 |
| Courtesy of MattysFlicks |
By David A. Tizzard
 |
Stephen Fry suggested this week that “social media is a lavatory wall.” Essential, capable of providing anonymity and security when we need it most, yet basically surrounded by a load of old crap and home to glory holes and spycams. It’s a place where ideas are scrawled by anyone and everyone, often without consideration of the consequences. A soapbox. A place to vent: to be outrageous. You can declare your love for Suzie, rage war against Junho, or just put a silly picture of a cat for no reason.
Social media, and Twitter in particular, talks of hot-button topics. There has to be news, outrage, something happening every morning. Hashtags fly. If there weren’t, we would probably have to learn about Twitter users’ lives instead. Imagine the horror! If you want to see Twitter at its worse, have a look on a day when something of reasonable importance happens: Everyone shares the same information just to make sure you don’t miss it ― for the 500th time. Each user feeling that they are in some way creating reality, shaping a narrative, and correcting the course of the world in their pajamas.
Twitter also seems to rely on anger and outrage as its main currency. Yes, it contains the possibilities of love, friendship, altruism, music, compassion, wit, poetry, and Doga Cat. But with that alone, it wouldn’t work. If you are angry about something, you’ll got loads of likes and retweets. If you’re happy and genuinely loving, you’ll receive far less. This truth is evident. It becomes really scary though when you realize that those who use Twitter regularly also know this, whether subconsciously or otherwise.
Contrast this with the television: Once a staple of information, entertainment, fear, laughter, love, and family, it is now neglected by social media users. Some will occasionally jack-in laptops, tablets, firesticks, and consoles in order to stream stuff on demand using a variety of wires, interfaces, and digital connections. What would have seemed like rocket surgery to people a few decades ago is now a quick chord change.
There’s no interaction here. The information is waved at you by far more beautiful people and there’s not a pajama in sight. There are also convincing graphs and moving words. Jingles and theme tunes provide a sense of regalia. And the whole thing happens according to its own preset schedule. You have to catch it rather than the other way around.
What I continue to notice is that the content on mainstream Korean television news (and radio) is becoming further and further removed from that taking place on social media. The political discourse on the two platforms is ever disparate. We are now seeing more than ever the creation of different paradigms and contrasting people. Essentially two different languages and cultures. If you raised one child (in Korea?!) on social media news and another on televised news, by the time they were twenty they would both have a completely different understanding of the country and themselves. Moreover, they would find it incredibly difficult to communicate because their values and ideas would be so alien to each other.
If you read Korean Twitter you will probably find Korean television news offensive for willfully ignoring the most serious issues. If you watch television news, you will see Twitter conversations as incomprehensible and largely inconsequential. The medium is the message. And the medium is massaging us all into equally perilously states of anger and division while those who supply the drug enlarge their retail and share of the market.
So what will you choose this week: Twitter or television?
Dr. David A. Tizzard (datizzard@swu.ac.kr) has a Ph.D. in Korean Studies. He is a social/cultural commentator and musician who has lived in Korea for nearly two decades. He is also the host of the Korea Deconstructed podcast, which can be found online. The views expressed in the article are the author’s own and do not reflect the editorial direction of The Korea Times.
Twitter or television?
Source: Buhay Kapa PH
0 Comments