December 7, 2022
I’m old enough to recall when
there were only 13 channels available on our television. When I lived with my
mother, she had a black and white RCA set that stood on its own legs. I don’t
recall how long we had this free-standing model, but it was what we were used
to. Of course, at that time, I was my mother’s remote control, and it didn’t
even matter if I was upstairs when she wanted the channel changed. I got
married a week before my 18th birthday, and moved not just out of
her house, but out of my rural community.
My mother did not, in her
lifetime, own a color TV.
But even before she died,
there was talk that something new would be coming before too long—they called
it cable TV, and while there would likely be a small user-fee involved, it
would well be worth that minimal price because, (they said), there would be
several more channels for watching, and there would be no commercials.
And maybe there are some folks reading this who don’t know, so I will relate
here that prior to the advent of cable, the only cost of watching TV was the
appliance itself, the antenna you bought, and the electricity to run it.
I do recall that my mother
didn’t believe that last part about no commercials on cable TV for a single
moment.
Moving forward from that time,
in the early days of my marriage, I had a job in the credit office of a department
store in our local large city. Then, one day, we were told that something new
was coming. They said we would be doing our work on a computer. It was cutting-edge
stuff and involved punch cards and something called a hopper. A young woman was
hired to instruct us all, and her first pronouncement was to assure us, quite
gleefully as I recall, that eventually we would all be replaced by this
modern-day machine. And she made one more promise, which we had all heard and
believed at the time—that the advent of the computer in the workplace would herald
the end of paper in the workplace. Just think, no more endless paper to deal
with!
I’ll give all y’all a moment
here to get the giggles under control in response to that last bit of horse puckey.
Now, with those two shining
examples in my background, one wouldn’t think I would be surprised that YouTube
is working on finding new ways of giving us even more commercials to pepper our
short, two-minute videos. I think there are enough now, because sometimes I’ll
be watching an eight-minute video and get three ads in the first three minutes.
I’ve participated in more than
a few surveys online, about advertising. There is almost always a comment
section. I usually state in that comment section that 1) I do not watch the ads
and 2) if they annoy me enough, I put the sponsor of the ad on my personal, “never,
ever buy” list.
Yes, I know that likely no one
ever sees those comments, but I do feel better for making them.
I have always believed that
the internet has more positives to it than negatives, and that attitude had, in
the beginning, extended itself to social media. But I forgot to factor in that
one bad actor can create more chaos, confusion, and pain than a room full of
good people can spread peace and harmony.
When television first came
into being, there was a general consensus that standards needed to be established
and upheld—for the greater good. Thus, behavior was monitored and those
producing the programming fit themselves into the stated community standards in
a way that became second nature.
I would dearly love to see
social media take on the same guardrails.
And as for those darned
commercials? I imagine if YouTube does manage to eliminate one’s ability to “skip”
some ads that eventually, I will simply spend far less time there. Likely using
the site only for limited purposes—like watching videos that I know can show me
how to do something, or how to pronounce a name.
Love,
Morgan
http://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury
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