Binge on Love This Holiday Season

Holidays are a time to indulge–in decadent desserts, bacon-wrapped appetizers, mulled wines, and media. Articles in Slate and The New York Times have chastised those who over-indulge in media, giving these people the derisive label “binge viewers.” We know that the substance of those sugar cookies and pork bellies isn’t healthy, but what about the…

Binge-Watch: Almost the Word of the Year

According to Time, “binge-watch” just missed out on being the Oxford English Dictionary’s word of the year. “Selfie” is the champion. (Is it worse to see a selfie or to lose to “selfie” in the lexicon contest?) Here’s how the OED defines binge-watch: binge-watch: (v.) to watch multiple episodes of a television program in rapid succession,…

A Convergence Culture Rebuttal to Neil Postman

In the previous Neil Postman-inspired blog post, I attempted to demonstrate that our culture’s dominant means of communication infiltrate the fantasy worlds that captivate our imaginations. It was an argument in tacit agreement with Postman’s claim that the dominant medium becomes our cultural “command center.” In this post, however, I am disagreeing with Postman’s essential…