I bet this doesn't happen to math professors

Some time last semester I was working in my office and a staff employee asked me about a comic strip on my door. It pokes fun at the career options of people who pursue higher degrees in the humanities. So he asked me what I studied. I told him media.

Here is the thing about studying media. Everyone has an opinion about it. And most of them that feel they need to share their opinions do not think happy thoughts.

He proceeded to tell me what was wrong with the news. I think it was mainly that they ruined Howard Dean in the last election or something. And I made a crucial error. I tried to argue logically. And play devil's advocate a little. I mentioned that if enough folks don't watch something they dislike its ratings will suffer and it will be replaced. Wrong tactic to explain things so simply.

He began ranting at me about other issues wrong with the news. Apparently a common misconception is that I have some level of pull with the networks and can get them to fix things if you complain to me. And I tried to point out that he was trying to argue several different points. And he got more worked up about things stating he was doing no such thing. Then I realized in his mind he wasn't. He was basically making one big argument and that is "Media is bad and you must agree with me about that."

He was was basically hoping I would say, "You're right, media is terrible." And I wasn't doing that. Which just made him more aggressive. I finally told him I really needed to get back to work since I had class in five minutes and I don't really even watch American news programs. I watch BBC America (remember that thing early about if you don't like it, avoid it? I follow my own advice) and pursue news online.

He went away and then came back three minutes later and made what he thought was some sort of sweeping finishing statement that was kind of sad considering he probably spent the whole time thinking it up. "The root word of news is new." Yeah, great. Except like I tried to tell him, finding new gets hard when you have 24 hours of news day to fill. Which means you turn to fluff to get something novel but he hated fluff news too. Way to argue for and against yourself at the same time.

And just in case you were wondering, this sort of thing happens semi-regularly to me. People find out what I study and suddenly they have a face for their harsh opinions about everything wrong with the media. I bet there are other academic fields that inspire similar reactions but I bet physics professors don't ever hear "You know what's wrong with gravity? It's incompatibility with quantum mechanics."




Written while listening to the Replacements. Good times.