Day 23: I might not be me

January 18, 2010

Since I was fifteen years old I have had a subscription to the magazine, Entertainment Weekly. Since then I read over seven hundred issues of some of the most hilarious and informative entertainment news that is out there. I literally pine for my new issue each week, waiting patiently sometimes for the mailman to do his delivers on Saturday afternoon. When I receive my issue, I sometimes read it immediately and other times I wait as if to not spoil the surprise. It has been fourteen years since I received my first issue and I can honestly say that I cannot imagine my life without it.

Which leads me to my topic for today. The only reason I know so much about what is going on in entertainment is because of the magazine. When someone asks me how something is, I always tell them what EW says about the movie/album/book. Sometimes I even tell them without letting them know, that it is not my opinion that I am sharing with them, but that of a magazine. This expression of opinion often leads to a discussion about the item, sometimes even an argument. During these arguments I almost always defend the magazines point of view, even if I have no real knowledge about the item that I am defending.

The same goes for films/music/books that I read about in the magazine and then go out and experience for myself. Their review of an item plays a large part into how I will ultimately feel about whatever it is I am analyzing. What I mean by this is, the better the review, the more likely I am to give it a chance. More specifically though, if something gets a good review and I do not personally like it, there is a much better chance of me giving it another try. I have done this so many times that I am confident if you want to make yourself like something, you truly can do it. If there is an album or a movie that gets an A, it drives me crazy if I don't like it.

The reason I am driving this point home so hard is because something has recently come to my attention. One night a couple of weeks ago I got into a discussion about a television show that I like. After about five minutes or so of talking about it, I found myself only saying terrible things about the show. After the discussion was over with, I thought about all the things that I had said about the show and was wondering why I had said them. After a couple of minutes I realized that everything I was saying was from this magazine. Not from a recent issue, from an issue probably close to ten years old now. This lead me to think about other arguments/discussions I had recently had with people and wondered how many other times I had said things that I didn't neccessarily believe in.

This lead me to the realization that perhaps my reading of Entertainment Weekly has not only supplied me with pointless entertainment news over the years, but has somehow molded a part of my personality. I would hate to think that I am some mindless drone who only learns his information from one source, but in some ways it is completely true. This is most accurately put on display when somebody trashes something the magazine has written. I will almost immediately come to the magazines defense and defend the argument as if it were my own opinion.

This is so sad to admit, but I know I have done this on dozen's of occasions. If this is all true(and I know it is), then what does that say about me as person? How can I be someone who blindly follows something as soulless as an entertainment magazine? Can I even consider myself an individual or am I just the living embodiment of the publication known to the world as Entertainment Weekly? I am like Time Warner's(EW's parent company) little doll, going around telling people what they should and should not buy. I am like a sleeper salesman who is so ingrained with what he is selling, that he doesn't even know when he is on/off the clock. I am making this much more dramatic then I should be, but in some ways this thought scares the hell out of me.

Why on earth would I let something like this happen and more importantly, if it's all true, is it even possible for me to go back? I of course have no idea what the answers to any of these questions are, but one thing is for certain; I know I won't find any of the answers in the next issue of Entertainment Weekly.