MediaPsyched.com

Just about every scenario seems to have been distorted into a reality show.  MTV’s new bi-sexual dating reality show is evidence that reality show subject matter has been pretty much exhausted.  Tila Tequila, who describes herself as bipolar (a serious psychiatric condition also known as manic-depressive),  is infamous for having the most number of “friends” (more than 2 million) on the social networking site MySpace.com.

Tila identifies as a bisexual.  The show’s plot will have 16 heterosexual men and 16 homosexual women vying for her undivided attention. An executive vice-president of MTV, Tony DiSanto, exclaims:

“The show is a rollercoaster ride of drama, conflict and emotion, busting stereotypes and challenging the norm—proving that the rules of attraction are made to be broken [my bold/italics].”

This statement holds more weight and gravitas than it first appears.  Our society is continually bombarded with the blurring of the norm.  In this case, exotic off the wall scenarios (girl-on-girl makeout sessions, bitch fights, a lesbian fighting a straight guy over Tila’s attentions, etc.) will divert attention from the show’s intent to normalize the sexual behavior.

Continued exposure to a stimulus can deaden the response.  This over the top, disgusting format is an attempt to deaden any moral opinion or response from the audience. Sadly, though, the audience of this type of show probably won’t - and more so are incapable - consider the moral aspects of such a prurient exhibition.

Do I hear fiddles?

I discussed the other day the incomprehensible behavior of the parents who sacrificed their children to the upcoming CBS reality show “Kid Nation.” Now some of the details of the agreements the parents had to sign are starting to leak out. What has our society come to when a parent is willling to sell their minor child away for a shot at tv fame?

In return for letting their little precious have a shot at reality fame, the parents greedily signed on the dotted line of a 22-page contract basically turning their child over to strangers.  All for $5,000.

The parents and the children agreed not to hold the producers and CBS responsible if their children died or were injured, if they received inadequate medical care, or if their housing was unsafe and caused injury.

Now this is where is really gets insane… 

But while such agreements might be standard for adult participants in a reality show, it also takes on a different tone when the minor and the parent are being held solely responsible for any “emotional distress, illness, sexually transmitted diseases, H.I.V. and pregnancy” that might occur if the child “chooses to enter into an intimate relationship of any nature with another participant or any other person (my bold).”

So who is “any other person” on the set if the only kids on the set are the participants!!!! Adults! So these parents pimp out their kids to an uncontrolled environment, acknowledging that they take responsibility if any other person (read “adult”) impregnates a 12 year old girl or transmits HIV or assorted STDs to their 8 year old! What if a pederast preys on the 15 year old boy?  No problem since the fees have been paid in exchange for silence. What goes on in Kid Nation stays in Kid Nation.

This is insanity.  On the parents’ part and on CBS’s part.  The parents pimp their kid so they can say “my kid’s on tv” and most likely in the process transfer the idea of celebrity onto themselves.  Now that’s being media psyched to the worst extreme!

CBS Television has a child reality show debuting this fall called “Kid Nation”.  Controversy is already brewing about the ethical implications of letting 40 children all between 8 and 15 establish their own society.  25% of the children were under age 10! What type of parent would send away their child to such an unstructured environment? The developmental gap between an 8 year old and a 15 year old is gigantic.

“Who is ultimately responsible here, the network that dangles the $20,000 prize in front of these parents or the parents who have allowed or encouraged their children to move forward with this situation?” asked Matthew Smith, chairman of the Department of Communication at Wittenberg University in Ohio and editor of “Survivor Lessons: Essays on Communication and Reality Television.” “Obviously, the situation wouldn’t exist if CBS didn’t say, ‘Come, but don’t bring your parents.’ But also, the parents, after I’m assuming reading lengthy legal documentation from CBS, still went through with it and said, “Go on ahead. I think little Suzie or Johnny can be fine for a period of 40 days without me.’ Even when I say that aloud my eyebrows start to do funny things.”

Again, it is necessary to look beyond the surface of the concept and into the motives of all involved.  Are the parents exploiting their children for a glimpse of fame?  How does the visit to contrived reality affect the child once back in their anonymous real reality?

Also, it will interesting to see the response of the critics on the social strata promoted in this series.  The children are assigned to “upper class”, “merchants”, “cooks”, and “laborers” based on the results of competitions.  So the show encourages and awards the upper class members and denigrates the laborers. I am surprised on one has jumped on this aspect of the show yet.

