Xplisset, all that is occurring is an engineered manipulation to pit us at each others' throats so that the 1% can implement their Davos 2030 goals of America no longer being a super power (the Constitution eviscerated) and us owning nothing (they will steal it all) and being happy about it (or else). Here is how they are doing this, we cannot let them get away with it:
Ten Ways the 1% Who - Who Own Almost All Media & Using It Have Radicalized Us Against One Another - Are Manipulating Us to Walk into the Technocratic Incinerator:
1) The first manipulation is the illusion of choice. You think you have two parties representing different visions for America but both parties are funded by the same billionaires, vote for the same surveillance bills, approve the same defense budgets, and serve the same corporate interests. The choice you are given is which color tie the puppet wears, not who controls the strings.
2) The second manipulation is emotional hijacking. The news does not inform you, it activates you. Every story is framed to trigger fear or anger or disgust because those emotions bypass your rational thinking and make you easier to control. You are not watching journalism. You are being subjected to psychological operations designed to keep you in a constant state of agitation.
3) The third manipulation is tribal sorting. The algorithm learns what makes you angry and feeds you more of it until your entire worldview is shaped by outrage at the other side. You are sorted into a tribe not because you chose it but because keeping you tribal keeps you predictable and profitable.
4) The fourth manipulation is false scarcity. You are told resources are limited and the other tribe is taking what belongs to you. Immigrants are stealing your jobs. Welfare recipients are draining your taxes. The other party is destroying your healthcare. Meanwhile the billionaire class has more wealth than any humans in history and could solve most of these problems tomorrow if they wanted to.
5) The fifth manipulation is memory holing. Stories that threaten powerful interests get buried or forgotten within days. Exposed crimes result in no consequences. Historical context that would help you understand the present is never taught. You are kept in a perpetual present with no past to learn from and no future to plan for.
6) The sixth manipulation is controlled opposition. The voices you think are fighting for you are often funded by the same interests they pretend to oppose. The outrage merchant on your side of the aisle is playing a character designed to keep you engaged and angry and tuned in while nothing ever actually changes.
7) The seventh manipulation is the Overton window. The range of acceptable opinion is artificially narrowed so that anything outside it seems extreme. Ideas that were mainstream fifty years ago are now treated as radical. Ideas that serve elite interests are treated as moderate common sense. You are not choosing your beliefs from the full range of human thought. You are choosing from a menu they wrote.
8) The eighth manipulation is learned helplessness. You are shown so many problems with no solutions that you eventually give up and accept that nothing can change. This is intentional. A population that believes resistance is futile does not resist. They scroll and complain and feel superior for understanding how bad things are while doing absolutely nothing about it.
9) The ninth manipulation is identity capture. Your political affiliation becomes your identity, and any attack on your party feels like an attack on you personally. This makes you defend politicians and policies that harm you because admitting they are wrong would mean admitting you were wrong, and your ego will not allow that.
10) The tenth manipulation is the most insidious of all: you are manipulated into believing you are too smart to be manipulated. Every person reading this thinks the manipulations I described apply to other people, the stupid people, the brainwashed people on the other side. That certainty is itself a manipulation. The moment you believe you are immune is the moment you become most vulnerable
“all men were created equal.” Quite a challenge for the time and still so for today. Lincoln put it more provocatively: “…dedicated to the proposition that all men were created equal” in his brief Gettysburg Address. Some of us remain dedicated to that proposition and have aspirations that it someday will be more than a proposition, but law of the land.
Thank you for this beautifully written analysis of which I read every compelling word. Sounds like someone’s heat came back on in more ways than one! ;) Your analogy to the volatile parent is apt. Now, I have to grapple with whether I’m up to the 24 hour challenge.
I could have restacked every sentence of this labor (I knew it would be worth the wait while you fixed your furnace).
I stopped writing because of the torture you described searching for that thesis to develop.
I taught a six week unit on social media addiction, helping and hoping my students—through their own research—would see the pitfalls and put their phones down. I think it was a losing battle. Of course, I ditched social media (I knew what Zuckerberg was up to years ago), but I was not ready for 2.0. The speed. The audacity (even for him). Epstein. Israel. Genocide. American murders in plain sight. Millions of people losing their ability to go to a doctor or adequately feed their kids. The corporatizing of the fucking television news.
