<blockquote>"The whole game that our culture is playing is that nothing really happens unless its in a newspaper. [...] And so our children begin to feel that they don't exist authentically unless they get their names in the papers, and the fastest way of getting your name in the papers is to commit a crime. Then you'll be photographed and you'll appear in court and everybody will notice you. It really happened if it was recorded - in other words, if you shout and there doesn’t come back an echo, then it didn’t happen. Its a real hang up.“</blockquote>

From "Out of Your Mind" - a series of lectures recorded by Alan Watts in the late 1960s. Perhaps in the 1980s or 1990s he would have talked about getting your face on television instead of your name in the newspapers. Surely today, he'd be talking about being in people's social media feeds. But the story stays the same - the insight here isn't really about 'media'- its about people.