My favorite part of this TRL documentary was when the computer screen arrow hovered over the old-fashioned "Facebook" and "Twitter" icons... and up popped "Error: Doesn't exist yet." Made me laugh.
My next favorite part was the quick nod to the Boaty McBoatface phenomenon. That made me smile again, and God knows we can use a little humor these days.
A personal story about promoting a short work of art:
I used to be in the music business. I wrote a satirical protest song about Fox "news" propaganda back in 2011.
At the time, I was deeply concerned that no one in the mainstream media was paying enough attention to Fox's business model of mainlining agit-prop (via fake news stories) to their viewers. It was obvious to me that the only way they would remain successful would be for them to escalate, escalate, and further escalate their dangerous rhetoric.
I spent two years turning my song into a music video, posted it on YouTube in 2013, and then said to myself, "Now what?" I couldn't figure out how to promote it.
A number of friends watched it and did not get the satire. In the middle of the song, during the instrumental section of the song/video, I made up a fake video news story about President Obama heroically pulling a Secret Service agent out of a fire at Camp David.
None of my friends got it - this incident never happened. The point of my satire was how easy it was for Fox "news" to create fake political news, but it went over their heads.
My song got about 2,000 views. The name of the song/video is "The Modern Hate Machine" by Sweet Pea Jones. My original name for the song was "The Modern Village Green" but then I was inspired by a comment from reporter Andrea Mitchell, who actually called Fox "the modern hate machine" in 2011 when they launched a vicious attack on her.
Then Jen Senko came out with the documentary, "The Brainwashing of My Dad" in 2015, which made the same point that I was trying to make. I loved it, and promoted it to everyone I knew. But once again, no one I knew got the dire warning about the danger of Fox "news" inherent in the story.
Fox "news" is now the most watched video channel in America. They remain the primary conveyor belt for much of the rw disinformation and agit-prop that spews out of Facebook and X-Twitter.
And as we discovered during the Dominion Voting Systems lawsuit, the SOB's at Fox are fully aware that they are promoting lies, and only care about their ratings.
Which takes us back to the subject of this documentary about a particularly famous day in TRL's history. The producer decided to give their teenage viewers what the teenage internet wanted, while at the same time slightly hedging the truth about the voting. But the studio audience was like, "WTF???" when New Kids came in at number two. Their appetite wasn't satiated.
As a Gen Xer I remember fondly Vh1 Behind the music. Gen X and older millennials are seekers of information. We love anthologies. Yes, we channel surfed. Younger millennials and Gen Zs are receivers of information. Algorithms do the work for them. They just sit and expect all the info to come to them.
I feel sorry for people who grew up having to listen to the likes of New Kids on the Block, Backstreet Boys, etc. You don't get more fitting Johnny Bravo's jacket than that crap.
As a Boomer, I have heard of all those boy bands but couldn't name one song or one member of any of them. It seems hilarious that fans of the Backstreet Boys would be upset that their list was being invaded by New Kids on the Block, the band from which they were cloned.
My favorite part of this TRL documentary was when the computer screen arrow hovered over the old-fashioned "Facebook" and "Twitter" icons... and up popped "Error: Doesn't exist yet." Made me laugh.
My next favorite part was the quick nod to the Boaty McBoatface phenomenon. That made me smile again, and God knows we can use a little humor these days.
A personal story about promoting a short work of art:
I used to be in the music business. I wrote a satirical protest song about Fox "news" propaganda back in 2011.
At the time, I was deeply concerned that no one in the mainstream media was paying enough attention to Fox's business model of mainlining agit-prop (via fake news stories) to their viewers. It was obvious to me that the only way they would remain successful would be for them to escalate, escalate, and further escalate their dangerous rhetoric.
I spent two years turning my song into a music video, posted it on YouTube in 2013, and then said to myself, "Now what?" I couldn't figure out how to promote it.
A number of friends watched it and did not get the satire. In the middle of the song, during the instrumental section of the song/video, I made up a fake video news story about President Obama heroically pulling a Secret Service agent out of a fire at Camp David.
None of my friends got it - this incident never happened. The point of my satire was how easy it was for Fox "news" to create fake political news, but it went over their heads.
My song got about 2,000 views. The name of the song/video is "The Modern Hate Machine" by Sweet Pea Jones. My original name for the song was "The Modern Village Green" but then I was inspired by a comment from reporter Andrea Mitchell, who actually called Fox "the modern hate machine" in 2011 when they launched a vicious attack on her.
Then Jen Senko came out with the documentary, "The Brainwashing of My Dad" in 2015, which made the same point that I was trying to make. I loved it, and promoted it to everyone I knew. But once again, no one I knew got the dire warning about the danger of Fox "news" inherent in the story.
Fox "news" is now the most watched video channel in America. They remain the primary conveyor belt for much of the rw disinformation and agit-prop that spews out of Facebook and X-Twitter.
And as we discovered during the Dominion Voting Systems lawsuit, the SOB's at Fox are fully aware that they are promoting lies, and only care about their ratings.
Which takes us back to the subject of this documentary about a particularly famous day in TRL's history. The producer decided to give their teenage viewers what the teenage internet wanted, while at the same time slightly hedging the truth about the voting. But the studio audience was like, "WTF???" when New Kids came in at number two. Their appetite wasn't satiated.
As a Gen Xer I remember fondly Vh1 Behind the music. Gen X and older millennials are seekers of information. We love anthologies. Yes, we channel surfed. Younger millennials and Gen Zs are receivers of information. Algorithms do the work for them. They just sit and expect all the info to come to them.
I feel sorry for people who grew up having to listen to the likes of New Kids on the Block, Backstreet Boys, etc. You don't get more fitting Johnny Bravo's jacket than that crap.
As a Boomer, I have heard of all those boy bands but couldn't name one song or one member of any of them. It seems hilarious that fans of the Backstreet Boys would be upset that their list was being invaded by New Kids on the Block, the band from which they were cloned.
I turned the dial a lot in that era.
RadioLab had a good treatment of the John Scott-vs-NHL story:
https://radiolab.org/podcast/radiolab-punchline
Did our votes on trl not count??
YOU'LL HAVE TO WATCH TO FIND OUT