And, then I found Substack. And you. And some other brilliant writers who speak to my soul, inform my brain, help me make sense of the insanity, and give me new ways of looking at the same shit this entire post focuses on. But, now I’m addicted to Substack. “Other people read books (the way I used to). What’s the difference?” I’m watching history in the making, the way my sister devours books about the Civil War.
Thank you so so much for torturing yourself to find your way back to the Blues. I can lose (or maybe the word is “find” myself in music, too). So here’s what I’m gonna listen to for a while. https://www.amazon.com/Pillars-Ellison/dp/B0D9C2SR1G
Yes. I taught at Chicagoland and NW Indiana Universities (part time, which is the way they do it, so they don’t have to pay benefits) and retired when it all went online and ChatGPT started writing students’ papers for them.
My youngest daughter teaches criminology at the uni level. She's having the same problems with her students. The uni has a few AI detectors, but they aren't perfect. She's really rough on the students she catches.
Thank you for unpacking this reality so carefully. Recently I’ve been diving under the wreck of my own psyche to disconnect as many signals and notifications as possible. My phone beeps dozens of times daily and I’m learning how to stop it, one by one. By instituting a news hour in the morning and another at night, I’m reclaiming my life and sanity. Thank you for affirming my own experience.
I’m forwarding this to my Republican nephew who is trying very hard to raise 4 small children without allowing them to spend their lives in front of screens. It’s a struggle for him and has become one of our points of connection. I’m mindful of what I email him and he actually reads what I send.
As you describe this screen obsession, I realize how profoundly addicted we all are. I’ve just finished dry January. Maybe unplugged February is next. Blessings.
That's similar to what I do. I take short breaks during the day, and a hard cutoff at 7:00 pm. I listen to contemporary jazz during the day, and read something unrelated to the news.
I read every word of this extraordinary analysis of what has happened to our minds, hearts and characters, as a result of the techno mind-f* that has gripped humanity in recent years. I recognize so many behaviors! Especially the numbness and emptiness. Reclaiming our interior spaces is the first step to action! Not sure if I can do a month unplugged, but I am beginning a personal Step Away into Peace initiative for the month of February and will be listening to the blues as I celebrate Black History Month. Thank you, Xplisset, for sharing your brilliance with us!
Excited to see your essay in my inbox. Assuming I can be glad your heat is fixed. 🎶 something in the way he writes…. 🎶 yeah, truly just love your prose, man. A turn of a phrase I can roll over in my mind and savor. And, this topic, a favorite with grown nieces and nephews around a dinner table. I understand the mind suck/numbery of the doom scroll but I never put that together with the creation of a docile and malleable mass of humans. I, too, actively work on turning away from the screen…..thanks for another wonderful essay.
I think this might be the best description of what is being done to us. I hate that we, s Democrats, always seem to be late to the party – that party where we communicate to our constituents that they life they are enjoying is due to our efforts. That party where we clearly state what we believe in and what we plan to accomplish in the future. And please, God, try to keep the words to less than six syllables each.
To your escape exit with music, you're right, we have to do something to disengage. My avocation is wood turning and when one applies a very sharp tool to a rapidly spinning chunk of wood, the very last thing you can do is let your mind wander. And for my mental health, that hour or so that I can still stand on my feet is the best therapy there is.
But, then comes that niggling feeling of guilt. Guilt that I should be doing something to fight this regime. And not playing in the shop while Americans are being gunned down in the street by ICE goons. Irrational, I know, but that's where it is and I don't know how to fix that.
Thank you for the clarity you have brought to the mindf*** we are all experiencing. You have described this in a way that avoids the cycle of language that social media feeds on. Straight forward and with deep thought into our emotional numbness. No BS or platitudes in your writing. I am thankful to have found you and happy to support.
