Media and Mental Pleasure

<blockquote> A story about people will always be more seductive to a broader group than a story about ideas.” — Chris Williamson (<a href="https://youtu.be/LJxBnSyH0T4?si=LnR6limsYcW-b93_" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">Modern Wisdom, E676</a>) </blockquote> Who do you watch on social media? Political leaders or commentators? Famous brothers? Maybe a criminal or a well known philanthropist. How many of us follow politics because we just want to be “well informed” yet couldn’t recognize our own mayor if we saw them at the grocery store? What is that video or post that the algorithm knows to put right at the top of your feed because it knows that you’ll click it? How much of the news you consume do you consume because of who it’s about, rather than what they are about? Thoughts and questions like these have lead me to re-evaluate my motives related to my personal consuming media. I think we could all take an objective look at the media we consume and recognize that we waste a good amount of time on media that doesn’t benefit us on a deeper level than just not feeling bored. During the same discussion as the introductory quote, a term was thrown out that I had never heard before. It was: “mental masturbation.” Mental masturbation refers to the consumption of information for pleasure; The consumption of which does not result in any personal fulfillment. The difference between fulfillment and pleasure is that pleasure may leave you momentarily satisfied, but that is it. Fulfillment is the positive counterpart to pleasure, and is a long lasting sense of satisfaction. Would you say that you are satisfied with your media consuption? Let’s see. How many of the last 5 videos you watched on YouTube would you say brought you fulfillment? If you’re history is anything like mine, you probably had five completely unrelated videos spanning from some person getting roasted in public for doing something stupid, to a random lathe video (and like me, you’re probably not even a woodworker, nor do you aspire to be one). I can’t tell you how many times I’ve looked at the time after an hour into scrolling through social media and realize that you have nothing to show for it. You weren’t bored for that hour, but as soon as that phone turns off, all the excitement is gone. <a href="https://steeleman.medium.com/media-and-mental-pleasure-51eaadc4f873">Click Here</a>