It’s all the fault of the pop video

Yes it is, the pop video has melted the brains of a generation, addled them and turned them to mush.  Our youth has been lost to the high octane visual staccato of the video medium of the last twenty years.  They have sat in front of the goggle box (should that be Google box?) absorbing a diet of music television.  It started with one channel (was it MTV?) but now there are hundreds.  Each is dedicated to its own genre, rock, dance, indie, pop etc. but they all pedal the same loop of sex, power, cars and money, sex, power, cars and money over and over again like a stuck record (can you still get them?).

Flick onto anyone of the channels and you will see some scantily clad bootylicious nymphet shaking her tush at you, or some gangster rapper overfilled with his own importance behind the wheel of his black Mercedes or some ageing rocker clad in leather and spandex leggings,  flinging his phallic axe about.  So what you say?  Sex, power, cars and money are what life is about.  Well at least sex and power, they have been behind much of human endeavour since the dawn of time, certainly before money was first invented and definitely long before the car arrived.

But that is not the cause for concern.  It is rather the way on which the videos are developed and produced.  Each image is held on screen for a very small amount of time, less than a few seconds only (I am reliably informed that 4 seconds is the maximum).  Each image is held long enough to stimulate your mind, to register on your cortex, to excite you or even to titillate you but no longer.  Just before you recognise what is going on, just before it becomes something meaningful it has changed, it has flashed like a stroboscope and it has filled your mind with subliminal images. 

It is this that has rotted the brains of a generation, the ability to concentrate for no longer than a few seconds and the requirement for instant gratification.  It is this that has created a populace of the disinterested and disengaged.  This is why the TV is permanently on, this is why everyone is glued to their smart phones when they have a spare second and this is why train passengers watch DVDs on their laptops instead of looking out of the window or having a conversation.  Don’t worry if you are bored as you will only have to put up with your ennui for the wink of an eye.  The pop video and its trickery has done all this!