Dirty looks, the nicest mean thing you can do.

I'd like to begin by introducing myself. I am a 23 year old science graduate with aims at medical school, but despite being short doctors for a million patients.. schools don't want me. I'm active and read profusely and I have a penchant for buggary. And excluding the second part of the last sentence, I'm telling mostly the truth.

I recently saw a video that everyone should see, is seeing, or has seen before but presented differenly. I'm talking about a Mr. Pausch's Last Lecture. This is an eleven minute lecture this academic presented to his students after being diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer. It is an amazing video that makes me want to cry, etc. What I'm amazed with is how blatantly people like Oprah use these people as a product. This guy pours his heart out to his class and does it in a very serious manner, and then Oprah makes big advertising bucks from selling commercials in between his lecture and talking to him. Pausch doesn't present anything we didn't already know, but he presents it earnestly and wholeheartedly.

The experience is different as a Youtube video than it is on Oprah. I believe this is because the experience is diluted in candy-coated tv fantasy land. You watch shows like this expecting to be scared of something by the eponymous America's Doctors, or made to feel grateful by being shown someone less fortunate than you. It may be a good way to get exposure for certain groups or social blights, but it is not honest. This is the crux of Pausch's lecture: Live Honestly. In this case the medium destroys the message. You turn off the tv and suddenly problems don't exist anymore, like they're trapped inside.

This is not a product of tv personalities, it's a culture and media issue. For the most part we want to care and love and fix everything... but not if we have to do anything. We learn all about problems that are occuring in the world around us and we feel connected and good about ourselves for caring. We're not caring. It's just voyeurism, and it's a terrible character trait. Its brothers are gossip and jealousy. By "getting involved" in surface skimming media presentations, it is so easy to ignore reality.

This type of exposure to the world is its shallowest incarnation. You come away from these experiences feeling a little hollower because you haven't interpreted it your way, just absorbed it. No, just let is wash over you and away. This is the direction we are all heading, and I predict more depression, more suicide, more idiopathic diseases and more apathy.

I challenge myself and everyone else to eschew unreal reality tv, CNN sob stories, and tabloid fears.