‘What’s been irrevocably harmed because of how it’s portrayed in the media?’ – 18 things that have been forever hurt by films and TV
We all know that films and TV shows like to portray a heightened sense of reality for dramatic effect, but it turns out this has unfortunate consequences.
All of this over the top media seems to have changed people’s perceptions of certain topics for the worse. And we know this because Exhausted_Skeleton was overwhelmed with comments when they put the following question to r/AskReddit:
‘What has been irrevocably harmed because of how it’s portrayed in the media?’
These top replies put the record straight…
1.
‘Blind people don’t want to touch your face.
‘My sister is blind and half the people I have introduced to her have asked if she needed to touch their face to see what they look like. She’s fucking blind why would she care about your bone structure she’s not making masks.
‘Portrayals of Helen Keller really did this one in. She wasn’t touching people’s faces to feel for what they looked like – she read lips with her fingers.’
-HeroinBob831
2.
‘CPR.
‘People think that CPR brings people back to life, when only 2% of people receiving basic CPR alone will survive. But alone is the key word, you keep doing CPR until the ambulance arrives and they start advanced CPR which has better chances of survival.
‘And when the person recovers from heart arrest they don’t gasp, open their eyes and start talking like normal. They might need weeks to recover and lots of physical therapy after they are discharged.’
-tortiesrock
3.
‘OCD is so different from how it’s portrayed, it’s not being “neat”, there’s many different types and they all involve extremely strong anxiety and the feeling that you’re the only person who can prevent something terrible.
‘It can also manifest as a swarm of uncontrollable, horrible thoughts you don’t want to have, which make you question if you’re a good person.’
-Heavy_Network_7736
4.
‘Jury trials. Because of “TV Forensics” every juror now expects the big smoking gun that puts every bad guy away, and that only happens less than half the time.’
-Repulsive-Exchange29
5.
‘Jaws was massively detrimental to shark conservation.’
NutsInMay96
5.
‘This isn’t the answer you were expecting but… the public library.
‘It’s an institution dedicated to providing free services to everyone regardless of age, gender, income, religion, or color. They provide so much more than books. You can use a computer, check out movies and music, get help with resumes and applying for social services benefits. Hell you can just sit and chill all day long and no one will bat an eye, but the media continues to harp on the “mean librarian” who shushes everyone.
‘I’ve spent over 15 years working in libraries. I have never once shushed a person.
‘The perception of what a library is and what it does is so incredibly outdated in the eyes of the media and because of this perception many people will miss out on all the free services.’
-meggerah
.
‘Hacking, it’s not nearly as flashy in real life’
-noisy_turquoise
8.
‘All those poor bastards who became architects because of the way tv and movies portrayed the career as some jet set playboy lifestyle.’
-darth_helcaraxe_82
9.
‘The plumbing profession. It’s a pretty high paying very stable career that is severely struggling to find and train new people largely because it’s been a joke in the media for decades’
-tacmed85
10.
‘The woman who was sent to the hospital by a McDonalds coffee. Discovery uncovered that McDs had trained employees to keep coffee at 180 F (around 20 degrees hotter than the industry standard at the time) AND that they had a pattern (700+ customer complaints over a time frame i can’t remember) of burning customers.
‘If you serve as much coffee as McDs does, it’s a statistical certainty that people are going to spill it sometimes. The jury found that continuing to serve coffee that hot even after multiple instances of people getting hurt was a breach of McDs responsibility to not injure their customers. That was the core fact of the case.
‘The woman initially asked for mcdonalds to cover her medical bills (she needed skin grafts), and mcdonalds offered an insultingly low compensation. It wasn’t until she was out of options that she decided to litigate.
‘Instead, media and pop culture depicted her as someone who spilled a little bit of coffee on herself and saw dollar signs. McDonalds put a lot of money into making sure this is the version of the story that became well known.’
-FerociousDiglett