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I don't know why you believe that there are very few entry points for ideas. Every person is a potential originator of an idea. Spreading ideas has never been as easy as it is now.
I don't know why you believe this. Censorship has never been lesser than it is today as far as I can see. People may fall into peer pressure to not say what is considered politically incorrect, but that has always been true because humans are conforming and tribalist by nature. I gave the example of a terrorist camp specifically to illustrate the level of extremity and control required for an environment in restricting ideas to qualify as brainwashing. It's not difficult to be agentic about spreading ideas opposing the current perceived consensus if someone really wants to do it.
Because effectively, they're not, and there's only a handful of entrypoints which allow you to flood all of society with an idea, while all the other ones give you an extremely limited reach. Why do you think all the creators whine so much about The Algorithm?
Yes, if people controlling the entry points want to let you spread it.
Because we've seen open and deliberate measures to throttle and restrict what was deemed "harmful misinformation".
I'm not particularly interested in litigating whether the control over thought was greater in the past than it is now, my thesis is: mind control works. The past might have had it's own forms of mind control, but today it works, to a large extent, by deciding what ideas get to spread over mass media (+a handful of institutions like the education system). This is undeniable, not only did we see it happen in real-time, we were explicitly being told that this was the goal of people in charge of said media.
But what they ultimately wanted to achieve, more than anything else they ever wanted before, was preventing Trump from getting elected, twice, and they failed at that. In that light, mind control does not work at all. I don't think HBD or lab leak theory or grooming gangs or trans scepticism or any other dangerous idea has been successfully suppressed by information control.
There’s this contradiction at the heart of anti-establishment movements – according to their own central myth, they are doomed rebels against the all-powerful, entrenched evil forces of the establishment, the cathedral, the megaphone, the elites, and so on. So when they win, as they often do because it’s a popular message/beloved fiction trope, they have a dog caught the car moment. In reality they were always more powerful than they thought they were.
Holocaust denial is not about maintaining the moral righteousness of nazism, but its essential myth of the all-powerful jew. 'it didn't happen, but it should have'. Or 'according to my ideology: it should have, and it couldn't have.'
Do you disagree with the theory that Elon Musk buying Twitter was a pivotal moment for Trump's second run?
I'll refer you to one of my previous comments:
I don't believe that, but I also think that the art of sausage-making involves a lot more than most people (including me) have stomach for.
Can't have hurt him. The point is, 'mind control theory' in its strong form, is contradicted by dissenters buying a piece of media to fight back against the mind control. There's the sarcastic quip about 'build your own banking system'- well, him, and through him, people who agree with him, did buy their own media system.
Are we just haggling about the price? I could just as easily say "Sure, you can fool some people some time, but you can't fool all the people all the time....".
I don't see that as a contradiction. For one, the purchase was kind of a fluke to begin with, the way I remember it, the TDS brigade was convinced they were owning Elon buy forcing him, via the court system, to buy it. Other than that, while competing interests may balance themselves out, the "balance" is far from guaranteed, I for one don't think we have a neat equal distribution of ownership of mass-media between various ideologies.
We very well may be. I don't hold a maximalist position. Look, here's me arguing for limits to the power of propaganda while expressing sympathy to the position that "propaganda works".
Though to point out it's something more than haggling over the price: if mind control works only on a "some of the people some of the time" basis, why would you say so much money is being spent on marketing regularly and continuously?
Who promised you this? I wouldn’t even want it that way.
Politically, or, consumerismically? Compared to the power of the citizen and the GDP he controls through the state, the political ads and lobbying don’t represent that much money.
For consumption goods, I know everyone thinks ads don’t work on them, but they mostly don’t work on me (also, adblock). For everyone else, they enjoy ads, it’s like good art to them, they’re more than happy to reward companies that evoke such joy with their purchases.
Seems like an implication of "is contradicted by dissenters buying a piece of media to fight back against the mind control". A handful (effectively: 1-2 that are very close to each other) of ideologies dominating the mass-media ecosystem seems to fit right into my model, and "dissidents" buying a SocMed is far from a contradiction.
The latter is a more obvious example, I think
Well, I will give you points for originality, I haven't heard that theory before. I kinda doubt that personally. I know there are some ads that are fun and creative, but the general sentiment towards advertising seems to be negative, and regarding even the positive ones, I don't think I heard anyone tell me they want to reward the company for a particularly well-made ad.
Imaginary bailey of 100% strong mind control : everything is controlled by one ideology, no dissenting centers of power. People have no independent minds, they just receive the transmissions the elites send, when they deem something not worth censoring.
Imaginary bailey of 0% mind control: people vote and buy only in accordance with their intimate conviction, deep desire, and pure, untainted knowledge. you cannot buy any influence at all. censorship never works. The centers of power perfectly represent the ideological population distribution.
The mottes, our true positions: golden middle of enlightened centrism, haggling on 20-80% mind control. Land of on the one hand, on the other hand.
This conversation is each of us arguing against a bailey the other doesn't actually wish to defend.
For example, it would be silly to try to represent the population's beliefs 1-to-1 (using a stringent form of ideological AA) in, say, hollywood, or newspapers. Is this not obvious? It's one thing to occasionally force a woman or a conservative in to make sure there's a little bit of everything, and prove they are not excluded, it's another to force equal representation. AA devolves into completely unmeritocratic fixed roles for everyone, without regard for ability or interest: the 8th employee must be a 30 yo black creationist, 9th a 50 yo redhead anti-vax woman, etc.
If you see attractive people on a boat drinking Trademark, or a 4x4 Trademark driving though the wilderness on TV, it can move you, and if so, it does add to your enjoyment of the product later. Thank you michael jordan for making me feel like michael jordan when I put on these michael jordan shoes.
It can also inform you of a sale or a new product that alone can meet your peculiar needs, but that's standard ad apologism.
The deeper question is whether the ad can just totally subvert your 'true wishes', or if it is limited in its effects, can even in some cases bring you something positive, or reveal your true wishes. The same goes for political influence: I don't think you can convince people of anything, censor anything, buy any idiot the presidency. There are limits to what this mind control/nudging can achieve.
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