Multiplication Effect: The Medium is the message
Going Into Overdrive
Hello reader, you are reading my third publication of the week—a recovery project titled GOING INTO OVERDRIVE. You can read the first issue here, and yesterday’s issue here.
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For my third issue on Going Into Overdrive, I will discuss the exchange between generations on the topic of hypersexualisation. I am sure it is worth your time.
Multiplication Effect: The Medium is the Message
Every generation faces its accusation of decadence and degeneracy. It is not new to hear the statement “what is this world turning into?” or another like it- “this generation is so messed up.”
The commonest rebuttal from the accused generation or for humor, the defendant, is simply the “stop right there! This did not start with us.” Then they would continue with “you guys have always had this problem. It is just more popular now because we have [insert whatever means of communication is popular now]”
Plaintiff generation: you kids are hypersexualized
Defendant generation: Nahh. We are on the same scale as you guys. We just have the technology that exposes our decadence more than yours.
I want to discuss the multiplication effect that is associated with the prevailing technology or means of communication. And in this particular case and generation, social media and the internet.
Is the rebuttal that things remained the same, only the means of transmission changed an effective one? No, I don’t think so. The means of transmission is the danger here. It is the focus. Exposure is key.
To keep it simple, a generation that had most of their adult content in low transmission and distribution forms such as magazines and CDs will not experience the same social and psychic consequences as the generation that has their transmission in fast and sophisticated forms. Pace is important.
In previous generations, children, teenagers, and adults snuck around to find magazines with adult content. The one dude who had it was treated like a king or a Pirate ship captain who found treasure. And his earnestly curious peers would gather round him like a crew loyal to their captain. With such scarce distribution, where 13 boys gather round a piece of paper merely containing images, the multiplication effect is miniscule compared to what happens on Onlyfans website.
To explain with my just deduced aphorism that “diversity may be the strength of the people but variety is the appeal of porn,” what a Playboy magazine offers in terms of variety is small compared to that of a regular pornography website. For a magazine, you wait for the next issue for about a month or two (as they are printed by very few organisations). On a website, you have thousands of content creators from across the world feeding the website every hour (if not minute), in various categories, at a high speed. With such availability and abundance, how can you think that the hypersexualisation of a generation that was minted in the age of high speed internet is an imaginary accusation?
A regular pornography website serves millions of users everyday. That compared to subscribers of Playboy magazines makes the latter appear as child’s play. Still, we have not examined the different levels of vividness that videos impact on the psyche compared to flipping images on a book. One calls for your participation more than the other and I don’t have to tell you which one.
Still yet another unexplored phenomenon is the mobility involved. While you can move magazines around (if you have just the right bag), such luck does not exist with CDs. You can’t simply move a CD player into a public bathroom stall to do your business. But how about now? Wherever you go with your smartphone and PC, you carry a TV, CD player, and connection to the internet with you. With your smartphone and PC, exposure is unconstrained, has low limitations, and is even imbued with features to help you cloak your activities. There is no good sense then in thinking that you can compare the consequences of both means of transmission and distribution, and judge that these are on the same scale.
Let me revert to Marshall McLuhan’s theory of The Medium is the message. McLuhan wrote in Understanding Media that
“In a culture like ours… it is sometimes a bit of a shock to be reminded that, in operational and practical fact, the medium is the message. This is merely to say that the personal and social consequences of any medium — that is, of any extension of ourselves — result from the new scale that is introduced into our affairs by each extension of ourselves, or by any new technology.”
If you are confused by that, what he means is that what a medium transmits is less important than how a medium transmits. There is a greater focus more on how and less focus on the what.
He [McLuhan] wrote that:
“What we are considering here, however, are the psychic and social consequences of the designs or patterns as they amplify or accelerate existing processes. For the “message” of any medium or technology is the change of scale or pace or pattern that it introduces into human affairs. The railway did not introduce movement or transportation or wheel or road into human society, but it accelerated and enlarged the scale of previous human functions, creating totally new kinds of cities and new kinds of work and leisure.”
Marshall McLuhan in his powerful explanation redirects us to pay attention-not to the content of a medium-but rather to the scale, pace, and pattern of transmission. It is folly to think that this technology that increases exposure at a geometric scale will not impact the psyche of those who were born into that generation and have interacted with it like they breathe air.
A simple representation will appear like this:
Behaviour——New (and More) sophisticated Technology——Behaviour(raised to n)
Every new technology changes the scale, pace, and pattern
CNN and The Joe Rogan Experience
TV and the Internet both transmit information. But the pace and scale of transmission and their differences is typified in our time by CNN and Joe Rogan. For example, CNN’s Primetime Anchor Anderson Cooper received around 238,000 viewers on average per episode last year, while podcast host Joe Rogan reaches an average of 11 million listeners per episode. That much gives us a vivid image on the differences in scale and pace of both technologies. The internet and the expanding online space transmits information at a grand speed that beats every other medium before it. It is preposterous then to think and imagine that the personal, social, and psychic consequences are bound to remain the same.
One social and psychic consequence of mobile phones and instant messaging is the atrophy of faith and the rise of anxiety respectively.
Before there were mobile phones, people travelled the road for hours without contact and communication with us who expected them. This required faith (or hope). For you had to just believe that all was well and that in an estimated time of arrival, you should receive your loved one. But the introduction of mobile phones and the ability to make calls at will changes that. I had an event that jolted me into realising this change. My mum was on her way home from a trip. Then, her number was unavailable. This was odd and although I did not visibly panic, I thought a million thoughts of anxiety. When she arrived home, we discovered that she put her mobile phone on flight mode. And then I thought to myself (luckily I was born before mobile phones went mainstream) how we survived before mobile phones went mainstream. I realised that people just believed. We don’t need that belief now. Whatever anxiety we feel now can be settled with a few reassuring phone calls and updates that all is well (or not). Whether you know it or not, the ability to put a call through at will means that you will use your faculties of faith and hope a little less. And an under exercised faculty experiences atrophy. In this case, our faculties of hope. Availability erodes hope.
For Instant Messaging, Whatsapp and other types of instant messaging applications have helped amp up anxiety in relationships–specifically romantic ones.
Now people can have whole meltdowns because their partner did not take time from their busy schedule to reply to their good morning text. Or text them sweet stuff during the day. I ask myself (and you) how life was before instant messaging. People were okay with speaking to their partner twice a day–in the morning and evening. They were content (they had no choice) with the long silence during the day. Phones were a luxury. Hence they were used sparingly. But now, the abundance of information technology enables us to maintain constant communication throughout the day. The romantic gestures and unbroken communication that we can share throughout the day are owed to technology. It was not always so. Then the day it appears that one person is not keeping pace, and reciprocating this abnormal ubiquity, our heads imagine scenarios that threaten the relationship and our self-esteem. It is addiction to this abundance that has led us to unbridled anxiety.
These are just clear and classic examples of the personal, social, and psychic consequences that are introduced into our affairs by any new technology. Then can we say that the accusation of hypersexuality in a given generation that has this technology is far-fetched or bogus? I will leave you to decide.
Thank you for reading my third publication of the week on my project titled: GOING INTO OVERDRIVE. See you tomorrow.
Take this picture just because…
PS: The Medium is the Message can be applied to weigh the implications of the discourse on mental health.