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Comment by noonespecial | Hacker News Reader

It was a wakeup call for me when I literally heard the Disney channel coming out of the mouth of my 7 year old girl. I spent a day and actually watched that stuff. Day-um. It was good for a life lesson about how tv is a huge exaggeration of real life and you probably shouldn't talk like the characters on tv until you can appreciate the impact of those words and attitudes.

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It was a wakeup call for me when I literally heard the Fox News channel coming out of the mouth of my 70 year grandmother... etc. Barf.

The point is much more general: programmed stimulation is a problem. Unless you are a slave owner, then programmed stimulation can be good for production.

Well, there's a difference in that Fox News was simply telling your 70 y/o grandmother that her preexisting views were shared by many others, and therefore acceptable to express in public.

On the other hand, live action Disney shows have a much greater effect, because they can permanently affect the mental and social development of young children.

The part I really had trouble with was the shows had kind of a pervasive cynicism to them while the dialog consisted largely of biting sarcasm. The message seemed to be "whoever is fastest on the draw with a sarcastic insult is coolest."

Just taking an episode of South Park and s///g'ing the profanity with disnified words like "dweebiod" doesn't alchemically transmute it into "wholesome family entertainment". If you talk to your real life friends like the "friends" do on these shows, you're not going to have many of them.

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