Its huge, sneaky, manipulative, a bad influence on us all, is armed and dangerous, and committing mental abuse. This menace is everywhere: in magazines, television, commercials and news. It is guilty for misleading people, scaring people into buying their product, and making people feel like they aren’t good enough. Everyone is a victim especially those who are vulnerable to their insecurities. It preys on the emotionally unstable and the young and naïve. Be on the look out for the media.
Propaganda has been around for hundreds of years. In 1914 propaganda was how the government would get recruits into World War I, by distorting the truth, understating the number of deaths and the risks, and patriotism, which gave a false hope. They did this through advertisements expressed by war heroes. Propaganda has evolved into what is today’s media. It has the same purpose to advocate, all the same, through advertisements but instead of war heroes it is now celebrities and instead of war it is for different causes such as, diets, make up, and plastic surgery.
The media has a powerful, manipulative and psychological effect on us. It uses gorgeous people and modifies them to be over all flawless, as a means to appeal to people and advertise certain products. Lets face it we all wish for more sometimes and feel jealousy, but when you compare yourself to those people you start to feel bad about yourself. You forget about all the good qualities you possess and pick out qualities you don’t have, that the celebrity does have. In this state of mind products like make up, and slim fast drinks comes into interest and diets don’t seem like such a bad idea. The media is one big false image that you have to be perfect,
and it wants you to portray that image, but it’s false because no one is perfect and there is no such thing. The image is phony just like the air brushed, enhanced people on the magazine cover.
The media also uses another method sort of like reverse psychology. All the news and gossip about celebrities is always bad. I think this is targeted to people who hate or love celebrities or hate themselves. If ever there is some incident involving a celebrity it never goes unnoticed. I was once in a store and the beautiful Brittney Spears cover caught my eye that read, “Brittney Spears gets parking ticket.” I would never be able to comprehend why that would interest anyone, let alone why it’s on the front page of a magazine. If I get a parking ticket it’s no big deal but if Brittney Spears gets one, it makes front page. We don’t know these people so why do we care so much about their lives when they are people just like us the only difference is the numbers in our bank accounts. So why do people read about celebrities, why do we care if Jessica Simpson and Nick Leshay had a divorce, or if Lindsay Lohan has a drug problem or if one of the Olsen twins is anorexic? Because now it is making you feel good about yourself. People love hearing bad things about other people and hate to see them succeed. It is a personal issue of jealousy that everyone shares.
It is almost like a high school scene because the celebrities are popular, and everyone envies them and the media is like the one who gossips and spreads rumors for attention. The media will look at any kind of trend or human behavior as an opportunity to make money. If its guitars we like it’s an attractive woman holding the guitar. If it’s needy school girls its “find out if your crush likes you!” People who feeds into it are insecure, or just don’t have a life. To let some media figure make you feel not worthy by comparison is just plain insecure. To read about, and also be interested in someone else’s problem, to feel some sort of sense of worthiness is just plain disturbing. Especially when that person doesn’t even know you exist. If we let this worldwide controversy and advertisement effect us then there is obviously something we do not like about ourselves and are looking for an alternative. This pandemic is targeted to the youth especially and we cannot let them use our own insecurities or temptations against ourselves, it is only telling us how we to be in order to be accepted, encouraging youth to be a follower, of a false image. Don’t give in to its negativity; don’t give up your individuality because it is too precious to take for granted. Our disadvantages are to the medias own advantage, and the media is our disadvantage
