8 ms·

Those of us in the west tend to forget that much of what we see is a form of propaganda, whether by governments or businesses, or even a large number of people.

by yowayb 2y ago

Those of us in the west tend to forget that much of what we see is a form of propaganda, whether by governments or businesses, or even a large number of people. When you keep this in mind, everything you see becomes an opinion and your mind can comfortably (or at least not emotionally/hurriedly) form your own opinion over time.

rpastuszak 2y ago
Easier said than done. Bear in mind that the way information is served is meant to trigger strong emotional responses, skip the prefrontal cortex and tickle your amygdala. You can limit how much it impacts you, say, through reducing exposure, but you can't reason your way out of it. (this is a response to the comment, not the article)
- gergo_b 2y ago
  You cannot logic someone out of something they didn't logic themselves into. 90% of what we feel is primal in-group survival.
browningstreet 2y ago
I agree that most messaging is propaganda, but that doesn't really counter the real pain that is being inflicted upon large populations of people by these government (and corporate) moves, and being cheered on by pretty large masses of people. The propaganda is like environmental pollution -- hard not to breathe it in. That said, I have no answer here..
- breakingrules3 2y ago
  my advice to you that cant breathe it in is leave your fantasy where propaganda is pollution and join reality where it does not impact you. also if you live in reality instead of the fantasy, you will just be less outraged in general.
  - anticorporate 2y ago
    You realize that pursuading people to accept terrible acts as normal and not outrageous is the primary aim of much propaganda, correct?
    - seneca 2y ago
      The aim of propaganda is not anywhere near singular. Much of it is also aimed at convincing you that minor things are "terrible acts" that you need to be outraged about.
    - torstenvl 2y ago
      Name one.
      - seattle_spring 2y ago
        Name one... what?
  - watwut 2y ago
    So you say, do exactly what authors of propaganda are trying to achieve and let them do what they want. Also, I am impacted by legal system, by lawlessness for some, by environment pollution, by Healthcare system ...
    - marchofdangs 2y ago
      [dead]
  - StefanBatory 2y ago
    [flagged]
- jfkrrorj 2y ago
  How about you read actual news, not already half-digested propaganda vomit? You do not have to live in polluted wasteland of western media propaganda! Big media failed 1000x since war on terror, and Bush lies, yet you still consume their shit! Simplest way is to read media from independent country. India is good, perhaps Arabic countries. Next level are independent channels on Telegram and Youtube. 10 min daily summary on war situation goes very long way.
  - justin66 2y ago
    > Simplest way is to read media from independent country. India is good, perhaps Arabic countries. It's interesting that you listed India first. The English-language news source that pops up most often via Google News is the Hindustan Times, which is hot garbage. Are there any Indian sources that are much, much better than that which you recommend?
    - jfkrrorj 2y ago
      Honestly no idea, I followed this rabbit hole many years ago. Hindustan times seems like a rag, like British Sun. I guess I would recommend to take some event that happened 2 years ago, find how some papers wrote about it back then, and if you like it, follow them. My point is there is no reason to stay in toxic relationship. There is no reason to read news if you do not get any rewards. Even monthly AI summaries will be better, and you will stay "informed". For example all the Trump shit today, he wants legal precedents from constitutional court, 90% of this shit is irrelevant.
- gadders 2y ago
  There was just as much "large pain" being inflicted on people in the previous 4 years, it just didn't affect you personally.
  - braiamp 2y ago
    Dude, lets be real here: most people would say the economy is shit, while still being comfortable with their lives. Anyone's general assessment of the economy based on gut, is meaningless. Unless you were on food banks/stamps, you were doing pretty good for all intents and purposes.
    - lazyeye 2y ago
      This statement is ridiculously out of touch.
      - HEmanZ 2y ago
