f13.net

I've never come so close to putting my hand through a TV screen, or wanting angry.bob's shooting-sodomy-through-the-internet gun so much.  Whoever decided that should get so much coverage shouldn't cover any news bigger than elementary school lunch lists.  

And I'm providing no link, for the children.  

/agree.

Sensationalists. Then when their star fades, they'll get divorced and spend the next seasons divvying up the stuff until the husband realizes his breadbasket has all of it.

Oh, wait, wrong sensationalists.

Hate this crap anyway. I understand the appeal (hey, my life at least doesn't suck THAT much/I wish my life was like that/sure is cheaper than scripted dramedies), but everything about this stuff annoys me.

Having said that, if I hadn't know about their Wife Swap stint and the YouTube videos, I'd probably have been holding my breathe with some of the rest of the country. Thought I would have wondered how something so light could life a 40-60(?) pound kid without showing him as a tumor on the bottom.

I dunno, this is a perfectly acceptable story to me. Nothing more interesting than watching media whores get what's coming to them.

I felt the same way.  There was nothing newsworthy about the event per se.  You only had to look at the headlines the news to get perspective on that.  Hoax balloon escapade should rank well below bombings in Iraq, earthquakes in Indonesia, Health reform in the US, or any number of truly global news stories.  It was the drama of the events ocurring as they unfolded that led to retarded "me-too" news coverage.  Live camera coverage - check.  Inane filler coverage with no new information - check.  Coverage on all TV channels - check.  TV off till it all blows over - check.

The Balloon Boy story is kind of a tipping-point example of newsmedia priority. The story continues to be watched because it was a story that prompted watching in the first place, when there was a wide lens on a balloon floating in midair with no scale context to give anyone a real sense of how tiny it actually was. Since so many people followed the news watching a balloon which was believed at the time to have a boy in it — and if you've got live coverage of that, you have a story people will watch — so many people were receptive to gabbing about the fallout and the circus that follows. Once you're over the edge, the interest does not go away.

some more meta-analysis

My Kid, the Ratings Bonanza[/quote]

 (http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-et-media-balloon-boy19-2009oct19,0,5213142.story?page=1)
In discussing the subject, they correctly point to two other current-day examples of more successful kiddo exploitation: the Jon & Kate saga with its tabloid-friendly disintegrating abusive marriage, and 18 Kids and Counting, a look into the ugly guts of a heavily religious family of more than 20 people, where the children are homeschooled and raised by their sisters and the parents have an intense case of fundamentalist procreational monomania.

It's not like we're reforming health care, in two wars, with an economy in the shitter.

Well, the good news is the Dow bumped up something like 3000 points in a year, WHAT COULD GO WRONG.

We've all been watching too many cartoons when we automatically believe that a balloon that size could even come close to carrying a 50-60 pound child.  I suspect it would seriously struggle with a bowling ball.  Any media outlet that gave this serious attention should be embarassed.  The guy should ultimately be prosecuted for yanking real emergency services around by the chain, but how fucking stupid are we for believing it?

They (the family involved) weren't even good actors.

I am feeling quite happy about this story. Why? Because I completely missed it until it was not-the-only-thing-on. I was busy doing other shit. It makes me feel like I've achieved some kind of good mental health when I manage to be alive, consuming popular culture much as I always do, and yet somehow completely avoid a bullshit media event like this.

This is the new style reality tv. I can see more of these in the future - some tv exec is sitting there looking at the ratings and will make the connection. You'd be hard pressed to find any reliable news outlet these days.

I just got spam in my inbox about the true story of balloon boy. SHOCKINGLY, it was about Cialis.

This kind of story makes you much less angry when you accept what the media is really for.

It's not for telling the truth, informing the public or disseminating news. It's just there to make money. Which is why the entire media focuses on a tiny selection of stories every day and all the same ones.

There's far too much going on in the world to tell everyone everything every day - there has to be some selectivity, it's just that all the 100s of competing media companies all tell the same stupid stories every day rather than presenting any kind of diversity, because they're all just chasing ratings. If you want a proper media, a useful media, then you'd have to get rid of the profit motive.

