corrupt sexuality we have essentially authorized the entertainment industry to bombard us with wave upon wave of it. It is imperative to progress that we begin to reject these forms of entertainment rather than justifying them to be “guilty pleasures.” In allowing the persistence of guilty pleasures, we allow ourselves and our culture to be perverted by the crude and wrongful activities that they endorse.
