In this peace and quiet today, watching the clouds float effortlessly and the squirrels play, I’m reflecting on Media, of all things. Why? Because the world is truly so peaceful, and beautiful. And much of media paints a world that so—isn’t—any of those things.

I work in media. And I’m thinking about how very little I emotionally have common with where media has leaned, over the past many years.

It truly got me to thinking about when this shift happened in media, a shift when simply reporting the news became a Gladiator arena sport.

And I believe I’ve found the most recent splintering-off point in media. Certainly, US news media has always portrayed certain perceptions, such as American pride, or an American view of any foreign war.

More recently, over the past 40 years, news media as a once-means of delivering messages of what’s happening in the world has become a means to then-concoct a reality whose messages then form that outter world.

For me, this most recent media delivery-splintering goes right back to the radio shock-jocks of the 90’s.

Radio is a funny medium. The human mind plays a big part in the radio-listening experience. Back in the birthing days of radio, “radio plays” had actors reading scripts, and radio techs creating sound effects (later to be known as “Foley”, after the guy who created the art of theater of the mind via sound).

On radio, a listener’s state of mind would fill in the blanks, as this story implied by audio-only left lots of room for one’s own imagination and interpretation.

Radio was such a powerful medium, psychologically, that when late actor Orson Wells read the radio play “War of the Worlds” in 1938, listeners who tuned in late did not realize that the fictitious “news broadcast” was nothing more than scary entertainment. The sound effects, and Wells’ skillful delivery in his role as “the hysterical news reporter”, were so realistic to listeners, that they truly believed that the earth was being invaded by aliens.

This resulted in mass panic across the USA. People jumped from tall buildings to end their lives, rather than be captured and destroyed by a monstrous alien race that was wiping out cities. People emptied their bank accounts and abandoned their homes, heading out of congested cities to hide in rural places. The stock market took a hit as folks cashed out in panic, expecting a post-alien-invasion crash in the market.

This was the co-creative worst-case-scenario power of the mind, in listening to radio.

In radio, the ability for a person’s brainwaves to achieve a passive state when listening, then open people up to receive information in a differing way than if they were watching, and listening at the same time. Podcasts are at an all-time high in popularity, because of this phenomenon. The human brain is the most consciously engaged when it’s not having every single sense triggered at one time.

Interestingly enough, we are designed to thrive mentally when we are a co-participant in our perceived reality, rather than having it spoon-fed to us, eyes taped open like in a dystopian horror film, a constant stream of pop-ups and texts slamming into the hull of our consciousness, threatening to puncture our thinning steel which battles against a constant storm of rage and hysteria—that never abates.

So for me, this most recent turn in news or magazine media, and its ability to instill hysteria within people — came with radio. And most very recently, with the experiment of the shock-jocks in the 1990’s.

I say “experiment” because everything in media is an experiment. Creators experiment to see what sticks with the masses, and whatever sticks, means more advertisers flocking to the sticking-ground. Media is always evolving to reflect cultural acceptance and need. At least, media used to be on the other end of cultural acceptance and need.

Now the tail is wagging to dog, to drive engagement. Modern media steps out to create cultural need. And I can really see the lynch-pin in that cycle.

I recall hearing the shock-jocks in the 90’s for the first time—Howard Stern and Rush Limbaugh. I didn’t care for either one. They were coarse and loud and vulgar, and both worked far too hard “to shock” people. Just like staring at a bad car wreck, the listener would stay shocked to the channel.

This media style was never for me. I could feel the performative nature of it—these guys would say and do anything keep a listener. It was so overtly fake to me. It was offensive in how it didn’t care who it rolled over, or destroyed—because the desperation to hold listeners was so feverish.

Though Stern and Limbaugh were both shock jocks, pioneering a field just to “see how far they could push it” —their messages were most definitely not the same.

I recall seeing “Rush is Right” stickers everywhere in the 90’s. I didn’t know anything about Limbaugh, so one day I tuned in.