I'm with you 100% on this.

This is what happens when you need 24 hour news and all your anchors act like EVERYTHING is OF DIRE CONSEQUENCES TO THE WORLD! and shit.

I still like the story when the bridges fell down, the one with the bus. You know, the bus that did not fall full of children. The part I like, is that apparently that's not news worthy (everyone was safe), what is news worthy, is this CG animation we made of WHAT COULD HAVE HAPPENED to the bus, complete with children flying through the air... now isn't that just terrible, horrific, and ratings worthy,............................. if it had happened.

I'll admit I was totally going along with the story when I was watching the event on the news, with the balloon followed by heavily zoomed-in helicopter lenses. Without perceptual context I thought it was a huge balloon. There was nothing in range to gauge its size by until it started to land. When the guy ran up to it on the ground I realized it was way way way smaller than I thought it was.

My ire and ridicule was mostly directed at the media...because surely they could've found an "expert" to find out, you know, how big the thing was (I would bet money they already had information on it's size) and if it was even remotely possible that it could lift a child off the ground.  Fuck, they could have just called the fucking Mythbusters. 

It's not just news, it's nature and science, too. Sharks aren't cool enough on their own, but THEY COULD ATTACK with tons of looped footage of some dipshit who stuck his foot in a shark mouth spliced in with stock footage of sharks feeding. No mention of how many millions of sharks are killed for every human killed by a shark.

Meteors aren't cool enough, but THEY COULD END EXISTENCE ON OUR PLANET. That at least I could see a defense for, since dipshits won't fund science unless it's saving their ass or making their dick hard.

But maybe death by nature beats the fucking hippy agenda inserted into nature shows. Tough call.

Oh, in that sense, what happened was totally understandable — the only scale information anyone had on the balloon when they sent helicopters out to follow it was provided by falcon's dad, and he'd lied about the size. The helicopter crews had already started to openly speculate about the size and weight capacity of the balloon while the 'chase' was still in progress but information from the mythbusters (which the news networks had actually called) hadn't had time to filter in.

People's bullshit-dars started going off en masse the second the balloon got in range of the ground too. Thankfully.

As long as news is treated as a for-profit business rather than a public service, we'll have sensationalist crap like this.  Same reason they always trot out all the irrelevant sex stories during the sweeps weeks.

I can prove this wrong by referencing the sales of any of the shitty chat magazines that you find at the supermarket checkout vs the sales of say The Economist. Given a choice between actual news and populist non-news, people unerringly go for the wrong option. Some people are genuinely interested in news, they don't watch the news channels but get their information from a synthesis of other sources. News channels are there for everyone else because even not-for-profit broadcasters still have to worry about audience share.

I'm quite unfortunately the exact sort of hussy they peddle this shit out to, since I track stories of exploitative parental dysfunction. Munchausen's by Proxy, reproductive monomania (see: Duggars, Octomom) have both been combed over from me so the Heene story makes a good central case for parents who want to whore their family out for media attention.


This is actually pretty much why Fox News has the dominant share of cable news networks. The demographics that the other news networks would be keeping as an audience have moved onto that (largely internet based) synthesis and dislike the talking-heads format. Fox news keeps an older, more recalcitrant, less tech-savvy demo that actively seeks 'ideologically sympathetic input' — i.e., the news they want to hear, from only angles they are comfortable with over regard to angles which are more objectively factual or impartial.

Nothing you said here really contradicts what I posted except for implying that The Economist has better circulation than gossip mags.  To this, I will say:

The Economist: Circulation 1.4 million per week
People: Circulation 3.75 million per week

Source: Wikipedia, because I wasn't willing to spend an hour fact checking.  You know, just like cable news. ;)

Of course there are people who only want the news without the crap.  I for one have never turned on a cable news station and never will.  That doesn't change the fact that news stations, especially the 24 hour cable networks, basically just attention whore with this sensationalist crap for ratings.

