This documentary, Programming the Nation, is about how hidden messages have been placed in American media for decades – though it says mainstream I believe this is true for all current American media. Media interpretation and hidden messages are all about an individual’s beliefs. If I, for example, believed “all media is lying to people” then I will always find something that I consider proof of media’s lies. Alternately, if I believe and take all media at “face value” then I will see a news story in which someone says “it’s sad that this poor girl died,” then I will believe a poor girl died and that is sad to hear about just the same.
The truest of hidden messages are the ones intended to be found and “exposed” to others. For example, if one person thinks a triangle means “Illuminati,” we will surely hear about every company that has ever used a triangle being part of the Illuminati during this time where information, true or false, can be accessed easily over the internet. This will cause others to “join” that belief and spread it farther geographically until it “takes over” more of the world than supposed “logical reasoning,” sowing doubt into even the most logical of minds and putting the burden of proof on those who think there is nothing to prove because nothing is there at all.
Our “progressive Age of Technology” has made it both harder and easier to spread misinformation to the point that it’s hard to even decide what information is “true” anymore. There is only the choice to “believe” something someone has already told you or to go out and prove something to yourself at risk to your own wellbeing. For people being collectively told to stay home as often as possible, it’s quite the tall order to ask us to go out and prove something.
That leaves “belief” as our only flexible option. Belief in ourselves and others and things that we can see and hear that we get straight from a computer or TV screen.
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