Does mainstream media make people stupider or...

[Tyshalle]

...does mainstream media just pander to stupid people?


I've been having an ongoing argument with a friend over why the majority of people in America are stupid. A lot of things have been said, and I think that overall the situation has become so convoluted that you can't rightly point at any one thing and assign ultimate blame to it. You can't blame the parents of stupid children for not raising them better, for instance, because their parents are likely products of their own parents and so on. Inevitably our arguments always bring us to mainstream media, from movies and TV to videogames and shitty music, and my friend is very quick to place blame here.

But... I dunno. I'm unconvinced. I'm personally not intellectually stimulated by the barrage of reality-TV you can't avoid seeing if you watch TV (which is one of the many reasons I don't), and I can't imagine that anyone else could be either, but even the stupidest TV shows wind up having an audience of bling-toting neanderthals.

So as I see it, there's only three general possibilities here. Either TV does make people stupid, people make stupid TV shows to cater to stupid people for high ratings, or it's a sort of cycle, where TV sort of makes you stupider but it also is catering to its biggest audience (stupid people), and as time goes on in order to keep up with the IQ levels of its audience TV has to become more and more idiotic.

What do you think?

[Kanastrous]

A little from each of Columns A, B and C.

Although I suspect that the major damage done by television in the US is not so much its exacerbation of stupidity as it is its encouragement of laziness.

[Tyshalle]

Why do you think that is? My theory is that laziness and stupidity tend to sell. You don't really see McDonalds or Pepsi talking about devouring their shit in small quantities alongside a regular balanced nutrition.

It seems like all advertisements do these days is promote the idea that we're too good to do anything for ourselves. That and the idea that all that's important is being rich, young and pretty, and the best way to get rich is by being young and pretty.

[Kanastrous]

The core of effective advertising has for a long time been seen as making it simple. Reduce all choices to A or B; A is sexier than B, A will bring you more respect than B, A is what the cool people have while B is for lesser types, etcetera.

This has had a bleed effect into the way we market just about everything: political parties, candidates for high office, decongestants, foreign policy, dish soap, makes no difference now that everything is Product to be sold. There's little to no room for subtlety, and subtle considerations are not what you want to introduce into the target audience, anyway: you want everything to break down into A vs B, with a clear unmistakeable choice as to which is preferable.

Since programming is in large part filler between ads whose principle function is to keep viewer eyeballs in range of the next set of ads to be aired, it's no surprise that with a few exceptions the programming is designed for the same lowest-common-denominator appeal as the ads themselves.

[Kitsune]

I know that my TV tends to wander between Discovery and History channel. While there are some good shows, there are some really horrible background noise such as "Monsterquest"

There are thousands of history and/or educational subjects which they have not touched.

[Kanastrous]

My primary objection to History and Discovery Channel programming is the ever-rising tide of sewage revolving around Mayan calendar prophecies, end times nonsense, UFO tales, bigfoot debates, gospel stories and all the other horrendous shit they air which is apparently designed to lend some kind of 'scientific' aura to folklore and religious superstition.

Alongside that they still air some worthwhile stuff, but the shit-to-content ratio is getting less favorable, all the time.

[Kitsune]

The only channel which does not seem to keep the great favorable material to shit is PBS and mostly Nova. Not every subject is my interests but they all seem well crafted

[Big Phil]

Mainstream people (of all societies, not just the USA) are kind of stupid. You're pandering to the AVERAGE member of society, right? What is the AVERAGE member of society interested in? It's probably not opera, physics, or chess - it's more likely rock & roll, beer, and sports. If you want high quality news and programming, watch PBS - they don't cater to society at large.

It's not media causing stupidity, as much as it is media recognizing that to appeal to the widest (and most profitable audience), you need to have content that can be digested by the stupid while not annoying the more intelligent. It's a balance between stupidity and intelligence, and it leans toward stupidity. If you want outright stupidity, we'd have shows with people getting hit in the nuts (AFV, perhaps) on every channel.

[Zixinus]

People like being catered to and most media has to sell, so they cater.

It's how business works.

If its bullshit that makes people watch your channel then its bullshit a go, because we have to pay our employees.

Truly interesting or intellectual things require effort to understand, even from their target audience (whom are used to this). Most people are lazy to move their mental muscles or just don't have the patience.

If you want people to listen to you, you have to tell what they want to hear. The same principle applies to television.

This is sadly especially true for news outlets: Faux news survives to this day because it tells GOP voters what GOP voters want to hear, so GOP voters pay for it.

[Zixinus]

One thing to add:

You have to consider that people were never really smart, not as much as we think them to be.

