My house, Carponport, Saskatchewan.
Enjoying Sunday Afternoon, 3:32 PM
Weather = very cold, very windy, very white.
So some of you might be thinking to yourself "why is Greg calling something stupid after he wrote an entry about why nobody should call anything stupid?" Well, if you are thinking that right now then you didn't read my last post very carefully. I'm pretty sure I left myself an out when I said that if I "discover that there were lots of mistakes and logical inconsistencies with a healthy dosage of foolishness then I can say legitimately and with gusto 'that's stupid, and here's why...'"
Maybe it would help if we defined Stupid. According to Dictionary.com stupid has the following meanings.
–adjective
1.
lacking ordinary quickness and keenness of mind; dull.
2.
characterized by or proceeding from mental dullness; foolish;senseless: a stupid question.
3.
tediously dull, esp. due to lack of meaning or sense; inane;pointless: a stupid party.
I didn't mention this in my last post, but there is a danger in thinking objectively and logically about the world. The danger is that sometimes you will understand just how profoundly stupid some things really are. Tabloids are one of those things and I am going to declare why... with gusto!
So I'm finishing up some Christmas / grocery shopping when I come to line up at the till and there are stacks of tabloid magazine *things* looking at me. They were attractive to look at. All those colors, interesting looks on their faces, usually a liberal amount of skin on display, and catch phrase titles. Then I began to read what was on each of the covers and discovered, with no shock, that they were all absolutely pointless.
Let us assume that the tabloid magazines were accurate in their information and take the cover stories at face value. The first style of tabloid to grab my attention kinda looked like 'Oprah is with so an so, but she's really with someone else,' 'Jessica's Revenge on Brad,' Britney Betrayed by so an so,' and so on and so on ad nausium. What is this? If we boil this down to algebra this is (celebrity x) (relationship status) (celebrity y.) Now I don't know about you, but I don't personally know any celebrities, and if I did, why would I need to read about their relationship status? In fact, why should I (or anyone else) care about these people and their relationships? Does my knowledge of (celebrity x)'s relationships add one iota to my life? Maybe if I am a shallow pitiful person with shallow pitiful friends who don't have the ability to live a life of their own and need to leech off the life of the person they want to be.
eh... sorry, maybe that was a little extreme. Note, the above statement is more rhetoric than objective thinking. I apologize. And no I will not erase it. Sometimes I like rhetoric and I am not perfect. Moving on.
My point is that this sort of information is pointless and useless. It's female teenage high school drama stretched out to unhealthy and absurd dimensions. It's no different than the highschool girls nattering on in the hall about everyone else's business with no understanding of what's actually going on. Lots of emotion, lots of opinion, all of it backed up by popularity and more emotion and more opinion. Well emotion and opinion do not amount to much except uninformed ignorance. 'Popular' is never the same as 'Important.' It is authentically sad to see people thrive on this sort of drivel. So shallow. So pointless.
Furthermore, the information you get in these tabloids is not accurate. The people who create these things feed the niche of 'gossip' and will phrase things in a certain way and leave out some points (or just create an entirely fictional story) in order to arouse that sense of urgent and shocking scandalous news. I was a bit soft there, many tabloids unashamedly concoct completely fictional stories with absolutely no basis what so ever! So not only is it pointless and shallow, it is also inaccurate pointlessness and shallowness. Completely meaningless.
The second type of tabloid that I spied was the one that appealed to my sex drive. The cover had some woman wearing lingerie in the form of everyday clothing. I thought to myself 'my that shirt looks very much like a tightened corset, and I swear that if those super short blue jean shorts were shaped just slightly differently they would be blue jean panties.' Thank you Cosmopolitan for showing women how to where their undergarments as overgarments. These types of magazines had call outs like "10 ways to find out if you are good in bed," "15 sexy tips to seduce your man," "how to lose those 15 pounds and stay sexy." (and these were the tame ones)
Now I understand that these *advertisements* are addressed to women. I am not a woman. But I can still call these things for what they are. They are shallow and destructive. They are shallow because they appeal to base instincts of sexuality and social acceptance. They all say "You want to be sexy, and in order to be socially accepted (or popular) here's how you become more sexy." There are so many things wrong with this message so I will try to highlight in broad strokes. These types of messages on the cover of the tabloids appeal to the physical side of intense relationship only. Real relationships include actual relationship... beyond physical sex, long before sex, and long after sex. It's one of the most obvious forces of sexualization and objectification of women in society. Be sexy. Sex is your goal. How to have more sex. How to have better sex. How to stay sexy. How to keep your man for more sex. (celebrity x)'s sex life. Sexy stories. Sex tips. How to feel good and sexy.
A very wise man told me once that sex is only a very small part of marriage. Why do these tabloids spend so much time on it then? Because it is a base desire, it is the lowest common denominator. It is scraping the bottom of the barrel. It assumes a world where physical sex is all there is and you try to get enough of it as possible. Now no magazine publisher would ever agree to that (at least I hope not) but that's one of the message that's coming across in the tabloids. As I said before, relationships should include relationship. You know, friendship, mutual respect, agape love, persistence, care, grace, wisdom. To skip to and fixate on sex is extremely immature at best but far more importantly down right destructive to the female psyche. (This issue deserves a dissertation all on it's own) My heart goes out to those who drink this crap in and become distorted in their mind and soul. There are so many broken people craving for meaning that run afoul this false and shallow world view.
So what do these tabloids cultivate?
1. An unhealthy fascination with gossip
2. Immature social popularity contests
3. Outrageous fiction propagating itself as truth
4. Distorted Understanding of Sex
5. How you (a woman) can become a more appealing sex object
All of these things are pointless, meaningless, foolish, and unhealthy. A steady diet of this sort of crap will eventually make you stop thinking and begin acting on instinct alone (which is what these tabloids appeal to the first place).
So after looking at Tabloids objectively and in understanding them I will say with conviction and with gusto that Tabloids are Stupid!
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