>>19 I also agree with that mindset, because I pointed out the "media just sampled bits of reality and chose to promote the bits' importance over the other things that they didn't 'sample'."
By that statement, I am not implying that the media is control here, but that the reality the people display is chosen by the media.
So yes, it is based on what we want, but I think it has gotten to point where media keeps on setting up these sampled desires as some storm of info, people start to lose sight on what they actually want and start to find comfort on the displays.
I know persons that have their priorities screwed where their circumstances allowed them to have the media take control for them. In a way, society can be defined this way too if you look at the cues that the media shares. It goes how far we allow the media to control us.
And as for the statement on avoiding the media, I feel that you can't. Nearly everything you see these days are plagued with the label of entertainment, and I have learned that people tend to passively absorb 'info' despite actively avoiding info.
The bottom-line is that society sets up the media on what there is to be shown, only for society or a majority/minority of people to actively choose to be controlled by the media spectacle.
Hmm, it's similar to the capitalist system if you look at it from this way--> People want products. So you have the boss man giving work to laborers to make product. And after work, the laborers go out and buy products using their paychecks while the surpluses go to the boss man. It's like that people are getting controlled by something that they wish for-- products.
I'm not angry or finding any of this bad, it's just interesting to see how society can be defined so well under these terms. I'm not saying that the media is the bad guy here, in fact, we shaped the media in this way, and this potentially resulted in a degradation of our morality.
But it ought to be considered that the media's control over us depends on how we make it to be. The 'control' aspect it has is the attraction that it presents for us to want to watch it, not on how well it can influence our actions. There are cases where it does both.