Xplisset, all that is occurring is an engineered manipulation to pit us at each others' throats so that the 1% can implement their Davos 2030 goals of America no longer being a super power (the Constitution eviscerated) and us owning nothing (they will steal it all) and being happy about it (or else). Here is how they are doing this, we cannot let them get away with it:
Ten Ways the 1% Who - Who Own Almost All Media & Using It Have Radicalized Us Against One Another - Are Manipulating Us to Walk into the Technocratic Incinerator:
1) The first manipulation is the illusion of choice. You think you have two parties representing different visions for America but both parties are funded by the same billionaires, vote for the same surveillance bills, approve the same defense budgets, and serve the same corporate interests. The choice you are given is which color tie the puppet wears, not who controls the strings.
2) The second manipulation is emotional hijacking. The news does not inform you, it activates you. Every story is framed to trigger fear or anger or disgust because those emotions bypass your rational thinking and make you easier to control. You are not watching journalism. You are being subjected to psychological operations designed to keep you in a constant state of agitation.
3) The third manipulation is tribal sorting. The algorithm learns what makes you angry and feeds you more of it until your entire worldview is shaped by outrage at the other side. You are sorted into a tribe not because you chose it but because keeping you tribal keeps you predictable and profitable.
4) The fourth manipulation is false scarcity. You are told resources are limited and the other tribe is taking what belongs to you. Immigrants are stealing your jobs. Welfare recipients are draining your taxes. The other party is destroying your healthcare. Meanwhile the billionaire class has more wealth than any humans in history and could solve most of these problems tomorrow if they wanted to.
5) The fifth manipulation is memory holing. Stories that threaten powerful interests get buried or forgotten within days. Exposed crimes result in no consequences. Historical context that would help you understand the present is never taught. You are kept in a perpetual present with no past to learn from and no future to plan for.
6) The sixth manipulation is controlled opposition. The voices you think are fighting for you are often funded by the same interests they pretend to oppose. The outrage merchant on your side of the aisle is playing a character designed to keep you engaged and angry and tuned in while nothing ever actually changes.
7) The seventh manipulation is the Overton window. The range of acceptable opinion is artificially narrowed so that anything outside it seems extreme. Ideas that were mainstream fifty years ago are now treated as radical. Ideas that serve elite interests are treated as moderate common sense. You are not choosing your beliefs from the full range of human thought. You are choosing from a menu they wrote.
8) The eighth manipulation is learned helplessness. You are shown so many problems with no solutions that you eventually give up and accept that nothing can change. This is intentional. A population that believes resistance is futile does not resist. They scroll and complain and feel superior for understanding how bad things are while doing absolutely nothing about it.
9) The ninth manipulation is identity capture. Your political affiliation becomes your identity, and any attack on your party feels like an attack on you personally. This makes you defend politicians and policies that harm you because admitting they are wrong would mean admitting you were wrong, and your ego will not allow that.
10) The tenth manipulation is the most insidious of all: you are manipulated into believing you are too smart to be manipulated. Every person reading this thinks the manipulations I described apply to other people, the stupid people, the brainwashed people on the other side. That certainty is itself a manipulation. The moment you believe you are immune is the moment you become most vulnerable
Thank you.
Thank you Ally. That is an excerpt ftom a larger brilliant analysis here: https://tritorch.substack.com/p/everything-you-watch-or-read-is-owned
I think you will find it well worth your time.
“all men were created equal.” Quite a challenge for the time and still so for today. Lincoln put it more provocatively: “…dedicated to the proposition that all men were created equal” in his brief Gettysburg Address. Some of us remain dedicated to that proposition and have aspirations that it someday will be more than a proposition, but law of the land.
Thank you for this beautifully written analysis of which I read every compelling word. Sounds like someone’s heat came back on in more ways than one! ;) Your analogy to the volatile parent is apt. Now, I have to grapple with whether I’m up to the 24 hour challenge.
I could have restacked every sentence of this labor (I knew it would be worth the wait while you fixed your furnace).
I stopped writing because of the torture you described searching for that thesis to develop.
I taught a six week unit on social media addiction, helping and hoping my students—through their own research—would see the pitfalls and put their phones down. I think it was a losing battle. Of course, I ditched social media (I knew what Zuckerberg was up to years ago), but I was not ready for 2.0. The speed. The audacity (even for him). Epstein. Israel. Genocide. American murders in plain sight. Millions of people losing their ability to go to a doctor or adequately feed their kids. The corporatizing of the fucking television news.