        There is a massive amount of evidence that Americans basically think everyone else is having a terrible time, but asked to review their own living situation things are going well. Here’s a decent summary from late 2024: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/23/opinion/biden-trump-vibecession.html https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/23/opinion/biden-trump-vibec... Instead of engaging in the data, opponents usually yell the equivalent of what you put “You’re just out of touch!” Or throw in an anecdote like “well my cousin is having a terrible time!”. What’s going on the US is weirder than a “normal” economic problem. That’s what makes it so frustrating and politically polarizing.
        lazyeye 2y ago
        Sorry but quoting the NYTimes as evidence would be no different from a Republican quoting Fox News as evidence to you. Here's an old quote from the author, the esteemable Paul Krugman “The growth of the Internet will slow drastically, as the flaw in ‘Metcalfe’s law’—which states that the number of potential connections in a network is proportional to the square of the number of participants—becomes apparent: most people have nothing to say to each other! By 2005 or so, it will become clear that the Internet’s impact on the economy has been no greater than the fax machine’s.”
- keybored 2y ago
  Is your comment propaganda?
  - brookst 2y ago
    Yeah we seem to have rhetorical escalation. Opinions are propaganda, beliefs are narratives, etc, etc. It's a way to devalue messages one disagrees with; they aren't just wrong, they're nefarious.
    - keybored 2y ago
      People don’t understand what I was getting at. In my book any furthering of any position is propaganda. It’s not just when you do it in a dishonest or underhanded way. That’s the old-school definition. Now what started this was the bald assertion that all most messaging is propaganda. Okay. People went with it, including the person I replied to. And that’s not objectionable according to my own definition. But if it is only “nefarious” messaging which is propaganda then you set yourself up for throwing stones in a glasshouse. Because a lot of comments (including the one I replied to) contain at least assumptions that further a world view. I don’t have to make an outright statement. I just have to hint at an assumption. And yeah, that’s what they did too.
- yowayb 2y ago
  I must agree, but I think the global public's awareness has been shocked into growth. I find the biggest problem with social media is actually user error. Unfortunately social media apps have become so complex that many have given up on curating their feeds. This is critical. If you can tune your social media to show you _interesting_ things, you can stay informed, possibly get good context, and not lose your mind.
crispyambulance 2y ago
I had used ublock-origin on youtube to disable the right-hand sidebar of "recommended" videos so that I could just view the stuff in my subscriptions. A couple of years ago, they started detecting and blocking ublock-origin, so I stopped using it (ublock). It's not really the ads that bother me. It's the "recommended videos". Is there a way to customize my view of youtube to avoid the shit I don't need to see? The thing about youtube is that it's very easy for propaganda/click-bait to creep in during moments of weakness. Maybe it's time to go cold-turkey? Failing that, maybe it's worth it to try and take some control over the experience?
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- andrewflnr 2y ago
  Slide the right side of the window off the screen, maybe? Dirty tricks are allowed. I'm very aggressive with the "not interested" and "don't recommend this channel" buttons, and over time it does mostly get rid of the most obnoxious recs. Right now it's also not recommending much good stuff, either, so YMMV.
- pavon 2y ago
  For youtube, you can put the video in theater mode, which makes the video the full width of your window, and pushes recommendations down below it. With this I only ever see recommendations at the end of the video. As a general solution for us techies, you can have user defined style sheets that selectively override the site's CSS, either using a plugin like Stylus, or Firefox's built-in userContent.css. Inspect the website, find the id name (or class if it is unique enough) for the content you want to go away and put the following in your user CSS. #<id> { display: hidden; } I have so many of these. There is some upkeep with redesign, and for some sites with high churn I've given up, but in general it makes the web much more tolerable.
- ranger207 2y ago
