Suggested Media Diet

That’s 6.5 hours of non-work screen time. That seems like a lot? Assuming work takes up only 9 hours of your day, after your 6.5 hours of healthy screen time, that leaves 8.5 hours of a 24 hour day for “actualization.” If you’re like me, you will try for between 6 and 8 hours of sleep. Not a ton of “actual” time left, eh?

It depends if you read the comments.

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Personal taste is a huge factor here, as is location.

If you live in a city where you can see an amateur produced show on a Thursday night for 15 bucks, that’s a lot of bang for your buck. And if the show didn’t do much for you, you’re not out that much money. On the other hand, a $50 ticket buys you a much less personal experience in a far larger venue, with high production values and a certain “high art” snobbery that’s hard to penetrate… Film is much less risky, and more apt to connect.

I really miss the fringe theater days when I could afford to go to two shows in a weekend. Those were good times!

Somewhere between Discovery Channel and green leafy bits?

Anyone else think that calling conversation a form of media is a little dehumanizing?

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That’s literally true but, well, a pointless comparison (sorry).
Is it realistic to think that someone with a taste for ‘Citizen Kane’ in film will have a taste for ‘Twilight’ in books? Though the chart allows it, It doesn’t really make sense to compare the best of one medium to the worst of another.

Personally, I’m unconvinced it’s the medium that matters as much as the content; exactly as you say, excellent film content trumps crappy writing, and excellent writing beats crappy film.

I’m not entirely comfortable with the chart’s implication that ‘popular’ is bad and ‘exclusive’ is good, either.

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I’m afraid that sounds as if you haven’t visited a decent theatre for a while! I regularly see West End (London) productions and the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford is the theatre I visit most often. I don’t say this as a boast but to emphasise that there’s nothing unusual or ‘other’ about visiting top theatres - it’s just inclination. I wouldn’t expect to pay more than £25 (Google says $34) or encounter snobbery.

I’ll be at Saturday’s performance of ‘Julius Caesar’ (David Calder/Michelle Fairley/David Morrissey/Ben Whishaw) at the Bridge Theatre. I do this stuff routinely, and I’m neither rich nor ‘theatrical’!

ETA: I live hours from Stratford and London.

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Breaking this down who has time to eat or sleep.

Why is the 2nd category, ‘education, hobbies, non fiction, journalism’ recommended less than books, chats, arts, theatre. Chats? Really? I think the FDA needs to come in and topple this media pyramid. God knows we can no longer rely on the FCC.

Sure, there are different types of books, some better than others. But books as a class are way more important than film or TV. Even the best TV show (The Prisoner) comes nowhere close to the depth of a good book, or its immortality. Thousands of years later, we are still reading, teaching, suffering due to the influence of The Republic. Books have power that film does not - they are distilled thoughts in their most accessible form, the best way to fall inside the mind of another.

Books take more work, and we are a lazy race, but it’s indisputable that they are better for us - better teachers that show us more things. Encouraging more reading - yea, even beginning with Dan Brown - is always the correct action.

Unfortunately this pyramid won’t have any effect on the people who need it most. If you watch Fox News all day, or follow Infowars religiously, then seeing NPR even mentioned as part of a “healthy media diet” will make you red with rage.

I multi-task all of the things at once.
Is that a good diet?

NPR has become pro-trump propaganda. Other than that …

A ridiculous list. NY Times, Amazon Post, WSJ, MSNBC, Fox News & CNN are all corporate enterprises that sell eyeballs to advertisers. The notion that any of them will educate you about the real news in the context of the structural issues that prevent human freedom and human progress is ludicrous. NPR is CNN with a hipster aesthetic and is supported by government and global corporations (Archer Daniel’s Midland, Lockheed Martin, etc.). NPR-consuming liberals are some of the most misinformed and brainwashed people I know (I’m from that world), comparable on the Left to Fox News watchers on the right.

No one should consume any legacy-news with a one-to-many broadcast philosophy. Their days are numbers, their audience aging and dwindling. Good riddance.

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Oh man, that interview with the WV Teachers Union president a couple of days ago was horrible.

“Just how much are you going to kill Medicaid for the state with this?” “Aren’t the other social programs going to suffer?” “Wasn’t this strike illegal? Why aren’t you in jail?”

You would think NPR of all institutions would be pro-union, but they were grinding the ax like a Fox News reporter. I will give props to the union rep for holding his own and pointing out that the teachers and public sector employees have effectively had pay cuts for over a decade thanks to healthcare cost increases and even a relatively massive 5% raise really only brings them back to where they started.

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See my caveat about location. London has nearly 9 million people in the larger metro area, that makes for a complex theater ecology. There’s no comparing that to a city with half that, which was the “good old days”, or where I live now, at a quarter that size.

There is something missing from that pyramid: advertisement/marketing.

Advertisement and marketing is what makes the whole show run. The time it takes from the end users should be accounted as well, especially because it is usually designed to be disruptive.

On TV and radio, especially in the USA, you have advertisements giving out a number or website to check now. Presumably, some people do that. On cell phones and tablets, people install apps with priviledges to send them notifications. I know they can be mitigated, but I would be ready to bet that the majority of people don’t. Presumably, there are people who spend an inordinate amount of time reading about the next discount or the availability of a special on a loot box and then spend another hour checking the web site for other stuff they can put into their basket.

When I got a new cell phone last year, I let the notification system on for half a day. The thing would beep about 10 times an hour on average and I had not installed merchant apps.

What are the 39 steps?

See mine too :wink:
As I mentioned, I live hours away from Stratford (166 mi) and London (245 mi).

While I think the joke is unfair, their desperate straining for balance does make them often come off as “Nice Polite Republicans.”