So its not that the mainstream media is that dumb. They were always dumb, you just never noticed.

Then again, if your expectation of people that you play on, that expectation can become a reality. If you expect your players to be retards, they'll be retards.

[Majin Gojira]

After studying Screen Writing for 3 years I have an answer:

It's pandering. Planned Pandering.

With a movie or TV show, the audience will make a judgement about a character instantly, and writers have to craft their characters to those generalized judgements within that split-second. Sure, the character can grow, change and reveal hidden depths as time goes on. But it will start out as a stereotype by and large.

Add to this the nature of the media (Advertiser-investment driven), and we see why these programs are shown: people watch them.

[Junghalli]

Mainstream people (of all societies, not just the USA) are kind of stupid. You're pandering to the AVERAGE member of society, right? What is the AVERAGE member of society interested in? It's probably not opera, physics, or chess - it's more likely rock & roll, beer, and sports. If you want high quality news and programming, watch PBS - they don't cater to society at large.

It's not media causing stupidity, as much as it is media recognizing that to appeal to the widest (and most profitable audience), you need to have content that can be digested by the stupid while not annoying the more intelligent. It's a balance between stupidity and intelligence, and it leans toward stupidity. If you want outright stupidity, we'd have shows with people getting hit in the nuts (AFV, perhaps) on every channel.

I think SancheztheWhaler here explains it well.

[Rye]

If you think that your media doesn't teach you how to consume it as much as it panders to your desires, you're missing out half of the picture. Like weed, mainstream media often teaches people to be happy with being bored, when it's not getting them worked up over stupid shit or fusing entertainment and polemic with "news" (tabloidism). Let's say you get 10 people of varying intelligence. For the lowest common denominator, you will have to produce material graspable by the majority. All the average and frequently above average intelligent people will be taught from a young age that the dumbed down version of the material is the "norm" and may find it alien and uncomfortable to watch something that doesn't talk down to them, or isn't filled with bombastic music, hype, tabloid bullshit and right wing axioms.

[Darth Wong]

Reading and writing expectations were greater in the 19th century because only the elites could read and write. Now that Trailer Park Bob can read and write, a lot of literature is designed for him. Similarly, if TV was only produced for elites, it would probably be much more intellectual than it is.

Mind you, that's only half the problem. The other half is advertising. Advertising infantilizes us.

[Forum Troll]

Though genetics can be a factor, most variation in the intelligence of children appears from the environment (the old nature versus nuture debate). Example: A child taught from being a young toddler to add numbers and do simple math will have a higher mathematical IQ than a child whose developing brain was mostly ignored in that regard until reaching school age.

All else being equal, the modern tendency towards smaller families would ordinarily in itself help the amount of parental attention given to each young child. Yet that's complicated by more babies and young children mostly growing up in daycare, in which case a top factor switches to the number of kids per staffer and how devoted or skilled are the employees hired.

The parents who let their young children watch TV all the time, even as toddlers, harm the growth of intelligence, with the lack of challenging mental exercise. However, since so much of intelligence is determined in the first few years of a baby and then a child's life, TV seen in much later age shouldn't be more than a limited influence. A moron teenager or a genius teenager would retain their respective intelligence difference whatever movies or TV they watched.

TV is often rather non-intellectual, though. Being a successful actor, an actress, or even a director can have little to do with academic achievement, intelligence, or knowledge. (Of course some are intelligent regardless, but the profession doesn't exceptionally select for such over just good looks). As a result, for instance, it's particularly common to see blatant scientific inaccuracies not only when such are helpful for a plot or for visual effects but also even when they are just utterly unnecessary.

Since polls indicate that most people say they get their majority of their scientific knowledge from TV, such explains a lot about common ignorance. The rise of the internet is probably beneficial, though, a more interactive recreational media that better lends itself to communicating information efficiently. The written word is much more efficient than the spoken word, especially on sophisticated topics involving math.

[Kanastrous]

In the last eighteen years I have not met a single director or producer whom I could honestly describe as lacking in intelligence. Lacking in class, lacking in grace, lacking in social skill, lacking in empathy, lacking in honesty, lacking in humility, lacking in basic humanity, yes, but this is not a business that tolerates actual stupidity in those positions.

As for actors...well, that's another story.

[Forum Troll]

In the last eighteen years I have not met a single director or producer whom I could honestly describe as lacking in intelligence. Lacking in class, lacking in grace, lacking in social skill, lacking in empathy, lacking in honesty, lacking in humility, lacking in basic humanity, yes, but this is not a business that tolerates actual stupidity in those positions.