  There's a browser addon, Enhancer for Youtube, that lets you hide recommended videos, among other things
lawn 2y ago
The danger with this way of thinking is that it's easy to start weighing all information equally, while that's very far from the reality.
- lordfrito 2y ago
  If everything I read online [that I don't pay for] is a form of propaganda, then the only choice I have is to either: 1) weight all information equally 2) bias information based on [personal beliefs XYZ] I'm trying hard to do #1, mainly because #2 is confirmation bias (and reinforces it). What other options are there?
  - lawn 2y ago
    You could for instance consider actual facts? Because 100% of what you read online is in fact not propaganda. Then you might find that some sources are filled with lies and others contain a lot more facts. Then you'd naturally weight facts from the more trustworthy source higher. The next step is a "web of trust" where a new source will be more trustworthy if it's linked to by other trustworthy sources. So in the end you'd rank information from Russia Today (one of Russia's main propaganda channels) as very low, a comment from a random redditor low, and a comment on physics by a renowned physicist as very high trustworthiness.
    - lordfrito 2y ago
      > Because 100% of what you read online is in fact not propaganda. This isn't even close to true. Facts are facts, and stories are propaganda. What we call "news" is largely just "stories" (opinion/editorials) about facts -- the story is the propaganda - the story weaves the facts together in a narrative, the narrative tells us how to feel and think. Stories cost $$$, and those promoting them are absolutely promoting some stories over others. They have a message to send -- that message is propaganda. You mention a comment from a "random redditor" is low value -- I'm suggesting that nearly every "major" narrative spun on Reddit has been largely placed there by forces with deep pockets and axes to grind, and the true believers and other useful idiots that follow blindly. It's all astroturfing, and Reddit is an absolute garbage dump of discussion. Anyone that goes there thinking they're getting an accurate picture of the world around them is seriously deluded. I'm convinced those that run Reddit do this by design. We know who runs Twitter, and Facebook. No one talks about who is running Reddit. A "comment on physics by a renowned physicist" is still just a comment -- there are facts in physics, and theories. Even renowned physicists can be wrong when it comes to the theories they back. And honestly [coming back to the point of the article] that's not what's causing people to feel outrage -- they're not doom scrolling physics forums outraged about dark matter or a theory of everything -- they're doom scrolling an endless stream of political/cultural propaganda designed to outrage them and keep them addicted. The world isn't nearly as black and white as the internet would have you believe it is. Point me to a source of political/cultural news that you believe is full of fact and not just another site full of opinions pieces and editorializing around the facts.
root_axis 2y ago
Would you consider your own comment to be a form of propaganda? I'm genuinely asking.
lordfrito 2y ago
> everything you see becomes an opinion and your mind can comfortably (or at least not emotionally/hurriedly) form your own opinion over time I agree (I've done this), but it's much easier said than done. Requires a lot of mental work/training. More importantly, it requires a sort of mental "enlightenment" to the true state of things.. That everything you read for free on the internet is being paid for by someone, with their own motivation and intents, and that these forces don't have your best interest in mind. The saying "If you're watching it, then it was intended for you" comes to mind. Once this breakthrough occurs and you begin to see the world this way, everything else usually follows. As you begin to realize that most of your facts and opinions are those planted there by other powerful ($$$) forces, you start to recognize that what you think is largely what they want you to think. But the scariest part of the awakening is that you begin to realize how little you truly know about the world outside your direct experience. You feel much less certain about the world and your place in it. Most of the people I know recognize this, and I can have sane conversation with them. You can tell those that are caught up in the propaganda because they largely sound like parrots, and it's