At the gym, the stationary bikes I ride sometimes instead of swimming are mounted with little televisions. Some of the bikes are old enough that the televisions don't work; on others, the TVs get stuck on one channel and can't be changed. Today mine was stuck on Fox News.
There's a jack where you can plug headphones in if you like, but I never do, so I couldn't hear what anyone was saying, but the closed captioning was on, so I could read it if I wanted to. I did so at first, interested in what the possible attraction could be -- why did people watch this show? What did they get out of it?
I still don't know. They were on about Trump and how corrupt the FBI was, but honestly I couldn't even hate-watch. It was as dull as listening to someone explain some complicated dream they had had, except they kept explaining it over and over again. In each retelling, they didn't add any new information -- they just kept repeating the same details over and over.
I suppose part of it is their audience -- not critical thinkers, not very educated, not very smart. Hearing the same story told fifteen times in a row in pretty much the same way each time might seem fascinating to them, the way toddlers like hearing the same book read over and over?
Because I wasn't listening, just reading, I probably missed the over-the-top outrage that keeps Fox viewers interested. But even so, I don't get the attraction.
Luckily it's only one bike stuck on that channel, and after a while I could switch to one that was stuck on the channel showing endless soccer games. Also not fascinating, at least to me, but at least not actively stupid.
5 comments:
Yes-- it's very cult-like. Lots of call-and-response and repetition so it feels like people who have been taught via drill-and-kill rather than to think critically are learning something. (I blame no child left behind for some of it...) They feel smart because they can anticipate what is going to be said next because of all of the repetition.
And yes, EXTREMELY boring if you're used to thinking for yourself.
I don't even think it's that Fox News viewers are necessarily dumb, but that they haven't been taught critical thinking and they have been taught via black-and-white right/wrong repeat-back-what-the-teacher-said. You probably see a lot of this in your freshmen, because I know I certainly do. And they love call-and-response in my math classes (though mine are much less dangerous-- "If p is low..." "Reject H-Oh"... we also learn the critical thinking behind that, but people like having the rule). My students can and do learn critical thinking skills, but it's definitely a huge transformation from black and white to actually thinking for themselves. (Even though Fox News/Breitbart/etc. and their ilk give them the illusion of thinking for themselves, they're really not.)
It really did seem like that -- like a catechism, almost.
I see this a lot in my literature and grammar classes, students who are used to being told what the "right" answer is, and want me to supply it. When I tell them there *are* wrong answers, but not necessarily a single right answer, some of them get very uneasy.
Ugh, that sounds awful. I would probably have opted out of using it or put a towel over the screen because I can't see or hear that stuff without getting upset about it. I don't know how to fix people who are adults, have somehow missed learning critical thinking or even what a credible source looks like, and who are so firmly ensconced in their worldview. I wish ignorance on that scale was more harmless than it is.
I also wish their ignorance did less harm to the rest of us. :(
@delagar We specifically address that uneasiness in all our core first semester required classes. It really seems to have helped since we started doing it, especially since they hear about it from multiple professors at once.
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