Erm, I was implying the exact opposite.

ETA: taking the profit motive away from news won't magically fix the problem because more people are interested in shitty non-news and 'human stories' than they are in actual journalism. 'Real news' would cater to the tiny fraction of the population who are already getting 'real news' and the rest would keep on consuming the same stuff that's pouring out of 'news channels' now.

Then I suppose I'm just not understanding how you were proving the statement you quoted wrong.  Of course, it's been a long day and my brain currently has the consistency of tapioca so it's hardly surprising.

Suns?

Hey look, Gay bashing, too! (http://gayrights.change.org/blog/view/the_anti-gay_twist_of_the_balloon_boy_saga)  Surely a more quality pair of specimens of Homo Rubor will never be found.

 :facepalm:

Yeah and I just finished the complete wife swap footage.

Hahahahahahahaha oh god the parents are a tragedy of the human condition.

Nobody can beat the family who brushed their teeth with butter and ate rotten meat.

What ?  :ye_gods:

Is it so bad over there that you can't just... not watch shitty news stations and not read shitty papers? Are they knocking on your door and making you give a shit?

Yes. 

I wasn't even aware of this until this thread appeared. I haven't watched anything except PBS in months.

And really, who is surprised that the fucking parents are retarded? They named their kids Falcon, Ogre, and Dipshit (no I'm not going to go look up their actual retarded names, the 30 seconds it took me to post this and skim a news article has already wasted too much of my time).

You can check out Richard Henne's themesongs he made up for the tv show this balloon stunt was done for here:


http://www.aolcdn.com/tmz_audio/1019_science_detective.mp3

http://www.aolcdn.com/tmz_audio/1019_the_contactor.mp3

That was one of the all time classic Wife Swaps. Survivalist family in Iowa swaps moms with image consultant black mom. Survivalist parents are batfuck crazy. They are 100% self sufficient on their farm for when the apocalypse comes. They homeschool their teenage kids (consists of counting eggs their chickens lay), eat uncooked food (including meat and eggs), do not bath with running water (use the tub for storage), do not clean anything, at all, and believe that what they call "high meat" (meat kept in a jar for a month) is a cure for what ails you. The idea is to not kill any microbes because we have microbes on us all the time. And for toothpaste they use a mix of butter and baking soda. It also seemed like the son and daughter were fucking each other. It's been a while since I saw it, so I might be a little off on some of the details - but that was what was going on.

I kinda want to see that.

I need to find that, because I need to show that to my girlfriend, she loves wife swap, because she hates people. :awesome_for_real:

The trailer (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3P4VFjA1WYc&hl=nl) or whatever it is, is pretty horrifying.

Wow...you almost started feeling sorry for the guy, right up until you could see the black stuff in the toilet.  Gives a new perspective on the horrors of "splashback".

Someone find a torrent for that please, I need to watch that shit.

I don't do torrents, but here's some sort of link (http://www.torrentreactor.to/search/wife+swap+season+3+episode+16). If none of these work it's US Season 3, episode 16 with the Haigewood/Hess-Webb families.

And seriously, don't feel bad for the survivalist parents. They're keeping their kids in that fucking 25' x 25 foot house with no education or contact with the outside world. And the mom is a totally smug cunt. At one point she licks the black family's kitchen floor to prove her point that it was too clean and needed to be dirtied up a bit.

Oh god. Wife Swap might rank as high on the "I hate humanity" meter as "Bridezilla"

Bridezilla does for me what Jerry Springer used to for a lot of people -- throw up in your mouth a little while feeling smug and relieved you are in no way at all involved with those people in front of you

there are some truly broken people in the world from the 2-3 parts of shows I watched

I saw a trailer for some bizarre show the other day.  It was about some little girl whose legs were fused together.  At least that's the way it looked.  The show was called "Mermaid Girl".  The woman was saying how she does all she can to make her child feel normal by taking her places where she can interact with other kids.   She said something like, "I don't know what else to do".  I thought maybe she could start by not letting a bunch of dodgy TV producers call her kid "Mermaid Girl" on National TV.  She'll always be Mermaid Girl now.  I guess Balloon Boy will always be Balloon Boy, too.  Even when he's 40.  If he becomes a brain surgeon or a rocket scientist, I bet he'll be called Doctor Balloon Boy.

