Sometimes I find myself pausing to ponder whether the world around me is gradually growing an ever-increasing need to be "entertained" by absolutely everything around us.
What made me think about it was walking through the grocery store the other day and noticing just how much food seems designed to entertain these days, while actually feeding us is almost overlooked.
Don't get me wrong, I understand perfectly well the whole idea of puzzles on cereal boxes for kids because if the box is entertaining you get the kid to eat the cereal. I'm talking about the rest of us here.
And then I found myself thinking about the fundamental process of eating out and how I have watched — over the past 30-40 years — the entire experience of eating out becoming less about eating excellent food and more about being entertained.
"Hi, my name is George, I'll be your server entertainment tonight!"
But let's take it to a completely different arena and consider something like the evening TV news. What used to be simply a news reader letting us know what happened in the world, has now turned into a strange soup based more on the idea of needing to entertain and grab people's attention, then providing actual useful information.
I'm sure I'm not really telling you anything you didn't realize, already...
Which leads me back to the original question of why do we need to be entertained by everything?
ADHD Society?
I can't help but think that the need for entertainment goes hand in hand with the general "shortening" of everything we do. Not only has our world trended away from reading actual articles to get our information to reading 256-character tweets, but we also expect to be entertained while reading those 256-character tweets.
In another 20 years, will the evening news be reduced to just a series of dank memes flashing by at breakneck speed?
I recognize the reality that we have less and less time on our hands and so my bottom line question becomes whether or not this incredible cornucopia of information is actually a good thing? Many would argue that we're "better off," but are we really?
Looking at this evident "time shortage," and going back to being entertained by my food while eating out, I also remember a time where if you went out to eat a decent meal in an actual non fast food restaurant, you came in, you sat down and the table was pretty much considered yours for the rest of the night.
Now so much of the focus is on eat-and-run, that is, you come in, you have your food, you eat it, and you get out of there in less than an hour so they can turn over the table three or four times in the course of an evening.
In fact, in many places you're kind of unwelcome to linger beyond having eaten your last bite of dessert.
But let's get back to entertainment.
If I'm expected to spend $30 for a dinner, I need my steak and baked potato to be tender and juicy and tasty and cooked just right, I don't need it to do a song and dance for me! I want to have conversation with the people at the table, not watch George the entertaining waiter perform vaudeville while taking my order!
Which leads me to the deeper inquiry: Is this all just part of the inevitable process of making everybody stupider and stupider... because they focus on being entertained rather than thinking for themselves? Feels a bit like it...
I suppose it would be easy to assume that I have just become one of those grumpy old men who sits on the back porch and yells at the kids to get off his lawn… but the counterpoint to that is that I didn't want to be entertained by my food even when I was 21.
When I wanted to be entertained I sought entertainment.
Again, I keep returning to the shortening of everything and how it feels like we are expected to cram so much into our short time. Is this just a case of my food having to be entertaining because I am trying to combine entertainment and food into the same time space so I have more space left over to... What exactly?
What is the objective here?
I just spent a couple of hours in our garden, just tending to plants and harvesting some of what we have grown... very slowly. There was something magically healing about that...
Thanks for reading, and have a great week ahead!
How about you? Do you enjoy "entertaining" food, or do you prefer "just food?" Do you think the rise of "infotainment" as news is part of a greater trend that makes people think less for themselves? Comments, feedback and other interaction is invited and welcomed! Because — after all — SOCIAL content is about interacting, right? Leave a comment — share your experiences — be part of the conversation!
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Created at 20221009 14:32 PDT
0666/1912
Ok, man, TV news is the worst! Gyrating graphics, irritating sound effects, shouty delivery, no depth or context, at best cursory partisan perspectives...
Entertainment culture also makes life a sort of sensory overload, but flashing lights and bright advertisement every where are really nothing new. It;s just inescapable now when social media exists primarily to dump ads in your lap, too.