It was a dream come true to be hired right out of school as a sportswriter for an afternoon newspaper, but the hours weren’t exactly dreamy.
With a small staff, we all shared reporting and editing duties, meaning there were many days of both early mornings, putting the paper together for afternoon delivery, and late nights actually covering games.
Made for some really long days.
Even though age was on my side at the time, I couldn’t run 24/7, so some days I’d return home in the afternoon for a nap or to practice being a slug on the couch in front of the TV. (I was good at it.) In the days before we could cut the cable because we didn’t have cable (as we know it now), we had a handful of channels to choose from. Weekday afternoons? Soap operas.
I’d watched the soaps a little during college — college students had eclectic viewing tastes — so I started watching them again in the late ’70s as what seemed like a harmless way to kill a little time while I rested. One show after another. Got into the story lines and the characters. So much angst and heartache and drama.
After a while, I noticed I was feeling a little down, and it wasn’t because I had to cover high school basketball games on cold January nights (which I actually liked) or even wake up at 5 a.m.to work the desk (which I actually didn’t much like, though the task was interesting). I hadn’t descended into some deep, dark hole. Nothing that serious. I was just, inexplicably, feeling kind of blah about life.
Then, it dawned on me.
It was the soaps! Maybe I got a little too deep into the “lives” of the characters — comedian George Carlin used to joke that to dedicated soap viewers they were “my stories” — and I was left mildly dejected. (It was the same sort of moment of epiphany — at about the same time, in fact — when I figured out a certain fabric softener was seriously irritating my skin. The realizations were life-changing. Also cleansing, as I’ve never washed so many loads of clothes at once.)
Anyway, I shut off the soaps, and life seemed to brighten. Now, this is not intended to cast aspersions on devoted fans of soap operas. I’m sure they don’t affect everyone as they did me, and, if you derive enjoyment from them, well, good on you. I don’t think anyone, even their staunchest fans, believe soaps are the health food of television viewing. I like cookies, too, but I’d apparently reached my limit. All of the anguish-sorrow-conniving-torment proved too much for me.
I thought about those days when I recently read a story about a woman who said she had escaped the clutches of “QAnon,” a cult-like confederacy of conspiracy theorists that at its core made the guy who used to live in the White House a messianic figure.
This woman said she had never been particularly political, but with TIME ON HER HANDS she had been sucked into the social media vortex of foolishness, losing touch with reality. She got caught up in the stories — outlandish and preposterous as they were — and ignored the truth because that was part of the scam. “Fake news,” remember?
I remember comedians long ago making fun of people who didn’t believe astronauts had walked on the moon and clung to the notion that it had all been shot on a Hollywood back lot. Funny stuff, but I had a difficult time believing anyone actually subscribed to that theory — or thought the Earth is flat — but it turns out people do believe that mess, in scarier numbers than I could even imagine.
It’s OK, even advisable, to be skeptical. I mean, journalists make a career of it. But to fervently believe astronauts didn’t walk on the moon or that the Earth isn’t round — or that no plane crashed into the Pentagon on 9/11, mass shootings at schools were staged and lasers from space started California wildfires — is just kind of … weird?
One of my favorite lines from the old “Cheers” television show came in the episode when Frasier Crane responded to (yet another) remarkably inane comment by Cliff Clavin by asking, “Tell me, what color is the sky in your world?”
Soap operas, of course, are not QAnon conspiracy theories (they do not pretend to be reality, for one, and also do not attempt to undermine democracy). However, both can lure you into a kind of fantasy world. One is fun (for most people) and one is …I don’t know exactly the entertainment value of conspiracy theories. In any case, the trick is recognizing when to exit the ride, when enough’s enough.
So, come on, people: Stop spreading disinformation. Stop believing disinformation. Step away from the TV or social media and tune back into real life.
Oh, and the correct answer, most days, is “blue.”
wlohmann@timesdispatch.com (804) 649-6639
February 12, 2021 at 10:00AM
https://richmond.com/news/local/lohmann-its-easy-to-get-sucked-into-a-fantasy-world-but-its-ok-to-just/article_03aa6180-c9f1-5dac-9183-78b96ce6361c.html
Lohmann: It's easy to get sucked into a fantasy world, but it's OK to just walk away - Richmond.com
https://news.google.com/search?q=easy&hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US:en
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