娱乐至死3

emily

If a news anchor ever winked at you after reporting a tsunami and said, “Now… this,” Neil Postman would’ve yeeted his remote control into the sun. Chapters 7 and 8 of Amusing Ourselves to Death dissect how media turned gravity into confetti – and reading them in 2024 feels like watching a prophet predict the chaos of your group chat. 📱💥  

Chapter 7’s “Now… This” isn’t just a transition phrase – it’s the DNA of our attention spans. Postman describes TV news as a ADHD carnival 🎪 where nuclear war updates get sandwiched between toothpaste jingles, all delivered with the emotional range of a weather report. Fast-forward to today: we swipe from “Genocide in Sudan” to “Look at my dog’s Halloween costume!” in 0.2 seconds, our brains doing moral gymnastics that would baffle Simone Biles. I tested this yesterday: cried over a Gaza documentary, then immediately giggled at a meme about crying over Gaza documentaries. Postman’s point? Media isn’t just fragmenting information – it’s fragmenting us.  

The chapter’s killer insight? “Now… This” culture makes everything equally meaningless. When CNN treats politics, tragedy, and celebrity gossip as interchangeable content blocks, we start believing they’re equally important. Or worse – equally unimportant. Last week, my Apple News feed served me:  
1. AI’s threat to human extinction 🤖☠️  
2. Kim Kardashian’s new metallic leggings ✨👖  
3. A 30-second explainer on quantum physics (sponsored by Raid: Shadow Legends) 🎮⚛️  
By lunchtime, my brain had processed all three as “vaguely concerning background noise.” Postman saw this coming: when media flattens all information into entertainment topography, we become tourists in our own reality – snapping selfies at ethical dilemmas. 📸💣  

Chapter 8, “Shuffle Off to Bethlehem,” is where Postman goes full Shakespearean tragedy on religion’s TV makeover. Televangelists turning sermons into variety shows? Megachurches staging resurrection reenactments with better lighting than Broadway? 💡✝️ He argues TV couldn’t handle religion’s seriousness, so it repackaged transcendence as a infomercial – “Call now! Salvation guaranteed or your sins refunded!” 🙏📞  

But 2024 said “Hold my green screen.” Now we’ve got mindfulness influencers selling enlightenment via ASMR videos 🧘♂️🎧, mega-pastors viral-dancing to sermons 💃📖, and meditation apps that interrupt your zen with push notifications about other meditation apps. Postman’s nightmare isn’t just that we’re trivializing the sacred – it’s that we’ve forgotten what “sacred” even means. Spirituality now competes with unboxing videos, and losing. 😶🌫️  

The real joke? We’re the punchline. Postman describes TV audiences nodding along to commercial-break sermons like they’re watching sitcom reruns. Cut to today: I literally listened to a podcast about climate apocalypse while playing Merge Dragons🐉📱, my brain partitioning existential dread into its own mental spam folder. When your phone serves Buddhist mantras between TikTok thirst traps, enlightenment becomes just another subscription service. 🔄🧠  

But here’s the twist Postman missed: we’ve weaponized his critique. Modern creators know they’re packaging wisdom as snackable content – and wink at us while doing it. I follow a philosopher who explains Kierkegaard through SpongeBob memes 🧽📜, and a scientist who dances to explain black holes 🕳️💃. It’s meta-entertainment: laughing at the absurdity of laughing at serious things. Postman’s “Now… This” became our “lol nothing matters” cope. 😂☄️  

Yet buried under the lolz is real loss. Postman makes you mourn for context– that forgotten art of letting ideas breathe. TV (and now algorithms) force-feed us deconstructed reality: all climax, no plot. Imagine reading the Bible as emoji-laden tweets:  
🍎 + 🐍 = oops  
🌊 + 🚢 = zoology hack  
👨👩👧👦 + 🔥 = parenting win  
We’ve become Picasso painters of comprehension – all fragmented angles, no cohesive picture. 🖼️🔨  

As an experiment, I tried rehabilitating my attention span. I watched a 40-minute documentary without checking my phone. Results:  
1. Learned about Arctic ice melt ❄️🔥  
2. Felt actual emotions (not just performative angst) 😱  
3. Developed a craving to yell at strangers: “THE PLANET’S DYING AND WE’RE FILTERING IT!” 🔥🗣️  
Turns out sustained focus feels like using muscles you forgot existed – painful but weirdly satisfying. 💪🧠  

Postman’s saddest observation? We’ve replaced communion with content. When TV turned religion into spectacle, it killed collective reverence. Now, my generation “worships” through isolated scrolling – lighting digital candles in prayer apps 🕯️📲, getting sermon highlights via Instagram carousels. It’s spirituality-as-a-service: all the transcendence, none of the human sweat. We’ve shuffled off to Bethlehem, alright – via Uber, with a 4.8 driver rating. 🌟🚗  

So here we are: juggling existential crises and unread notifications, treating reality like a never-ending Netflix preview. Postman’s “Now… This” isn’t just a media critique – it’s a mirror. Every time we click “skip ad” on our own attention spans, every time we let a TikTok stitch explain systemic racism, we’re building a world where nothing matters deeply.  

The final “Now… This”? You’ll finish this essay, feel a flicker of unease, then swipe to the next dopamine hit. And the circus plays on. 🎪🤡