impossible to talk to them reasonably. A few friends of mine are in this category, and the one common denominator between them is that they are deeply unhappy, riddled with anxiety, and glued to their devices. The true human casualties of the new technological information age we've birthed. It appears that this is by design, as those that control the flow for information know exactly the power they have and what they intend to do with it. For those that are stuck, I wish I knew how to open their eyes up and look around them. It's not too bad when you look at the world outside of the internet. I've tried to listen empathetically to people that are stuck, but it mostly doesn't help. Their minds are hamsters spinning on wheels, unable to stop or hear any thing else from the outside. One or two have woken up only after the anxiety it produces begins to interfere with their real lives and relationships, It's a form of addiction, and unfortunately many people are stubborn and will double down on their addiction time after time until they hit rock bottom. We're in the middle of a massive mental health crisis. I hate knowing that a not-insignificant portion of our fellow citizens are rapidly heading towards some sort of mental/emotional rock bottom caused by technology... I feel powerless to do anything about it as I've watched it slowly unfold over the last decade or so -- it's nearly impossible to reach the friends and family members that you're actually close to. I don't know what can be done other than sit back and wait for them to crash, and help them pick up the pieces when that time comes. Anyone got any good advice?
Epa095 2y ago
This reminds me of two quotes: "The point of modern propaganda isn't only to misinform or push an agenda. It is to exhaust your critical thinking, to annihilate truth." -Garry Kasparov. And "This constant lying is not aimed at making the people believe a lie, but at ensuring that no one believes anything anymore." This latter quote is, rather ironically, a false quote! (falsely attributed to Hannah Arendt). But I still think it contains truth.
- jacobn 2y ago
  This, plus the A/B testing of headlines to maximize clicks has lead inexorably to the current information environment. Our intuitions, outrage, and knee-jerk reactions are being weaponized to gain clicks, votes, donations, and "action". Many a dictatorship has fallen in the wake of social media revolutions. I wonder how long democracy can last? In a would-be-funny-if-it-weren't-tragic ironic twist both of the two main US parties see themselves as the last guardians of democracy and frame their opponents as Evil, against which "any means necessary" is the only reasonable course of action. (Yes, the party you disagree with is way worse and it's all their fault, this whataboutism indeed has to end, absolutely) And here we all are.
- like_any_other 2y ago
  > constant lying Selective truth is far more effective, and more common, propaganda. Not in omitting important context from a story, but by omitting or burying (or simply never seeking out) entirely stories you don't want heard, and emphasizing stories you do want heard. In essence, holding up a funhouse mirror to society. This is the propaganda you get when all your reporters think they are being honest and uncensored, but they all deeply care about the same set of issues, and are deeply ambivalent about another set.
godshatter 2y ago
I was looking for a take on this that was more than just finding ways not to be inundated. You don't have to get outraged about something when you think about how that particular article might be trying to fan those flames and how what is reported might just be highlighting the points that push our buttons (but the real set of facts might not be as bad when looked into). Even the things that really are that bad don't have to lead to outrage. I take a wait-and-see attitude about a lot of this stuff we see in the media. There are trolls everywhere, we'll see if anything comes of it. I'm also capable of not liking something strongly without feeling rage with regards to it, while still wanting to combat it if I have a say in it at all. Of course, "just don't let it get to you" is easy to say but hard to implement. I think it's the only real path that allows the inclusion of social media in our lives, though.
genewitch 2y ago
It ostensibly used to be better in the US, and then the smith--mundt act was changed/repealed and now who knows. I do like the "that's just like, your opinion, man" as an answer to news stories, though.

