The Media's role vs The People Around You in the Development of Personality (continued)

I have used caps here to place emphasis on certain parts of the arguments, they do not exist to offend or confront. I may carry this across to further rounds where the same idea applies Rebuttals for mass media arguments 1) So you concede that hypnosis through mass media would be ineffectual. I agree that what dictates a person's belief in information is in how acceptant they are of information but I would like to push that this in no way negates copying the actions of the people around you as this is also a method of information intake, and one which a child is far less likely to disagree with, actions speak louder than words. So I shall also introduce this aspect into the argument here: -doing as your parents and peers do will come far more naturally to you than distancing yourself from these people. -seeing someone do something right in front of you will have a greater effect on your personality than seeing somebody to which you cannot directly relate doing the same thing through a piece of media. 2) evidence please, whilst I understand that evidence will exist I cannot argue against a statement without being able to see the foundations. Many things that people provide in fallacies are of opinion, if a friend advertises a good game to me and I see an advert for a different one I know I'd be far more likely to pick the one my friend recommended as they have a greater understanding of me as a person rather than as a target audience so, in turn, I am sure that any fallacies that they may have about the game are not likely to be ones that will ruin the experience for me. The same applies to other topics and other people, unless you have a large degree of mistrust for your peers you can trust that the fallacies they portray will not have a negative affect on your life and you will allow these fallacies to influence your personality. rebuttals for interpersonal relationship arguments 1) statement, no evidence. if the answer were that clear we wouldn't be debating. 2) I do not see how this breaks the rules of unfairness, the world is not a controlled experiment and you cannot force people to be undergo large influence through the media. the fact is that you DO have the choice to change channel or turn off the TV. If you turn on to a channel and you don't like what's on then you change channel. If something challenges your core beliefs you will dislike it, if something only has minor challenges to your beliefs then it can only have a minor influence. A large part of any debate lies not only in strengthening your own arguments, but in pointing out the weaknesses of your opponent's. this is a large weakness towards the effect of media and I would appreciate it if you would not attempt to hide it behind the rules. As it goes, it would only be against the rules if I were to say something along the lines of: parents think that the child is watching too much TV and the people around the subject remove the influence of media. by my interpretation at least, since this is a self subjected and fairly common act it cannot be discounted. People can, and do, remove all influence of their peers. but this only occurs in extreme cases and often due to large trauma/ bad parenting. therefore it is quite a rare phenomena and actually does go against the earlier guidelines we set out before beginning this debate, please do not compare the 2 arguments the likelihood of occurrence is vastly different. Like me arguing that an Amish child could never be influence by media until they're outside of the target age set in debate 1. Purely comparative arguments. 1) untrue, media AND peer influence won. Had their peers told them that the food was bad and that they shouldn't eat it the result would likely have been much different as they would have agreed with their peers so that they could better fit in. 2) "The media is an excellent place to get that support when your friends won"t." Just to dissect this sentence and send it back at you. IF the people around you were to refuse to influence you then the media would have the overwhelming effect. but if the media tells you that you deserve something then your family and friends tell you not to act, you would find yourself in the minority when following the media. The media gives support to beliefs but without further backing and the right foundations you will not be prepared to build on the ideas that the media give you. further superiority of the media... just no. 1) "would just automatically be assumed that if a person is a Christian, all of their peers would be Christian too" Incorrect, if I were at any point to argue that you are friends only with people who's beliefs are EXACTLY the same as yours then I would be negating their ability to influence you at all. all that is required are one or two points on which you can agree and the disagreements will then be worked out between you, thereby affecting your beliefs. for example, an atheist gamer could very well be friends with a Christian one. my standpoint on this is as such: If you have nothing in common with someone, you will be unable to connect and will not be friends. If you have everything in common with someone the need to communicate with them is removed and you wouldn't be able to form an effective friendship until your personality had been influenced enough to have at least some disagreements. In this impossible case, completely refuting the idea of individuality, media would have complete control over your personality development. I am yet to hear of two people with absolutely no contrasting views however. "Some of the subjects that could have never taken off if we remained subject to peer influence include affirmative action, the women"s movement, hatred toward communism, et al, and now the influence of homosexuality. That"s it, there I said it, the approval of homosexuality is being generated primarily by the most powerful influencing source, the media." all of the above, with the possible exclusion of homosexuality, started with groups of peers meeting and finding other people with similar beliefs to surround themselves with. This would be a peer influence. In fact, had it not been for groups of homosexuals standing up for themselves do you honestly believe that the media would have convinced people to be acceptant. do you think that the media would have the stories that it needs to push for acceptance if people did not first find peer groups within which one of them influenced the others to go public with their experiences? "Knowing that Ellen is gay when you watch the show, is an agreement to be influenced by the ideas of a homosexual. " most are acceptant of homosexuality, the fact that you think it is strange " to be influenced by the ideas of a homosexual" is odd in itself. she is a person, influencing other people. there is nothing else to it, I argue that anything that happens around you will influence you and that people who watch her show, and the media in general WILL be influenced, the arguments that I offer only oppose the idea that the media>peer influence or parental influence. "If she were truly a conservative wouldn't she use the more constitutionally correct term" this really makes no difference to the debate, who cares if she wishes to surround herself with hypocrisy, it's her life after all. "Can you imagine America becoming nation where the government imparts its power to the people" That's kind of the whole point of voting, so you can get the power used how you want it to be used. "rather than remaining a country where it derives its power from the people?" Where else is it supposed to get it's power from? Thousands of her so called "conservative" listeners are having ... which affects our personality, came from the media and not from the people around us? finally an argument relative to the debate. How many people listen to this and try to seize control of their country? an EXTREME minority act on her words.