‘Digital Drugs’ and the sad state of TV journalism

Yep, this video is hilarious, and not only because it’s completely out of touch with reality. It’s hilarious because it parodies contemporary journalism better than The Onion or Stephen Colbert could hope to. Here’s why:

  • Several of the people interviewed hadn’t heard of the phenomenon before being interviewed, but got to talk about it on TV anyway.
  • Everyone interviewed came to the conclusion that this “drug” is harmful and will lead to real-world drug use.
  • No context whatsoever given to binaural beats, a technology that dates back to 1839.
  • No explanation about how binaural beats even work. Seriously, at least read the Wikipedia entry.
  • The sentence “I heard it was, like, some weird demons and stuff through a iPod or something” was filmed. At some point the producer decided to include this sentence in the story, and that producer wasn’t working for Comedy Central.

It’s pretty obvious the team behind this story has no idea how to use the Internet, but if you haven’t come to the conclusion check this out:

Yep, that’s right: they’re using IE 6. You can clearly see YouTube telling these people to upgrade or switch their browser, but they don’t know what that means…and are too busy using the amazing power of journalism to rid the web of virtual drugs.

Good job, News 9 Oklahoma City! You’ve demonstrated in three minutes just how close Idiot America‘s come to taking over our lives.