He may not be a psychologist, but Dennis Prager has simple common sense.  He has an interesting opinion article on the overstimulation of our children:

Today’s young people have the ability to experience excitement more than any generation in history. Outside of school, excitement is available almost 24/7. MTV is exciting (MTV has done far more damage to this generation than has the tobacco industry); video games are exciting; the nearly all-pervasive sexual stimuli are exciting; MySpace (largely a human cesspool) is exciting; getting tattooed is exciting; piercings are exciting; many pictures and videos on the Internet are exciting. The list of exciting things many children experience is as long as there are hours in the day.

All this excitement in their lives bodes poorly for the future happiness of millions of American children. Real life, let alone daily life, will seem so boring to them that they will not be able to enjoy it. And more than a few of them will opt for lives of constant excitement, often in ways destructive to themselves and others.

This observation is very important. Our technological advances -which do produce some fantastic, wonderful results - can meanwhile be programming our children’s behavior Pavlov style.  Eventually, unless there is some outside stimulus, the child  may be incapable of functioning or responding.  The effects of online written communication are readily evident in the inability of even college students being categorized as literate.  At our local community college, if I recall correctly, 70% of the entering students require remedial composition…but I would bet that almost 100% text message fluently.

One other comment about the reference to MTV and the effect it has had on our society.  Last night I was watching a rerun of the 1991 “Cape Fear” remake with Robert DeNiro.  This presentation had comments throughout the movie in a bar at the bottom of the screen (remember “pop-up videos”?).  During the pivotal scene between the stalking, sociopathic adult DeNiro character and Juliette Lewis’ naive, unconsciously sexy 15 year old, the kiss that results is one of pure evil and violation.  How appalling to read in the notes that MTV nominated that scene as one of that year’s “Best Kiss” scenes! Is this another effort to “train” our children to accept any behavior no matter how inappropriate?

Gosh…if I only had the readership of the Wall Street Journal!  Exactly the topic I posted yesterday - the ill effects of online Second Life affairs - was the topic in today’s WSJ! Read this article!

This is serious.  People are completely fabricating their self-images and investing their emotional and psychological essence into fantasy. Proof are the alter-ego avatars they create for themselves.  ”Living in a dream world” used to be a derogatory comment about someone!

The moral costs of this virtual free for all are incalculable.  This is a topic that will be exploding - unfortunately with mostly negative results.

By now you probably know that I am not wild about Second Life.  I have come to consider it an escapist exercise and the more I observe of it the stronger my conviction becomes.  As with any effort relying on getting people to spend money, the limits must constantly expand to keep the hook in the participants.

An article in today’s NYTimes discussed the trend of designing, building and decorating homes in Second Life. Interesting in that is gives people a creativity that perhaps finances doesn’t permit in real life.  However, what startled me was the references to marriages - and divorces and remarriages - that occur in Second Life. Various quotes:

• The two, who are married to other people in real life, met in a Second Life club, hit it off and were married six weeks later in a Second Life ceremony — a more or less common occurrence (as are Second Life marital spats and Second Life divorce) that often occurs with the knowledge and consent of real-life spouses.
• They met while she was still with her first Second Life husband and became fast friends, then married shortly after her “divorce.”
• For his part, Mr. Roy, like many real-life spouses of virtual bigamists, seems unworried by his wife’s extramarital marriages. “What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas,” he said. “You are a completely fictional person in Second Life.”

Well, the characters may be fictional but are emotions fictional?  Doesn’t the effort to create virtual relationships not need real emotions behind them?  What occurs in persons who channel their emotional efforts toward a fictional existence and character rather than to the humans who are alive around them?

If someone is in an actual human relationship, I cannot see how dating, getting married and having sex with your partner (married or not) in Second Life can be considered anything but a form of emotional adultery. 

Not surprisingly, the article just ignored the ramifications of this moral and cultural affront.

Continuing with Andrew Keen’s book “The Cult of the Amateur: How the Internet is Killing our Culture”….on page 161 Mr Keen addresses the virtual Second Life phenomena. Again, on the surface Second Life sounds fun: creating an avatar and creating identities and creating an alternative life.  For the visually driven person it is a dream.

