4 ms·

The difference that makes that much less logical being that in the West the government is not determining what people can watch, they're watching what they enjo

The difference that makes that much less logical being that in the West the government is not determining what people can watch, they're watching what they enjoy.

mcpackieh 3y ago
Western writers (usually) aren't taking direct orders from the government, but that doesn't mean they're impartial weather vanes that reveal currents in society but never try to manipulate (or fabricate) those social currents as they see fit.
- dotnet00 3y ago
  And yet that doesn't support these conspiracies you and thread OP want to believe in.
  - mcpackieh 3y ago
    What conspiracies are you talking about? You should read Manufacturing Consent by Noam Chompsky. Most of what seems to be a conspiracy in western media is not actually organized as a conspiracy, but is emergent behavior in a system in which individual actors have aligned incentives. Acting individually without coordination, people hire and promote people who think like them, and ape then adopt the beliefs of their superiors. I said usually western writers don't take direct orders from the government because sometimes they do, and this isn't even a secret. Hollywood lets the US military rewrite movies whenever they want access to military hardware and facilities. And during wartime, the US government employs writers to produce propaganda. Superhero comics in particular have their roots in overt war propaganda.
    - dotnet00 3y ago
      The conspiracies being your attempt to argue that the superhero movie fad is some absurd attempt at making billionaires look good. If you look for a conspiracy in everything, you're going to find it in everything. Entertainment is generally just entertainment and this sort of overanalysis of things to push an agenda has been part of what has made so much of modern entertainment so cookie cutter.
      - saiya-jin 3y ago
        Yeah but just with literally everything else in life, everything is way more complex than first glance suggests, interconnected and if you actually care to dig deeper, you find interesting stuff. Nobody sane argues western Illuminati is steering and manipulating everything and everybody towards desired future, yet mass media manipulation is extremely common practice, ie mr Murdoch and similar folks have significant powers. Also lets not forget that CIA was very active in Hollywood for many decades with light and not so light touches here and there, I mean its the propaganda tool for US hegemony and spreading western view on society, values, 'american dream' etc. If you want to shoot say an action movie with real US planes landing on real aircraft carriers, US navy will have non-trivial impact on your movie and its story (so most end up as over-patriotic to the point of being unwatchable for many non-US viewers). Its all natural and logical, all humans like to see or hear stories that make us feel good even if its not proper truth, much more than stories telling some ugly hard truths.
        norman_roman 3y ago
        [flagged]
      - mcpackieh 3y ago
        I just told you it's not a conspiracy, you're tilting at windmills. I have not proposed a conspiracy to create movies like this, I don't think there's a cabal of billionaires who dreamed up and coordinate this as a deliberate propaganda campaign. I assert that the Hollywood system creates movies like this because because of the way it is structured and the nature of making movies. People who fit the mold and are naturally inclined to make movies like this get promoted and given opportunities by like-minded people. People who don't jive with the crowd never have the opportunity to make movies of their own, because making movies (particularly blockbusters) requires access to a system with lots of capital and manpower. I'm not the one looking for conspiracies. You're looking for a conspiracy in what I'm saying so that you can dismiss it. Read Manufacturing Consent.