Hearing him in the feel-good 90’s, I wondered who would even ever want to listen to such vile accusation, heated blame, extreme distortion of the facts, deep paranoia, and overall negativity. He sounded like someone’s drunk grandpa on a rant at a backyard picnic who stopped making sense an hour past the potato salad running out.

Sure, I didn’t agree with his politics, but so what—that wasn’t what turned me off about the guy. My dislike for Limbaugh was his overall chosen on-air persona, and delivery. It was utterly fabricated and ridiculous. It tried way too hard, which made me uncomfortably embarrassed for him. As a media personality, I could hear all of it.

It has remained a shock to me that he was so popular. I guess I have just not ever been that unhappy or unsatisfied in my life, to align with whatever message he was pushing at the time.

As I went on in my career, I became close with folks in the radio industry. It was brought to my attention time and time again that just like Howard Stern, Limbaugh was a “shock jock”, this 90’s phenomenon of shock-media that was being auditioned through the less-expensive investment of radio airwaves. This medium became popular for a time and eventually morphed into “reality TV”, which portended to be reality, but was a soft-scripted low-bar human cat-fight that could be shot on very low budgets.

You get what you pay for, folks.

As the world has grown more dire, the Reality TV industry has folded up its shutters. There’s enough traumatizing drama in real life. We don’t need to watch manufactured pretend-drama on a screen.

In the 2000’s working in LA, I found out from my media contacts that Rush Limbaugh didn’t even BELIEVE everything he spewed on about. Turns out that though he was a conservative, he said those extreme things because it was his on-radio character. Just like Howard Stern, he did his shock-jock job, and it kept the money rolling in.

He and his people designed a show that was the antithesis to the Howard Stern Show. Where Stern’s show was weirdly cultural and sexual, Rush’s was cultural and political.

It was widely known that off the air, Howard Stern was a nerdy, quiet guy. His fans even knew this. Which was one of the reasons folks tuned in—to see how wild he would get on the show. I never, ever liked the Stern show for the same reasons I never liked Limbaugh—too much. Trying too hard to shock. Desperate for the next sensationalized thing. His character he created on-air was a “base dude” that I had nothing in common with, as strippers sat on his lap in-studio and pretended to have sex with him.

Limbaugh was known in real-life as the same nerdy, shy guy off the air by everyone who knew him. Yet his fans didn’t believe that to be true. Even when he disclosed this fact in personal interviews. Even when his wife would talk about his shy temperament, off-mic. His fans didn’t want to hear the reality of Rush Limbaugh. They preferred to buy his tough-guy raging-grandpa act all the way to the bank.

I was told by those who worked for his organization that Limbaugh was initially uncomfortable with his fans believing he was actually his radio character—at least for a time, until the money kept rolling in. Then he simply pretended he WAS the character.

Stern and Limbaugh both played a disrupter on radio that earned them millions upon millions of sponsor dollars.

The difference between Stern and Limbaugh was that Stern pushed social norms by pretending to have overtly sexual encounters in his studio, on air. He talked about body parts. He swore. He was vulgar. His was cultural defiance. Stern played on people’s sexual repression. At the time, it was shocking to listen to.

Limbaugh, in contrast, played on a different kind of repression—that of political ideology. He created his shock value by appealing to those who felt their conservative values were being overrun—by the likes of folks like fellow shock-jocker Stern.

While stern spun fictitious tales of him sleeping with four strippers at once, Limbaugh spun fictitious tales of deep-seated conspiracy and government deceit. He played on people’s paranoia, their fears of being left out of the “American Dream”, and though he wasn’t swearing like Stern, or having porn stars sit in his lap—he hissed the kind of thoughts that no one was caught dead saying out loud, opinions on race, religion, immigration, on being a white American—Limbaugh was simply parroting the “good ol boy” chats around the water cooler, in the way that Stern was parroting the “dude” talks in the locker room.

