The Effects Debate

What different effects does Charlie Brooker say repeated visions of middle class lifestyle is having on British people?

Over time our perception of having a good quality of life is to match that of celebrities. We are exposed to these "lifestyles" through the media such as adverts, programmes and magazines and this has led to us believing that we must follow this lifestyle by purchasing lavish and expensive goods such as the hyped-up goods we see advertised in the exaggerated commercial breaks.

TV programmes such as Gossip Girl and Sex & The City create a vision that life is full of 'beautiful' looking people having arguments about who has the best dress or boyfriend and when they try to touch on truthful and realistic scenarios they manage to remove all seriousness by deploying a single-minded view to which the audience is glued to.

News-agents are full of magazines with large bold headlines displaying who has had plastic surgery or who is splitting up with their husband because he was sleeping with someone else. All these magazines are displaying very inferior blemishes to such a large scale that people literally judge a book by its cover (magazine in this case).

British people have become so attached to the effects that the medias representation of middle class lifestyle it has become a necessity to better others and even family and friends. This leads to British people not having a realistic perception of life and being unable to comprehend with real life scenarios.