A stupor of homogenous thinking took hold this week. I am even tired of magazines. I decided that the prevailing culture dominated by inbred circus media was getting me down. I always worry when I return to questioning the existence of museums. I was weak and embattled. Had Medialomania beaten me? Is Medialomania contagious? What is Medialomania?

I looked up “medialomania” on Google and got five hits back. Two of which were domain name advertisers. One other was German and I can’t call the fourth. The fifth? Well, I stopped caring because something has to have more than five hits on Google to be anything.

However, when I do that search post publishing, I will find myself on that list with the only firm definition of “Medialomania”. I hope. Is this not a good test of Google’s panopticism? Or should we all just wait for Wikisearch? (Which currently hosts an expired blog by a former board member). The details may play out in a soap opera script, or may not….

So allow me.

–noun
med.i.a.lo.ma.ni.a [mee-dee-uh-loh-mey-nee-uh]
1. Psychiatry, – institutional Psychiatry – the symptom of media corporations observable in offensive delusions of importance. Mediolomanic institutions will often get embroiled in adolescent ratings battles. Medialomanic activity increases proportionally to group size. Behaviours extend to racial profiling, empty headlines, long-sightedness, lack of context and human interest stories. – cognitive psychiatry – within human individuals medialomania is evidenced by mutations of institution medialmonia, that give rise passive rose tinted consumption of the world and its events.
2. Journalism – communicative psychology - the obsession of largess media with doing extravagant or grand things, eg graphics and scrollling headlines and a clock and a busy news room behind and five monitors and a nice silk tie, or “oo, look honey, she’s done her hair differently tonight…”.

-adjective
med.i.a.lo.ma.ni.ac [mee-dee-uh-loh-mey=nee-ak]
1. Of, pertaining to, or suggesting megalomania; a person. group or corporate boardroom that displays the symptoms listed above.

[Origin: Wednesday, 28th March, 2007; media- + -lo- + -mania; media- + -lo- + maniac]

I recently subscribed to the feed from the grandly titled Institute for Public Accuracy. I know nothing about the editorial team but I have enjoyed their strong opinion and bare journalistic swagger.

This week I discovered photojournalist visionary, Fazal Sheikh, who is making the sublime legible. Edward Burtynsky is as brilliantly shocking as he is aggrandised by media elites. But aren’t there thousands of people doing work as human? Let’s see it. Let open source reign. Lets see the facts laid bare and let them be unobscured and unfiltered. I’d rather discomfort and awareness than sensation and numbness. A wise man once said, “If you are to choose between security and liberty, always choose liberty”. Journalism is not entertainment. Entertainment is predictable and voluntary. Journalism, with the world as its looking glass, is every possibility simultaneously and your a fully subscribed member.

If entertainment is security and journalism is liberty, then the only question remaining is which do you choose? Allow the medialomanic corporations to continue their circus, just don’t turn on your TVs.

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