And, then I found Substack. And you. And some other brilliant writers who speak to my soul, inform my brain, help me make sense of the insanity, and give me new ways of looking at the same shit this entire post focuses on. But, now I’m addicted to Substack. “Other people read books (the way I used to). What’s the difference?” I’m watching history in the making, the way my sister devours books about the Civil War.
Thank you so so much for torturing yourself to find your way back to the Blues. I can lose (or maybe the word is “find” myself in music, too). So here’s what I’m gonna listen to for a while. https://www.amazon.com/Pillars-Ellison/dp/B0D9C2SR1G
If you don't subscribe already, I strongly suggest Heather Cox Richarson's Substack "Letter From An American". It is a must read.
Thanks, I love her and watch her on YouTube every day.
100%!
Do you teach high school or college level?
Yes. I taught at Chicagoland and NW Indiana Universities (part time, which is the way they do it, so they don’t have to pay benefits) and retired when it all went online and ChatGPT started writing students’ papers for them.
My youngest daughter teaches criminology at the uni level. She's having the same problems with her students. The uni has a few AI detectors, but they aren't perfect. She's really rough on the students she catches.
Thank you for unpacking this reality so carefully. Recently I’ve been diving under the wreck of my own psyche to disconnect as many signals and notifications as possible. My phone beeps dozens of times daily and I’m learning how to stop it, one by one. By instituting a news hour in the morning and another at night, I’m reclaiming my life and sanity. Thank you for affirming my own experience.
I’m forwarding this to my Republican nephew who is trying very hard to raise 4 small children without allowing them to spend their lives in front of screens. It’s a struggle for him and has become one of our points of connection. I’m mindful of what I email him and he actually reads what I send.
As you describe this screen obsession, I realize how profoundly addicted we all are. I’ve just finished dry January. Maybe unplugged February is next. Blessings.
That's similar to what I do. I take short breaks during the day, and a hard cutoff at 7:00 pm. I listen to contemporary jazz during the day, and read something unrelated to the news.
I read every word of this extraordinary analysis of what has happened to our minds, hearts and characters, as a result of the techno mind-f* that has gripped humanity in recent years. I recognize so many behaviors! Especially the numbness and emptiness. Reclaiming our interior spaces is the first step to action! Not sure if I can do a month unplugged, but I am beginning a personal Step Away into Peace initiative for the month of February and will be listening to the blues as I celebrate Black History Month. Thank you, Xplisset, for sharing your brilliance with us!
Excited to see your essay in my inbox. Assuming I can be glad your heat is fixed. 🎶 something in the way he writes…. 🎶 yeah, truly just love your prose, man. A turn of a phrase I can roll over in my mind and savor. And, this topic, a favorite with grown nieces and nephews around a dinner table. I understand the mind suck/numbery of the doom scroll but I never put that together with the creation of a docile and malleable mass of humans. I, too, actively work on turning away from the screen…..thanks for another wonderful essay.
There is something big & important there. Now I have to read it again & absorb it & read it again.
Thank you.
Excellent post; and hits me right between the eyes--and in my heart.
I think this might be the best description of what is being done to us. I hate that we, s Democrats, always seem to be late to the party – that party where we communicate to our constituents that they life they are enjoying is due to our efforts. That party where we clearly state what we believe in and what we plan to accomplish in the future. And please, God, try to keep the words to less than six syllables each.
To your escape exit with music, you're right, we have to do something to disengage. My avocation is wood turning and when one applies a very sharp tool to a rapidly spinning chunk of wood, the very last thing you can do is let your mind wander. And for my mental health, that hour or so that I can still stand on my feet is the best therapy there is.
But, then comes that niggling feeling of guilt. Guilt that I should be doing something to fight this regime. And not playing in the shop while Americans are being gunned down in the street by ICE goons. Irrational, I know, but that's where it is and I don't know how to fix that.
Thank you for the clarity you have brought to the mindf*** we are all experiencing. You have described this in a way that avoids the cycle of language that social media feeds on. Straight forward and with deep thought into our emotional numbness. No BS or platitudes in your writing. I am thankful to have found you and happy to support.
Time to listen to some Blues!
What a damn shame.