by yowayb 2y ago

rpastuszak 2y ago

Easier said than done. Bear in mind that the way information is served is meant to trigger strong emotional responses, skip the prefrontal cortex and tickle your amygdala. You can limit how much it impacts you, say, through reducing exposure, but you can't reason your way out of it. (this is a response to the comment, not the article)

gergo_b 2y ago
You cannot logic someone out of something they didn't logic themselves into. 90% of what we feel is primal in-group survival.

browningstreet 2y ago

I agree that most messaging is propaganda, but that doesn't really counter the real pain that is being inflicted upon large populations of people by these government (and corporate) moves, and being cheered on by pretty large masses of people. The propaganda is like environmental pollution -- hard not to breathe it in. That said, I have no answer here..

breakingrules3 2y ago
my advice to you that cant breathe it in is leave your fantasy where propaganda is pollution and join reality where it does not impact you. also if you live in reality instead of the fantasy, you will just be less outraged in general.
- anticorporate 2y ago
  You realize that pursuading people to accept terrible acts as normal and not outrageous is the primary aim of much propaganda, correct?
  - seneca 2y ago
    The aim of propaganda is not anywhere near singular. Much of it is also aimed at convincing you that minor things are "terrible acts" that you need to be outraged about.
  - torstenvl 2y ago
    Name one.
    - seattle_spring 2y ago
      Name one... what?
- watwut 2y ago
  So you say, do exactly what authors of propaganda are trying to achieve and let them do what they want. Also, I am impacted by legal system, by lawlessness for some, by environment pollution, by Healthcare system ...
  - marchofdangs 2y ago
    [dead]
- StefanBatory 2y ago
  [flagged]
jfkrrorj 2y ago
How about you read actual news, not already half-digested propaganda vomit? You do not have to live in polluted wasteland of western media propaganda! Big media failed 1000x since war on terror, and Bush lies, yet you still consume their shit! Simplest way is to read media from independent country. India is good, perhaps Arabic countries. Next level are independent channels on Telegram and Youtube. 10 min daily summary on war situation goes very long way.
- justin66 2y ago
  > Simplest way is to read media from independent country. India is good, perhaps Arabic countries. It's interesting that you listed India first. The English-language news source that pops up most often via Google News is the Hindustan Times, which is hot garbage. Are there any Indian sources that are much, much better than that which you recommend?
  - jfkrrorj 2y ago
    Honestly no idea, I followed this rabbit hole many years ago. Hindustan times seems like a rag, like British Sun. I guess I would recommend to take some event that happened 2 years ago, find how some papers wrote about it back then, and if you like it, follow them. My point is there is no reason to stay in toxic relationship. There is no reason to read news if you do not get any rewards. Even monthly AI summaries will be better, and you will stay "informed". For example all the Trump shit today, he wants legal precedents from constitutional court, 90% of this shit is irrelevant.
gadders 2y ago
There was just as much "large pain" being inflicted on people in the previous 4 years, it just didn't affect you personally.
- braiamp 2y ago
  Dude, lets be real here: most people would say the economy is shit, while still being comfortable with their lives. Anyone's general assessment of the economy based on gut, is meaningless. Unless you were on food banks/stamps, you were doing pretty good for all intents and purposes.
  - lazyeye 2y ago
    This statement is ridiculously out of touch.
    - HEmanZ 2y ago
      There is a massive amount of evidence that Americans basically think everyone else is having a terrible time, but asked to review their own living situation things are going well. Here’s a decent summary from late 2024: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/23/opinion/biden-trump-vibecession.html https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/23/opinion/biden-trump-vibec... Instead of engaging in the data, opponents usually yell the equivalent of what you put “You’re just out of touch!” Or throw in an anecdote like “well my cousin is having a terrible time!”. What’s going on the US is weirder than a “normal” economic problem. That’s what makes it so frustrating and politically polarizing.
      - lazyeye 2y ago
        Sorry but quoting the NYTimes as evidence would be no different from a Republican quoting Fox News as evidence to you. Here's an old quote from the author, the esteemable Paul Krugman “The growth of the Internet will slow drastically, as the flaw in ‘Metcalfe’s law’—which states that the number of potential connections in a network is proportional to the square of the number of participants—becomes apparent: most people have nothing to say to each other! By 2005 or so, it will become clear that the Internet’s impact on the economy has been no greater than the fax machine’s.”
keybored 2y ago
Is your comment propaganda?
- brookst 2y ago
  Yeah we seem to have rhetorical escalation. Opinions are propaganda, beliefs are narratives, etc, etc. It's a way to devalue messages one disagrees with; they aren't just wrong, they're nefarious.
  - keybored 2y ago
    People don’t understand what I was getting at. In my book any furthering of any position is propaganda. It’s not just when you do it in a dishonest or underhanded way. That’s the old-school definition. Now what started this was the bald assertion that all most messaging is propaganda. Okay. People went with it, including the person I replied to. And that’s not objectionable according to my own definition. But if it is only “nefarious” messaging which is propaganda then you set yourself up for throwing stones in a glasshouse. Because a lot of comments (including the one I replied to) contain at least assumptions that further a world view. I don’t have to make an outright statement. I just have to hint at an assumption. And yeah, that’s what they did too.
yowayb 2y ago
I must agree, but I think the global public's awareness has been shocked into growth. I find the biggest problem with social media is actually user error. Unfortunately social media apps have become so complex that many have given up on curating their feeds. This is critical. If you can tune your social media to show you _interesting_ things, you can stay informed, possibly get good context, and not lose your mind.

crispyambulance 2y ago

I had used ublock-origin on youtube to disable the right-hand sidebar of "recommended" videos so that I could just view the stuff in my subscriptions. A couple of years ago, they started detecting and blocking ublock-origin, so I stopped using it (ublock). It's not really the ads that bother me. It's the "recommended videos". Is there a way to customize my view of youtube to avoid the shit I don't need to see? The thing about youtube is that it's very easy for propaganda/click-bait to creep in during moments of weakness. Maybe it's time to go cold-turkey? Failing that, maybe it's worth it to try and take some control over the experience?

