What's Growing in Your Brain?
You may not notice, but something's taking root...
Hello friends, and happy Wednesday! I hope everyone is staying warm, this winter snap is brutal and certainly making me long for spring more than I have in a long while. I’ve selected some headlines of good news this week since the rest of the news is so absolutely dreary. That brings me to the main course because it turns out a diet of news can….change your brain!
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Last week, Tolarian Community College, the world's largest Youtube channel for Magic the Gathering, raised over $500,000 for Trans Lifeline. "It's overwhelming to see the community support. It makes me so proud of Magic: The Gathering players to see them rallying behind the trans community like this," Lewis (the owner of the channel) has said.
The site of Compton's Cafeteria has been added to the National Register of Historic Places. Compton's Cafeteria was the site of one of the first Trans uprisings three years before Stonewall.
Kansas Governor Laura Kelly has vetoed a bill that bans gender-affirming care for trans minors. "It is not the job of politicians to stand between a parent and a child who needs medical care of any kind," Kelly said.
We've all been there; you look up from your phone, and you find an hour or more has gone by. Maybe you've been on TikTok, maybe Instagram, maybe binging your favorite show, but low and behold, the phone has made you a time traveler, taking you from past to present with only mindlessness in between. We all know that the algorithms swirling inside our phones affect us deeply, but did you know they actually change how you view the world long after you've set them down? They do, thanks to a little phrase called Cultivation Theory.
First, a little backstory. A few snowy Sundays ago, I was at book club, and we were waxing poetic about romance (shoutout to the divine thots). After exploring many romance classics, the conversation swung around to Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller, which I read a few years ago and did not love. I realize that I am absolutely in the minority for this, but something about the way their relationship was depicted has sat wrong with me ever since.
I've always been hyper-critical about the love stories we're told in our modern society because I think that most of the stories out there give us unhealthy depictions of what love and relationships should look like. Now, I don't fault the creators of these projects at all. Big love is what sells, and high drama sells even better. Stories about the nuance of love are usually less entertaining than the stories that live on for generations. I mean, just look at Romeo & Juliet. Humankind's most lasting love story is about two children who fall in love after a few days, manipulate their whole families, and in the face of death, decide that the only real thing worth saving is each other, then realize that life isn't worth living without the other and kill themselves. How is that a healthy blueprint?
Now, I know that not every story is meant to educate people how I want them to. But we are impressionable creatures, and our brains suck up information whether we want them to or not. Enter Cultivation Theory.
What’s Being Cultivated Exactly?
Cultivation Theory is the idea that long-term exposure to media (primarily studied through TV consumption) will shape how the consumer of said media views the world. The theory was first introduced in the 1960s by George Gerbner, who wanted to explore the effects of this rapidly growing invention called the television set.
Gerbner was called to these experiments because he saw television as a unique influence on Americans for the following reasons.
It was easy. It was both auditory and visual (a split from radio) and yet did not require literacy like silent movies did.
It was ubiquitous. The advent of the television set meant that families no longer had to travel to a theatre in order to consume their media.
It was biased. It didn't just give you facts but stories. Unlike the news, television and the programs on them gave narratives and judgments, not just the 'facts of life.'
It was cementing. Those narratives would end up stabilizing particular societal patterns, reinforcing them, and then making consumers more resistant to change.
Over the course of his experiments, Gerbner discovered that television could shape the worldview of consumers based on the type of media they were being presented. Children who were shown commercial television had much more stereotypical views of sex and women than children who didn't. He found that television also tended to homogenize people's belief systems, leading to reducing individuality and cultural differences. Regardless of demographics, people who watch the same content will eventually converge on a 'mainstream' idea shaped by their media.
It’s a Mean World Out There
The most prominent finding that came out of his experiments was coined The Mean World Syndrome. When looking at violence and danger, Gerbner found that television viewers are more likely to believe that the world is more dangerous than it actually is if they are frequently exposed to violence on TV. I've seen this firsthand, and it's a huge reason why I don't check or watch local news as often as I could. The Citizen App is a great way to alert people to what's happening in your neighborhood, but it is also a great way to become fixated on very random, isolated acts of violence that do not actually reflect the big picture of where you live.
