While in the past the job of passing on necessary life skills, history and information was a collective effort, today, all of that power has been given to commercial media.
In the words of George Gerbner, “Commercial media has eclipsed religion, art, oral traditions and the family as the great storytelling engine of our time. And whoever tells the stories of culture gets to govern human behavior.”
And therein lies the biggest problem with commercial storytelling. Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, Facebook, all the different news apps and websites, how many times do we check the news on our phones every day? In the past, it took weeks, months or even years to hear bad news from the other side of the world.
But today, we have everything at our fingertips.
Wars, riots, chaos, scandals, the news feels inescapable.