Communications and Old Media

"Guess where I am," said a friend over WhatsApp one recent afternoon.

"A very important and super-secret staff meeting?" I texted back. She is always attending very important and super-secret staff meetings. I think she might be a Russian spy.

"No!" she replied. "I'm at a gender reveal party."

...

...

...

What?

Twenty years old I may be, but when I don't know something, I'm not averse to seeking answers from the ever-ready founts of wisdom we all have a pair of.

"What's a gender reveal party?" I asked my mother.

She explained that it's an event where new parents reveal the gender of their baby. Duh! Why didn't I think of that? Actually I'll tell you why: I thought a gender reveal party was something to do with LGBT. I never thought of the more mainstream interpretation.

I admitted my ignorance to my friend, who teased: "You, of the Instagram age, should know what it is!"

"I'm very old-fashioned," I retorted.

And it's true. Look at all the millennials nowadays, with their Netflix and Snapchat and Instagram Stories. It makes my head spin just thinking about all the services technology brings us.

You see, I'm a bit of a relic. Every night, I watch television. You know, the box-shaped thing that emits colour and sound, and doesn't need an internet connection or a username and password or a subscription fee? TV beats Netflix any day, in my opinion. You literally just press a button to turn it on, and all you have to do is sit there and be entertained.

I can hear the protests. "But the shows on TV are so old!" Sure, I'll admit that almost all we get on free-to-air TV are 5-year-old reruns and trashy game shows, but in amongst the crap lie some gems if you look hard enough. For example...

Tanglin
Channel 5
Weekdays (except public holidays), 8:30pm to 9:00pm
This long-running local family drama revolves around the lives of four families living in the titular neighbourhood. They get into plenty of trouble and tears and hand-wringing abound, but they always manage to pull through thanks to the support of everyone else in Tanglin. Except that person they are having a feud with. And the other one who harbours some deep-seated resentment against them that will be revealed 300 episodes from now. And the other one who bears a grudge from years ago. In other words, a standard longform drama serial with the usual plot crutches: car accidents, alcoholism and gambling addiction, sudden-onset diseases, and so on. But the script is superbly written and the acting is generally commendable. Cliffhangers keep me tuning in night after night until it has become a staple of my routine, and during the emotional parts, people keep cutting onions next to me for some reason.

Code of Law
Channel 5
Mondays, 10:00pm to 11:00pm (or 10:15pm to 11:15pm if parliament has a sitting that day)
I mentioned this before. This is a police-and-lawyer drama. After watching this, you might start to become paranoid, because a lot of people get murdered in the show. Communications theorists call it "mean world syndrome": the media shows us all the bad stuff that happens in the world so we think of the world as a more dangerous place than it really is. Nevertheless, it provides a full hour of fun escapism. The storylines are crafted expertly and have twists that elicit gasps of surprise. The acting is absolutely amazing in this one, a true testament to local talent. And because of the late timeslot, the characters are allowed to use profanities, and it is so rewarding to see the policewoman shouting "You're under arrest, asshole!" while kicking a criminal in the balls.

Yes, both of these are local shows. Really, Mediacorp does a good job with them. Don't scoff. #supportlocal

See, I know how to use hashtags! I'm not that old you know. I do use Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. But Stories is the feature I just can't wrap my head around. I posted an Instagram Story once and found it to be such a mind-boggling process that I decided that I wasn't going to be a regular user. What's with all the filters and stickers and buttons and other fiddly things? And no Likes on a Story post? Where's the fun in that? The whole idea of posting something on social media is to get Likes and enjoy the accompanying dopamine rush, isn't it?

I understand that Stories was a reaction to Snapchat's rise in popularity among youth, but again I don't comprehend the obsession with Snapchat. I've never used Snapchat because I think it's an evil platform that allows rampant cyberbullying, blackmail, perversion, and vice. Think of all the unflattering photographs of unsuspecting victims that have been spread through the app, and all the pictures of naked bodies or exposed genitalia. Such flagrant disregard for societal rules will never meet with my approval. I'm by no means conservative, but neither do I condone behaviours that will ultimately result in the breakdown of good order.

My slothfulness in adopting new entertainment technologies is mirrored in my outlook on my chosen field of study, communications. Indeed, how ironic it is that my university major is called Communications and New Media, given my preference for traditional public relations tactics like media relations and event management over more novel ones with those confusing buzzwords like "digital advertising", "data mining", and "artificial intelligence". Thanks to the flexibility of the NUS (National University of Singapore) curriculum, I can actually mould my degree after my image, by taking modules in the more traditional aspects of PR instead of the newfangled "interactive media" bits. So I'll probably end up with a degree in Communications and New Media but know close to nothing about the latter half of the description. Sounds a bit like false advertising but in my defence I wasn't the one who came up with the name!