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
andrewflnr 2y ago
Slide the right side of the window off the screen, maybe? Dirty tricks are allowed. I'm very aggressive with the "not interested" and "don't recommend this channel" buttons, and over time it does mostly get rid of the most obnoxious recs. Right now it's also not recommending much good stuff, either, so YMMV.
pavon 2y ago
For youtube, you can put the video in theater mode, which makes the video the full width of your window, and pushes recommendations down below it. With this I only ever see recommendations at the end of the video. As a general solution for us techies, you can have user defined style sheets that selectively override the site's CSS, either using a plugin like Stylus, or Firefox's built-in userContent.css. Inspect the website, find the id name (or class if it is unique enough) for the content you want to go away and put the following in your user CSS. #<id> { display: hidden; } I have so many of these. There is some upkeep with redesign, and for some sites with high churn I've given up, but in general it makes the web much more tolerable.
ranger207 2y ago
There's a browser addon, Enhancer for Youtube, that lets you hide recommended videos, among other things

lawn 2y ago

The danger with this way of thinking is that it's easy to start weighing all information equally, while that's very far from the reality.

lordfrito 2y ago
If everything I read online [that I don't pay for] is a form of propaganda, then the only choice I have is to either: 1) weight all information equally 2) bias information based on [personal beliefs XYZ] I'm trying hard to do #1, mainly because #2 is confirmation bias (and reinforces it). What other options are there?
- lawn 2y ago
  You could for instance consider actual facts? Because 100% of what you read online is in fact not propaganda. Then you might find that some sources are filled with lies and others contain a lot more facts. Then you'd naturally weight facts from the more trustworthy source higher. The next step is a "web of trust" where a new source will be more trustworthy if it's linked to by other trustworthy sources. So in the end you'd rank information from Russia Today (one of Russia's main propaganda channels) as very low, a comment from a random redditor low, and a comment on physics by a renowned physicist as very high trustworthiness.
  - lordfrito 2y ago
    > Because 100% of what you read online is in fact not propaganda. This isn't even close to true. Facts are facts, and stories are propaganda. What we call "news" is largely just "stories" (opinion/editorials) about facts -- the story is the propaganda - the story weaves the facts together in a narrative, the narrative tells us how to feel and think. Stories cost $$$, and those promoting them are absolutely promoting some stories over others. They have a message to send -- that message is propaganda. You mention a comment from a "random redditor" is low value -- I'm suggesting that nearly every "major" narrative spun on Reddit has been largely placed there by forces with deep pockets and axes to grind, and the true believers and other useful idiots that follow blindly. It's all astroturfing, and Reddit is an absolute garbage dump of discussion. Anyone that goes there thinking they're getting an accurate picture of the world around them is seriously deluded. I'm convinced those that run Reddit do this by design. We know who runs Twitter, and Facebook. No one talks about who is running Reddit. A "comment on physics by a renowned physicist" is still just a comment -- there are facts in physics, and theories. Even renowned physicists can be wrong when it comes to the theories they back. And honestly [coming back to the point of the article] that's not what's causing people to feel outrage -- they're not doom scrolling physics forums outraged about dark matter or a theory of everything -- they're doom scrolling an endless stream of political/cultural propaganda designed to outrage them and keep them addicted. The world isn't nearly as black and white as the internet would have you believe it is. Point me to a source of political/cultural news that you believe is full of fact and not just another site full of opinions pieces and editorializing around the facts.

root_axis 2y ago

Would you consider your own comment to be a form of propaganda? I'm genuinely asking.

