I don't normally watch TV, so it's easy to forget, but it's frankly horrifying just how heavily propagandized the average American is.
When I moved out on my own I never bothered getting a cable subscription. It's been several years now. On my PC or my phone, I use ad blockers. On the TV we pass around account credentials for streaming services. I almost never even see advertisements any more (in media, anyway), aside from when Mike Duncan is hawking razor blades or mattresses at me for the first minute of his podcast.
On rare occasions my wife turns on a stream of CNN, John Oliver, the Super Bowl, the Olympics or whatever, or when I go to see family or somewhere in public where cable news is playing, I begin to feel physically ill. It is all just so fucking slimy and duplicitous. They literally cannot go a minute without reinforcing some sort of big lie about American exceptionalism, empire, or the innate benevolence of American institutions, the global free market, or their new favorite term, the American led "rules based international order."
It is, as Zizek would say, pure ideology. It is nothing but ideology. Doesn't matter if it is MSNBC, CNN, Fox, NPR, local broadcast TV. It is always like fucking astrology. It is always working backwards from the assumption that the United States is legitimate and justified in all circumstances to explaining how domestic and world events uphold that assumption. It is never an investigation into how or why crises take place, what the root causes are, or how they might be avoided or mitigated. It is never about holding powerful people accountable.
Then after 6 minutes of that slop, it is time to cut to the advertisements so you can learn about how the new Tide Pods are environmentally friendly(TM) because you can run the machine on cold (as if you were going to waste money washing your socks in a separate machine at the laundromat), some new TV series about being Black in America which frames all problems of living in the inner cities on a bunch of yokels in the hills and prescribes national unity as the solution, how the newest Ford pickup is bigger and stronger than all previous iterations but we're working on becoming environmentally friendly(TM), or some patriotic spiel from Bruce Springsteen about how great America is, followed by a sales pitch for the new Jeep Wrangler. Then three or four ads about the newest prescription psychiatric drugs with animations of sad bumblebees turning into happy bumblebees while someone reads an entire page of disclaimer copy.
It is fucking bleak. It is worse than any picture they try to paint about the conditions of propaganda in our Official Enemies(TM) like China or DPRK. It is like a very bad methamphetamine-enhanced acid trip.
I actually haven't had cable in close to a decade now and everytime I see the TV at the breakroom at work I feel the same way. (American) capitalism is shockingly "totalitarian" and it's very bizarre to feel that way because literally no one besides the 0.00000000000001% of crazies like us seems to notice it. Some reactionaries do but they just call it "globohomo" and want to replace it with heckin based 1950's ads instead
only the Polytron reduces an entire mouse to a soup-like homogenate in 30 seconds
And yet juche hasn't introduced ads, mass markets, landlords, etc.
. I almost never even see advertisements any more (in media, anyway), aside from when Mike Duncan is hawking razor blades or mattresses at me for the first minute of his podcast.
:data-laughing:
To be fair to Mike, someone on Twitter pointed out that all of his ads end at exactly like 90 seconds into his podcasts (so it's easy to set it up so it just skips the ads automatically every time). I remember Mike actually responded with a wink emoji or something like that
haven't watched TV in years, every media I consume is from the internet, and I have adblockers and script blockers, so I don't see any ads. On the rare occasion that I catch something on TV, I am disgusted by the ads trying to sell you things you don't need. However the most disgusting is when I watch some sports programing, like the NBA, and it's filled with ads for the US military. Turn off your TV and block all ads to save your sanity.
I am absolutely oblivious to all ads not pertaining to Grammerly.
What's fun is when the nbc nationwide nightly news does a random USA USA USA type story. Like some rando getting citizenship and the locals celebrating. Hundreds of thousands of people a year naturalize in the US and y'all just gonna report on one of them. Just because. Yeah, okay.
Anyway, here's a story of deployed soldier surprising their dog when they get back.
My liberal parents are like "television news is all propaganda" but also "so I was listening to NPR and..."
"Our local paper takes the side of big business" but also "the NYT and WaPo are the last bastions of democracy in this age of division"
I'm just going to share a chat convo I had with a lib friend about NPR:
<Me> Just because [NPR] isn't outright stating what you should think doesn't mean they're not trying to sway your opinion. Propaganda is just as much (if not more) about emphasis as it is about fabrication.
<Me> Who are the "both sides"?
<Him> NPR gives equal time to all views
<Me> How often do they feature Marxist-Leninists? Anarchists? Maoists?
<Him> NPR does a pretty good job of presenting enough info for me to form my own opinion
<Me> How often does it bring communists on to speak?
<Him> Don't know
<Me> What do you mean, "you don't know"? If you listen to NPR on a regular basis, you should be able to tell me roughly how often it includes communist voices.
<Him> I mean I haven't really paid attention to the exact view points. only that I get multiple sides of the story.
