Mediacology

“We don’t need no ed-u-cation…” (disco guitar);
“We don’t need no thought control…” (disco guitar);
“No dark sarcasm in the classroom” (you get the idea);
“Teachers leave them kids alone” (yeah, you);
“Hey! Teachers! Leave them kids alone!” (chorus of cool kids);
“All in all it’s just another brick in the… toilet.”
“All in all you’re just another brick in the toilet.”

OK, so Roger Waters is a bit of a cynic. But you don’t have to be. The folks at MySpace have a really cool feature, A Brick in the Toilet. There’s lots of little, practical features to get your ecology on. Plus you can see a preview of El Presidente Gore’s new missive: An Inconvenient Truth. Speaking of which, I haven’t seen the film, but I wonder about the disaster film aesthetic. Can anyone tell the difference between The Day After Tomorrow and an infomercial on global warming?

I suppose many people are only motivated by fear, so the dramatic strings and timphony drums will certainly get a rise out of some folks. But I’m still searching for a way to focus on the positive efforts of people (hopefully the movie will propose solutions, as I suspect it will). There is a tendency among media activists to believe that just by opposing something, by default it makes society more democratic. What gets me are the fear tactics of media like Democracy Now! The example of MySpace’s Brick in a Toilet is a good way to feel like you can actually do something today to alleviate climate change. I hope my little critique is not self-contradictory, but I’m really hungry for solutions, not fear. I believe most would agree.