With novel ways of thinking about propaganda and obedience training, this short post will recommend:
a) stop watching television
b) stop streaming services
c) stop Spotify/music streaming
Television not only rots your brain with low level dribble, but you are a passive consumer. The goal of television is to force-feed you content, instead of having you actively decide or evaluate choices. This trains you to accept authority, as eventually the two choices can turn to one.
In his famous book from 1928 titled “Propaganda”, Edward Bernays, who produced media for the United Fruit Company (and therefore the CIA), to overthrow Latin American governments, pushed the idea that propaganda ought to reduce the choices the consumer make. He promoted the idea that propaganda should push the consumer down to binary thinking. [1]
Even if you were to decide between things to torrent on your PC, that would be better than just turning on the TV and consuming whatever is on. Because torrents force you to research options from an infinite dataset and then make a choice, which is training your mind to question and consider alternatives.
By using streaming services, it creates a cycle of dependence on the provider and the elimination of your privacy. Streaming services force Digital Rights Management (DRM), which is insecure technology that uproots the autonomy of your electronics to become an obedient receiver of commands from the media company, in order to ensure copyright compliance. While this seems like a trivial matter, DRM represents a fundamental shift in the dynamics of power, to have electronics that you own, become subservient to a master other than you. Furthermore, you open yourself up to security vulnerabilities as hackers try to uplift this new-found foreign power.
According to Monero core developer ArticMine, DRM is so insecure, that he does not even trust American cybersecurity firms to diagnose vulnerabilities, because they can’t legally break DRM. Instead, he says it’s a shame that war has prevented the use of Russian companies that can properly diagnose problems. [2]
Services like Spotify reduce the need to research musicians on your own. You accept whatever the popular choices are for a genre and avoid making decisions on what comes next. Furthermore, Spotify and music streaming services like it, reduce the need to interact with others. When I was a teenager, asking other kids what music they liked was how I did research. This made the process of exploration into an activity into itself. Today, you’re hooked into what the AI predicts you’re least likely to close the app after a few seconds if they put on. This merges your unique independent tastes into whatever appeals to the most people who are consuming.
The sources for this article can be found here.
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