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1. SUBLIMINAL IMAGERY AND HYPNOSIS
Have you ever felt like you were unable to tear yourself away from the television. If you thought that you were just too engrossed in an amazing program to actually do anything, you've been duped. You never made the choice to stay glued to the couch, and the good odds out of Vegas say the program you were watching probably isn't high on the "quality" scale. Hell, it was probably some dopey situation comedy. However, there is no need to feel bad because it is not your fault. The TV establishment, including the major networks plus cable and satellite providers are involved in an elaborate scheme to force you to watch their subpar shows. It's not that far-fetched if you think about. If it is possible for certain combinations of light and sound in cartoons to cause seizures, it is also possible to purposefully create combinations of light and sound that would ensnare your brain at a level below conscious thought, creating an atmosphere in which you would feel compelled to watch until your eyes are bloodshot. It would be simple to overlay these patterns into every program and signal in a way that wouldn't attract attention from anyone, not even the FCC. Unless the FCC is in on it too, but that would open up a whole new level of government involvement and an example of their desperation to control the people, and they would never do that.....
2. SURVEILLANCE: IS TV JUST A GOVERNMENT SUCKER BLIND?
The wholesome programming you watch on television everyday is as pure and unadulterated as something can get these days, right? Not! When you watch TV, you're allowing someone to send signals into your home, into your private living space, wether it be through a cable line, satellite transmission, or any number of various other mediums. The important idea here is that someone you don't know by any other name then Soulless Corp. is sending a SIGNAL into your HOME. To us, that transmission seems as benign as a playful kitten, providing us entertainment until the cat pees all over your bed and you have to send it to the pound. However, in order to bring us our weekly fix of "Survivor" or whatever crap you like to fill your head with, the television companies have to get permission from the government to use the airwaves. I wouldn't put it past the government to ask for a little favor in return. If a signal comes into your home, what's to prevent another signal from leaving your home? Stay with us here. How many people have actually taken apart their boob tubes and looked for a transmitter device? I don't see any hands, so I'll continue. It would not be impossible, or even difficult, for a tiny transmitter, maybe even a video or audio surveillance system, to piggyback a signal on to the wave that carries the TV signal to your house and transmit it elsewhere. Everytime you turn on your TV, there could be some guy in a comfy rolly chair sitting in a bunker room, with a CIA poster on the wall, full of TV screens who goes "Hey look, it's the Johnsons!! My, how that little Petey grows like a weed! Uh oh, do I see some marijuana on the table? Better call the local cops and forge some probable cause for a warrant!" This is not impossible. In fact, it's likely. Just think about it next time while you're answering the questions on "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?" Maybe someone is keeping score for you on the other end.
3. MEDIA CONGLOMERATION
Television is supposed to be a land of freedom. It's supposed to be a place where you can find as many different opinions about the world as there are channels. The news media has taken advantage of this great power over the past half century to teach us more about the world around us and keep us up to date on important events. That freedom is now in jeopardy. A terrible force has come to the land of Free Information, and it has to come to destroy the viewpoints of others and to keep thought in line. This force of pure darkness is called......the multi-billion dollar merger. Probably the best example of this heinous atrocity against humanity is the recent AOL-Time Warner merger. All of a sudden, the world's biggest internet provider, another source of information for the public, and one of the biggest entertaiment companies that owns God knows how many stations, became one gargantuan corporation. It controls the level and content of the information that reaches literally millions of people. Do you trust them with that kind of power? Do you think they'd ever release a story that would hurt either of their corporations in any way, shape, or form? How would the average Tom, Dick, or Harry learn anything important, not to mention factual, about the news if this orgy of mergers continues? AOL and Time Warner aren't the only example of this. An older situation is the fact that Disney bought out ABC and ESPN and added them to it's huge TV empire. Do you think ABC would ever run an expose about unsafe rides at Dinsey Land now? Have no fear though. The Conspiracy Theory staff will continue to work around the clock to bring you the truth, or at least a funnier version of it.
