Closed Captioner life: Heartache, Paranoia, and a Deep Disdain for Media
My worst day of work went like this:
October 1, 2017: “Hey, can you jump onto Las Vegas news? Something is happening and we need emergency coverage.”
Sure. I get connected to the event. The broadcast has already started.
“… for those of you who are just joining us, we’re receiving reports of gunfire at the Route 91 music festival. Injuries are reported but police have not released an exact number of casualties…”
It progressively worsens over the next hour. “We are confirming 4 fatalities and many injured.”
I jump on Facebook and find a post from a girlfriend: “yo some sort of terror attack going on in Vegas, friends keep your eyes peeled.”
“Police have confirmed at least 8 fatalities.”
“Police have confirmed at least 15 fatalities.”
I don’t know when my worknight ended. But we all know how it ended, so I won’t say more.
My best days, plural, happen every few days when I am proud as heck of the transcript I’ve just produced. Noteworthy though, I don’t have a best news *content* day.
Because “the news” is miserable.
The Trauma
Partially, because it’s sad. The constant exposure to the content of news for multiple broadcasts a day causes secondhand traumas that all of us experience, but that everyone manages differently. I’m not one of those who manages it well, so I try my hardest to stick to sports.
Hearing every tragedy imaginable befall people makes me afraid to leave the house for fear that I’m going to be the next person “in the wrong place at the wrong time”. Or maybe it’ll be my parents. Or my siblings. Or my boyfriend.
I can put myself in the place of the victim and fantasize. It will be me in that 30-second segment. Someone placing a candle around my photo on a fence. It will be my name that reporters rehearse before their segment and say, “yikes, I hope I don’t mess that up.”
ME, whose name might be misspelled in the captions because the channel neglected to put that story somewhere accessible on the website, and now the captioner will have to just throw out a homophone and hope it’s doesn’t come out offensive. If I’m not even correctly identified in my death, was I ever really important? (Dramatic, I know.)
…But anyway, not only because news is sad is it miserable. It’s ALSO miserable because it has made me see clearly that it’s the design of media that has driven people to the types of behavior that make me afraid to participate in the world.
Mary Frances Flood posted this photo on her blog which was wholly worth the read.
“The Truth”
Captioning television, news and otherwise, has sharpened my ability to sniff out not-the-truth as well as not-the-WHOLE-truth, which has culminated in a fundamental nugget of wisdom: Never trust without question any person or organization who claims they know the truth.
“The truth” from a person who is doing the act of convincing is 1. obvious, if you know what to look for, 2. never saying 100% of the truth, or 3. at the very least, not telling the amount of truth that YOU need to know in order to draw a fully-informed and consenting conclusion.
This used to be the job of the journalist, but so many news everythings are somewhere between “information” and “entertainment” now, that we just can’t be sure which element a reporter is leaning toward. It is now up to us to research every potential claim or value back down to the roots of where it first came from, who spread it first, and what their motive was to do so.
And then vet further.
Other words I live by: Beware large groups of people who all think the same way and are backed by money (and general social consensus). Those people have the ability to deceive us. It is in their best interest for us to think they are righteous, too, because they’re probably making money from achieving that. And until you have ceased to think, you, too, are susceptible to other people’s ulterior motives.
Since organizations can do this on a massive scale, they can make this phenomenon happen: “Well, tons of other people that I respect agree with this statement, and it DOES make sense, passes all my immediate red flag checks, yep, I agree too,”
…which makes it easy for the truth-claiming organization to seem credible and therefore, be excused from our vetting and thoughtful examination.
But think about this. That lack of thoughtful examination means you’ve just handed the agency of your feelings over to someone else. In social media land especially, and I’m sorry to my brother if he ever reads this because he went to school for marketing, but there are people who have
made.
it.
their.
occupation.
to know the perfect formulas to activate a human’s hormones within allotted constraints. Endorphins and adrenaline and the like. Isn’t that wild? It blows my mind that this is a thing people go to school for and get paid to do. This person now gets to control that feelings side of you for a second because whatever you just saw seemed credible, but you didn’t verify if they actually are, for sure.
I mean, come on. I tried to search for a satire comic or something. Feed the Beast, I guess.
And those people never have a problem getting hired, because companies all need to play this game too but most people realize the whole “game” is, at its core, being a digital ambassador on the internet, rather than one’s TRUE self. And with every company doing that, some preying on the positive feelings and others preying on the negative feelings, poof! We have the world we’re living in today.
A whole internet full of people and companies doing their best to vie for our attention and get some sort of tangible reaction out of us.
OF COURSE the same thing is happening everywhere on television, too, and in movies, on radios, on podcasts, in churches (yeah, I said it), in instagram ads, from publicists, from commissioners of major league sports, from non-profits, from activists, from “thought leaders”, from the mouths of politicians, on Reddit, I mean… that’s the name of the game.
What do all of these instances have in common? They prey on people who can’t spot disingenuous intentions, and/or who don’t have the ability to dig for the truth for themselves. They prey on people who prefer to be reassured what to feel and think. They prey upon people who are too busy making end’s meet every day to think deeply. And more importantly, and this deserves its own line:
They often prey on people who already think a certain way.
“The Take”
I hate the take.
What started as a way to fill a *little* bit of airtime with the opinions of experts has grown into a fiery abhorrence of feelings bait. News stations have ’em. Sports stations have ’em. 24 hours a day of programming (instead of a few hours like those two entities used to be), and probably half of it or more are “takes”.
Blah blah blah blah blah, this is why what I think is right. -Analysts
Imagine having a job where you just blab your opinion for a few hours, and someone else blabs their opinions, and you blab about why the other person’s opinion is wrong, and they blab back about why yours are wrong. My God, what a life, right? What’s the saying about why opinions are like assholes?
It’s cheap. It’s filler. There’s no value in it. It’s not improving the world, making people happier, or providing helpful information to make people more knowledgeable. It’s JUST provocation. That’s the only goal.
And I firmly believe that our general acceptance of “the take” and the culture surrounding this phenomenon is why everyone is so quick to double down when a person challenges us. We are reacting to stimuli and hormones are pumping through us. But the older I get, the more I realize productive discussions don’t include, “You’re wrong.”
The Solution
My advice to people consuming too much “take-ing” is this:
When you find yourself agreeing WAY too much with a broadcast or social media post, does it seem too good to be true? Do you automatically agree without question because you already think that? Be careful. Those people might be preying on you and people like you, specifically. Pleading for your agreement. Your solidarity. And you might be being lured into a false sense of community.
And if you find yourself becoming UPSET with a broadcast, and you’re thinking incredulously, “There’s no way this is real…” It probably isn’t. At least not all the way. Their intention is to speak in a way that encourages reactivity (engagement food).
Either way, clinging to your agreement or reactivity will make you an insufferable person, carrying around everyone else’s ulterior motives.
Try your hardest to resist the urge to give into acting on the hormones that cause you to either respond angrily, or walk away feeling vindicated.
Keep your critical thinking skills sharp. Cultivate your ability to protect yourself from deceit. Question the TV people. There’s *always* more truth to be found. Practice asking for proof. Dismiss the people who make excuses not to provide it for you, even if you are “on their side”.
No, especially if you are “on their side”.
I plan to write more about reactions, triggers, trauma, introspection, and why I believe ego is the cause of all preventable crimes. I think the discussions need to go to this place to heal society by way of accountability, rather than endlessly discussing the content of ideologies and who is more correct and more deserving of our eyeballs and brain space.
