Irene and Hype

picture from noaa.gov

picture from philly.com

As Hurricane Irene bears down on my hometown, I’m having this little internal debate going on in my head.  

Hype.

For whatever psychological reason, I abhor hype. I have an instant negative reaction to hype. I instinctively avoid anything that is hyped; the top movies, TV shows, and other entertainment events, as soon as they’re dubbed the “next big thing”, I instantly decide to not be involved. In the sports world, I turn off the radio whenever I start to hear a debate about whether this player truly is “the best ever”, or that team is a “must see”. I’m not sure why I’m this way, but that will have to be a topic for another day.  (I do have to admit the concept of Flavor Flav being the hype-man for Public Enemy is about the only hype topic that I actually enjoy.  It’s comedically ironic. But that too is another topic for another day.)

The news media (or the “newsmatainment industry” as my long-time friend and fellow blogger calls it, accurately so) is very guilty of hyping everything. The latest health scares, terrorism scares, product recalls, general advice, etc., all gets hyped many time to the point of near widespread hysteria.  The swine flu – remember that?  There are two things that bother me about this, if I ignore the fact that cynically speaking, I (and my fellow blogger) think this is all done for ratings, which equal advertising dollars, which equal increased profits. First, many things that are hyped I tend to believe are over-hyped, where just a simple statement of facts, or a simple transparency of opinion, could accurately get the message across that the topic-at-hand is one that should be paid attention to. But, second, when there is something that probably truly should be hyped, how many times does that issue get downplayed as “just another overblown issue?” The “boy who cried wolf” parable…

And weather reporting is right up there with some of the biggest hype machines out there. I have always been a weather geek (though for years in the closet…). In my lifetime, I have only been through two hurricanes:  Gloria in the mid-80s and Floyd in the late-90s. Gloria was widely hyped across the entire Philly area, so much so that schools in my hometown were closed that day ahead of the storm. (For those who don’t know, my hometown is about 100 miles inland of the Jersey Shore.) Gloria amounted to be nothing more than a rainy day…I don’t even think there was a lot of flooding.  Floyd was the opposite; that storm was not hyped at all, and it caught a lot of people off guard. My hometown was flooded out on three sides of town.  My office ended up closing at 2PM that day and fortunately my trip home was into the only non-flooded side of town. My neighbor wasn’t as lucky, however; she had to leave her car stranded at a flooded intersection and her car was severely damaged.  

So, I have mixed feelings about the hype surrounding Hurricane Irene. Fortunately, being in Western New York, I have an outsiders’ view of all this, but I have many friends and family that live right in the storm’s path.  As most people know, there have been many evacuations along the Atlantic Coast, but there are a few people who refuse to leave. A fire chief of one of the shore towns stated, "Units are driving around making the announcement [that] as soon as the storm truly hits, you're on your own.” And as much as I tend to be anti-hype, there is some times where maybe hype is warranted, and maybe this is one of them. If I think of this storm and the hype potential:

HURRICANE IRENE	Best Case Scenario (little damage)	Worst Case Scenario (massive damage)
Hype?	Inconvenience	Hopefully minimized because of the hype
No Hype?	No harm no foul	Are we mourning the unprepared?

So…with the memories of Hurricane Katrina still fresh in everyone’s minds, maybe this time, I am OK with the hype surrounding Hurricane Irene. If only I could get the cynical picture out of my mind…the picture where the profit ticker at the Weather Channel is spinning wildly upwards…

…and I do sincerely hope that my family, friends, and everyone else along the East Coast heed the warnings and more importantly, are safe and smart through whatever occurs with this storm.