David Brinkley - "Most of the time, nothing is happening."

"People have the illusion that all over the world, all the time, all kinds of fantastic things are happening; when in fact, over most of the world, most of the time, nothing is happening." - David Brinkley

The public promotes the illusion that the world is filled with interesting occurrences.

For the most part, there's actually a distinct rarity of exciting, memorable, new elements. One of the most abundant resources of all is tediousness, repetitiveness, and the mundane. We can easily observe how that's the case--and yet, the public keeps on telling us that it isn't.

The public's presentation of what the world is will give you a very inaccurate sense of what the world really is. The public circulates a representation of the world that is extremely misleading in many ways, and not particularly enlightening. On the other hand, our close, meaningful observations of the world, though potentially misleading as well, also have the potential to be extremely enlightening.

News, biographies, biopics,, documentaries, even conversations--these, to a major extent, are actually works of fiction. Even if such works have their basis in facts, there is still a very significant element of fiction that might now be evident from a superficial view. The filtering out of certain elements, the spin put on other elements--these can have an effect that is far more significant than we might think. Ultimately, most non-fiction is far more fictional than we suppose.

Fiction is, for the most part, intended to produce certain effects on people. It's not intended to be especially educational or accurate. A show like Friends is carefully crafted to have certain effects on the viewer. The objective is to make the viewer be entertained, laugh, get used to and like the characters, feel comfortable, come across something that's mostly familiar, track the progression of a plot and its resolution, label people certain ways, become engrossed in a certain flavor or culture of the show, etc. Most "non-fictional" works are surprising similar to Friends in the sense that they also are carefully crafted to produce a certain effect on people.