Losing Grip

Have you tuned into the Olympics on channel 7?

In decreasing order of airtime you will see and hear advertisements, background stories, studio commentary, field commentary and, finally, actual Olympic events.

Which makes me wonder why Channel 7 spent so much money acquiring the rights in the first place?

They could do all of the same, sans the events, and I’m guessing no one would notice.

It’s sort of like anti-reality TV. They spend all their time analysing, discussing and backgrounding something which is real, without actually showing the real thing.

Whereas in genuine Reality TV they do the same but there’s nothing real that they don’t have to show. And, perversely, they do show a fair bit of it anyway.

It’s all quite confusing. 

Why do people tune in to view something that they hardly see and which they think they care for, when they obviously don’t?

I can only assume that their presumed interest is due to all that advertising which ironically is the very instrument that prevents them from seeing it.

Somewhere behind all this is the addictive ‘loser’ mentality that is drummed into folks by advertising.

It’s the misleading and deceptive conduct of advertising that first creates a deep feeling of unworthiness which can be temporarily relieved by one form of consumption or another.

I call this the loser mentality because: 

(1) Studies have shown that, when exposed to gambling systems with no inherent losses (no ‘house’ fees), gamblers lose interest because the regressive mean results in them having no long-term losses, and therefore,

(2) It’s the pain of losing that is so addictive to gamblers, and people in general when this hypothesis is expanded to other activities.

My view is that a sense of reality is just one of the collateral losses caused by the exploitation of the loser mentality.