Over the last few weeks I have randomly been watching Brockmire, a show I hadn't heard of before, starring Hank Azaria and Amanda Peet. It is very likely not to everyone's tastes, but I found a lot of it funny, especially some of the way he described and gave insight into situations. The humour is often crass, but is also quite an interesting commentary on the social world today, and in the last season, what might be - or is already here.
While there are many bits that stood out, I found the following quote really interesting, as it gave some insight into how content influences our behaviours and changes culture. I hadn't really thought about it in this way, but it actually makes a lot of sense and likely has many more implications than it speaks to directly.
Biggest change in this country in the 10 years that I was gone? America went from being a boob nation to being an ass nation. I mean, 30 years ago, if a company ran an ad campaign on 3 TV networks and 10 magazines, everybody saw it. And what they saw mostly was boobs -- boobs, boobs, boobs. I mean, eventually, we just forgot all about butts. We were just so relentlessly hammered with images of boobs. And by the '80s, Charles, big old fake boobs -- just these enormous sacks of viscous chemicals that were bolted onto the front of a woman's chest in defiance of all good taste and gravity. Anywhoodles, I'm at the Big Freedia bounce show last night, and I'm just -- I'm getting lost in the applause of like a hundred clapping asses. And it hits me, it dawns on me -- I am surrounded by the very people that got America back into ass. I'm talking about straight black men, the gays, of course, and thick women. God bless 'em. 'Cause, see, when the Internet expanded all media into the limitless chaos that we know it to be today, the power of the straight-white-male gaze got diluted, and all of a sudden, all these long-forgotten voices could finally be heard, man, and they were screaming, "Butts! Come on! Butts are wonderful!" And that, my friend, is how the titty wool that had been pulled over our collective eyes was finally lifted.
Brockmire
Season 2, Episode 1
! [Disclaimer] I have always been an ass man.
Which is likely why the quote resonates with me, as I was one of the underrepresented preferences when I was growing up, where everyone else seemed to be far more boob-centric in their tastes, because there was over representation in the media. At the time, only a select few were making the choices of what was seen, what kinds of bodies, what kind of colours, what kind of language, what kind of everything. All content ran through a filter based on the preferences of a small selection of people, who didn't represent all people. Through repetitive exposure however, their influence pervaded the preferences of society.
We are what we eat.
The introduction of the internet meant that we were able to feed our interests without the filters of the media, and then the algorithms came to double-down on feeding our wants. This led to a diversification of content and for many, exposure to new perspectives that influenced their tastes. It is similar to when a homogenous community is opened up to the flavours of an ethnic restaurant, and soon there are all kinds of choices that go beyond the local selection. And then, options also become available in the supermarkets so that people can cook their favourite "foreign" meals at home. And soon, flavour diversity becomes mainstream, with options the norm. Choice is expected.
But with all of that choice with much of it being undesired, the algorithms start funnelling us into content boxes, feeding our desires and pushing us further toward the fringes, the extremes. Getting what we want, when we want, twists our expectations and narrows us down again, much like the media did of old, except now it is tailored specifically for the individual. In some ways this is great, but at some point, it is going to turn obsessive. Which is likely a big part of the catalyst behind the identity politics movements that have taken individualism to the extremes to the point that no one can relate to anyone, as there is always at least a slight difference between all of us.
And I think that this is what a lot of people don't recognise when they are getting exactly the content they want. We don't realise that getting our preferences continually fulfilled means becoming increasingly exclusionary and less accepting of anything that doesn't fit our preferential mould. And because we are getting more extreme in our tastes, finding it in reality gets increasingly difficult, because no one can live up to the model we have built through all the content we have consumed.
People used to complain in the 1980s (and likely before) about "unrealistic body representations" in the media, which compared to now, was actually very realistic. They were real people, albeit a small sliver and a narrow selection of person, but they were living and breathing. Nowadays, we can pick and choose over and over to refine our "type" and that type is increasingly influenced by what is truly unrealistic, because it doesn't appear in nature at all. Faces and bodies that have been twisted and pinched by all kinds of digital filters to create something that looks like it exists, but doesn't in reality. It is just a caricature of reality, a stylised version only.
The return of the ass is not actually a return, because there have always been those like me who are Ass men" (and plenty of ass women too), but it has become more mainstream. With mainstream meaning visible in public, in media, in society in general. Go to a gym and see how women have turned away from hip-slimming aerobic exercise and taken up squats, lunges and hip-thrusts on mass to widen and strengthen their booty. And perhaps this makes sense, because unlike boobs, it is something that women can effect without cosmetic surgery. And it is also something that enhances natural feminine shape.
And I suspect that all kinds of behavioural changes we see in society now can be traced directly back to the type of content people are largely consuming. It doesn't mean that consuming fitness videos makes a person fit, but it could be that consuming them can either inspire them to try for similar, or demotivate them to go the other way. Regardless, it is still influences direction, and then it can also influence what the next content source might be, like body-positivity content that can make people feel good, about being unfit.
We shape our world through our behaviour. But our behaviour is influenced by what we consume, and how we consume it. When surrounded with content A, we will have relatively predictable responses for or against content A. Surround with content B, and the same will be true. If we are attracted to what we get out of content A, that is what we will consume more of, do more of, and look for more of. So, we really should be careful with what content we seek out, even if it feels good, even if we are interested in it, even if we like it, because it is most likely going to affect our opinions, beliefs, and behaviours.
Remove the proverbial "titty wool" covering our eyes.
There might be harmless content, and there might be harmless content. But what we should all acknowledge and take to heart, is all content influences us. Every morsel of content we eat is going to affect us in some way, even if we don't even realise we took a bite.
Taraz
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