Years ago, I discovered a lie in my head. This particular lie came from a news headline.
When I watched the source material directly, the truth was the opposite of the headline.
This triggered an unpleasant expedition through my psyche to find more lies. I found a lot.
I was forced to reconsider everything I had learned from sources like the news. People on the news are not journalists. They are paid actors who don't care about what's true. These actors repeat and advance stories that benefit their advertisers. In other words, propaganda.
The "news" lied too much, so people watch it less. Now people watch things like social media and Youtube.
The propagandists who paid for narratives on the news are now adapting to influencing you on social media and short-form videos.
If this sounds like a “conspiracy theory”, consider that the ability to control how you think is the greatest prize on Earth.
Everyone is now online, so the rewards for control are the greatest they've ever been. It'd be much more surprising if there weren't campaigns aggressively trying to influence all of your views. Due to this constant propaganda in all media, we are the most propagandized generation by many orders of magnitude.
Emotional triggers in videos are the most effective form of propaganda. Emotions like sympathy, concern, shock, and the maternal instinct are abused and hijacked to bypass higher-level thought.
The most effective way to influence someone is to let them do most of the work themselves. If you show someone a headline or a video and make them feel something, they'll create the reason for why they feel this way themselves.
Propagandized people can be mobilized for any purpose. War, donations, social change, political power, even assassinations.
As in 1984, ultimate power is controlling how people think. It's much more powerful than money. So we’re all the targets of propaganda campaigns to nudge, shove, push, and cajole us, both directly and indirectly via news, media, advertising, and culture.
Some campaigns are positive or neutral, such as a company sincerely believing their product will help you. Unfortunately, most propaganda definitely does not have your best interests in mind.
Those who think they can’t be influenced by propaganda are more vulnerable to being influenced. This is because they think they're immune, which reduces their skepticism in critically evaluating ideas. Especially if the idea is subtle, disguised, and leverages human vanity like “this belief makes me a good person, and part of the good tribe”.
Disgustingly, much of the propaganda isn’t just a simple lie, but the exact opposite of what is true. The sheer audacity makes it paradoxically harder to see the lie, especially for a good person who avoids lying and isn't fluent in deception.
Because, surely they wouldn't lie about something so blatantly false? But they did. They are, and they will. Even worse, much of the propaganda pits people against truth and their own nature. The results are tragic.
Abandon all hope, all ye who stay here. Question everything, including this essay.
I've deliberately avoided including examples.
Propaganda's goal is making you think their idea is actually your idea, so you defend the external idea as a part of yourself.
Since the best propaganda works on emotions and not facts and logic, people often have a severe emotional reaction and shut down or lash out when a narrative they believe is questioned.
In the future, I'll go into specific examples. For now, my goal is encouraging general introspection about narratives:
1) Where did this idea come from originally?
2) Who would be incentivized to spread this idea and why?
To be clear, many other much more talented writers on X and Substack have written on these ideas. This is my attempt to explain my perspective on thinking about propaganda to my friends, in the hopes that they can join me in enjoying the benefits of recognizing and avoiding harmful narratives.