        dotnet00 3y ago
    - smolder 3y ago
      Chompsky makes a biting critique of the US military-industrial complex. It's a great book that I recommend everyone sink their teeth into at some point.
  - pessimizer 3y ago
    Op-Ed: Why does the Pentagon give a helping hand to films like ‘Top Gun’? https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2022-05-30/top-gun-maverick-memorial-day-tom-cruise-pentagon-propaganda https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2022-05-30/top-gun-mav... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theaters_of_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theaters_of_War Pay No Attention to the G-Man Behind the Curtain https://www.theatlantic.com/membership/archive/2018/03/pay-no-attention-to-the-g-man-behind-the-curtain/555839/ https://www.theatlantic.com/membership/archive/2018/03/pay-n... In the ‘90s the U.S. Government Paid TV Networks to Weave “Anti-Drug” Messaging Into Their Plot Lines. Here Are the Worst Examples. https://www.columnblog.com/p/in-the-90s-the-us-government-paid https://www.columnblog.com/p/in-the-90s-the-us-government-pa... Education Dept. paid commentator to promote law https://web.archive.org/web/20100722051019/http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2005-01-06-williams-whitehouse_x.htm https://web.archive.org/web/20100722051019/http://www.usatod... https://www.gao.gov/products/b-305368 https://www.gao.gov/products/b-305368
sdsd 3y ago
[flagged]
- dotnet00 3y ago
  You're too absorbed in your own cynicisim to see the obvious. There is hundreds of thousands of hours of all sorts of content added to the internet every day from all over the world. Western governments have nowhere near the sort of control over what their people can see to pull off anything anywhere near comparable to NK's attempts at controlling their people's entertainment.
  - c_crank 3y ago
    The whims of the morally aggressive Western elite substitute for heavy handed regulation from top down. Although recent moves have been made to try and institute a CCP style bureau of misinformation even in America.
    - dotnet00 3y ago
      While I agree that social media is way too aggressive with moral policing of content, I can still trivially watch any of the morally reprehensible stuff that would be banned from there.
- havelhovel 3y ago
  I guess I’m also pretty naive then. Got any examples of the US government dictating what people can watch through censorship on par with North Korea or even China?
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
jacquesm 3y ago
You watch from what's available.
- havelhovel 3y ago
  And in the West what’s available is the product of people making what they want to make with relatively few restrictions.
  - jpg1 3y ago
    No, you only are able to watch a tiny part of what is marketed for you. What doesn't get money doesn't get views.
    - devcpp 3y ago
      Not anymore. I can't imagine what media doesn't have a free type of publisher (Youtube for videos, Amazon or Lulu for text, itch.io for games, Github for software, play store for apps, etc), and getting traction is as easy as a Reddit/HN post. If your content is good, it takes 5 minutes to get it to the entire world for free.
  - jacquesm 3y ago
    I so wish that that were true. No, a lot more is made than what is available to you.
    - devcpp 3y ago
      Not really. These days, if you have talent, spreading your work is as easy as making a Reddit or HN post and get traction in no time at all. What sinks probably isn't worth much attention. Of course, works are also made and not published anywhere, but people are free to stay a hermit and not publish their work.
      - calderknight 3y ago
        My experience with Reddit is that what doesn't sink isn't worth much attention.

