[ExI] Big Media is turning into Big Brother

[BillK]

On Tue, 9 Nov 2021 at 14:53, <spike at rainier66.com> wrote:
>
> -----Original Message-----
> ...> On Behalf Of BillK via extropy-chat
> Cc: BillK <pharos at gmail.com>
> ...
>
> >...‘We just want to nudge you towards cleaner, healthier ways of living’
> sounds better than ‘We want to re-engineer your thoughts and habits to bring them into line with what we consider to be correct moral behaviour’....
> ------------
>
> >...Remember - Big Brother knows best what is good for you!
>
> BillK
> _______________________________________________
>
>
> BillK, is this just now coming to Britain?  We have been doing that in the colonies since always.  The popular press mostly instigated the war which broke us away from Britain to start with.  Our current cultural civil war is being fueled by the popular press.  Freedom of the press means that cannot be stopped.
>
> Regarding Big Brother, I was thinking about something on which you might have insights.  George Orwell was a British guy who wrote his most important work in the late 40s.  By that time, he would perhaps recognize that the biggest audience was in the states.  The USA is really tuned into the notion of growing government power and influence, which is why the constitution is written the way it is.  70 years later, Orwell novels are literature classics, being studied in American high schools to this day (thank you, may your memory live forever St. George.)
>
> BillK, or anyone else, do you suppose Orwell himself realized he was writing novels specifically to appeal to Americans?  If so, it worked.
>
> spike
>
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This article isn't about adverts or propaganda, which have been around
since printing was invented.  :)
This 'nudging' is intended not to be noticed as ads or propaganda. It
is to brainwash people into thinking that it is showing the way that
everyone normally behaves and if you want to be popular and accepted
into society, then you should behave like that also.
If you notice that it is propaganda, then it has failed.

Orwell never visited the USA, but his later writing definitely had the
US in mind.
See:  <https://www.americanheritage.com/george-orwells-america>
(The internet makes everybody an expert!)  ;)

Quote:
In the last, and perhaps the most delightful, of these selections,
Orwell reminds us of how post-Civil War monopoly capitalism tarnished
the old, untrammeled, egalitarian America of the 1840s. But the
article is no polemic; it is, rather, an evocation of the America of
George Orwell’s fondest imaginings—the free and buoyant land that is
more symbol than geographic or political fact but is none the less
real for that.
—Richard F. Snow
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BillK