The Media Reports On A Non-Existent World
To call this garbage 'news' is absurd. Ukraine isn't at war -it's just the venue for NATO v Russia in the Arms Dealer's Explosion Cup Final -where both teams can buy all the extra time they want. Catastrophic global warming is an imaginary problem with no conceivable solution even if it was real. British Conservative Party members must now select one of two people to be their leader, although neither is a Conservative. Men cannot become women by saying so, and men cannot give birth to babies, no matter what the TV says. The entire output of mass-media is a non-existent fantasy world.
Imagine a world without media. Better still, organise it for yourself -switch off all the screens and radios, ditch your smartphone and spend a couple of days living in a media-free world -if you dare. Older people tend to find this relatively easy, but the younger you are, the harder it gets. With few exceptions, those aged under 21 consider spending even one day offline as the equivalent of amputation; a virtually impossible challenge. Why should that be?
The answer is in the bathroom, probably above the sink. What you see in the mirror decides what goes on in your head, and in 2022, the media has become a distorting mirror -but one through which we are invited to percieve ourselves and the meaning of our lives.
SELFIES
Immediately it becomes clear why the young are so helplessly addicted,
because juniors are hopelessly self-centred, self-conscious and, in our digital
maze, endlessly self-broadcasting or recieving. This week it was reported that the top three sources used by British teenagers to get 'news' are Tik Tok, Instagram and Youtube -three apps on which ego is paramount. [Full Story HERE]
We have all, to varying degrees, allowed media to replace our own thought processes. At the same time as we are being pushed apart from each other by the self-orientation demanded of a computer-based lifestyle, we are being invited to replace human bonds with shared 'knowledge' of people we never knew in the first place. Click like and subscribe.
For example, how quickly most of the 'celebrities' would vanish from our thoughts without constant, repeated reminders of things they say and do. It's irrelevant whether the celebrity's words and deeds make you as an individual happy or angry or even just irritated -the whole point is to direct our attention away from concerns that we might develop ourselves, and towards topics created and controlled by mass-media instead.
By endless repetition, phrases which our brains reject as nonsensical nevertheless become lodged in our heads. By the hundredth time you hear diversity is our strength or stay home stay safe it doesn't matter if you have never agreed and will never agree. What matters is that a part of your attention is now fastened on that statement, and your thoughts are orbiting an agenda which you -left to yourself- might never waste a moment upon.
War propaganda is fed to us WW2-style, from 'authorised sources' that invent fairy-tale dramas to distract us from the orgies of greed inflicted on those unfortunate countries where 'conflicts' are arranged and performed by billionaire arms-manufacturers. (Didja catch the Vogue magazine photo-shoot of the lovely Mrs Zelensky? Didja? ) And courtesy of covid, unelected self-appointed 'experts' appear and deliver speeches that miraculously inspire 'elected' leaders worldwide to adopt the identical ludicrous policies in wildly different countries at exactly the very same moment.
SUCK ON IT
Gradually, bit by bit, we are sucked into circular debates we don't want to have, arguments about imagined rights and wrongs, imaginary threats and dangers that emerge from the bowels of giant corporations like ABC, BBC, CBBC, MSNBC etc. to lure us into obsessing on unsolvable problems. Parents in full-time employment are particularly vulnerable, as they have very limited free time to themselves and are easily gulled and lulled by short but repeated exposure to the headlines and soundbites of the day.
In a society bombarded in this fashion, discussions about 'world events' can rapidly descend into the sound of parroted catch-phrases learned by repetition and recycled as 'conversation'. An exhausted, weak-willed majority are now utterly enmeshed in the non-issues, fake stories and imagined concerns of a largely non-existent world. But in that world, they are reminded daily that disaster is always just one headline away.
Although this might seem a product of the 24/7 digital hellscape overtaking the 21st century, the same deception has been in play for centuries already. Consider this remarkably accurate observation:
"Let a Gazette come out filled with the finest descriptions of prosperity, general health, growing trade, internal peace and prevailing virtue, and it will be read almost with indifference and thrown away.
In contrast, let a Gazette inform us in detail of a plague, civil war or dreadful famine, and this paper would be read over and over again and pronounced a valuable paper."
Although it could have been written this morning, the above quote is over 230 years old -from an editorial in the Independent Ledger of January 26th 1784. The writer was a 'news' professional and understood all too well how the public can be persuaded into an emotional response to almost anything if the content is lurid enough.
The attraction of 'bad news' is partly rooted in our unconscious survival instincts. Most pre-industrial humans lived short, generally brutal existences, and for the vast majority, the world really was a very dangerous place. Remaining on constant alert for trouble was part of the human evolutionary success story. But in the industrialised west, we now live about twice as long as before, and have, for the last fifty years, been largely immune to most of the threats that carried off our ancestors.
