Still Bloody Brainstorming...

So I'm still spewing out half-developed possibilities without any sign of committing to one of them... I think it's time to stop thinking and talk some of these things out with a variety of people...

However, the idea for today is as follows... I've always been really impressed and interested by Orsen Welles' radio adaptation of "The War Of The Worlds" in 1938. For any of you who don't know the story, here is a brief explanation http://www.transparencynow.com/welles.htm. I understand the trouble that causing the public to believe they are being invaded by space aliens creates; however the fact that a large number of people actually fell for a radioplay that wasn't even intentionally out to fool them is incredible. I always read about the angry backlash that Welles' radioplay created at the time, with people trying to implement legislature to prevent things like it from ever happening again...

But then you think about mass media today, and every pop singer lipsyncs, we watch terribly obvious staged reality TV; and essentially my first instinct is that anything the mass media says to me HAS GOT to be some sort of fabrication... So, 70 years after Orsen Welles, it seems like everyone wants to try and recreate the stir he caused but we're all so bloody jaded because of the constant bombardment of 'instigated panic' that it doesn't even have an effect... It's like in shopping malls when the fire alarms go off, nobody even flinches, they plug their ears, keep buying their groceries and give the ceiling dirty looks as if they are pissed off that someone is disturbing their shopping spree in order to save them from being burned alive.

So I guess the idea that comes from that, is, with the so-called 'democratization' of mass media through blogs, youtube, myspace, etc. is it possible to subvert our jadedness from years of not wanting to believe anything? Are people beginning to trust my blog or my youtube video moreso than CNN? That may be a little much, but I think it would be very interesting to cause some kind of stir by getting a whole web of seemingly unconnected people to post videos/blog entries/etc. about something that is between ridiculous and believable... Maybe not an alien invasion, but something of the sort... The only problem is doing it in a way that (a) doesn't get me arrested (b) doesn't actually cause any real harm to anyone (c) once explained, will actually leave an impact on people and inspire some questions in them as to how truth sustains itself through a mass media that is authored by anyone and everyone. It'd be really fun to author a series of interconnected postings and release them slowly and sporatically enough to be believable.