THE police, the NHS, our country’s bloated infotainment industries (digital TV etc) – they are all so terribly keen to get interactive with us these days.
Well, I don’t want to play. They’re not cool enough to be in my gang.
And they can shove their hi-tech services where the sun doesn’t shine.
What everyone fails to realise is this: just because the technology exists to do something does not necessarily mean that that “something” is a good idea.
Television, films, the world wide web and computer games are all slowly converging into one all-dancing, all-singing stream of noisy moving images which are liberally laced with coarse sexuality (and in the internet’s case, really disgusting pornography).
Although there is some good content on the internet (you’re looking at it, dude!), the web’s overall influence is not benign.
It is bad, because the vast majority of internet content is poorly edited (if edited at all) and therefore it foments dangerous and untrue ideas among the people who use the services (some of whom are very thick, having been raised on dumb-ass shoot-‘em-up computer games).
Overall, the internet (and other digital entertainment platforms) are dumbing everything down – the spoken and written language, culture and even human identity itself.
Also, as I mentioned a few paragraphs back, much of the internet’s content is pornographic and geared to loveless, dehumanised sex. That’s very bad indeed.
Similarly, much of the increased digital TV that is linked to the web is pornographically-led in one way or another.
I don’t know where this digital interactivity will end, but I can take a wild guess.
The next big thing will be that local councils want to run their own TV networks, via the internet at first.
Can you imagine how awful Wirral (or Liverpool) Council Television would be?
It would be dull of earnest advice about: going green (yawn, yawn); how to claim benefits; how not to behave anti-socially; how to get your unwanted sofa carted away; and how, if you are a motorist, you will be hassled and hassled and hassled again over parking.
My prediction is not as far-fetched as it sounds. One local authority down south, Kent County Council, that has launched its own TV station – operated by 10 Alps, a company set up by the Live Aid big gob, Bob Geldof.
Now, having got all that off my chest, let me say I have been watching some of the new digital TV networks of late, and one of them actually has a series that I like the look of.
I refer to The Riches, a US drama, starring Brits Eddie Izzard and Minnie Driver, which is on Virgin 1, Mondays.
They play a couple of trailer trash grifters, Wayne and Dahlia Malloy, who have fallen out with their fellow travellers.
So they go on the run with their three kids and are involved in a road accident in which a wealthy couple, the Riches, are killed.
The Malloys then steal the wallets, credit cards and identity of the Riches, and push their bodies and their flash car into a swamp.
Our roughneck anti-heroes then proceed to live high on the hog, by passing themselves off as the Riches, even moving into their luxury gated mansion.
Wayne and Daliah are complex characters and, though they are morally dubious, the viewer warms to them. It’s a series that’s worth checking out.
And I say that as someone who was never a fan of Eddie Izzard’s stand-up routines.
He came across as a smug, middle class, smart arse – and there are far too many people like that on TV.
I wasn’t impressed by his dressing up as a girlie either – not a good look for a big lump of a fella like Izzard.
More recently his voice has been annoying the hell out of me in those useless Government propaganda cartoons about how we should all go green.
“Recycle,” he would squeak, “the possibilities are endless!”
Oh, just p*ss off will you!
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Mensahman wrote...
Merseyside Police are so "interactive" fighting crime that they have pulled the Blogging Policeman here on the Wirral Blogs.
I sent info to the police to the police about various things and they have done Sweet FA about the matters I raised.
The Merseyside Police are basically paying lip-service to justice to fool the public.
The new hi-tech gimmick seems to have worn off now, and they have gone back to being tax-collectors via speeding fines.
REGAN REPLIES: Thanks for that Mensahman.
Posted by: Mensahman | October 5, 2007 7:46 PM