#olay

Olay (on her channel Olurnatti): How “This Didn’t Age Well” Destroyed Media Literacy

Olay is a defense attorney and fierce advocate for equity & equality; I always find her to be razor sharp as well as empathetic, while taking absolutely no bullshit. It's a long video but very worth watching. I have wanted a masterclass essay on this topic for a long time, and she provided it and then some.

I'm including some of what she said that I liked best, but it is no substitute for watching this fully and hearing all of her examples (she pulls from a very wide variety of media as support to her thesis) and reasoning.

9:21:

Moral media consumption is simply an extension of ethical consumerism, where we try to choose our media based on what aligns with our own views and ethics, and we critically analyze media to determine what the messages an impacts are, so we can better determine how to consume and engage with media, as to mitigate social harm. It's about being responsible with our media, ensuring that we don't spread and promote harmful ways of thinking. Which might require you not to consume certain media altogether, but it doesn't have to. It might just need to change how you need to engage it, and analyze it, and speak about it.

"Virtue Mirroring" is a phrase Olay coins in this video. 11:42:

Virtue mirroring is less about tangible external impact, and more about one's personal views, feelings, and what we think our media says about us. Whereas, ethical consumerism and moral media consumption, are about avoiding tangible, real-world harm by not funding it, or incentivizing its creation, or engaging and promoting it uncritically, which makes it more significant.

24:37:

Virtue mirroring is unnecessary, and I don't think moral media consumption requires that we totally disengage. I think it provides us the option to analyze and discuss media in a way that minimizes the harm.

26:27:

We think our media is supposed to reflect us, say something about us. And only depict the world we want to live in, not the one that we do. ... We've become so politically conscious that we've created this kind of hostile social environment, especially on the internet, where everything is a litmus test, and you're expected to denounce, abandon, and shit on, any and everything that could be called problematic. To the point that people break into fucking hives at the first sight of media analysis, because they're going to have to denounce, cancel, or get rid of something they love.

30:06:

I look at media "not aging well" as a good thing. Proof of progress! That we can now see the errors in our ways, and that we have a society where we can better hear the dissenters.

46:09:

Where media fails to drive home the lesson, that is the point of media analysis. We have to do the work that the creators don't do. It is okay for us to laugh at enjoy problematic media, so long as we remember to critically analyze our media and parse the lessons out.

Now this is me speaking: I want to emphasize that this applies to everything. The show that got nearly everything right. The show that was enjoyable to watch at the time but has a lot of bad stuff in it looking back. The thing or person you loved that made an enormous impact on you but turned out to be a horrible person or made by a horrible person. The latest newest hottest thing on the market that you expect to live up to certain modern standards of morality; the old classic novel that is outdated in its beliefs.