You’ll note there was no such thing as a female shock-jock in the 90’s. A few tried to moderate success, but it required a singular lens, a particular vulgarity and verbal ugliness that bordered on abusive—that didn’t really read well coming from women, due to the sexist double-standards of the 90’s. Men could be sexually promiscuous. If women had stated on-air that they were sleeping with four men at once— they’d be dropped by advertisers. Men could snark their political opinions on-air and call people “sheep”. If women did that, they’d be deemed a “bitch” and dropped by advertisers.

Women did better with this “shock-value” in the TV scape, with the feminine side-eye and steely-cold glares, cat fights, and backbiting gossip.

Those scathing shade-tossing subtleties are hard to create on radio.

The 90’s shock-jock phenomenon was a big turning point in media. Who would listen to the slap-in-the-face messages of Stern and Limbaugh?

As it turned out — everyone.

The difference between Stern and Limbaugh as time went on is that Stern rode the wave of sexually shocking, until the wave got awkward. He sensed times changing. He rolled his tone with the times, still staying edgy yet letting go of the same shock-jock-sex tricks that launched his show fifteen years prior.

Stern was an entertainer, a millionaire on Sirius XM, being one of the first radio jocks to make the transfer to satellite broadcast, paving the way for online podcasts everywhere. He wanted to stay relevant, and riding a mid-90’s gimmick for too long will relegate anyone to yesterday’s news.

Limbaugh, on the other hand, doubled down on his 90’s schtick, because his particular gimmick had been clamped down in a pressure-cooked suppressed boil since the Civil War.

Limbaugh stayed the shock-jock course, becoming more extreme as the years passed, barking his fictitious fear stories that were more bizarre as each decade clicked by, where vaccines were full of nano-technology that would infect your brain, and immigrants were the planted-enemy laced with secret terrorists who were here to destroy the American Way of Life. His battle cry to his army, as he’d refer to his fans, was: “I will tell you what to think and when to think.”

As times shifted, Limbaugh’s message didn’t. Because since Lincoln overcame the seditionists, the seditionists still resented it, hundreds of years later, with now differing faces and names and people to blame for the failing late-stage capitalism that has created the economic disparity in our nation.

Both Limbaugh and Stern’s message was always about liberating the self from cultural norms; Stern and Limbaugh both sent the message of “don’t let anyone put you in a box”.

In this process, Stern’s tone was a personal message to every listener—be yourself. Set yourself apart. Be an individual. Don’t let anyone tell you what to do or think. Be free.

Limbaugh’s message in this same process was nearly exactly the opposite—find your army. Bank together in the truth I’m telling you. I will tell you what to think. Prepare for a war.

They were both famous 90’s shock-jocks. But they weren’t the same.

We barely even hear about Howard Stern anymore. He’s still around doing his thing, with a dedicated listenership of around 10 millions folks— yet he has stepped out of the business of shock-ugliness, as he’s matured, and become more of a regular normal-edgy host these days. His fan base doesn’t need to be screamed at, or told what to think. Especially in this day and age, where ugliness is an everyday media occurrence. Rage is no longer taboo, or special, or rare, thus interesting. In 2024, shock is tiring. Stern rolled with his audience’s need

Limbaugh also rolled with his audience’s needs, a group who had not tired of the indignant rage. Instead, they found it a unifying battle-cry. He ramped up his made-up stories of doom and gloom and conspiracy and fear, amassing an enormous fan-base-turned-voter-base—and was awarded a congressional mental of honor by former President Donald Trump for his 40+ years in laying the groundwork for what became known as “Rush’s Soldiers”.

Limbaugh affected his followers with the Orson-Wells-style made up-stories of a shy radio guy, wearing the costume of a raging grandpa character who knows best, trying to keep 40 mil a year in advertising; his fans saw the Power of The Great Wizard of Oz. Those of us who worked in the industry saw the little man behind the curtain who knew how to pull the lever and speak onto the microphone.

Stern had fans that lived vicariously through his fictitious in-studio stunts with porn stars. Limbaugh had devotees who went on to run for office to liberate the country from the fictitious deep state.