Gerbner also found that media effects are stronger when they reflect the lived experience of the person watching. This creates a sort of toxic cycle as our brains look for what we know and then use those 'facts' as reinforcement. In a similar example, let's say someone who lives in a high-crime area watches The Penguin (a show all about mobs and crime). The viewer's brain is going to resonate more with the violence that they recognize. Their brains will use the fictionalized violence they are seeing to confirm the views they already have about the world. Then, because they're seeing more of it on TV, they will also begin to use that to strengthen their already existing beliefs that the world they live in is a violent, crime-ridden place.
Modern Day Growth Explosion!
The results of Gerbner's studies were pretty damning, and those were released during the 80s. Now, we have TVs in our hands all day and are constantly being bombarded with messaging that is far more adept than television at knowing what we want. The algorithms that run our phones are not only learning about us but feeding us what we think we want our worldview to look like, and it's obviously leading the world down many different paths. Ironically, our phones are creating so many different worldviews that we each perceive as mainstream. The problem is we can get so much information to back up any particular worldview that we are cementing our beliefs based on unvetted information brought to us by whoever our phones want us to see.
A big reason that the right is enjoying so much power right now is that they have learned how to manipulate cultivation theory expertly. Many televisions just leave FOX News on all day. Day after day, these ideas that they hear directly or from another room will become the beliefs that they spout to others. Even the advent of the podcasting world has changed the game. The sprawling, three-hour-long Joe Rogan episodes are meant to build camaraderie with the men listening. If Joe Rogan's voice takes up three hours of your brain a week, you're going to trust him and think him a friend. You'll form emotional relationships with him that can then be exploited in whatever direction he wants. Case in point, I know people who did not feel galvanized about the 2024 election until they heard Trump speak on Rogan and that Harris had said no to Rogan.
So What Now?
Be Intentional
Try to be much more intentional about the media that you're consuming. If you watch the news, turn it off and go read it instead. Try searching for different news avenues like Ground News, which shows you how a certain story has been covered by which outlets and if the coverage skews left or right. If you need something else to fill the time, go pick up a book or a magazine or dive deep into Substack. The constant bombardment of fear and excitement is designed to keep you hooked and anxious, not keep you informed. The more you fill your brain with other things, the more you’re shaping your own worldview.
Be Varied
Next, take stock of all the media you consume. Are you on a diet of Housewives, Traitors, and Drag Race? If so, you might be building a worldview that is a little more catty and full of drama. Are you stuck bingeing Squid Game, The Penguin, or Monsters? If so, you might be building a worldview that is unrealistically violent and stress-inducing. If you're on a diet of high-fantasy and science fiction like I am, I have no idea what worldview we're creating, but I'm always on the lookout for UFOs.
And bringing us all the way back to book club, if you're consuming love stories that aren't healthy, then you're going to be out there looking for love that isn't healthy either. I understand that people can and should be allowed to consume romance as escapism or aspirational, but I still believe that it can negatively impact you if it becomes your dominant source of information about love.
So, if you're looking to break your cultivated habits, go ahead and give those a shot. And if you're looking to break your cultivated beliefs around love specifically, give Gay Gourmet a try. I can guarantee that the beliefs and ideas that I share about love will, at the very least, run counter to what you're used to, and that can be a great help in either helping your brain grow or giving you a great foil to deepen your current beliefs. You'll get nuanced takes about things that are usually said in black and white and learn how to figure out what you want in a relationship and how to find it.
It's a win-win!
Over the past week or so, Casey and I have started watching Mythic Quest, a workplace comedy on Apple TV+ about the workers for a massive online fantasy role-playing game. The show is from some of the folk from It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, but the tone couldn't be more different. And best of all, the Queer storylines in the show are so heartwarming and adorable. The show is now on its fourth season so there's plenty to watch should you find the time to dive into their rich, hilarious, creative, and heartfelt world.
Now, that’s all from me this week. I hope you’ve enjoyed reading this piece about the brain and stay tuned for more brain stuff next week!
Coming Up Next:
Friday: Romantic Pessimism & You
Next Week: My Journey with Brain Drugs
As usual, you make me think and laugh and introduce me to new stuff. I think 'cultivation theory' applies to porn consumption too!