M. T Anderson Feed Summary

With the mass amount of entertainment and media that gets shoved in our faces on a daily basis, it can be a difficult task to look between the lines and see what’s really going on. While many of our favorite shows, movies, and books seem like light entertainment, they often carry hidden messages meant to sway us into a particular worldview. Blackmail in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, drug abuse and promiscuity in Scooby Doo, and mistrust and paranoia in If You Give A Mouse A Cookie are just a few examples of why we need to be consciously aware of what media is trying to tell us. William Shakespeare 's A Midsummer Night’s Dream shows us that he thought slavery was okay.

A Rhetorical analysis of “Generation Velcro” In “Generation Velcro,” Dorothy Woodend discusses the lack of basic skills and knowledge that is being passed down from generation to generation, and how this could be a fundamental problem for both generation Y and the future of planet earth. Woodend, setting the tone for her article, asks the question, “[i]s this generation heading into a coming dark age with little more than the ability to update their Facebook statuses and watch YouTube, all with laces untied?” (par. 7). She contends that “[t]he inability to concentrate in a world of competing bits of information and constant multitasking have led to brains that can no longer keep up,” implying that this problem of concentration is inhibiting this newest generation’s ability to learn the skills necessary to sustain our world properly (par. 12).

To begin, Bradbury argues that the overuse of technology, especially television, causes members of modern society to become ignorant and self-centered. Harold Bloom describes Bradbury’s warnings about the danger of technology: Technology, according to Beatty, is to blame for the oppressive world around them. Bradbury, through Beatty, is issuing a warning―that unchecked technological development, mindless thrill-seeking in media, and the political anomie of the majority, create in American society a drastic vulnerability to a progressive degeneration of its cultural and intellectual capacities, with a corresponding decay of its democratic political institutions. (29)

In The Essay “The News” Neil Postman demonstrates the problems with News on TV and the Psychology behind it of why our society continues to watch. Postman displayed many points that becuase television news is must appeal to everyone in a short amount of time; the coverage is often shallow and gives a false impression of the world. Neil Postman describes the time restrictions of (22 mins) because of commercials overtaking the news. This reflects “The News” as we know it to become a big piece of entertainment that has nothing to do with the intellectual information that affects our lives. The lack of in-depth look on News nowadays draws an Appearance vs. Reality that the News isn’t what It should be.

In the past few years humans have spent much more time indoors with their technology than outdoors. Televisions, computers, and smartphones tend to draw greater numbers of people inside their homes, just as humans did in the futuristic world of Leonard Mead where no one left their homes at night. (“The Pedestrian”). Children especially have been infected with the media bug, much like Peter and Wendy, who are unable to stray away from their virtual reality in “The Veldt”. It is understandable that many-particularly older- people believe that technology is affecting how human naturally interact with each other and their surroundings.

Neil Postman in Chapter 1 of "Amusing Ourselves to Death" aims to show how the television can manipulate a person 's decision in politics, religion, education and turn those into entertainment. Even today Postman’s ideeas stand strong and it is true that if an information is entertaining the viewer will not look at the autenticity or what the origins of it are. Probably as expected, the more the technology advances, the more the manipulation from the television is taking place. This is done by: changing how people think, making their brain numb by not allowing them to have an opinion and interfering in their family life and in people decision-making process. The only way to save ouselves from living under the control of the television is simply

n Barbara Ehrenreich’s The Worst Years of Our Lives, she highlights a significant infection festering in American Culture: television as a main event, or only event in a day. As she says “you never see people watching tv”, and that happens because it truly isn’t entertaining. It substitutes for a life. The television has been pulling people into an allusion of a false reality and a seemingly boring life since its implementation. She essentially illustrates the negative impact television has on todays society.

Chris Hedge’s article, “Our Country Is Lost Believing in What It Sees on Screens, and We Are Going to Pay a Nasty Price for It,” highlights the negative influence electronic media has on society. The author provides a realistic insight into the negative effects of electronic media. Hedges states, “It is the electronic image that informs and defines us. It is the image that gives us our identity. It is the image that tells us what is attainable in the vast cult of the self, what we should desire, what we should seek to become and who we are” (Hedges, 4).

Our era is the time of the media. Technology has been taking over, and sure technology can be a good thing, but it can also be very dangerous at the same time. One example is how the media has influenced our society. Because of it, girls as young as three years old are insecure about their bodies. The author, M.T Anderson, has noticed how out society is sick, so he wrote a novel called Feed.

In the article, “What Monkeys Eat: A Few Thoughts About Pop Culture Writing” Linda Holmes is trying to explain that we should focus the study of pop culture from what we ought to watch, read, or listen to, to what we actually watch, read, or listen to. What we take in to entertain ourselves is what drives the conversations we have on a daily basis. “What monkeys eat” is referring to us as the monkeys, and what we eat to our forms of entertainment. The shows we watch an the celebrities we follow are all what “we eat.” These influential factors are what we mostly write about, instead of the more important topics such as, war or how the economy will look in the future.

In reality, we are closer to a world like Bradbury 's dreaded society. In Fahrenheit 451, the people only had televisions to keep them occupied but in many cases, we are a lot worse than the citizens of modern Chicago. In the present day, we have a long list of technology at our disposal, including phones, laptops, televisions, and much much more. Which means that many more people are addicted to these forms of technology. In the United States, a massive '97% of boys under 18 and 94% of girls under 18 report playing video games regularly."

Imagine any dystopian novel you have read recently. The plagued life they live, the crumbling government, and the aspiring heroine who attempts to make change to their world. “American Psychosis” is an article where the author, Chris Hedges examines the problems he sees in our society. He believes that our civilization is plagued by social media and criticizes American culture saying that everyone is the same. He pulls us in by talking about something we can all relate to, which in this case is the celebrities we see on TV.

Jessi Mann stood in front of her floor-to-ceiling mirror, brushing her long brown hair while she listened to the pop music emitting from her stereo. She had the same routine each morning: get up, eat, prepare for school, and listen to the radio so that she was caught up on all the news from the past twenty-four hours. Only, today was different. The reporter came on for the two-minute newscast with a statement that shocked Jessi to the core.

The article “Mind Over Mass Media”, written by Professor Steven Pinker, describes the impact of media on human lives and brains. Pinker illustrates the benefits people gain from using the worlds quickly increasing technology and media. Pinker suggests that today’s technology such as, PowerPoint, Google, and other forms of social media can actually enhance and bring more intelligence to the mind, instead of being detrimental. Critics believe that the many different forms of media can lower intelligence. However, Pinker declares that scientists are using all of this technology everyone else is using, and are still discovering new things.

The television gives people an important lesson of life and people find the examples of what’s right in TV. This one of many illustrations how the television and films influence humans’