However, as with anything there is a darker side:

And because, in true Web 2.0 fashion, Second Life is virtually unregulated and unsupervised, it has become a channel for all kinds of social and ethical vices. Though there are (largely unenforced) rules against inappropriate behavior in public (virtual) spaces, users can act out all of their most base or prurient instincts in virtual privacy.  For 220 Linden dollars, one can even act out virtual rape fantasies; options include “rape victim,” “get raped,” and “hold victim.”

Delightful.  I wonder if those who are so active in Second Life, especially those channelling their real dollars into play money (another way to mask the reality and pretend it is just a game and make-believe) comprehend that they are supporting and condoning this type of behavior by their participating in a virtual society that permits this behavior?  Or is rape between two avatars a private choice that society as a whole should not judge?

A study regarding the link between viewing Internet child pornography and actual child molestation has been pulled from being published in a peer-reviewed journal. The study’s results indicate that up to 85% of those convicted on Internet child porn crimes have actually performed some form of sexual abuse on a child.

This is startling and relevant.  The Internet has facilitated the business of pornography - both adult and child - and it is now astronomical in terms of numbers of viewers and the dollars spent.

But why are the results of such an important survey being withheld?  It appears that because some offenders may not be molesters, then the safety of society needs to be forfeited.  The 15% hypothetical chance trumps the 85%.

Yet others say that the results, while significant, risk tarring some men unfairly. The findings, based on offenders serving prison time who volunteered for the study, do not necessarily apply to the large and diverse group of adults who have at some point downloaded child pornography, and whose behavior is far too variable to be captured by a single survey.

The words I bolded frighten me.  The relativism evident in this statement is chilling.  Why would anyone outside a police investigation be downloading child porn? Again, it is an indicator of our society’s continued dilution into a pool of no censure on any behavior. True, one survey does not necessarily establish a truth. But in this case the results DEMAND attention.

The article in the NYTimes today on CEO of Whole Foods John Mackey’s deceptive online persona questions why top level executives and professionals would risk their reputations by sock-puppetting.  What is sock-puppeting? Quoting directly from that article:

This digital-age deception has a name, “sock-puppeting,” and a precise definition — the act of creating a fake online identity to praise, defend or create the illusion of support for one’s self, allies or company.

I have always posited that the Internet has created an environment that enables narcissists to “act out” in a wider arena than with just those in their physical presence. Psychologically, narcissists rank up there with sociopaths (antisocial) and borderlines as the cream of the personality disorders bunch. Hard core they are and dangerous.

The proliferation of self-topic blogs, personal social websites, and 24-hour live cams enable narcissists to create and self-validate their importance in an unrestrained manner. Sock-puppeting is one of the clearest examples of how those we place in powers of confidence can be morally and ethically flawed and corrupted.  It is a serious symptom of a problem that pollutes both our business and social structures.

The Pew Internet and American Life Project recently published a memo on cyberbullying and online teens. One in 3 teens has experienced some form of a negative experience while online. This includes threats, forwarded emails that were assumed private, embarrassing photos or fabricated rumors.

Bullying has entered the digital age. The impulses behind it are the same but the effect is magnified. In the past, the materials of bullying would have been whispered, shouted or passed around. Now, with a few clicks, a photo, video or a conversation can be shared with hundreds via email or millions through a website, online profile or blog posting.

There have been quite a few high profile incidences recently regarding photos placed on social network sites that have proven quite embarrassing and even life changing for the subject.  Many teens think just because they have their site access marked “private” it will prevent anyone with bad motives from accessing their site content.  What they fail to realize is that those who are allowed into their site can then pass on the site’s content to others.  Teens - and adults - still don’t grasp that once that send or enter button is pressed, that content exists forever. There is no privacy on the Internet. There is no real “delete.”

This leads me back to the cyberbullying e-thugs.  The playground bullies we adults experienced were at least out in the open and could be dealt with face to face.  However the today’s e-thugs can remain anonymous while spreading rumors or photos to millions before the subject of the rumors even catches on!  How easy it can be for someone to detach from the reality of their maliciousness when all that is necessary is to press a button while in hiding.

In terms of emotional/moral development, what are going to be the repercussions of this unmonitored environment where any person can say anything about anyone and not have to own up to it? 

Over the next decade we will be seeing sociological changes that we can’t now imagine as our media savvy teens who have been raised in the cyberworld reach adulthood.  Are we taking into consideration if their moral characters will be as developed as their technical skills? What is the impact of their cyberworld on what we are trying to teach them?