I’m wondering about programmes like “The weakest link” or these talkshows where people talk in a loose manner and the host is paid to throw in nasty putdowns. Some people defend these shows, by saying something like: “They’re showing something which is also true about human nature”. So, these shows would work like astringents. Those who enjoy them, are suffering from sacharrine overdose, from watching neat Hollywood movies and detective television series. Mainstream Hollywood only deals with mainstream reality. It leaves great wildernesses unexplored – pure greed and nastiness ( “The Weakest Link”), the joy of seeing a starlet being put down in a talk show are just some nearer approaches of these vast prairies.

The mainstream audience is aware something is missing from the stuff it is rationed, which is supposed to represent its tastes. Chips and hamburgers are nice, but it also wants pickles, thousand year eggs, Sichuan pepper. I used to think, with dread, that after decades of being fed the standard stuff, the audience would have been conditioned to like only that ( we are talking about the mainstream audience, the neat big block of the population). Mass production culture was to engender Mass production man. What went wrong with the corporate politburo’s indoctrination programme?

Maybe the fault lies with television itself. It is like a salesman endlessly, 24 hour, 7 day a week wedging its foot in your door. Its grab for people’s attention, which started 60 years ago , has become more and more desperate, with standards reaching new abysses every year. While sinking in the mud, the beast has thrown up to the surface some things which the audience should not have gained access to – odd sensations.

It could also have to do with internet. Through email many people have actually started enjoying expressing themselves in a written form. I remember when I was small, if someone would go to live abroad, his friends would tell him “Well , take care. You know I’m not very good at writing…”. Writing letters was considered bothersome. After two or three awkward attempts, people would fall on to the yearly christmas card. But with email, people do write, and many even enjoy it. Of course, they send each other endless jokes and photos but still, a lot of writing does go on. And that opens new rooms in the brain, it starts enjoying odd turns of the phrase, puns, allusions, bold assertions, what if’s.

Another extraordinary phenomenon: blogs. Who would have thought people , yes, standard issue people, , would regularly put their ruminations and doggerel on the web for the whole world to see ? Instead of just watching Dallas, they would write what they thought of the last episode, and disagree with someone else about it, and discuss the thing over ?

Maybe programmes like Skipe are not so good in this respect. Email is getting out of fashion, blogs could also be in danger. You can just talk yourself silly now. You can even have these making- up conversations with your lover where at first everything one says is followed by a long silences to think and digest and prepare a reply, and after three hours, when everything’s repaired, both are mumbling fervent promises and kissing the phone receiver– and one is in Cleveland and the other in Nauru. It is great for lovers, but it does cut in the woods of written language. SMS also doesn’t work good in this respect because it represents a sort of fast food version of written language, very compact and emphasizing short punchy lines over deeper expressions.

Unless an equilibrium is reached, just like the normal mail has survived the arrival of internet. Except that the mail has become a strictly utilitarian medium, there are not so many love letters anymore. Maybe email will also become increasingly associated with communicating on serious matters, or with people you are not so close to. That will be a loss because people will de-learn all the skills they had acquired in the 1990’s in expressing intimate thoughts in writing.

What about blogs ? Telephone is great for reaching to the people you know, but blogs and discussion forums enable one to meet new people – and the beauty of it is that, unlike cocktails, where you first see a pretty head, and say “hi” and then don’t know what to say next, here you know right away that the other person in the forum is into thai food, which is wonderful if you like this too. The only problem is that you don’t know whether you are talking to a pretty head or to a convict in Sing Sing.

The great battle of our times is about meaning. The more the web is like a school playground at noon, with children playing everywhere, the more hope there is. But if the schoolmaster succeeds in having drill maneuvers at noon, so that children can get physical exercise in the correct manner, instead of wasteful and dangerous playing activities, then we are truly lost. Or if the children themselves, instead of playing around, just sit there fiddling at GameBoys, then we are also lost.