# The Medium is the Massage? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cecil's Columns/Staff Reports\ **Created:** [July 28, 2003, 12:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-medium-is-the-massage/191420 "2003-07-28T12:33:18Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![DeepField](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e8c25b/32.png) [@DeepField](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DeepField)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2003, 12:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-medium-is-the-massage/191420/1 "2003-07-28T12:33:18Z")
I am reading the last posted column [Medium and message revisited: Was Marshall McLuhan a visionary?](http://www.straightdope.com/columns/030725.html) and I see a typo > [@](#): > > …and _The Medium Is the **Massage** : An Inventory of Effects_ (with Quentin Fiore, 1967). that may be an indication that somebody up there is dreaming with a vacation… ---
**Author:** ![Xgemina](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/b5e925/32.png) [@Xgemina](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Xgemina)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2003, 2:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-medium-is-the-massage/191420/2 "2003-07-28T14:10:24Z")
**DeepField** that is the exact thing that **daniel801** said in his thread titled _McLuhan’s Reflexology_ at [http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=200115](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=200115) Thanks to **K43** it turns out the title of the book really is The Medium is the **Massage**. Check it out yourself on Amazon: [http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1584230703/qid=1059401831/sr=1-1/ref=sr\_1\_1/102-6984315-2423313?v=glance&s=books](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1584230703/qid=1059401831/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/102-6984315-2423313?v=glance&s=books) ---
**Author:** ![Biffy\_the\_Elephant\_Shrew](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e47c2d/32.png) [@Biffy\_the\_Elephant\_Shrew](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Biffy_the_Elephant_Shrew)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2003, 3:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-medium-is-the-massage/191420/3 "2003-07-28T15:43:50Z")
Well, that explains Slug’s illustration…I thought he was just being a wise guy. ---
**Author:** ![DeepField](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e8c25b/32.png) [@DeepField](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DeepField)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2003, 5:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-medium-is-the-massage/191420/4 "2003-07-28T17:20:37Z")
I am sorry! :smack: Just **after** I submitted my post, I thought that Cecil should have been above typos, and after a two-click-search I confirmed it. It seems that a fourth thing should enter the Chinese proverb: > [@](#): > > “There are three things that come not back: The spoken word, the sped arrow and the lost opportunity”. the submitted post… ---
**Author:** ![dragonfly98](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/7bcc69/32.png) [@dragonfly98](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dragonfly98)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2003, 10:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-medium-is-the-massage/191420/5 "2003-07-28T22:36:32Z")
This posted column is pure unadulterated bullsh\*te. May i respectfully suggest that if one truly believes that 99% of what McLuhan wrote was horseapples, then maybe you should take a good look at yourself. And before you bother to flame me, i will not respond. Sorry kids. ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2003, 12:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-medium-is-the-massage/191420/6 "2003-07-29T00:24:15Z")
Not even to support what you’re asserting (without any apparent support)? Nice drive-by. ---
**Author:** ![dragonfly98](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/7bcc69/32.png) [@dragonfly98](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dragonfly98)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2003, 2:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-medium-is-the-massage/191420/7 "2003-07-29T02:22:20Z")
> [@](#): > > Not even to support what you’re asserting (without any apparent support)? Why would i want to do that? i am merely expressing my _opinion,_ but obvioulsy i hit a nerve. 😉 The same can be said for Cecil’s apparent and apparently hollow ruminations/conjecture. If he thinks 99% of what McLuhan had to say is bullsh\*te, why did he even go past the first page? Boggles the mind doesn’t it. 😃 Speaking of drive-byes, you also deserve equal recognition. ---
**Author:** ![CurtC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ce73a5/32.png) [@CurtC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CurtC)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2003, 4:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-medium-is-the-massage/191420/8 "2003-07-29T04:03:46Z")
So you think that 100% of what McLuhan said was BS? Or did Cece peg it too high? I can’t tell what you think from these two posts. ---
**Author:** ![dragonfly98](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/7bcc69/32.png) [@dragonfly98](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dragonfly98)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2003, 4:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-medium-is-the-massage/191420/9 "2003-07-29T16:09:30Z")
i have a friendly suggestion: Why don’t you read the body of McLuhan’s works, or at least the two volumes in question, and tell me what you think? i was attempting to point out that this column was unnecessarily dumbed down. In fact all are, but this was in especially bad taste IHMO. Trying to tell what somebody else thinking and putting words in somebody elses mouth can be considered one and the same in certain cases. i think this may qualify. i obviously disagreed with Cecil’s crass opinionating. It only follows that i disagree with the 99% figure pulled out of nowhere, and would peg it lower. There i did the math for you CurtC. You can thank me later. Enough of this i say. ---
**Author:** ![LBloom](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/898d66/32.png) [@LBloom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LBloom)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2003, 6:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-medium-is-the-massage/191420/10 "2003-07-29T18:19:15Z")
Marshall McLuhan was a catholic and worked at a major Catholic college. He was close to the Jesuits. He became famous for a remark that he really didn’t make namely “the global village.” That remark went a long way to helping the one worldist view of the world take hold. Since he exposed Northrup Frye as “a British Freemason” then is it any wonder given all these facts as to whether or not he was a Vatican agent? ---
**Author:** ![DeepField](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e8c25b/32.png) [@DeepField](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DeepField)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2003, 7:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-medium-is-the-massage/191420/11 "2003-07-29T19:23:53Z")
I think i read that “ **…before you bother to flame me, i will not respond.** ”, didn’t I? ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2003, 7:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-medium-is-the-massage/191420/12 "2003-07-29T19:23:58Z")
