Showing posts with label Digital Detox. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Digital Detox. Show all posts

Wednesday, August 19, 2020

8/19/20 - Intellectual Populism, Enemy of the People, The Humanovirus Sh*tshow

Detailing the gloriously organic results coming from a month of social media, news, and podcasting detox. Also, boutique "news" & democratized opinion's relationship to mob rule: Ibsen's Enemy of the People, the humanovirus and its ubiquitous invasive species traits, the Dennis Doctrine, and podcasting without Sausage Party Hope and with a severed validation stream leaves one pesky unanswered question: "why the f**ck am I doing this?"

More Drew Michael: https://www.youtube.com/user/drewmichaelcomedy/videos

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Tuesday, June 16, 2020

6/16/20 - Activist Media, Dogma as God, Marrow of Humanity

When the entire media's just abandoned their "objective" pretenses, where do you go? Also, digital detox and cutting the incoming noise, homogenous consistency of thought throughout a congregation qualifies as "religion", retained ideological attorneys, the difference between organic human beings and their virtual online projections, and the Marrow of Humanity: who we are when no one's looking. Don't worry. I'll get to the protests, riots, and thought-crime purges soon enough. Prepare yourselves accordingly!



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Beware the airlock: www.facebook.com/EscapingTheCave

Tuesday, May 19, 2020

5/19/20 - The Stalker Militia, A Hydroxy Hardon, Woke Youth

So, about that whole "in this together" thing... Topics include Trump's bizarre and supernatural hydroxychloroquine erection, quarantine and consumerist withdrawal, free-rage extremism and Michigan's armed stalkers closing the capitol, ideological bleed-over, identity politics infecting the virus, humble ignorance, a COVID-exploiting Woke Youth Recruitment video seizing the national airwaves, and what happens when I go off my gated social media reservation and why it's becoming nearly essential to completely disconnect. This one gets harsh. Beware.

Wednesday, April 29, 2020

4/29/20 - Social Media Disease: A Cacophony of Nothing



Todd's merciful Bat Plague boycott continues with more spiritually uplifting content like: "F**k Subaru. I hate them and you should, too." Also, 2020's Jill Stein; Steinbeck, Salinas, and digital detox; social media "should" be regulated like radio; carnival barkers and data overload are killing democracy; the Wisdom of the People™ doesn't exist therefore populism is pandering to a screeching herd; and rejoice! The Devil's all up in ya! Can you feel him? 



--More: www.escapingthecave.com and www.toddzillax.com
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Tuesday, April 28, 2020

4/28/20 - The Blacklands Abyss

Taking an improvised break from Bat Plague punditry by focusing on more "uplifting" material like cancerous cynicism! Also, a few old hitchhiking yarns and the metaphysical notion of trail magic, losing your religion, the God/Devil parable, and ignoring the positive side of universal human duality. Just for optimistic kicks, I also muse about my podcast's course and its ultimate futility. A warm and fuzzy episode? Believe it or not, kinda. And, no Covid! You're welcome.



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Friday, April 24, 2020

4/24/20 - Seekers, Preachers, & The Covid Reality Wars

Toddzilla delivers his overdue Message of Hope™ featuring topics like strutting stupidity, social media's performance addiction, Hobbes' inevitable civil war, the need for propaganda, and releasing our infected cattle back into the bewildered herd.  Book your children's party now! Use promo code "Leviathan Rising" to get 50% off!



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Saturday, March 28, 2020

3/28/20 - Detroit, Intellectual Distancing, The Glowing Antichrist

Can Detroit and rural Michigan bear what they say is coming? Social distancing as an apt metaphor and how it can be useful. A crisis instinctively prods a frightened herd into a closed-tribe psychology, which is nationalism. How data overload contributes to it and helps obliterate the utopian Brotherhood of Man mythology. Why many quietly want Trump to fail, whether they admit it or not.



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Wednesday, February 26, 2020

2/26/20 - Social Media Disease: The Dopamine Drip

"Whoever owns social validation..." Performance addiction and how the masses have become junkies gorging on validation's dopamine stream. How various influencers, including podcasters, have monetized validation mainlining in the name of "brand building". Propaganda, validation, dopamine, and Ellul's "conditioned response." How social momentum works: Tony McAleer on Your Undivided Attention. Also, how ideological boldness is a surefire sign of a propagandee.

Listen to "Your Undivided Attention" here: https://humanetech.com/podcast/




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Sunday, January 12, 2020

1/12/20: The Great Hack & The Great War of The 21st Century


After rotting in my queue for a couple of months, and one too many recommendations, I finally watched The Great Hack on Netflix. This feature-length documentary is worthwhile as a means to understand how our stolen data is not only being sold, but used to exploit the hole in our psychological firewall to manipulate and "trigger" what they call "persuadables" into a desired response or action. Or, non-action. It's essential if you're more than slightly interested in the subject. But...

