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When the trivial becomes overwhelming. And the overwhelming becomes trivial


The problem, for me, with news on the internet is one of mirroring, of repetition. It manifests in a couple of ways. Firstly, there is the serious story which, as a result of its analysis from every conceivable angle from every site one can accidentally click on a link to quickly loses all meaning. The brain stats to fixate onthe reporting of the event, rather than the event in and of itself.

For example, the media clusterfuck des nos jours is, natch, the whole Ted Heath imbroglio. Now here’s a perfect media shitstorm, right here, because hey, it’s a bit similar to a whole bunch of other cases of recent memory so yes, we have a toolkit to respond to this, and, woohoo, bonus points, there’s shagging. We can all get behind that (that’s what HE said, fnarr, fnarr), plus it’s all a bit vague so there’s some glorious grey areas in which theories can put down some roots and turn their pretty faces to the nourishing who cares about facts sun. Glorious. The column inches will pour forth. But the very level and attention of detail stands to desensitise the whole thing. As we nod sagely over news reports, and listen with furrowed brows to his biographer say well no, he couldn’t, because there were always policemen with him you see (which, I, for one, find very reassuring), or a neighbour say he was a nice bloke, or a clearly frustrated political reporter allude to other stuff that he’s heard that he can’t possibly say the overwhelming becomes trivial. It is simultaneously a non-story and a fucking massive one. Because should one stand back for a moment and say what? You’re shitting me. The Prime Minister. The fucking PRIME MINISTER? Then a whole bunch of other question start to assert themselves, and all the talk of shadowy paedophile cabals at the top of society starts to, well, not make sense as such because, and this should be stressed, these are unsubstantiated allegations. But, simultaneously, the mind does the vanishing trick of bunging it in the “hmm” file. Because this is the rolling, 24-hour media age, and we’ve heard it all before, not this name, but a name like it, not this story, but a story like it. And so, the overwhelming becomes trivial,

Now, part two, the trivial becoming overwhelming. Ahahah, it was announced that Kermit the Frog and Miss Piggy are breaking up. Ahahaha, aw, upsetting, part of our collective childhoods and whatnot. Or, more pertinently, part of the collective childhood of people who churn out content for news blogs, and have been asked to provide a little light relief, what with all this kiddy-fiddling bumming everybody out. Ahahaha. I said bumming. Give me a fucking column on the Huffington Post. I saw a headline, I smiled briefly, there was that cute line from Miss Piggy about dating moi being like flying too close to the sun. It was amusing. The muppets were always funny, Miss Piggy was always funny (Kermit not so much). But then the newsfeeds mount up. Lead in line after lead in line. Love is dead, What hope is there for us. Love is dead. The break-up. OMG say it’s not so. What hope is there? There’s no such thing as love. Taken individually the rational response is ha, yes, a cute story, a little light relief amidst the bombing, religious wars and doing kids up the arse, We all need a little light relief (NOT LIKE THAT TED – allegedly). But, when collated, as newsfeeds tend to be, it becomes overwhelming, as a reader you suddenly feel that all humanity is fixated purely on the break-up of two puppets, and despite you knowing that this is not the case, those jokey headlines, when viewed in their numbing repetition, suddenly signify a great gaping horror at the heart of humanity, the reader feels that, as a species, we have become incapable of engaging with anything other than the trivial. And the feeling is overwhelming.

The point is that each of these stories has a position in our discourse, but the way we engage with them has the effect of negating the potency of each. News becomes not news. Not news becomes news. I am unsure as to the way out of this.

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