The difference that makes that much less logical being that in the West the government is not determining what people can watch, they're watching what they enjoy.

mcpackieh 3y ago

Western writers (usually) aren't taking direct orders from the government, but that doesn't mean they're impartial weather vanes that reveal currents in society but never try to manipulate (or fabricate) those social currents as they see fit.

dotnet00 3y ago
And yet that doesn't support these conspiracies you and thread OP want to believe in.
- mcpackieh 3y ago
  What conspiracies are you talking about? You should read Manufacturing Consent by Noam Chompsky. Most of what seems to be a conspiracy in western media is not actually organized as a conspiracy, but is emergent behavior in a system in which individual actors have aligned incentives. Acting individually without coordination, people hire and promote people who think like them, and ape then adopt the beliefs of their superiors. I said usually western writers don't take direct orders from the government because sometimes they do, and this isn't even a secret. Hollywood lets the US military rewrite movies whenever they want access to military hardware and facilities. And during wartime, the US government employs writers to produce propaganda. Superhero comics in particular have their roots in overt war propaganda.
  - dotnet00 3y ago
    The conspiracies being your attempt to argue that the superhero movie fad is some absurd attempt at making billionaires look good. If you look for a conspiracy in everything, you're going to find it in everything. Entertainment is generally just entertainment and this sort of overanalysis of things to push an agenda has been part of what has made so much of modern entertainment so cookie cutter.
    - saiya-jin 3y ago
      Yeah but just with literally everything else in life, everything is way more complex than first glance suggests, interconnected and if you actually care to dig deeper, you find interesting stuff. Nobody sane argues western Illuminati is steering and manipulating everything and everybody towards desired future, yet mass media manipulation is extremely common practice, ie mr Murdoch and similar folks have significant powers. Also lets not forget that CIA was very active in Hollywood for many decades with light and not so light touches here and there, I mean its the propaganda tool for US hegemony and spreading western view on society, values, 'american dream' etc. If you want to shoot say an action movie with real US planes landing on real aircraft carriers, US navy will have non-trivial impact on your movie and its story (so most end up as over-patriotic to the point of being unwatchable for many non-US viewers). Its all natural and logical, all humans like to see or hear stories that make us feel good even if its not proper truth, much more than stories telling some ugly hard truths.
      - norman_roman 3y ago
        [flagged]
    - mcpackieh 3y ago
      I just told you it's not a conspiracy, you're tilting at windmills. I have not proposed a conspiracy to create movies like this, I don't think there's a cabal of billionaires who dreamed up and coordinate this as a deliberate propaganda campaign. I assert that the Hollywood system creates movies like this because because of the way it is structured and the nature of making movies. People who fit the mold and are naturally inclined to make movies like this get promoted and given opportunities by like-minded people. People who don't jive with the crowd never have the opportunity to make movies of their own, because making movies (particularly blockbusters) requires access to a system with lots of capital and manpower. I'm not the one looking for conspiracies. You're looking for a conspiracy in what I'm saying so that you can dismiss it. Read Manufacturing Consent.
      - dotnet00 3y ago
  - smolder 3y ago
    Chompsky makes a biting critique of the US military-industrial complex. It's a great book that I recommend everyone sink their teeth into at some point.
- pessimizer 3y ago
  Op-Ed: Why does the Pentagon give a helping hand to films like ‘Top Gun’? https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2022-05-30/top-gun-maverick-memorial-day-tom-cruise-pentagon-propaganda https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2022-05-30/top-gun-mav... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theaters_of_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theaters_of_War Pay No Attention to the G-Man Behind the Curtain https://www.theatlantic.com/membership/archive/2018/03/pay-no-attention-to-the-g-man-behind-the-curtain/555839/ https://www.theatlantic.com/membership/archive/2018/03/pay-n... In the ‘90s the U.S. Government Paid TV Networks to Weave “Anti-Drug” Messaging Into Their Plot Lines. Here Are the Worst Examples. https://www.columnblog.com/p/in-the-90s-the-us-government-paid https://www.columnblog.com/p/in-the-90s-the-us-government-pa... Education Dept. paid commentator to promote law https://web.archive.org/web/20100722051019/http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2005-01-06-williams-whitehouse_x.htm https://web.archive.org/web/20100722051019/http://www.usatod... https://www.gao.gov/products/b-305368 https://www.gao.gov/products/b-305368

sdsd 3y ago

[flagged]

dotnet00 3y ago
You're too absorbed in your own cynicisim to see the obvious. There is hundreds of thousands of hours of all sorts of content added to the internet every day from all over the world. Western governments have nowhere near the sort of control over what their people can see to pull off anything anywhere near comparable to NK's attempts at controlling their people's entertainment.
- c_crank 3y ago
  The whims of the morally aggressive Western elite substitute for heavy handed regulation from top down. Although recent moves have been made to try and institute a CCP style bureau of misinformation even in America.
  - dotnet00 3y ago
    While I agree that social media is way too aggressive with moral policing of content, I can still trivially watch any of the morally reprehensible stuff that would be banned from there.
havelhovel 3y ago
I guess I’m also pretty naive then. Got any examples of the US government dictating what people can watch through censorship on par with North Korea or even China?
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]

jacquesm 3y ago

You watch from what's available.

havelhovel 3y ago
And in the West what’s available is the product of people making what they want to make with relatively few restrictions.
- jpg1 3y ago
  No, you only are able to watch a tiny part of what is marketed for you. What doesn't get money doesn't get views.
  - devcpp 3y ago
    Not anymore. I can't imagine what media doesn't have a free type of publisher (Youtube for videos, Amazon or Lulu for text, itch.io for games, Github for software, play store for apps, etc), and getting traction is as easy as a Reddit/HN post. If your content is good, it takes 5 minutes to get it to the entire world for free.
- jacquesm 3y ago
  I so wish that that were true. No, a lot more is made than what is available to you.
  - devcpp 3y ago
    Not really. These days, if you have talent, spreading your work is as easy as making a Reddit or HN post and get traction in no time at all. What sinks probably isn't worth much attention. Of course, works are also made and not published anywhere, but people are free to stay a hermit and not publish their work.
    - calderknight 3y ago
      My experience with Reddit is that what doesn't sink isn't worth much attention.