lordfrito 2y ago

> everything you see becomes an opinion and your mind can comfortably (or at least not emotionally/hurriedly) form your own opinion over time I agree (I've done this), but it's much easier said than done. Requires a lot of mental work/training. More importantly, it requires a sort of mental "enlightenment" to the true state of things.. That everything you read for free on the internet is being paid for by someone, with their own motivation and intents, and that these forces don't have your best interest in mind. The saying "If you're watching it, then it was intended for you" comes to mind. Once this breakthrough occurs and you begin to see the world this way, everything else usually follows. As you begin to realize that most of your facts and opinions are those planted there by other powerful ($$$) forces, you start to recognize that what you think is largely what they want you to think. But the scariest part of the awakening is that you begin to realize how little you truly know about the world outside your direct experience. You feel much less certain about the world and your place in it. Most of the people I know recognize this, and I can have sane conversation with them. You can tell those that are caught up in the propaganda because they largely sound like parrots, and it's impossible to talk to them reasonably. A few friends of mine are in this category, and the one common denominator between them is that they are deeply unhappy, riddled with anxiety, and glued to their devices. The true human casualties of the new technological information age we've birthed. It appears that this is by design, as those that control the flow for information know exactly the power they have and what they intend to do with it. For those that are stuck, I wish I knew how to open their eyes up and look around them. It's not too bad when you look at the world outside of the internet. I've tried to listen empathetically to people that are stuck, but it mostly doesn't help. Their minds are hamsters spinning on wheels, unable to stop or hear any thing else from the outside. One or two have woken up only after the anxiety it produces begins to interfere with their real lives and relationships, It's a form of addiction, and unfortunately many people are stubborn and will double down on their addiction time after time until they hit rock bottom. We're in the middle of a massive mental health crisis. I hate knowing that a not-insignificant portion of our fellow citizens are rapidly heading towards some sort of mental/emotional rock bottom caused by technology... I feel powerless to do anything about it as I've watched it slowly unfold over the last decade or so -- it's nearly impossible to reach the friends and family members that you're actually close to. I don't know what can be done other than sit back and wait for them to crash, and help them pick up the pieces when that time comes. Anyone got any good advice?

Epa095 2y ago

This reminds me of two quotes: "The point of modern propaganda isn't only to misinform or push an agenda. It is to exhaust your critical thinking, to annihilate truth." -Garry Kasparov. And "This constant lying is not aimed at making the people believe a lie, but at ensuring that no one believes anything anymore." This latter quote is, rather ironically, a false quote! (falsely attributed to Hannah Arendt). But I still think it contains truth.

jacobn 2y ago
This, plus the A/B testing of headlines to maximize clicks has lead inexorably to the current information environment. Our intuitions, outrage, and knee-jerk reactions are being weaponized to gain clicks, votes, donations, and "action". Many a dictatorship has fallen in the wake of social media revolutions. I wonder how long democracy can last? In a would-be-funny-if-it-weren't-tragic ironic twist both of the two main US parties see themselves as the last guardians of democracy and frame their opponents as Evil, against which "any means necessary" is the only reasonable course of action. (Yes, the party you disagree with is way worse and it's all their fault, this whataboutism indeed has to end, absolutely) And here we all are.
like_any_other 2y ago
> constant lying Selective truth is far more effective, and more common, propaganda. Not in omitting important context from a story, but by omitting or burying (or simply never seeking out) entirely stories you don't want heard, and emphasizing stories you do want heard. In essence, holding up a funhouse mirror to society. This is the propaganda you get when all your reporters think they are being honest and uncensored, but they all deeply care about the same set of issues, and are deeply ambivalent about another set.

godshatter 2y ago

I was looking for a take on this that was more than just finding ways not to be inundated. You don't have to get outraged about something when you think about how that particular article might be trying to fan those flames and how what is reported might just be highlighting the points that push our buttons (but the real set of facts might not be as bad when looked into). Even the things that really are that bad don't have to lead to outrage. I take a wait-and-see attitude about a lot of this stuff we see in the media. There are trolls everywhere, we'll see if anything comes of it. I'm also capable of not liking something strongly without feeling rage with regards to it, while still wanting to combat it if I have a say in it at all. Of course, "just don't let it get to you" is easy to say but hard to implement. I think it's the only real path that allows the inclusion of social media in our lives, though.

genewitch 2y ago

It ostensibly used to be better in the US, and then the smith--mundt act was changed/repealed and now who knows. I do like the "that's just like, your opinion, man" as an answer to news stories, though.