Wednesday, October 30, 2019

10/30/19: Disinformation '16, Weaponized Truth, Hillary The Halloween Zombie

This episode focusses mostly on disinformation and interference in the 2016 election and includes selected clips from the Your Undivided Attention podcast episode "From Russia With Likes" (#1) featuring disinformation expert Renée DiResta. Her expertise connects incredibly well to my Propaganda series. Topics include: the seemingly innocent methods used by the Russians exploiting personal identity to create online communities that can be manipulated via agitative identity politics later on, The Call to Action: The Manchurian Propagandist, more on the propaganda dopamine connection: validation, attacking trust in political institutions and the media, anger and apathy, exploiting freedom of speech, and the silliness of the "Global Public Square.

Listen to Your Undivided Attention here: https://humanetech.com/podcast/



ALSO:
  • Hillary: probably right about Tulsi Gabbard
  • Hillary: definitely right about Jill Stein
  • Hillary: absolutely a Trump asset
  • Hillary: continue your role as a public servant. Retire. Quietly. 
  • Americans subsidize European entitlements
  • Trump's "foreign policy" could lead to universal education 
  • Media and Information Education: stat!
  • Be sure you're subscribed to "Escaping The Cave"
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*Also check out www.christophermedia.net  www.escapingthecave.com

Wednesday, October 9, 2019

10/09/19: Pinching The Impeachment Loaf

Are you stuck trying to build a well-reasoned, impartial, and detached impeachment snowman from competing piles of steaming cable news shit? Yeah. Me too. The only lens that works: the wide-angle agitation propaganda lens. First, a virtual colon cleanse in the form of a micro-pod.



ALSO: 
  • Fuck Twitter
  • Twice
  • Hard
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*Also check out www.christophermedia.net  www.escapingthecave.com

Tuesday, October 1, 2019

10/01/19: Agitational Dysfunction & Revolutionary Hatred

An introduction to LeBon, his ideas on mobs, and The Psychology of Revolution--specifically hatred. The forthcoming electoral reality show, 2020's prepared script, how the spinoffs will be cast, and what happens when our Matrix Avatar Superheroes stumble into the Desert of the Real.



ALSO:
  • Unrealistic expectations in the steaming pile of Twitter
  • Was it your childhood dream to be Saul Goodman?
  • More on pseudo-environments and internal narratives
  • Fcuk Twitter
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Friday, September 27, 2019

9/27/19: Propaganda Blindspots & The Constituent Mob

Institutions fail and democracy descends into mob rule when representative are paralyzed and terrorized by fear of their voters. Trump, Ukraine, and 2020's year-long electoral reality show disguised as an idealistic impeachment. Informational sectarianism and how it's easy to see "their" propaganda. Yours? Never! Their demagogue is your savior. There may be a way for a detaching informational unicorn treat that. MSNBC, CNN, and FOX are Pepsi, Coke, and Dr. Pepper; when everything is spin and propaganda, who's a political infidel supposed to believe?



Also:
  • Alternate Informational Universes 
  • Half-assed media sophistication: not enough
  • Why can't we watch the opposition's media without going nuts?
  • Our dueling scandals aren't automatically mutually exclusive
  • More on the the Current Events Man 
  • Media isn't free. You are the product being sold. 
 
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*Also check out www.christophermedia.net & www.escapingthecave.com
 

Thursday, September 26, 2019

9/26/19: The Internal Narrative Trojan Horse

"The fiction is taken as truth because the fiction is badly needed." A quick introduction to Walter Lippmann and the commonality between him, Ellul, Bernays, Haidt, and Harari. People can't personally perceive the world beyond their own sliver of firsthand experience. Therefore, the Current Events Man is beholden, dependent upon, and therefore exploited by the propagandist and his digital distortions. Tech and data overload confusion has made this exponentially worse. If democracy is demands an "enlightened citizenry", it's maybe doomed from the start. Paradoxically, there's a stab at some hope in here too. Weird.



ALSO:
  • Te Nosce, bitches 
  • Competing Scandals; Competing Networks; Competing Narratives 
  • Smoking, Facebook, and associative dopamine addiction.    
  • The Matrix and the Internet
  • The responsibility and danger of exposing "their" delusion
  • All Cats Meow
  • Why we believe the ridiculous
  • Finding hope in human imperfection
  • More on likability and art
  • The Hobgoblin  
  • Where the hell is Jill Stein? #NeverForget

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*Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, and and podcatcher that doesn't suck.
*Also check out www.christophermedia.net & www.escapingthecave.com

Tuesday, September 10, 2019

9/10/19: Iceberg Ahoy! Validation Junkies & The Chosen Ones

Social validation, dopamine, and social media's Walter White; the predictably ridiculous reaction to Dave Chappelle's latest Netflix special and how comedy has evolved from truth telling to Wokeflake proselytizing; more on how people are more willing and eager than deceived when it comes to swallowing fiction and disinformation; choking on data leading to confused gullibility; honesty in a crisis; Sausage Party Hope: children demanding their happy ending. Where's the spring of genuine hope?