4. CENSORSHIP
All television programs are controlled by someone. There's someone higher on the totem pole than the writers and actors and creators who decides what makes it off the storyboard and script and into the public's eye. This pyramid of producing power creates a system in which the views of the people with something to say are overruled by the people with the pocketbooks. Money molds the world. People with lots of money, and the power that goes with it, get to control what everyone else sees of the world. They are the people who arranged for NBC's all white lineup over the past couple of years. They're the people who refuse to let people voice their opinions on subjects they view as "touchy" because it might affect their profits. They are the reason that Ralph Nader couldn't get into the presidential debates in 2000. They control who gets seen where, when, and for what cause. By now you must be asking who "they" are. They are the ones with the cash. They could be in the government, private enterprise, or even from outside this country. To fight them, support public television and internet sites, like this one, that are not limited in what they can say.
5. THE SITUATION COMEDY
This is probably one of he evilest creations in the history of the universe, and in the history of all universes before this one. This great evil ranks up there with the atomic bomb, terrorism, and Richard Simmons. This vile creation of an already cash-bloated industry looking for even more dough is none other than the foundation of Must-See-TV, the sitcom. These half-hour romps into inane babble and forgettable plot lines tear away the very souls of those who watch them, turning them into zombies that guffaw their way through the entire episode, using the laugh track as their guide because they are too dullwitted to actually recognize what comedy is. These little snippets of life in a world where everyone is white and no one actually has to ever go to their jobs is one of the reasons our country is in the crapper. We teach our kids that waking up in bed with someone you don't know is okay, as long as you handle it in a comic way. They also teach you that you can be mean to your friends, cheat on your girlfriends/boyfriends, but as long as you go to a coffee house with them everyday, it'll all be alright. In the actual world, your significant other would leave you for a person who understands the concept of reality and your friends would hate you for making fun of their lives every single moment you had free, which would be a lot of moments if all you do is hang out at your anal retentive friend's apartment and drink coffee at the establishment downstairs.
6. RACISM ON THE SMALL SCREEN
Let's face it; the world's not fair. No matter what we do, someone will be in our faces, demanding that we fix things so that their little group isn't offended anymore. There is no possible way to make everyone happy, but we could be doing more than we are now. Anyone who hasn't seen a problem with TV programming in this day and age must be truly colorblind. Every single character in the network programming schedule is white. From Frasier, to Friends, to Everybody Loves Raymond, to King of Queens, even the Daily Show, or your local newscast. Hollywood is portraying a world where only the lives of white people are protrayed as important. Anyone who just said something about the shows on UPN or FOX or the WB needs to slap themselves upside the head right now. Do it, we're waiting. When you look at one of those shows, what do you see? You see all-black casts, except for the occasional white man, portrayed usually as a bumbling fool. Even these shows themselves are patronizing to African Amercian culture and it's people. We're not looking for new all-black or all-hispanic stations to start up to even out the odds here. That isn't the way to go; it's just a return to segregation and the policies of hate based on someone's looks. We want shows that combine whites, blacks, asians, and hispanics in the same setting, that more closely depict how the world is. Not shows that exemplify holding one group as superior to all the others. The madness has to end.
7. MELODRAMA
Okay, everyone in the country has seen one of these shows. For those who believe their viewing habits are pure, here's a quick laundry list of overly dramatic programming - ER, Providence, NYPD Blue (otherwise, it's not a bad show), Law & Order (same deal as the big Blue), Boston Public, Dawson's Creek, Roswell, 7th Heaven, anything on CBS, all those soap operas, and there are countless others. Bascially, these shows try to create fantastic tales of other people's lives in order to make yours seem small and boring. How many of us have gone through as much sputz as any of the main characters on those above shows? They routinely have bad break-ups, family members and close friends drop suddenly dead of exotic illnesses, there never seems to be enough money around, their kids are pretty much predicate felons, and all the kids are having complicated sexual relationships. No one lives that kind of life. Soon, you start feeling like not enough happens in your life. It makes you feel inadequate and unexciting, so things that happen in your life that are fantastic, either fantastically great or fantastically terrible, seem mundane. Plus, all the great, defining events of your generation get sucked up into these shows. Not only can they have characters of any age or race or religion who have experienced great moments in history, they can also steal any important current events. What a sham.  |
