A disease of the 21st century?

This being a moan about the growing intrusiveness of the Internet experience. Perhaps a disease of the 21st century, but perhaps also referring back to the theatre and opera of the late nineteenth century, when the people responsible for productions in both theatres and opera houses wanted to impose as big an experience as possible on its audience. No longer content with stories, sights, music or movement, they wanted all at once. They wanted to completely dominate all the available senses, dominate the consciousness of their audience. Thinking here, knowing to next to nothing about him, and only having sat or stood through one or two performances, particularly of Wagner. Also of the spectacles put on by Lully and Louis XIV more than two centuries before that. For which last see reference 1.

All this prompted by my irritation at what seems to be the increasing proportion of articles in the FT which come in the form of protracted and noisy video clips; noisy both visually and aurally. I want my news to be properly digested and spouted out in the form of the decently written word, sticking more or less to the Queen's English and not feeling the need to spice things up with slang and expletives. That sort of thing is fine in the pub - but not on the page - at least in so far as I am concerned. Spice things up with the odd picture or graphic, but they should not be too complicated and they certainly shouldn't move about, at least not unless you the reader asks them to. But, in the main, to be the written word which I can consume and ponder about at my own pace, in my own time. I don't want to be taken over by some cocksure young journalist.

Web sites generally seeming to falling prey to a similar disease, with all too many of them springing into visual and musical life without any prompting from me. All too often some noisy video clip advertising something or other, distracting my attention from the web site I thought I wanted to look at. A web site which has been squeezed down into a small panel in the middle of the screen, leaving plenty of room for all this other stuff around the edges. All too often the result of some complicated collusion - not to say conspiracy - between the ostensible owner of the website, people with things to sell, various media middle men and Google about what bones might usefully be thrown in my direction, for a consideration.

Even Wikipedia is not immune, despite its justly prized not-for-profit standing, with many of its authors being far too fond of elaborate pop-ups for my taste. You need to be careful where you leave your mouse if you don't want all these pop-ups to disturb, get in the way of your reading.

A related problem is the tendency for web site designers to opt for a very busy and lively page, to make the page a collage of all kinds of stuff, rather in the way of the graphic designers who put together the pages of the 'Sun' or the 'Daily Mail'. They all seem to think that the busier the page the more likely it is to hold our attention, to bring us back for more on another day. And presumably they are right, at least statistically speaking, as they are in well paid employment.

A problem which has spread to the producers of television dramas, where lots of action, both aural and visual, has become de rigueur. I think here of the difference between the television Maigret of Michael Gambon of the early 1990's and that of Rowan Atkinson twenty five years later. The former is straightforward and easy going. The latter is action packed, much more nasty in various ways and shows much less respect (to my mind) for the original.

Time to start thinking about the morning's spin and the beef to follow. Must remember to oil the bicycle chain.

PS 1: I notice that Google, apprehensive about looming taxation, regulation and interference, is spending quite a lot of money on advertisements pushing its public services. Of which, it is only fair to say, there are a lot.

PS 2: some of these web site designers, with their obsessive artiness, forget that small letters - be they black or white - on top of a photographic, or still worse, a moving image, are often very hard to read. One might think an elementary error which ought to have been ironed out by art school.

Reference 1: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2019/08/the-dancing-king.html. On the way to the source of the snap above.

Reference 2: https://institute.global/. A relatively restrained example of the video clip genre. A site which also offers substantial papers for reading. For example, reference 3.

Reference 3: Managing the Covid-19 Pandemic: Therapeutics Are as Important as Vaccines - Eva Thorne, Blair Institute - 2020. 37 pages of it. Despite my not caring much for the Blair brand, probably worthy - but so far unread. One can't read everything.