Importantly, since 1945, most of us have even been free of the curse of war, enjoying lives of relative luxury and relaxation of which our grandparents could not have dreamed. But now it seems these last seventy-odd years were the exception -a brief escapist interlude before a return to our arguably 'natural' state of constant alert and existential fear. Because a glance into any corner of today's media matrix is a straighforward leap into the paranoid abyss.
Tempting though it is to assume TV news-fans are completely deluded, there is a little more to the predicament than meets the eye. I am no fan of 'polls' most of which are created with a specific propaganda outcome in mind and only advertised if that outcome materialises. But we don't need YouGov to know that public faith in mainstream 'news' has never been lower in western countries. Two prime indictators are that almost nobody is buying newpapers and in 2021 alone 300,000 more people stopped paying for the BBC TV license. [Full Story HERE]
This is invariably described (in the mainstream) as a 'financial' crisis for the network, but is nothing of the sort. The BBC has always been a state/corporate propaganda outlet, nothing more, and will be bankrolled from Westminster till the cows come home. The real crisis -from an elite perspective- is that trust in the system is evaporating.
By no means all TV viewers are blindly accepting what is thrust at them, but cling to the televised news because that has been a lifelong habit; a source for 'explanations' for events not otherwise understood. On a subconscious level, many are afraid to turn their backs on a process in which they previously invested their biggest hopes and fears. If the mainstream is just a lie-factory, where can truth be found?
WHAT THEY DID
As recently as the year 2005 it was remarkably easy to find a great range of credible, well-sourced information and commentary online, with a little practise. But those were halcyon days, and by 2020 much of the the internet had been captured by the same powers still printing the papers and magazines, still pushing the same fairy-tales on every screen on the planet.
Youtube was swiftly purged of virtually all content challenging the propaganda consensus of terrestrial TV. Where creators were not actually shut down, thousands more were simply buried beneath algorithmic landslides of corporate-loving celebrity BS and 'favoured' political hucksters. Today, Youtube is now a tool for concealing, not revealing.
Savvy users will have noticed a 'filter' system is in place allowing for more specific searches -but what can NOT be filtered out is mainstream media content. If Youtube had the slightest intention of supplying users with the videos they actually want, we could tick boxes marked "no BBC content" or "no CNN" etc. Fat chance. Whatever you request, Youtube will strive to supply you with what they want you watching.
HOW IT'S DONE
In the same way, the world of independent bloggers has come under sustained assault. Three supression techniques are common to both Youtube and Google:
(1) When users search either platform, they will be offered a long list of selected "approved" content with independent commentators buried down on page 12 where few will find the time and energy to go.
(2) Searches addressing subjects on which there is a supposed "politically correct consensus" trigger a lengthy barrage of establishment talking points, with the add-on of so-called "fact-checking" information shoved down your throat before you've even had the chance to read any "facts" at all.
(3) People who follow or subscribe to youtube creators or independent bloggers are frequently unsubscribed without notification, or else not notified when new content is published. This is done shamelessly, and no amount of complaints to either platform makes the slightest difference.
Genuinely persistent or savvy users are still capable of navigating their own way to independent sources -like the one you are reading now- but growing an audience in 2022 is like climbing a slippery slope carrying a sack of bricks while eagles crap on your head.
MANUFACTURING CONSENT
In all these ways a non-existent world is media-manufactured while straightforward truths like biological reality are extracted from the menu of available information. Social norms are routinely twisted and extremist fantasies peddled as "information" against a background chorus of well-paid mouthpieces repeating the catchphrases.
And yet the only notable shift in behaviour is a steadily-growing groundswell of suspicion and distrust among a previously loyal audience. After a notably wretched three years of mind-warping state abuse, I am -believe me- in constant search of rays of hope and I'm delighted to say I can see light breaking through the clouds of confusion.
Speaking from (way too much) exposure to and engagement with mainstream media 'professionals', one of the great weaknesses of that rightly despised group is their refusal to hear anything but the echoes of their own narrow community of bores.
But even that barking Borg of scriptwriters can't get their story straight. They are now trying to sell the myth that "we never said the vaccines would stop you catching Covid-19". And a few billion people reply you what? Outright lying is not a sustainable programme.
As a species, humans have a well-developed nose for things in a state of rot and decay -and the mainstream media now stinks to high heaven. There is a split coming in the way truth and reality are perceived, which is why so much effort is being thrown at creating 'virtual' versions of both. In effect, a widespread attempt is underway to drive us mad. But up is not down and black is not green and we know it.
As more and more of us walk away from the shrieking lunatics infesting the speakers and screens, some kind of confrontation will become inevitable, because the greatest fear they have is that we simply stop listening. Because the less we listen, the more we think, the more we talk and the more we act independently. Let's start talking to each other about real things; real people; real life in the real world. There are, after all, a lot more of us than them.
Very good article.Very true.Very sad.
ReplyDeleteExcellent, as always.
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