[ExI] Big Media is turning into Big Brother

[William Flynn Wallace]

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.

Pressure to conform starts before kindergarten, continues with parents,
peers, TV, etc.  It never stops.  Society does not like nonconformists -
they scare people.  I don't know where to draw the line separating
propaganda from the rest, but sneering teen girls aren't doing it, like
they are doing exclusion of people who don't conform.  Brainwashing as a
term is way, way beyond what we are encountering in society today.  To use
it in this context is a diminution of it.  It should be restricted to
situations of isolation, starvation, beatings, and other methods of
torture. It should be noted that according to people who lived through
Korean war torture, that it didn't work very well at all.

bill w

On Tue, Nov 9, 2021 at 10:00 AM BillK via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> 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
> >
> ------------------------------------
>
>
> 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
> ------------------------------
>
> BillK
>
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> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat
>
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