Around twelve years ago, I was traveling around and sitting in an airport situation....CNN was on the terminal TV system, and I reached a point on maximum acceptance' of the CNN lecture. I plugged in my smart-phone ear-plug, and turned on some Woody Guthrie tunes....to mute-out the lecture.
I started to notice over the next year or two....I was hitting the mute-button on the TV a good bit, and my wife got irritated at my mute-rate.
Riding in a car? I got to muting news pieces just as much.
I know that the national networks have the idea that people have their programming on....but I suspect if you gauged a thousand people....at least one-third of them are muting on a fairly regular basis.
All of this leads me to pronounce this 'crowd' as the new 'mute-generation'.
I can probably sit in some Baptist church today and mute the whole sermon if the guy has suddenly connected climate change to Moses, or social justice to that Paul-character in the New Testament.
I can be sitting there and watching some sports piece, and the second that they go to social justice, or lives matter chatter....I can hit that mute-button and leave it there for the duration of the show.
So where does this 'trend' lead onto?
I would suggest that month by month....more and more people join the mute-generation. Studios and networks have a feeling of accomplishment....that at least they left the TV on, and the program still stayed on....while the mute was progressing. This would be like watching an NFL game....with no sound. If a majority of viewers reached this level....you could just lay off the moderator/talking-heads, and give people plain raw NFL action, with no analysis.
I might go and suggest this is a pretty worrying situation....where a whole bunch of folks might be dismissed and looking for future employment.
In Star Trek Borg chatter....the comment would be: 'We are Borg, We will mute you'.
