Yes thank you, my high horse is very comfortable

Reality television feeds off it, cosmetic clinics would be closing their doors without it and girly coffee dates rely on it to complete the fix.  That's right, the judgement of others.   A phenomenon that I'm sure we would all vigorously deny but that gives many of us so much joy.  


Television cements the judgement of every stereotype imaginable.  Overweight and perpetually single folk are paraded in front of the camera with the carrot of money and potential happiness dangled in front of their tear-filled eyes.  Dating shows like the Bachelor abound in catfights while the antics of the vacuous Kardashians still somehow manage to grab the attention of enough viewers to remain on the screen.

Lets face it, nobody would watch Jerry Springer if there wasn't the chance of a chair-throwing bitch fight...


My favourite way to view the judgemental human nature is to read online newspaper comments sections.  Here we have every kind of bias.  Contained within the pages we find racism, sexism, class distinction, one-upmanship and finally my favourite, the Grammar Nazi.  A lot of people writing in the comments sections have very valid arguments, but the second they confuse 'you're' with 'your' or 'their' with 'there', they have signed the death warrant of the respect for their opinions.  Within seconds, the Grammar Nazi will jump on the inaccuracy, highlighting it with a precisely placed asterisk: "You don't know what *you're* talking about"...


I have been known to add my two cents' worth to the comments of news articles.  As an emotive soul, I find myself unable to leave the ignorance of a minority of the commenters unchecked.  Looking at the posts closely, I have found that 50% of them are generally the outbursts of no more than five individuals.  The demographic of the commenters is also very interesting.  An abundance of tech-savvy new-retirees, a scattering of single or stay-at-home mothers, a handful of current university students (or graduated arts students), and the remainder are nosey tossers who will be wholly unaffected by whatever the article describes, but cannot resist having a dig at a lowly minority.  Oh, and occasionally me...


Despite the undignified nature of the media judgement of every stereotype imaginable, significant numbers of people still subscribe to, listen and read the kind of unintellectual material that we would also tell our peers that we would only ever utilise at a time when we were out of bog roll.  For instance, I love watching people get frisked and questioned at airports on border protection television programmes, but would I freely admit it?  Well yes, because I just did.  But if I was trying to impress it would be the last facet of my character I'd reveal.


Yet why do we watch programmes in which overweight, slightly desperate or extremely stupid people are paraded for no good reason?  Because it makes our own lives feel better.  We can watch someone with a BMI of 60 try and carry a couple of 10 kg sandbags up a hill and smugly note that we could have done it in a quarter of the time.  Being able to spectate the embarrassment of a pretty girl getting rejected by a farmer is the stuff our entertainment is made of.  I'm guilty of enjoying these scenarios, but television ratings tell me I'm not alone.  For this reason, my television has been switched off.  The only time it will alight my lounge is for Top Gear, David Attenborough or the Olympics.  Because I don't want to become what modern entertainment has the ability to turn me into. 




Blue skies,


-E