Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Looks Can Be Deceiving
After reading the first three chapters of UnSpun I have found Chapter 3 to be the most appealing. There is a quote which really made this chapter stand out to me and that is, " A picture can indeed be worh a thousand words-but those words are't neceessarily true." I found this quote to be very true in todays society especially through various media outlets. Everythingwe see or hear on tv, the radio, in newspapers, on the internet, and wherever else we look is sugarcoated. As this chapter showed different products that were sugarcoated and tricked people into seeing and belevingsomething that wasn't there. This happens all the time everywhere we look as I said before and the reason this was so important to me is because people don't feel the need to take time and do some simpler esearch. When you see a product being advertised and think it may be for you look into it and see what is really there. When a politician makes a proposed plan look into it to see what is really happening. If we start to look beyond the pretty pictures we want to see and start to see the dark truth which is usually behind it then we can start to become "unspun".
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I agree! This is especially true of the many pictures we are bombarded with through advertising. It is much harder to question the validity of a picture that is being to shown to attract an emotion than it is to count out truths in a print article. We often do not question the validity of pictures or photographs or think about the messages behind them.
ReplyDeleteGood call, I like Chapter Three as well and I agree with what youhave said. The notion that what we see overrides what we hear is so true. In the book I like the example using Paxil CR. Many, many prescription commercials use the same tactic of showing the euphoric individual while the side effects are being listed. In some instances, if you really listen you learn that they side effects can be much worse than the actual issue itself. Go figure. People need to start LISTENING more.
ReplyDeleteI once read somewhere that the average American will spend 3 years of his/her life simply watching television commercials. That is a huge amount of time, and to think these ads are only coming through in the channel of TV. You're right that we are bombarded from countless angles with 'pretty pictures' and images that appeal to our emotions.
ReplyDeleteIn response to Alex's comment...yes people do need to start listening more, but at least the drug agencies do list all of the side effects. They aren't totally misleading, but I agree they are wrong for putting the notion of guaranteed happniess or 'euphoria' in a consumer's head when that are stating everything that can go wrong.