That's a sure way to grow a supervillain, some crazy man who kidnaps the president and puts him in a balloon. Fortunately this little guy was honest enough to come clean on TV. I'm sure his parents had words afterwards though.

I've heard people with fused legs called "mermaids" before, so I think it is something they use frequently in this context.  In other words, I bet the little girl has heard it thousands of times already.

And when your real name is "Falcon", I'm not sure Balloon Boy is much worse.  On second thought, Dr. Falcon would be an amazing superhero name.  Dr. Falcon and his young charge, Balloon Boy!

Sadly, she'll never have a chance to outlive that name:

http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2009/10/26/mermaid-girl.html

Man, I'm the FALCON!They thought they was getting Tim Meadows but they got the FALCON! Though, I don't really have any superpowers. Man, my costume sucks!

Its pretty cool actually

(http://marvel.com/universe3zx/images/5/56/Falcon_.jpg)

Arrgh you're black tanned! Never mind!   :why_so_serious:

I remember a story about a mermaid girl who had a monoflipper made for her by... WETA I think, and she actually used it like a mermaid. Was pretty cool.

*edit*

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDajDkWGW4c

Here we go. She was an amputee, not born with the condition. Anywho...

One of their other kids is called Ryo.

(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/1/1a/RyoSakazaki.jpg/225px-RyoSakazaki.jpg)

Falcon and Ryo should team up to fight crime.

Psst. That's Ken.  :lol:

No, it isn't.

 :facepalm:

SOMEONE's not a king of fighters fan.

That's that shitty SF2 clone on that dead console, right?  :oh_i_see:

Ok, it is driving me crazy, I have to ask.

What is a war-dead sun? And why is it angry ?

You would be pretty angry too, if you were war-dead.

Would I ?

Uh, yes.  It is pretty descriptive.  Here is a random wiki search that should engage you. (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ASearch&search=war-dead)

Now imagine a sun destroyed by war.  Assuming living planets were nearby.

What?

Assume they were killed at close range by a foreign military that talked about how being that close to the sun disrupted their targeting software and the unpalatiblity of using WMDs. That kind of angry.

Mr. Sun is a giant inferno death machine.  Whether or not it is angry is of no significance.  The UN should sanction it.

You joke now, but one of these days someone is going to bring up the battle from the end of Matrix Revolutions and there is going to be BLOOD ON THESE FORUMS. Fucking mechs with open cockpits. You could fucking take one out by beaning the pilot with a rock.

Enclosing the cockpit of your mech isn't really going to help that much anyway.  Look at what the Ewoks did with sticks and stones.

Sometimes, I wish I was a dwarf just so I could wear an Ewok costume (of appropriate size) for Halloween. And for all other days of the year.

You could have your shins removed and your feet sew back on.  It'll make you look barrel chested, too, like a dwarf.  I'm pretty sure people do that sort of thing.

I could do that. But then I'd be a freak dwarf with no knees. :/

Do Ewoks have knees?  I'm not entirely sure that they do.

I think they just waddle from side to side.

You could grow a beard down to your knees and walk around the renaissance festival wearing a helmet with horns on it. Hopefully you'll overhear someone muttering "Dammit this isn't a Tolkien convention, there aren't supposed to be elves and dwarves!" at which point you can scream "I'M A VIKING MIDGET YOU BIGOTED BASTARD!" and punch them in the sack.

Viking helmets did not have horns.

Thor Odin the Viking God of Thunder would like a word with you.....



Edit- Saved!  :grin:

(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/4c/Thor-01.jpg)

Wings

Fuck, I just got owned.

(http://www.nationalsportsbeat.com/images/logos/nfl/Minnesota_Vikings_Helmet.jpg)