Wednesday, April 27, 2011

The ‘Meh’ Factor

The media is to blame! Every news story they take, they turn into a sensation. They build our expectations to such a level, that no one can live up to it.

Take the Royal Wedding, for example. Here in Canada, we’ve been hearing, watching and reading about it for months. It seems as if it was in the news even before Will proposed to Kate. It’s taken the dimension of the Christmas advertising: too much, too long and too kitschy!

Of course, come Friday, it will be a nice spectacle, but when all the I-dos are said and done, it will most certainly leave us with the “meh” feeling. Because, for a buildup to last this long, the event itself would need to last long, and to keep the general public’s infantile attention-span engaged throughout. Not going to happen!

Need more examples? Sure - take Oscars. Or, even better, take Obama. He was all the hype for over a year. He became the president. Then, he quickly became ‘meh’.

We are in the 140-characters news cycle, and our excitement lasts just about that long too. Times they are a-changing. We can’t constantly be tickled and expected to laugh all along. The sooner the big brains in the media business realize this, the less the public will despise them.

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