**dragonfly98** , I don’t know if you noticed, but Cecil is limited to a few hundred words. If he wanted to present all of McLuhan’s ideas completely accurately, he would have needed to fill books. Are you saying that the only proper response to the question “What’s the deal with McLuhan’s ideas”, the only valid response is to say “Read all his books”? Because that approach wouldn’t give a person much time to learn anything at all. There exists a place for summaries. And **LBloom** , I don’t see your point. McLuhan was a Catholic, therefore he must be a Vatican agent? If the Pope were trying to take over the world and every Catholic were a Vatican agent, then he would have succeeded ages ago. ---
**Author:** ![rfs001](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e19b73/32.png) [@rfs001](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rfs001)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2003, 10:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-medium-is-the-massage/191420/13 "2003-07-29T22:01:59Z")
I also posted this on the other McLuhan thread so skip it if you read it there. I believe it’s a shame that McLuhan is no longer taught in school. Genius may be far too generous a word to use in describing him, but I’ve also found that most people who trash McLuhan never read him (as one poster put it, his style is ponderous). How can you attack a philosopher without reading his work? What McLuhan did do better than anyone before him, as I see it, was to make it plain to people that they were, in fact, being HIGHLY manipulated by mass media. What I find peculiar about today’s 20-30 year olds is that they seem unaware of this. Yes, they recognize that advertising is “hype,” but they do not seem to understand the significance of the McLuhan message, which was far more than that. Nowadays, we educate young people in school classrooms with plenty of commercial messages (thanks to folks like Channel One, or Pepsi and Coke). Since we are starting the brainwashing of consumers at younger and younger ages and extending “The Message” to every physical space that they might occupy, the message becomes indistinguishable from the environment. This has obvious ramifications; that is what McLuhan was attempting to demonstrate. Some of his ideas might seem extreme at first glance (“The medium is the message” being one such example). He was trying to illustrate the idea that we become enraptured by the delivery technology so readily that we MISS (on a conscious level) the content of the message…yet the message seeps through subconsciously. I believe that there are large numbers of Americans (including some fairly well educated ones) who are virtually unaware of the extent to which advertising and marketing manipulation drives the choices that they make in their lives. However ponderous his style, the value of McLuhan’s work to me was in bringing a more sophisticated awareness to the way we experience mass media and pop culture. I think Cecil missed the boat on this one. I’ll bet he’s never read much of McLuhan, either. Maybe he’s been too manipulated by the media? \ ---
**Author:** ![wolf\_meister](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolf_meister/32/15202_2.png) [@wolf\_meister](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolf_meister)\ **Post date:** [July 31, 2003, 6:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-medium-is-the-massage/191420/14 "2003-07-31T06:31:38Z")
"I ulways thut that ze title wuz “The Medium Is the MASSAGE” Inspector Clousseau (I hope I typed in proper “Clousseau” phonetics) ---
**Author:** ![dougie\_monty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/439d5e/32.png) [@dougie\_monty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dougie_monty)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2003, 10:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-medium-is-the-massage/191420/15 "2003-08-01T22:26:13Z")
“Marshall McLuhan, What’re yew dewin’?” –Henry Gibson, 1969 😛 ---
**Author:** ![C\_K\_Dexter\_Haven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/b2d939/32.png) [@C\_K\_Dexter\_Haven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/C_K_Dexter_Haven)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2003, 2:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-medium-is-the-massage/191420/16 "2003-08-02T02:04:32Z")
Just a reminder from a friendly neighborhood Moderator: This is a place for a discussion of Cecil’s Columns, NOT a place for insulting each other. Name calling and nasty cracks are NOT appropriate for this forum. Not that I’m blaming anyone, just that we were skating a little close to the edge here. ---
**Author:** ![dragonfly98](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/7bcc69/32.png) [@dragonfly98](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dragonfly98)\ **Post date:** [August 5, 2003, 2:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-medium-is-the-massage/191420/17 "2003-08-05T14:26:49Z")
Understood Oh Mighty Moderator. > [@](#): > > I don’t know if you noticed, but Cecil is limited to a few hundred words. Well to be honest i don’t see the connection between the “99% if so and so’s work is horsefeathers” remark and the size of the column - whether it is a few hundred or a few thousand words in length. Admit it Cecil goofed on this one. > [@](#): > > Are you saying that the only proper response to the question “What’s the deal with McLuhan’s ideas”, the only valid response is to say “Read all his books”? No i’m not saying that at all. Where did you get that idea? It seems to me that Cecil’s inimitable style of glossing over subjects and pulling out the salient facts and pertinent details failed him on this effort. No more no less. But i agree with the above posters’ remark about Media Manipulation and how the underlying content is forced unto the subconscious mind. ---
**Author:** ![RM\_Mentock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e274bd/32.png) [@RM\_Mentock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RM_Mentock)\ **Post date:** [August 5, 2003, 2:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-medium-is-the-massage/191420/18 "2003-08-05T14:42:20Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by dragonfly98 \* > **Admit it Cecil goofed on this one.** I’m with the ones who’d say, read the books. That’s a good idea. However, I agree with Cecil. ---
**Author:** ![Irishman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/b487fb/32.png) [@Irishman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Irishman)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2003, 4:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-medium-is-the-massage/191420/19 "2003-08-08T04:50:30Z")
**dragonfly98** said: > [@](#): > > If he thinks 99% of what McLuhan had to say is bullsh\*te, why did he even go past the first page? Maybe because he didn’t decide it was bullshit until _after_ he read it? ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2016, 1:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-medium-is-the-massage/191420/20 "2016-09-23T01:45:29Z")
Bumped, because the column is back on the front page again. Thirteen years later, and the typo noted by the OP still hasn’t been fixed! [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-medium-is-the-massage/191420.md?page=2)