h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

*BONUS RANT*

Rumors, Speculation and Media Hype

Now I am one who has been the spreader and victim of many a rumor in the toast and jam world of the interpersonal nature of rumors. The more rumors you can spread sometimes, the more power you can gain. Thus being the character I am, I quickly became more of a victim then a spreader, and therefore have made myself a rung pretty low on the social spectrum. However from this low rung I can perceive many a person who is higher than me and I can tell you right now, I really don't want to climb that much further using this age old method of obtaining social status. Some however do.

Now rumors are sometimes very speculative. However they are not speculation. There is a major difference. Its somewhat like this:

Rumor:
A: "Did you know that X is having you know what with Y?"
B: "No. But I shall certainly make a note of it"

Speculation:
A: "Do you think that X is having you know what with Y?"
B: "I dunno. Might be the case."

Now you see speculation leaves it up to person B to make there mind up about X and Y were as rumor is telling person B the "truth" from A's universe. Now these two things are COMPLETELY different in the media world of interpersonal communication [1, 39]. You see if B believes that A is better or in higher status or of better knowledge, and this is the weird one if A is perceived to have more social capital. Now social capital is a nasty and confusing part of the world of communication its hard to explain and even harder to use. But basically everyone has invisible tendrils of social capital that we can each perceive by our knowledge of each other and our interactions. The basis for this capital is very confusing and takes years to fully study or understand. However you know basically what it is from its name. Social Capital means like the name, that you have and other people have a price or a costing of the knowledge and bounds you perceive. This costing is measurable, but its hard to achieve an adequate costing for different people. This is because everyone has a different perceiving of your social capital. It depends on what they know of you, who they think you are, when and were you are, what views you have expressed to them, and what rumors you have had spread about you. Now I am saying that social capital both makes your costing and gets you your costing, and as your mind goes *BOING* in the reciprocation of social economics there is yet another problem. This great problem is that there is also nonverbal communication. In a interpersonal situation your nonverbal communication plays a big role. Who you look at, for how long, when, why, and all of these things are analyzed by your conscious and unconscious [1, 85]. And you can draw your own conclusions and they can be modified by other peoples perception. All this ends up in a massive collaboration that is then quickly thrown away when you have your next thought and only sees the light of day at some later point when your thinking of the nights events. Or possibly not. The point being is that you cant really define what a person may or may not get from a rumor using this method. The best means of achieving a result is buy watching all there interactions and then seeing the result. This will then get you 1. charged with stalking and 2. give them avid paranoia. A nice result all round.

Speculation as we pointed out before is a hazier concept. As it is a "opinionated" idea. In mass media we have this speculative thing that has been given light. Say we are asked if we think the rap star "M And M B Daddy" Is homosexual. Now there are three responses that are generally seen, yes, no, and don't know and or care. These choices are the ones that most sentient people like me will analyze and use for statistical choices or for anything else for that matter. However the opinionated in this case is that you are not told if "M And M B Daddy" is or is not homosexual or not and we enter our new medium. The reason we call it opinionated is that it "give you an option" in this case yes, no, and don't know or care. The choice is yours. Now the problem is that you will now go to our friends, other interpersonal relations and basically everyone else we can think of and talk about "M And M B Daddy" wether he (or she) likes it or not [3. 2, 41]. Now this speculation can go on for WEEKs on end, you can have every commentator and his dog give his opinion and once finally all the hype is over we are back were we were at the beginning and accusing some other poor sap of say molesting children and giving our opinions on that. And I have to say that it makes me sick to think that someone happily living there life can be speculated and used as such a product of the media. A useful tool for the money making fat cats who sit on there idiot behinds all day only caring about there next meal and giving a few thoughts to there close nit family. I have to say that the way that the media acts is not my fault, and I don't like it. However I have to live with it and we will all have a even smaller world of the internet to live with very soon. Quite a lot of people have got onto the net already and its now no longer seen as a last refuge for the strange and geeks. Think how quickly speculation a rumor will spread here? Like lightning it goes WOOSH across the digital world. Any second now there will be a "We hate darakat" site set up.

The media hype that we have come to know and hate has come to a new boundary and once again humanity is in need of a new frontier. If we are to get beyond this useless life of name calling and speculation and rumor we are then to grow beyond the thing which well makes us childlike. It would be much of a lost and much of a gain. I have to say overall I am actually happy to live in a world were anyone can ay pretty much anything about anyone else, and anyone can reply to that. Unfortunately this is not actually the case and it would be stupid of me to say it is. There is a nice quote I want to use at this point from ( http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1212-28.htm ) "in the absence of governmental checks and balances present in other areas of our national life, the only effective restraint upon executive policy and power in the areas of national defense and international affairs may lie in an enlightened citizenry - in an informed and critical public opinion which alone can here protect the values of democratic government" So really what is being said is that there is no free and fair press? Wow. Thats news to me. Note the dripping sarcasm.

Well I hope that gets you thinking. The media and the hype and the speculation. Is it worth it or not? Well who knows. I am darakat and this is my rant.

Enjoy the hype.


[1] Lewis. G., Slade. C. (2000). Critical Communication, 2nd edn, Prentice Hall, Frenchs Forrest
[2] Cunningham. S., Turner. G. (2002), The Media and Communication in Australia, Allan and Erwin, Crows Nest New South Wales
[3] O'Shuighnessy. M., Stadler. J. (2002). Media and Society, 2nd edn, Oxford University Press, New York

I love rumors. I find them endlessly entertaining. What type of jam?

Jam?

Gooseberry.

Nice.

Marmalade.

Schnozzberry

I like how there is gooseberry then there is Gooseberry

Yes. It's a moment that you go 'aaaaah' for.

So how many shelf meters of plants do you have?

8 19X27" shelves, plus my terrarium which is 10X20".

perhaps you misinterpreted, SHELF METERS, note the word meters!

*sigh* Perhaps you forget I'm American? I can convert it to cms, but that's all you're getting.

48.3X68.6 cm (8 of these. do you need that in metric, too?)

25.4X50.8 cm

Thankyou. No I just wanted to see if you would.

I did.

And I thank you, and pay you in retrospect

Thanks.

So whats the price?