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Comment by DanielBMarkham | Hacker News Reader

The product that you appear to be buying is instantaneous transmission of the news, perhaps as much as a minute or two ahead of others.

The product you are actually buying is non-existent. You are the product. People pay good money in order to manipulate your social drive to keep you as viewers.

I said this to some friends on FB yesterday, but it bears repeating. Of all the players in this terrible tragedy, the terrorists, the police, the news media, the administration, the politicians, the security-industrial complex and so forth -- it's in everybody's interest to create and sustain some huge public spectacle. That's not a good thing for a democracy or the continuation of a free society. </rant>

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I realized late last week that I wasn't following this story as a news story anymore. I literally felt like I was watching 24, with cliff-hangers and all. It had stopped being something I followed to remain a well-informed person and just devolved into popcorn-munching entertainment.

It's a clear reminder that limiting news consumption is healthy.

That's curious, my need for instantaneous news has been waning. This past few weeks events (local and international) have really been the proverbial straw.

I now wait. For news, I want truth not action.

Indeed. I can only advise you to read "The Information Diet" if you haven't yet. The state of the media influences a lot the state of politics as well - and not only that, our whole culture. 24/24 news watching is more than popcorn, rather like only eating bacon burgers.

By far THE WORST instance of ratings pandering by the "news" media were instances of breathless replaying of the dramatic footage of the "suspect" being taken into custody at gunpoint and forced to strip naked before the police would approach (due to the risk of carrying a bomb wired to a deadman's switch). Some networks reran that footage hours after it had become well-known everywhere that the person was not one of the bombing suspects and was just a bystander who was quickly released. Rerunning this footage certainly added to the drama factor but from a news perspective it actually had negative value since it led people into possibly thinking the second suspect had been apprehended and it also led people to believe that man was in some ways connected to the bombings though he was not. It was just shameful.

> it's in everybody's interest to create and sustain some huge public spectacle.

What a ridiculous and insensitive assertion. These types of arguments only serve to distract from having honest debates about political subjects.

Even if that's not true, the coverage on the events was intense.

> The product you are actually buying is non-existent. You are the product. People pay good money in order to manipulate your social drive to keep you as viewers.

It ought to be much harder to manipulate people this way. I think a major missing part of general education is decision theory: how do people make bad decisions? Rephrased, how do I make bad decisions every day, and how can I avoid them?

News consumption is just one example from a huge class of transactions that are suspect because of manipulation. Our entire economic model is premised on the idea that parties to transactions are rational and self-interested. If there are ways in which people are irrational and manipulable, then 'voluntary' transactions are a fiction (which is clearly the case).

Why do the police--the people getting shot at, want a spectacle?

They get more funding in the end, because somehow people see them as the good guys again.

Somehow?

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