Tag: TV

Trypophobia: A fear of holes, bumps and clusters – CNN

Research into trypophobia is limited. Among the first to study the fear were psychological scientists Arnold Wilkins and Geoff Cole of the University of Essex in Colchester, England. In a paper published in 2013, they presented the theory that many of the world’s most dangerous animals, such as alligators, crocodiles, snakes and poisonous fish, have clusters of bumps and holes on their skin. Perhaps the aversion could be some sort of innate flight-fight response to dangerous or poisonous animals?

University of Kent postgraduate researcher Tom Kupfer had a different notion. “Those images look to me like they would be perceived as cues to infectious disease or parasites,” said Kupfer, who studies the emotion of disgust and the role it plays in our daily lives. “I wouldn’t be surprised if this is actually a disorder based on disgust and disease avoidance.”

Trypophobia: A fear of holes, bumps and clusters – CNN

Peter Popoff, the Born-Again Scoundrel | GQ

 

Once, Peter Popoff was a magical, mystical man of God—a giant among ’80s televangelists. And Lord, was he rich! But he was also an enormous fraud who was ruined in scandal. Ah, but here in America, time absolves all that. And if a fellow is clever enough, he can remake his kingdom and amass quite a fortune. For the Lord worketh in mysterious ways.

 

He came to me when I least expected. I was in a hotel bed, enrobed in terry cloth, my teeth brushed, my hand aloft holding the remote. This was a year ago, and the soft glow of cable TV was the room’s only light. I was flitting between channels when I happened upon BET. There I saw an old white man preaching to an audience of elderly black people. And as I wondered what on earth this pasty alter kocker was doing on black TV, it came to me: I had seen this man before.


Peter Popoff, the Born-Again Scoundrel | GQ

I have found a new way to watch TV, and it changes everything

HAVE a habit that horrifies most people. I watch television and films in fast forward. This has become increasingly easy to do with computers (I’ll show you how) and the time savings are enormous. Four episodes of “Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt” fit into an hour. An entire season of “Game of Thrones” goes down on the bus ride from D.C. to New York.

I started doing this years ago to make my life more efficient. Between trendy Web shows, auteur cable series, and BBC imports, there’s more to watch than ever before. Some TV execs worry that the industry is outpacing its audience. A record-setting 412 scripted series ran in 2015, nearly double the number in 2009.

“There is simply too much television,” FX Networks CEO John Landgraf said last year. Nonsense, responded Netflix content chief Ted Sarandos, who has been commissioning shows at a startling rate. “There’s no such thing as too much TV,” he said.

So here we are, spending three hours a day on average, scrambling to keep up with the Kardashians, the Starks, the Underwoods, and the dozens of others on the roster of must-watch TV, which has exploded in the age of fragmented audiences. Nowadays, to stay on the same wavelength with your different groups of friends — the ones hating on “Meat Chad” and the ones cooing over Khaleesi — you have to watch in bulk.

Washington Post

My family was traumatised first by a murder, then by the TV serialisation

After discovering in 2009 that my beautiful mum, who died in 1991, was in fact murdered by my father and the woman he had formerly had an affair with, I was propelled into a new world of trauma.

Loss of any form is distressing. But the intentional and often violent killing of another brings about a complex grieving process that is interrupted, sidelined and trivialised in favour of a criminal investigation. In a 2011 report of 400 families bereaved through homicide, more than 80% were found to suffer from trauma-related symptoms. When dealing with (or often not dealing with) the impact of murder and the sequence of events it brings about, it can result in multiple processes of re-trauma.

We all love a good crime drama. Yet the reality of murder on the families involved is much more sobering, traumatic and, well, messier than is often projected on our screens. Behind the high viewing figures, whether for fiction or the coverage of real crimes, there are people living with murder bereavement on a daily basis. And an intrusive media experience can often compound this original trauma. If deemed “a good enough story”, private grief becomes public property.

News is important, and when handled factually it serves the public interest. But there is a clear distinction between public interest and what is of interest to the public – the latter is problematic.

The Guardian

I have found a new way to watch TV, and it changes everything

IHAVE a habit that horrifies most people. I watch television and films in fast forward. This has become increasingly easy to do with computers (I’ll show you how) and the time savings are enormous. Four episodes of “Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt” fit into an hour. An entire season of “Game of Thrones” goes down on the bus ride from D.C. to New York.

I started doing this years ago to make my life more efficient. Between trendy Web shows, auteur cable series, and BBC imports, there’s more to watch than ever before. Some TV execs worry that the industry is outpacing its audience. A record-setting 412 scripted series ran in 2015, nearly double the number in 2009.

“There is simply too much television,” FX Networks CEO John Landgraf said last year. Nonsense, responded Netflix content chief Ted Sarandos, who has been commissioning shows at a startling rate. “There’s no such thing as too much TV,” he said.

So here we are, spending three hours a day on average, scrambling to keep up with the Kardashians, the Starks, the Underwoods, and the dozens of others on the roster of must-watch TV, which has exploded in the age of fragmented audiences. Nowadays, to stay on the same wavelength with your different groups of friends — the ones hating on “Meat Chad” and the ones cooing over Khaleesi — you have to watch in bulk.

Washington Post