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Media today is always about grabbing people’s attention. No one has the time or energy to really pay attention to an ad or a news story, so everything is about advertisements that are seconds long or trendy hashtags to pass around information that is quickly forgotten. This loss of attention span makes us more easily manipulated, as media not only controls what we see but also the way that we analyze and remember it. It is hard to start a movement if everyone forgets about it after it stops being trendy, yet different advertisements pay more and more money to stay trendy. How does this affect our perception of the world around us? One where we are torn between issues of social equality and advertisements for makeup products or skinny teas.
The best example of this is the #BlackLivesMatter Movement. For some reason, this was a big controversy, with many white people feeling excluded (even though that really isn’t the point). The point it, for a couple of months it got a mass amount of coverage. Everyone was reposting, retweeting, and sharing the hashtag as well as spreading overall awareness about police brutality. But what happened to that movement now? Did police brutality disappear in the same timeframe that those hashtags began to fade away? No. People just forgot or stopped caring. The lives of black men, women, and children were no longer a priority, and after the frenzy of posting, no one talks about it anymore. This is detrimental to the way we view the world and is something we all need to be aware of. Media has become an extension of ourselves, and the main way that many “interact” with the world. People think that once they post a picture, their job is done. Once they like a picture, they convince themselves that they have done their part to break down systemic oppression. This sort of media, this sort of attention span means that social issues are never solved and that any awareness raised is for nothing. Black lives may matter, but hey that was February. Climate change is trending now! And we still aren’t going to do anything.
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