The Tabloid Culture is the latest development of the
Culture of the Spectacle, and we should say that because of the media
development, Tabloid Culture is the culture of the spectacle in
extremis.
We must recognize that in TC there are no big differences
between fact and fiction, precisely because selling is more important than
truth.
Tabloid Culture does not rely on facts because the whole
business is giving consumers what they want to read. In this trash journalism
the whole thing is to create a fantasy of whatever proportion is needed to sell
the tabloid in question.
By the way, the etymology of the word “Tabloid” (1884)
comes from a trademark of the Burroughs Welcome and Company, a nineteenth
century pharmaceutical company in England that produced medicine originally in
powder form. The tabloid was a pill made by compressing the powder into small
bullet-like pills called tabloids, tablets and later tabs. By 1898, tabloid was
being used figuratively to mean a compressed form or small dose of anything.
The small newspaper with condensed articles was nicknamed the tabloid.
A small dose of anything is an excellent definition. Anything
is nothing, and nothing means the intrinsic devaluation of meaning. In tabloid
journalism anything goes. A celebrity’s friendly kiss becomes a scandal. Science
is a lie. In Mars there are ladies sitting in stones, lizards, squirrels, dinosaurs
and giant stone faces.
CIA has the time-space machine, and hundreds of extraterrestrial
civilizations are here, on our planet performing millions of abductions.
The whole world is controlled by conspiracies.
Intelligent Lizards from the 4th dimension are the masters of Earth
and the Illuminati work with a shadow government in the New World Order plan
and the secret contacts with friendly and unfriendly aliens.
Nonsense produces more nonsense. Pseudo-scientists
compete with pseudo-mystics and self proclaimed experts in galactic diplomacy.
Cosmic alchemists predict the future and reinvent astronomy.
Inexistent planets threaten Earth and there are
subterranean secret civilizations and in the Antarctica, huge UFO bases are
controlled by the survivors of the Fourth Reich.
And there is only
one rule: the show must go on. There is no difference between fact and fiction.
Do not ask yourself what is real and what isn't. In
tabloid or trash culture, If it sells its real.