As for actors...well, that's another story.

It's no doubt valid that reaching the position of being a director or producer usually takes some competency. Yet there isn't a selection factor making them be above average in academic knowledge, understanding of science & math, and that type of intelligence. TV is entertaining but a poor source of scientific education. While that's merely a statement of the obvious, it's not good when many people will learn about topics like physics and nuclear energy primarily from TV, which often spreads inaccuracies and a false illusion of knowledge. While that's mostly just unavoidable, such highlights the importance of making sure enough is covered in the required school curriculum.

[Kanastrous]

That's quite true; I have acquired a reputation as a science whiz in this business simply as a consequence of having done some reading, picked up some layman-grade knowledge and learned some technical trivia, which has been sufficient to convince a lot of the people who hire me that I am some kind of super-duper science knower-of-everything.

Which is actually a little bit sad.

[Tyshalle]

Slightly off-topic, but since it was brought up I wonder what you guys think about this: Assuming that most intelligence comes from your environment in the first few years of your life, is it possible to overcome it?

For example, if I were to be raised by a pair of idiots who maybe read to me as an infant, but having no comprehension of math or science or other left-brained concepts, they pretty much avoided those topics, leading me to be reasonably intelligent in a general sense but kind of an idiot when it comes to math and such, is it possible to train yourself to think better in those respects? Or once the damage is done is it pretty much over with?

[Coyote]

I think people are lazy, and don't bother to question much of what is being told/shown them... the end result is the companies shoveling out media messages don't put a lot of effort into what they're putting out. As DW pointed out, the chicken came after the egg in that media existed for the elites first, and then dumbed down as the access to literacy was spread among the masses.

[Junghalli]

For example, if I were to be raised by a pair of idiots who maybe read to me as an infant, but having no comprehension of math or science or other left-brained concepts, they pretty much avoided those topics, leading me to be reasonably intelligent in a general sense but kind of an idiot when it comes to math and such, is it possible to train yourself to think better in those respects? Or once the damage is done is it pretty much over with?

I would think you could learn these things if you were really determined, it'd just be much harder than it would be for somebody who'd been raised to think that way.

I very strongly suspect that most "stupidity" isn't people literally being inherently unable to understand the material, it's people having a difficult time understanding the material and not caring about it enough to make the effort to educate themselves.

[Akkleptos]

For example, if I were to be raised by a pair of idiots who maybe read to me as an infant, but having no comprehension of math or science or other left-brained concepts, they pretty much avoided those topics, leading me to be reasonably intelligent in a general sense but kind of an idiot when it comes to math and such, is it possible to train yourself to think better in those respects? Or once the damage is done is it pretty much over with?

Short version: there's still hope.

Long version: The human brain never really stops changing and developing. Of course, early childhood is the most formative moment of brain development, being when most of the neural connections in your life are made, but with sufficient stimulation it is also possible to make new connections at a later age. It was once believed that the adult never made new connections, and by losing thousands of brain cells every day, the only way to go was down; but more recent research on neural bridges proves that while no new brain cells are created, the existing ones can grow new connections in order to make processes more efficient. This is called neuroplasticity or cortical re-mapping, and it's how people who have suffered a great deal of cortical damage can, with adequate therapy and stimulation, re-map areas of the cortex for tasks that were originally located in another area.

It's not media causing stupidity, as much as it is media recognizing that to appeal to the widest (and most profitable audience), you need to have content that can be digested by the stupid while not annoying the more intelligent. It's a balance between stupidity and intelligence, and it leans toward stupidity.

Certainly. Some experts refer to this demographic focus as "lower common denominator". As a business, TV has to attract the greatest possible number of viewers, and thus needs to generate entertainment for the average Joe, rather than specialise in high-brow content.

However, there's a certain feedback factor: the more stupid TV gets, the less intellectually stimulated the viewers are. And while that doesn't make them more stupid outright, it doesn't help matters one bit.

[ray245]

Whether a person becomes stupid or not, depends on the person willingness to think about the information he has received. People who don't really like think about all those social issues and etc, tend to be the one who are conservative.

[Akkleptos]

Whether a person becomes stupid or not, depends on the person willingness to think about the information he has received. People who don't really like think about all those social issues and etc, tend to be the one who are conservative.

A person's reluctance or downright refusal to think critically is usually a telltale sign of stupidity itself. Conservatives are renowned for accepting ready-made explanations for society's problems, and refusing to even consider evidence to the contrary. But so do many socialists I know, who are always ready to defend opinions like poverty criminality, etc. Stupidity has no particular political sign. Or rather, it's not exclusive to any one political creed.