So I'm looking over my RSS feeds on my page to see what the latest headlines are for today and I see an article called "Group To Protest Outside of CEO of BET's House to Demand End of Negative Images". All in all it is basically about a group going to protest over the commercialization and use of negative images of black men and women in the media. They say that people need to be aware of how influential the media is on the public and want them to be more responsible.

It is true that there is a lot of power in the media. It has shaped and molded the world in many ways. However, what people fail to understand is that nothing in advertising, promotions, etc, is done without some type of movement, trend, fad already existing in the population. They don't make the trends, they just broadcast them. There are scouts out a public schools, in malls, everywhere covertly polling the public for the latest trends, saying, etc. They look at what the people are doing to create their ads and reach their target market. Remember the goal of a lot of these media outlets is to reach as many people as they can. If what they are showing didn't appeal to a vast majority of the people, then they wouldn't waste their times putting it out there. Now this could very much so be a chicken and the egg type debate. Is it the media that makes us do what we do, or are they just a reflection of what is already going on? I don't really care at this point. I know marketing. I know that if the people were to stop buying, stop acting ignorant, put clothes on and show respect for themselves, the marketing execs would see this as a new emerging trend and more ads, videos, etc would begin to reflect what the people are doing.

I say that to say this. Instead of putting all of your energy trying to change how the media portrays black people, why not try and change how you are portraying yourself every day. If they see that what they are doing no longer reaches the people they are targeting, they will have to change their methods. In the end it's all about money. You want to affect change, you find away to affect their profit. Until then all this pointless protest is just that. Pointless.