ALSO:  
  • The Battle of the 21st Century
  • The iceberg bobbing off our bow
  • Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube: Walter White cutting his meth supply? 
  • Pinker's Utopian and Tragic Visions
  • Evolution and self-awareness
  • The apocalypse and its "chosen ones"
  • Progress's Myth and becoming organic

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*Also check out www.christophermedia.net

Thursday, August 22, 2019

8/22/19: Propaganda: Contradictions, Agitation Media, Typhoid Zuck

Propaganda's ambiguity and contradictions including: creating tensions while relieving others, an introduction to the companion propagandas: agitation and integration and how they overlap; self-justification and imposed guilt; attachment and ostracizing oneself to join the "enemy; politicization and privatization; "Why die for Danzig?' and how political orphans benefit extremists and authoritarians.



ALSO:
  • Andrew Sullivan on the boomerang
  • Post-Truth hatred and division: a bigger threat than climate change
  • Don't blame the bartender for getting you drunk
  • Twitter, Facebook, and Typhoid Mary
  • Atomic Ping Pong
  • Our personal broadcast stations
  • The Russia investigation saved the Democrats
  • Setting up your triage tent
  • Forget the mob; save yourself
  • Information or Propaganda? Can you tell? Does it even matter?
  • The Matrix & Propaganda
Jacques Ellul's "Propaganda": https://www.amazon.com/Propaganda-Formation-Attitudes-Jacques-Ellul/dp/0394718747

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*Also check out www.christophermedia.net

Saturday, August 17, 2019

8/17/19: Propaganda: Dependent Drunks In Denial

On Ellul's "The Need For Propaganda." We've both developed a tolerance for and a psychological dependency on propaganda's certainty-stoking, justifying, and and self-worth generating narratives, social media is a propagandist's dream, desensitization and an increasing desire for the excitement felt from being immersed in the constant, and necessary stream of propaganda, how our addiction has allowed both traditional media and social media "influencers" to monetize the Outrage Industrial Complex, our role as retained ideological attorneys, and wishful thinking (and possibly disastrous effects) of suddenly eliminating 320-million people's propaganda narratives. Sometimes the cure is worse than the disease. Grab a sammich for this one. And maybe a stiff drink. Hey! I never said this would be easy!



ALSO: 
  • This is a triage situation; not a search for the "cure"
  • Disinformation bit me again!
  • Why we won't quit the informational drug
  • A possible path to empathy
  • The culture war is a War of National Narratives
  • Chosen perspective becomes "personal truth"
  • Provoking shame as a "debate" tool: a boomerang
  • Social media "influencers": personal brands hocking a product while posing as "journalists"
  • The IDW: agitation propaganda
Jacques Ellul's "Propaganda": https://www.amazon.com/Propaganda-Formation-Attitudes-Jacques-Ellul/dp/0394718747

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*Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, and your favorite podcatcher.
*Also check out www.christophermedia.net & www.escapingthecave.com

Friday, August 2, 2019

8/2/19: Propaganda: Slogans, Rationalizations, The Religious Mind

The conclusion of Ellul's psychological crystallization segment featuring the makeup of its slogans & how they're used to replace thought, collective belief and obsessions, self-justification/rationalizations and how they spawn the self-righteous Puritan, the closing of the crystallized mind, propaganda's religious personality, and a bizarre 21st century media phenomenon: monetizing mind rape.




ALSO:

- Marianne Williamson: The New Trump?
- Introducing the father of American propaganda: Edward Bernays
- They know you better than you know yourself
- Propaganda's side-effects and how they mirror the '60's definition of "neurosis"

Jacques Ellul's "Propaganda": https://www.amazon.com/Propaganda-Formation-Attitudes-Jacques-Ellul/dp/0394718747


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*Also check out www.christophermedia.net & www.escapingthecave.com

Thursday, August 1, 2019

8/1/19: Propaganda: Inseminating Zealots & Vicarious Atonement

Begins with a takedown of "white privilege", self-flagellation vs. self-interest, and the asinine/futile demands of our Social Vengeance Warriors; beware the boomerang, Moonbeam. From there, I move on to Ellul's dissection of how propaganda hijacks the political cultist's mind. The first of two parts, this episode focusses on the distinction between doctrine and critical thought, unnaturally homogenous thought, codifying social, political, and moral standards, exploiting latent pre-existing prejudices, and the power of implanted stereotypes & symbols used as triggering mechanisms. The elephant is strong in this one!



Jacques Ellul's "Propaganda": https://www.amazon.com/Propaganda-Formation-Attitudes-Jacques-Ellul/dp/0394718747


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*Also check out www.christophermedia.net & www.escapingthecave.com

Thursday, July 25, 2019

7/25/19: Spinning Mueller & The Sacred Cows

Congressional grandstanding for the cameras, Mueller's testimony: viewed and spun in parallel universes, deciding whether to read the report, voting your own self-interest (Yes! Do it!), the Current Events Man, asking the right questions, when boutique news becomes fatal, and the sacred Golden Calves.



Also: 
  • Leaving the mob
  • Evolution lurks
  • Mythology and the Devil within

*Like it? SPREAD IT!  F**k The Zuckerbeast & Twitter. YOU are my marketing team.

*Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, and your favorite podcatcher.
*Also check out www.christophermedia.net and www.escapingthecave.com