<Me> How can you claim they represent "all sides" when you aren't even paying attention to what people are saying?
<Him> I am paying attention to what they are saying.
<Me> But you just said that you "haven't really paid attention to the exact view points."
<Him> Bad wording on my part. I paid attention to the view points. But not to the political leanings of the person making the view
<Me> It shouldn't be hard to infer someone's political leanings from their viewpoints. They're going to make points that are in line with their views.
<Him> I dunno. I don't fit cleanly into any given political category.I don’t fit cleanly into any given political category.
"I don't know anything about the categories and this is a way for me to assert my individuality instead of revealing my ignorance"
Most people have contradictory viewpoints that don't align with their broader political views.
"When was the last time they had a conservative/republican give a viewpoint"
"Today."
"When was the last liberal/democrat?"
"Today."
"When was the last anarchist/communist?"
"I don't really know what viewpoints the speakers have."
<Him> I dunno. I don’t fit cleanly into any given political category.
:centrist: and most likely right wing.
and most likely right wing.
I cut contact with him after he argued at length in support of vaccine apartheid because "poor countries don't contribute as much to medical research"
No he's most likely telling the truth. The vast majority of Americans have completely incoherent political views that can change wildly depending upon the particular issue at hand. It's why culture warring is particularly effective here. You can have hardcore reactionaries who basically espouse communist-esque views on economic issues but vote Republican because they think Cultural Marxism is destroying American when the fucking Teletubbies said "trans rights"
Americans have completely incoherent political views that can change wildly depending upon the particular issue at hand.
Why are they like this?
By design. The two major political factions that the media and parties allow to exist are entirely differentiated by culture war bullshit and anything outside that paradigm doesn't exist as far as society at large is concerned. Without any sort of coherent central ideology people just aimlessly bounce from position to position depending on what they're exposed to, leading to completely incoherent views like someone agreeing they and their coworkers should own the company they work for and receive the fruits of their labor but vote for open fascists because McDonalds had a pride flag on their soda and the only source of information they're exposed to has beaten them over the head with tHe GaY aGeNdA for the past twenty years.
Yeah, especially with COVID. My mother, who is asthmatic and out of shape, randomly told me I shouldn't take the Vaccine, and I was taken aback like what are you talking about? Then I realized she was watching some Facebook shit and wouldn't listen to me. Now she's got COVID and lost her sense of taste/smell. She seems alright other than that but refuses to try and not spread it so I have to avoid her now. It's so fucking frustrating to see reasonable people become manipulated so easily.
At least Fox and OANN will tell you to your face they're shamelessly in the bag for the republican party. CNN, MSNBC, ABC all dance around being in for the dems but try to appear to be centrist on paper. They all suck and I think a lot of americans know this but sadly they get sucked into facebook, instagram, twitter when they turn off the tv.
Fuck fash shit, don't care if it's saying it to your face or subliminally.
Fox news absolutely does not present itself as biased to its audience. No idea why internet leftists keep trying to non-equivocate bourgeois media when it's all owned and operated by the same types.
Fox news absolutely does not present itself as biased to its audience.
Hannity absolutely does and he's their most popular personality.
Agree, but this also happens to me with normal TV (mainly dramas)
After not watching TV for a long time, basically all dramas (think GoT and other stuff with a similar tone) and most non-"mockumentary" modern sitcoms (Friends, HIMYM) became totally unwatchable to the point of "how does anyone even watch this shit"
non fiction was good, older sitcoms were alright
Whats wrong with GoT? I mean, yeah it's set in some feudal society, but what, period pieces aren't acceptable to leftists?
I'm not the person you were responding to,but I also find it unwatcheable. I just hated everyone on screen and didn't care about them.
If you mean the characters, then fair enough, but if you meant the acting I'd disagree.
not GoT, just any drama. Has nothing to do with GoT in particular
although, I find european fantasy to be extremely overdone
also the khaleesi girl looked like bad cosplay
Its coming crashing down as we speak, but that tree is falling towards the house, not away.
just imagine what its like for someone who hasn't regularly watched tv news for about 30 years
I've been living with my mother in law for the last few weeks. She has been working from home, and she likes to keep the radio on in the background. Holy fucking shit is that shit garbage. It's not even talk radio type shit, it's just the local news radio. And I know, local news anything is unimaginably reactionary but Jesus.
A couple of years ago I flew to the US to visit my friend in California, the mental shit for me was the amount of drug adverts and weird independent-schools-on-yachts type stuff that weird silicone valley tech bros send their kids to
Every time I go home to visit my parents I’m reminded how terrible local news is.
I remember catching a glimpse of Fox News while my mom was watching it and they were doing the whole "Dr. Seuss is cancelled" bit and I'm like, "How could anyone take this shit seriously?" and right as I think that my mom calls out to the other room, "Can you believe they're saying Dr. Seuss is racist now?" :deeper-sadness:
