On the Saturday before the Monday on which I have a final project due, a final exam to prepare for, and a final paper to write, I would have expected myself to be working diligently on some combination of all three. Yet, my evening (my day having been sadly lost due to a boring and depressing power-hour the night before) was filled not with the diligence due a serious college student with serious interests and a serious personality, but with the watching of 2 hours tv–and a non-serious channel like comedy central at that. And I claim that this is more serious than most of the tv-watching serious people do. The state of the failing media is a hot topic these days, with good cause (but which has been apparent to many people for the past few years). It seems as if more-and-more, the best places to find out about news is through bad sources–”fictional” tv shows, manufactured for comedic consumption. Yet, sadly (but also to great benefit to comedy), this is the case. The two hours in question tonight was four episodes of South Park. As I watched one of the episodes whose moral content I did not particularly agree with at first, I started wondering why I was still watching. If I had seen anything remotely similar on a serious channel, I would have flipped the channel immediately. Yet here I was, watching Matt Stone and Trey Parker sermonizing on the same topic, and I had no intentions of changing the channel. Why? I think it’s because I genuinely want to understand the other point of view, without being (a) talked down to, (b) being verbally abused, (c) insulted, or (d) being marketed to. And while South Park can continue being that way, it will always be a pleasure to watch it.
With such issues on my mind, I left the tv at midnight to come to my computer, hoping to get started on one of my pending tasks, only to open up my browser to this article. The two major articles linked to in that one were amazing in their portrayals of “news” sites writing advertisements in the form of stories. That this occurred was not as much a surprise to me as the incredible ubiquity of it–and the more I think about it, the more disgusted I am. This is the reason I have lost all faith in conventional news sources–if we cannot even expect to maintain some standards of journalistic integrity, or even basic integrity for that matter, how can we expect to get news that is not complete garbage?
My intellectual journey then led me to Paul Graham’s website, which I spent the next 4 hours exploring fully. His essays are excellent, and his writing style is clear and persuasive (well-matched with his keen analysis of the relevant issues). His revolutionary attitude is well-masked in a shroud of decency, but for someone looking for a fellow shocker, one of those seemingly elusive people who is more shocking than he appears to be rather than the opposite, his writing marks him clearly as one of this rare breed. Covering a range of topics from open-mindedness (one of my own interests) to free speech and press to why high schools in America are simply prisons to keep kids off the streets to why Lisp is the bestest programming language ever to starting up a startup company that doesn’t suck, well shit, go read them now. He’s a much better writer than I am, and especially when I’m writing at 6:45 in the morning when I should be sleeping so I can finish all my work tomorrow, err today.
Tags: paul graham, south park
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