alt Hacker News> the most compelling content wins the most reach regardless of its origin or intent.
“Winning” means you have successfully manipulated a person who has so little capacity for reasoning that they will react to and make decisions from propaganda
If the plurality of humans have no ability or desire to actively resist manipulation then they are living in the world they are satisfied with
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Propaganda works very well on smart people too. Here's how it often works: smart people like to be well informed. They drink a steady drip of "news" covering a wide range of topics. They therefore have a wide but shallow understanding of current events.
The topics are usually chosen for them (editor or algorithm). The news is packaged up for them to form an opinion at a glance (headline/social media post). They lack a deep understanding and so most things pass as largely believable, if at times a bit of a stretch. Topics they know deeply are almost always "covered poorly," but not the topics they don't know deeply.
The analysis of 1960 trends leading to belief that religion and racism divides would diminish is laughable but the post hoc analysis in Jacques Ellul’s book Propaganda makes several compelling arguments that propaganda is omnipresent and difficult for the great part of public to counter and misplaced confidence in one’s own judgment is often the Achilles heel that allows propaganda to insinuate itself in one’s brain. I mentioned this book in another comment today but it’s uncannily relevant.
Propaganda works on people with all levels of 'capacity for reasoning'. No one is immune to it. Also, a feature of good propaganda is that it gets through a persons bullshit filter so that they are not even aware that they are being manipulated. The article points out the current use of Lego propaganda as examples of governments updating their tools so that they get their message across to more people.
This is important because it lets pluralities build from people who are not aware they are being manipulated. Pluralities can lead to majorities and majorities, in a democratic system, create power. All this to say: I don't think those who have fallen for propaganda are living in a world they are satisfied with but instead that they are living in a world they've been told they are satisfied with and a lack of counter narratives have not shown them a better way. Consider that propaganda gets busted out whenever something isn't naturally popular or beneficial to most people, that is why we see propaganda most used around military efforts.