alt Hacker NewsI acknowledge that such telling exists, but there is still responsibility for people choosing to listen to it. Skepticism is vital. Beyond being skeptical of what you see, it is wild to me that we don't have approximately everyone blocking all ads, cable news, most social feeds, and other such transparently manipulative shit. Advertisement especially is literally industrialized and research-based psychological manipulation to make people do things that make no sense (see what Alfred Sloan did to GM, for an early example) — it's toxic and should be absolutely avoided.
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You can’t block all of it all of the time, and children (some of the most vulnerable) especially can’t.
> but there is still responsibility for people choosing to listen to it
yes, sure, this is easy to say, but hundreds of billions of dollars and uncountable person-hours go into this manipulation machine, and many peoples' lives and livelihoods depend on maintaining it. it's a lot to ask of every individual to be solely responsible for the negative impacts of advertising when we all have lives we want to live.
i'm not saying personal responsibility doesn't play a part, but we shouldn't atomize - we should be organized and wield regulation more effectively against the profit motive.
There are MILLIONs of human years of effort, by experts at manipulating people, put into making people feel this way.
Saying bro, why can't your willpower overcome MILLIONS of years of experts trying to manipulate you is a pretty weak argument. It's basically the same as saying 'why can't you take on the top UFC fighters?' at this point. There is a battle to squeeze everything possible out of the sheep on one side, on the other side is us sheep that just want to chill, enjoy life a little. The sheep are f'd.
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People aren't going to learn to be skeptical or think critically because we've been literally removing that from the curriculum in schools. How can someone be skeptical of something if they don't even know how to be skeptical?
Social media runs rampant with a form of skepticism, but I would call that closer to paranoia than critical thinking, and I don't think it's really being helpful in the same way.