Media Criticism

I’ve had a cast on my leg since January and I’ve been non-weight bearing for the last three and one half months.  So, I haven’t been out of the house too terribly much.  I’ve watched the local news a few times a week and of course with all the hoopla surrounding Michael Jackson I watched a lot of Headlines News and CNN. 

I’ve read some magazines as we get the TV Guide and Entertainment Weekly and of course, there are ads all over the internet.  But, for the most part, I have learned to tune out the ads.  I can go to a webpage to show my mother something and instead of looking at what I am trying to show her, she is asking about all these ads that I have never even noticed.  I think it comes with the territory.  My kids hate commericials and no matter what we are watching, they yell, skip this every time a commercial comes on TV.  And of course I couldn’t tell you one ad I saw in any of those magazines that I’ve read.

Today however, I went shopping for groceries and holy cow, the media.  No wonder people buy crap they don’t need.  I have never paid that much attention to the ads in grocery stores, Wal-mart, K-mart, or Target like stores.  But today, they were just like…everywhere…al up in my face.  I found myself thinking of buying different name brands when I’ve used the same one for years.  It was crazy. 

I think I’ll stick to the internet, I have a keen sense of selective reading.

I remember when I first started blogging, it was purely innocent.  I wrote what I wanted to write and if people read it, fine, if not fine.  That was just how I rolled.  Then, I slowly started to learn that people were making money by blogging, and well, who doesn’t get a little rush when they find out they can make money doing what they love to do, what they are already doing and all that jazz.

And, then imagine when I learned that people were making quite a bit of money blogging, people were making big money doing as much and well, there I went with the excitement again.  So, I jumped in with both feet.  I didn’t mind selling myself out on a couple of blogs where I really didn’t do much by the way of effort.  I simply wrote the posts necessary for the money and the filler posts that were required and it was done.  I certainly don’t feel like I am selling myself out.  I mean, does every marketing person out there feel passion for every product they’ve ever created an advertisement for?  I highly doubt it.

I still had my personal blog and all was well with the world.  Then I learned about 451Press and I’ve enjoyed my stay here.  I don’t have to actually promote products, services or websites I know nothing of, I can still just write for the sake of writing.  And, I make a little bit of money on the side, who can argue with that, right?

And, then, slowly I was introduced to Twitter and I loved it.  I always enjoyed chat rooms and such way more than I did forums.  It’s the ADD, the instant gratification, the communication, all of it, that’s just what I enjoy.  And, then it happened….

Much quicker than it happened in blogs and with much more competition, Twitter turned bad.  People that I had enjoyed chatting with via Twitters 140 characters started to advertise on Twitter.  Slowly and unfortunately, Twitter has turned into simply another place for people to compete.  I rarely get to have conversations with people anymore without them forcing someone else’s product, someone else’s link, someone else’s website down my throat.

I admit, I almost fell prey to this myself in the beginning.  I mean, after all, if people were making money this way, then why not.  I’ll tell you why not.  Because I just want to chat with people, not marketers.  Now, that said, I am fortunate enough to receive a few products here and there to review, I’ve had companies pay my way to conferences and I’ve enjoyed socializing no someone else’s dime. 

But, what I really want is my Twitter back.  I want to go there and have unimportant conversations without having to deal with sales pitches.  Common sense would be to just simply not follow those people who are guilty of this, but the fact is, that would take out all but about 3 of the people I Twitter with.  And, if I can ever break the barrier of marketing, I really enjoy talking with most of these people.

Is nothing sacred anymore?