...how long before we start getting "media atheists"?

Possibly when the Amish start conspirating

the media is not a religion.

the media is like a myth teller. See it's all a myth. Matrix, Madonna, Elizabeth Taylor, Star Wars, Harry Potter are all modern day myths, they are the modern day equivalent of Hercules and Hera, and Orpheus and Eurydice and all that shabang.

The media is a myth maker-

Well you could also argue that religion is based on myths.

Ophiel Ophiuci what would qualify one as a media athiest?

no tv, newspapers, radio or internet is great. media free straight edge

Someday I'd like to be a media atheist. Just not right now. I need to get a life of my own first ... in the meantime, I'm going to concentrate on other people's.

Naw, I'm already on my way now that I think about it ... I try not to keep up with the latest gossip and whatnot but it's fucking EVERYWHERE and it's inevitable that I know about Lindsay Lohan's rehab/DUI crap. And I hate it.

see. i agree with this.

media sceptics, media athiests... we're already halfway there.

More like mythos, doctrine, and order.

And ffs media is not myth. No one has ever started a religion based on Superman being real. Well, maybe they did, but for all intensive purposes let's say they didn't. A myth is a legend, a legend is not Star Wars. It was never intended in the way the myth of Io, Hera, and Zeus or Hades and Penelope were. It was intended as fiction, not the explanation of where the sun came from or why birds fly. It's meant as fiction.

Storytelling isn't necessarily myth. A square is a rectangle, a rectangle isn't a square.

I'm not in the position where I am making crass demands that advertising be shut down, I keep that to myself for the most part, unless someone asks my opinion or it comes up. But I don't ever rely on Coke ads and CNN to deliver the goods, religiously or spiritually (the basis of religion, I'd say). There's nothing deep and profound offered on TV, for the most part, and if there is, I usually take it in my own context anyways.

Another reason why media isn't religion. Media isn't clear, it doesn't have goals specific enough to spirituality, or the basis. That's like saying kitty litter is the new religion. Because it's a noun. Christianity is a noun. It must be a religion. And lots of people use it, therefore it's mainstream and wide spread. It's twisting logic. You can say that media is a religion, but how so? You're stating a fictional piece of information as fact and then relying on people's sensationalist tendencies to muck up the conversation.

Religion is mystic experience, spiritual connectivity, soul exploration, etc. Spirituality. Media, while is does pertain to those subjects sometimes, cannot be judged on the same levels. It's apples and oranges. Media is the expression of information on a medium. That's tangible. Religious experience isn't.

You could say that the expression of religion is media... I guess you COULD make a religion about media but I doubt that any doctrines and belief system that could come out of it would ever be practical. That would also be the role of a religion, the rites, the symbolism, the meaning (media is the expression of these), and, of course, the internal, which media could never cover. I guess you could... think about media and not have it be media.

I doubt in the religion of media that media could ever be the main focus. Or it would be this... vortex of infinite media upon media of media. I think media is just the window looking out of the house.

If you're talking about media like shows on TV, movies, pictures, etc., then yeah, you could have a religion for that, I guess. If you're talking in the strict sense of the word then no. I doubt you could.

But then again, if you're creating a religion on media one of the prominent questions you'd have to settle is 'what is art?'


BTW, about being cynical and sceptical about popular media (aka corporate media) the goal isn't just to never hear gossip or to never buy brand name. Part of it is, but mostly it's choosing for yourself how to interpret media and what choices you make regarding whatever suggestive media there is presented to you. You watch a Coke ad and don't like it but you still buy Coke. I'd consider myself to be a 'media atheist' regardless if I'd chosen the drink because of it's quality. (Other factors come into play too, of course.) It's allowing those types of media that aren't directed at people who are objective to just go right out of your head. Instead of going out and buying Evian water because the ad was totally wicked awesome and so cool you buy it because you like bottled water. And if you don't buy it because you hat the idea then you're being objective.

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America is pretty much a media athiest in comparison to the "newsagent" culture of Britain, who is probably the worst cultprit. Alot of people's parents would pop down to the newsagents everyday for the paper or get a glossy mag for their break at work and would be home in time for the 6 o clock news without fail. EVERYDAY.

Yes indeed.

I guess there'd be people who are sceptical of the media because they've studied it and understand it, and then there'd be those who reject it completely because it occasionally says some stupid things, or who only consume the most unreliable and misguided media sources (the media equivalent of highschool Satanists).

It interests me; we seem to have a similar relationship to the media now that we had to the church 1000 years ago, and since there's currently a big stink over here about the media (shock horror) editting the news to make it more interesting, running phone-ins that you have zero (rather than virtually zero) chance of winning, etc., I'd be interested to see how people react, whether they see it as a test of faith or completely reject their beliefs or whatever. A believable media requires just as much blind faith as any religion when you see how easily manipulated people are.

