Pay attention to the advertising you end up seeing regularly. Notice what it says about who you are - what parts of your life it appeals to.
Advertisers prey on our fears. Ads targeted at the teen / young adult market are about trend setting and fitting in, being pretty enough and cool enough. Those aimed at parents are about child safety and long-term planning. Ads aimed at the elderly are about health, personal safety and life insurance!
Do you fit in with your "target audience group"? Are you properly pigeonholed?
McNews
Are you ready to try a media-free attention diet?
Believe it or not, there are enough information sources surrounding you in daily life that even if you never watch the news or read a single newspaper article, you will still know the gist of what's going on. What will amaze you is how little the headlines change over time, and what passes for "news" on a daily basis.
Like most diets, the long term benefits will be more effective as a lifestyle change, rather than a temporary purge.
Also similar to nutritional dieting, the first step is awareness. Like the Food Log that a dieter is asked to keep and simply watch mindfully what they are eating every moment of the day for a week, you will need to know where and how you take in your mass media information.
Where do you get your news? Where do you seek entertainment? Do you read the newspaper every morning? What about television? Films? What sites do you read online? Who emails you the latest juicy tidbits of gossip?
Like the omnipresence of McDonald's restaurants - Big Macs that splatter all over the world - notice the inundation.
Notice how much the world clambers for your attention.
When I get up and get ready to go to work in the morning, I choose not to turn on the television.
The first news I read is the headline on the local paper in the newsstand at the commuter train station. The Watchtower I politely decline each morning. Animated digital news & advertisement tickers on the train platform. On the train itself, there are closed-captioned television screens with taped local news and commercials. Billboards out the windows, on-train advertisement placards for fast-food and cars for sale: "Low-credit, No-Credit, OK!"
There is the music blaring from headsets of other commuters. Not to mention the various covers of books, magazines, and newspaper headlines in the hands of everyone around me. There, are of course, more news tickers, newspapers and ads at the station near my office. Branding on buildings, banners, and the sides of trucks on my short walk. News, trivia and advertisements scroll on a Captivate Network LCD screen in the elevator of the office building.
I unwillingly receive this in one hour, even before I've turned on my PC, checked my email, or gone online.
Life outside the box
You will notice a resistance to your media diet from friends and loved ones. Like an alcoholic sometimes has to make new friends to stay on the wagon, you might have to talk to different individuals.
Some people feel very insecure about the idea that you aren't watching television. I find that my media diet triggered a defensive response in many people. At first, they were confused asking me questions like "What do you do?!" or "Where do you point your furniture?"
When I respond that I write, read, listen to music, practice yoga, surf the net, garden, walk my dog, experiment in the kitchen, clean the house, paint, sew, or get a little extra sleep... They wonder if perhaps they should be joining me on this unconventional quest for peace and quiet. When they decide that they cannot possibly give up their time with the mass-media, my friends started trying to give me television sets. Literally. It became a point to make all of them feel better to know when I finally accepted one.
It is commonly accepted social etiquette to have something interesting to talk about in casual conversation. If you're reading great books, then you don't need this. If you're renting quality films that you really want to see (or borrowing them from the library?) again, you've got plenty there. But if you really need current events to be able to chat about, I highly recommend a fun site called Happy News.
The media-free diet
One of the more insidious sources of "information" I've encountered has been the informal kind.
The news at the water-cooler is actually the most helpful. I tend to hear most of my breaking news from concerned coworkers who know I don't watch the news. In fact, we always benefit from our friends giving us their attention.
