Paper TV

Airy, easy-reading printed material such as Time and Wired magazine, etc., ostensibly written to inform and educate but in actuality designed to inculcate rapacious consumer desire (buy an H2; you need a new laptop, etc.) and reinforce prevailing socio-governmental and economic beliefs (diversity is our strength, housing is a “smart” investment, etc.). Close scrutiny reveals that Paper Television’s content is little more than ill-conceived “bait” thrown out in hopes of courting the eyeballs that advertisers want desperately and will pay handsome sums of money to target. Making money is Paper TV’s primary goal. Secondarily it aims to advance liberal, egalitarian, and hypercapitalist worldviews inasmuch as doing so helps foster linear values sets in which money is the chief determinant of individual worth and merit (e.g. Sony doesn’t care what sort of person you are so long as you have the money and the will to purchase their advertised products). The net effect of exposure to Paper Television upon those still gullible enough to read it is wholly negative, and may include such side effects as the belief that all humans are fungible, coupled with an insatiable desire to purchase goods (usually on credit) that are neither needed nor affordable to the readers of such textual dreck.