Newspapers and Paradox

I just realised that while I had written a blog post in Evernote last week, I didn't actually post it. This writing a post every week might take a little more getting used to, and a lot more double checking to make sure that I've done what I thought I've done. 

To keep things fair, I am not going to just use last week's effort and post it now, I'm going to write a new post and do this right. Although I don't think I can fairly call a write up that didn't get posted as a success. 

On to this week's post…

We gave up cable a few years ago. I'd lost my job, and in an effort to cut costs we decided that cable would be a logical item to drop. This was slightly before Netflix was popular, and when we wanted to watch something we would grab a DVD and make our own syndication of our favourite TV shows.

This had been our main source of advertising. We listen to CBC radio which is, for the time being anyway, advertiser-free. We weren't huge consumers of magazines, didn't have a newspaper subscription, and had gotten used to ignoring ads when using the Internet. 

We had no idea what was going on. We lost track of what movies were coming out. We got behind in conversations about TV shows. It was like we were cut off from the things that everyone else was talking about. 

For a while, it was weird. Conversations with other people consisted of us saying we had no idea of what they were talking about, and them trying to explain it to us. This doesn't work well, especially when they're trying to describe reality TV. We were out of a number of social loops, and it was pretty obvious.

Cut to last November. We'd gotten pretty used to not knowing what was going on. It is possible to exist without knowing the current models of cars, or the newest incarnation of a certain product. Occasionally it was a bit weird to see packaging radically changed at the grocery store with no idea it was happening, but mostly not knowing what's going on was now normal. Our consumption of many items dropped, and the pressure to keep up with the Jones' was non-existent.

Then I subscribed to the New York Times paper edition.

It's been a long time since I've looked at newspapers every day. I'd figured it was time to pay for media, and the appeal of sitting down and reading an actual bona fide piece of paper seemed appealing.  

As luck would have it I started the subscription a few days before Sandy hit New York.

This made reading the paper and seeing ads exceptionally surreal. There have been days where I literally saw photos of people living in hurricane-damaged homes on one page, and ads for Cartier, Tiffany, and other high end retailers on the other. 

Even when I see ads in other places, on TV in a restaurant, or on a radio being played in a shop, they seem unreal. But nothing like that initial shock in the days after the hurricane. This happens with other stories in other areas of the paper as well. 

It says a lot about us, as a society. We can indulge in our wants instead of just our needs. We can ignore stories about things that are ugly or uncomfortable if we wish. We're incredibly privileged to be able to do so.