So much for the Boomer bashing

[moniss]

13. Excellent analysis and yes it is noticeable

the incredibly shortened attention spans. It's most notable to me as I interact with younger people in business situations. If I speak on something for longer than a sentence or two I can sense them zoning out and I, in a kidding way, say "I can see your thumbs starting to twitch". But sometimes if they just stare at me I might hit 3 items of information in a paragraph length statement but after I have finished they can't repeat back to me most of what I said. Just the other day I was on a phone call with a person who was looking at a computer screen list of companies. I asked her to read me the list but I gave her the names of 3 companies to not bother with. Not long difficult names either. Just one word for two of the companies and three simple single syllable words for the 3rd one. By the time she read me 4 names she had forgotten what I had told her and she began reading me the companies I had excluded.

At the end of a day I have never seen people who spend so much time taking in "information" all day long and yet at the end of the day they remember little of it or, as you pointed out, the context of anything or how it might relate to something else. It's like mindlessly being a part of some "gerbil running in the wheel" sort of scenario and just responding to stimuli.

You are so very correct in your take on WW1 and yes the problems created are still with us today. Our media and Western governments put out this very simplistic picture of things and then hammer that incessantly as the propaganda. When you mentioned the history section at the book store it reminded me of a time a few years ago when I was watching the History Channel and they were doing their typical WW2 all day and night programming. After awhile I noticed that I was listening to narration about a battle but they were running the same stock footage as they had just done a half hour before for a completely battle. As though they had hundreds of stories to tell but only 10 minutes worth of film so they just kept using it again. Same airplane scenes dropping bombs no matter if the the action was for Germany or Italy. Same artillery going off. The same groups of battleships and carriers in every battle in the Pacific sustaining the same damage in the same way with the same sailors. So it became just like some droning on and I thought to myself "For what purpose is this being shown in this way because beyond some of the narration the visuals aren't even real to the events?" That's when I reminded myself that "programming" is exactly the right word for what it is. Just a simple tale hammered over and over for the purpose of the viewer "getting the desired message".