Social Media= Pathetic?

How did today’s social media become so pathetic?

This question is somewhat similar to the “chicken or the egg” question. Did today’s social media become pathetic, and THEN viewers began to respond to this type of appeal? Or did today’s social media become pathetic BECAUSE viewers only respond to this type of appeal? I think that our society has become almost numb to appeals that AREN’T pathetic and this is why media has been forced to use pathetic appeals.

If a non-profit organization, trying to raise money to help starving children in Africa, spread its message by simply stating statistics and only using a logical approach, not many people would donate their money to their cause. Because of selective exposure, we only notice information that is interesting to us. Our society has become so fast-paced that this type of approach would probably not even catch their audience’s attention. If that same non-profit wants to get donations, they need to catch viewers’ attentions…which is exactly what they do with their sob-story commercials with video footage of the starving children in Africa. So, don’t blame the media for becoming too “pathetic;” they were forced to become this way in order to keep up with what our society has become. Sometimes you have to pull on people’s heartstrings if you want to get things done.