They are not the same.

Over the years, I came to visit with folks who worked on Limbaugh’s show. It’s no secret that Rush Limbaugh was a big conservative. However, just like any other performer playing a character —he didn’t believe most of the stories he told on air.

His former production folk told me stories of how, for a time at least when he truly became mainstream and wasn’t just the “midnight-broadcast-guy”, that Limbaugh struggled with how literally his fans took his histrionic stories of conspiracy and government manipulation. It’s surprised even him.

He wondered if he was doing the right thing.

I asked one of these folks why, then, he kept on with his bizarre messaging , if he didn’t feel good about it. The person said—and I’ll never forget this:

“He kept being told by his producers that people believed this stuff anyway, and they did. So why not be the one to take home the check on it? If it wasn’t him, it would be someone else.”

And that’s true. Tucker Carlson picked up the mantle, and ran with it.

Toward the end of Limbaugh’s career, he suffered severe hearing loss. I don’t think that’s accidental; when any of us are saying things we don’t believe, after awhile, the psyche will tune it out, any way it can. Even going deaf to the self.

Now, media is in a free-fall of the new “shock jock” application— semi-subtle, spin-cycle, click-bait headlines. It’s a different tactic but the same old desperate grab for advertising dollars in a world whose cash flow is now drying up. Even the New York Times, a once-revered publication, has plummeted to the lowest common denominator with headlines that polarize so that indigence and anger the. drives the reader to simply open an article. Once clicked, the media source can sell “engagement” to advertisers, even if the article is never read.

We are living in a world where money is becoming harder to come by as unfettered corporate greed has swept the USA and other first-world countries. Once fiercely gate-kept, the distribution of information on media is now free and plentiful, thanks to the Internet.

Also, thanks to the Internet, the spread of disinformation is rampant.

It appears that news providers in our modern world walk a fine line between observing the click-potential of hysteria-posting, and simply reporting current events. It’s my observation that many once-storied media outlets are now failing that line-walk. If these networks and periodicals were an inebriated person pulled over by a policeman, and forced to walk that line, they’d be on such a stumble that they’d end up in cuffs, in the backseat of the squad car.

Perhaps the shock-jock phenomenon of the 90’s was the beginning of an experiment on which we can bring a conclusion, now based upon 30+ years of data.

We now know that culturally, humans are attracted to something shocking, for a moment.

We now know that over time, people wear-out on the constant hippocampus-triggering by trauma and fear. The adrenal system just can’t handle constant stimulation.

We now know that people’s brain patterns and brain chemistry can be altered by continual hippocampus-triggering, so that the brain will begin to “crave” the trigger, to create the chemicals—much like a person addicted to meth then craves the meth in the brain structure.

We now know that advertisers, media, and product manufacturers take advantage of this hippocampus-triggering, in the same way food manufacturers take advantage of the way that the human brain becomes addicted to sugar—thus resulting in countless US Food manufacturers increasing the addition of sugar into their products by 10x.

We also observe in the USA a spike in depression, suicide, anxiety, and hopelessness, which has skyrocketed since the 1990’s.

From this data, one could surmise that having the hippocampus triggered on a regular basis may be a staggering contributor to the mental health decline in the USA. Though correlation is not causation, at times—a duck is simply a duck.

Perhaps with this knowledge, we can choose to make differing choices in how we observe our media, and moreover, observe our potential hippocampus-addiction to trauma and shock.

Are we awakening to meet the day with hope and peace?

Or do we turn to our phones, and seek the next headline?

Only we can break the cycle.

Advertisers and money follow human trends. Yet we have been allowing the trend to lead the humans.

The question would be: have we shocked ourselves into permanent hysteria? Where our collective hippocampus will constantly crave shock and terror to feel “normal”?

I don’t believe so. Because I sit here, with the sun on my face, listening to the birds chirp, while I type these thoughts—I choose to observe that it’s a beautiful day.