Poisonous Entertainment

Entertainment is a great way to pass the time. It keeps us distracted from the horrors of the outside world. Or, in a less dramatic sense, it's simply an easier way for us to escape reality every now and then. We all deserve some time to just kick back and forget about the struggles and worries that plague our everyday lives.

However, I'll tell you something that really irks me to no end. I can't stand seeing and hearing Black people constantly complaining or stuck in a perpetual state of apathy. We're always going on about the state of our community, yet we're always condoning the same evils that plague our community and only reflect badly on us as a people. Worse, we're often the ones reinforcing the narratives that our enemies use against us and CONTINUE to use against us. It's sickening and utterly pitiful. And this isn’t so much opinion, more so observable facts.

Now, I don't mean to speak from a place of “superiority”. My horse is no higher than anyone else's. But this is the kind of discussion that often gets ignored and more than not, passed off as "lame", "corny", or "boring". So on and so forth.

Tell me, what is so lame about wanting to elevate to a higher state of living than what we've been accustomed to for so long? What is so corny about preaching peace and positivity? What is so corny about saying "no" to the negative stereotypes that condition us to excessively consume and destroy more than any other race? A big part of why we behave in such manners can be blamed on the media we consume. Same as with the food we eat and the substances we drink or indulge in for recreation.

Media is powerful. It can either be our greatest tool or our greatest weapon. Unfortunately, it seems it's being used as more of a weapon against us these days. With the rise of Black-owned social media apps, this issue is starting to dissolve. We're creating our own platforms so that our voices cannot be censored or outright silenced by those who seek to harm us until we've been completely decimated to nothing but only a dark shadow of what we used to be.

Entertainers are normal people who get paid to portray abnormal lives. People from all over the world tune in to Instagram Live or any reality TV show to bear witness to their favorite celebrities riding gold-plated jet skis across the Caribbean. Playing pool with Komodo dragon eggs on the cliff of the most beautiful mountainside in Italy. Or maybe placing 100k bets on a real-life Celebrity Deathmatch in the deep tombs of the Vatican.

This infatuation with acquiring wealth and living your best dream life is ever-so present in the minds of millennials through Generation Z. From childhood, we've been trained to believe that one day, it could be us with all the glitz and glamor. All the riches in the world and the fame that rivals even the most timeless of figures. But as we grow older, we slowly start to realize that it was all a lie. You’re probably reminded of the infamous lines said by Brad Pitt’s character in Fight Club (1999) at this point. Well, that’s exactly where I’m going.

The media has portrayed false realities for our once naive, impressionable minds to cling to in the hopes that we’d be right there in it. Society has had a great impact on our psyche as well. To keep it short and get right onto the “poisonous entertainment”, the people who control what we think is reality, are the ones who've, at the same time, stolen it from us. That’s why many of us stay stuck in mindsets that only trap us in a lower state of being. So many of us are angry, apathetic, miserable, and depressed, and why? We’ve been consuming too much poisonous entertainment. Many of us don’t want to acquire knowledge, so we lean towards entertainment. And because those who control what we see only want to show us everything negative about the world, more specifically about our own race, it becomes a recipe for everlasting devastation.

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