I forget whether it was Barthes or someone else who started using the term "myth" when applied to the media, but yes, religion is based on the use of the untrue/unproven/unproveable to illustrate a message that one wishes to convey, to instill behaviour that is desireable and so forth. Just recently, there was a news report here about how the general public feel less safe than they did ten years ago, even though crime has actually decreased in that time. The media has created a myth - that crime is on the increase de facto and that society is "going to the dogs" - which people believe and will defend even when the evidence is absent or even contradictory.

Doesn't that sound like religion to you?

Would it be helpful to instead say that, rather than the media being a religion, religion and the media are part of a category of similar things? They both depend on and engender faith in order to achieve goals within society. The spiritualist angle only really applies if you genuinely believe in the afterlife. If you don't, then the spiritual aspect of religion is just what makes people believe it, equivalent to the stern ominous music you get on a documentary when they want you to know the guy walking down the street in slow motion is evil rather than good.

Only if that information is absolute fact and presented in a way which is not biased to coerce the audience into thinking one thing or another. Do you know of any medium that does that?



I think that's the important thing, and relates to my analogy of the media equivalent of Satanists in relation to Christianity. Rejecting something outright isn't always the best way to go about something, and a lot of people seem to ditch mainstream faith, but then fill the void with something that's similar, but very often a lot worse. In the case of the media, I'm talking about people who claim you can't believe anything you read in the papers or see on the news (which is dumb enough in itself; very few avenues of the media would ever be cocky enough to print 100% lies), but then have no trouble believing someone like David Icke purely on the basis that it's technically possible he might not be a complete lunatic.

I guess in your example I'd equate it to someone not drinking Coke on purely ethical/health grounds, but then buying bottled water which, while not unethical as such, is still really stupid.

I think I'm looking at it in this way because the media has become the elephant in the room that religion was in the olden days. Some people still can't deal with any science that doesn't leave room for their religious beliefs. The same way, some people still believe what they read purely because they read it and the font looked all nice and authorative.

Wow - I didn't know this. I can see how the British might be slightly more old-school, and by that I mean trusting of what they may deem authority (TV, newspapers, government, doctors). Americans are much more do-it-yourself and cynical ... it's amazing how many people I know who would prefer to doctor themselves than see an actual doctor. But then I do live in the South ....

The media has always existed throughout the ages in the form of story-telling around the campfire and such. Spinning stories is part of human nature and often condoned and enjoyed by audience members. Remember the game of telephone? That's all it is - just one big game of telephone. Add a shit ton of money into the mix, and you've got one hell of a good story.

To be honest, I think his analysis of our media consumption might be off a smidgeon. The tabloids here are bigger business (they're not as ridiculous as the "supermarket tabloids" in the US, btw), but they're more "journals of opinion" than news. Basically people buy them because they want someone to agree with them, to stimulate debate etc. I don't think anyone buys The Sun thinking that it's a serious source of information; the press here certainly don't sell the news to that market as such. To be honest, it's more like a lowest common denominator version of The Onion than anything. People are cynical here; it just doesn't stop them from buying newspapers.

You don't have to believe in an afterlife to be religious. In Judaism they believe that Heaven is oblivion, nothingness, the greatest thing a man can feel.
And I don't think media is a religion because it doesn't have any basis on spirituality. They can have spiritual shows but you could easily have someone who treats it anti-religiously completely.

Well, let me put it this way. Religion has it's teachings and TV has it's broadcasts. But religion is essentially religious, TV isn't.
It's a means of broadcasting anything visual/aural. To assume that TV is religion because it makes some people think a certain way would be the same as thiking brainwashing kits are artifacts of religious use. As the main use. But that would be one of many uses. No matter what is broadcast on a Christian TV network it IS religious in nature because of the broadcaster's intent. But TV's entirety isn't. Even though you can worship TV that doesn't make it a religion. That whole situation of you treating as such would depend on your view that it iIS a relgiion and you would have to make it a religion in your own view but it would never be a bona fide religion. The TV wasn't invented around a religion or as any theme of a religion. Nothing about it makes it religious but the channels. And those can change at any time.

Exactly! I'm tired of people throwing themselves in record numbers to the other extreme just to spite the conservatives. I mean, for God's sakes, they're just as dumbassed as the people they're fighting because instead of using logic and science to disprove idiotic theories they fail at the foundational rule of debate: arguing your case with a fallacious or poorly formed point. If you argue against somebody who believes the sky is blue because of angel farts by saying that it's because tiny particles of ores are leaving the Earth then you're jumping to stupid and false conclusions in science and your pushing yourself in the wrong direction. Your filling the enemy's base with ammunition. You're basically asking them to kick your ass when you fall into shitty emotionally stupid patterns of action and belief. Don't believe what Noam Chumsky says because it's the arty libertine transgressive thing to do. Do it because you actually consider his point to be logically solid.

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religion is one way to control people and the media is a way to control people too.

That's a biased stretch.

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