2/27/20 - Conform Or Be Cast Out

Social validation & conformity: the evolutionary default setting. Why choosing intellectual autonomy over the herd is nearly impossible. Also, standing apart in self-reliance, the drifter, and mending holes in the firewall.



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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/




--Don't settle for imitations! Be sure you're subscribed to an authentic Escaping The Cave feed!

2/23/20 - "Vladdy Loves Bernie?" Or "It's The Destabilization, Dummy!"

Of course Putin's playing both sides and assisting Bernie in the Democratic primary. It's about agitation, discord, and eroding the public's already fractured belief it itself, not ideology. This is the perfect insurgent agitation storm: who in this country are more divisive than Bernie, AOC, and Trump? The Russians aren't to blame. We are. Also, why Informational Education programs aren't coming, the simple and cynical reason our for-profit media outlets and political "leadership" won't help us immunize ourselves from foreign propaganda, and Walter Lippmann on free speech and why Facebook must eventually take the fall for our unwillingness to tell truth from falsehood. Includes a quick refresher on 2016's multi-pronged disinformation/partitioning campaign as well as a recap on Jacques Ellul's agitation propaganda material regarding the unleashing of hatred. Introducing: The Rant Alert!

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




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2/21/20 - Authenticity, The Mask, and The Beast Unleashed

On independent thought, authenticity, social momentum, and permitting redemption. Also, You're not the Elephant Whisperer, let Dumbo feed! Detecting doctrinaires, the Warm Glow of the Herd's Fellowship, manipulative monkeys dancing for their lunch, and a mask, the core, and the id walk into a bar.



A format change is underway. Make sure you're subscribed to an Escaping The Cave feed!

2/11/20 - Unimpressed Sobriety & Sanity's Touchstone

Toddzilla's latest Message of Hope formally introduces the loyal listener to Mr. Lippmann: a Man of the People! Touched on are Lippmann's "The Phantom Public", his iconoclastic thoughts on technologically pre-historic data overload, emotional detachment, objective reality, the presumed wisdom of We the People™, and democracy's fate. Have a drink first. Also, institutions and trust are dead, a defense of the "elites", and generalists vs. specialists.



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

2/6/20: The Wokeflake Follies

The Iowa Boner, The Rips Heard 'Round the World, and impeachment fails. All by Wednesday. This is the alternative?



ALSO:

• Scripture, agitation, and The Herd Mind
• Democracy implodes without the public's consensual trust
• The means, ends, and Salem Witches
• Romney, Amash, Manchin, and the Principled Pit of Hell
• Howard Dean says Democrats will challenge November's election  

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

2/1/20 - Criminal Conformity & The Beautiful Mutant

"Imitation is suicide." How independent thought gets smothered in infancy, the need to belong: why standing apart from the impaired herd is not only hard, it runs against our social and evolutionary grain. Also, collective and self-delusions protecting us from unpleasant discoveries that might destroy our notions of being special, divine, or even "good."

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



ALSO:

• Tending to personal and commercial attachments
• How political and marketing swine manipulate attachments via identity
• Meditation and Buddhist philosophy as tools to disconnect
• Blank Slatists: Beware
• Emerson's Self-Reliance: read it. 

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

1/28/20 - The Boldness of the Herd, Political Atheism, Our Glowing Christ

The next great war: intellectual autonomy. The bold certainty of the herd, the challenges of independent thought and why seeing someone who is genuinely their own Man is so rare, the media has supplanted the church, disengaging from the ideological Holy War in favor of political atheism, and Toddzilla's Paradox: the conflict between intellectual independence and the desperate human need to belong. Still available for children's parties! Now doing bat mitzvahs!



ALSO:

• A quick impeachment fart
• You want an authoritarian
• Political Vampires
• Algorithms, Lippmann, Bernays, and You
• Silver Spoons: A Hate Crime
• The filthy Centrus Americanus
• Friendship: Loyalty & Support vs. Honesty
• Nothing can be done about climate change
• Data Overload revisited 

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

1/23/20 - Hilerpes; Bernie & The Suckerfish

Hilary's flared up again, this time on Bernie's groin while Tulsi sues to find out if Valtrex is right for her. Also, It's time for the Democratic Socialist's Red Tea Party to get off the DNC's guest couch, pack their stuff, and find their own place. Go be a dragon, Daenerys.  



Remember: Toddzilla didn't kill himself. 

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1/21/20 - Richmond: The 2A and MLK

Wokeflake Twitter was apoplectic when the Richmond pro-gun rally turned out to be peaceful while the rest of world asked, "What? No Antifa? Do they not believe in their holy crusade against Fascismo de Naranja?" Not really. No one asked that. I discuss Thoreau's Civil Disobedience, how it affected Gandhi and MLK, and how that's an unexpected and possible path for gun advocates to reclaiming the narrative.

Also:

• The Invasive Species has a name
• The Democrat's fracture has gangrene
• Daenerys and the Utopian Teet
• Don't call a backdraft a boomerang
• F**K Twitter

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

1/15/20 - Snakes, Survival, & Sabotage: The Need to Feel Alive

Todd discusses collective human boredom in relation to the need for a sense of purpose, struggle, and the addictive rush of just feeling alive. How a dormant survival instinct comes alive during a crisis and how, absent that, we'll manufacture one just to have something to endure, battle, and survive. Also, some some predictions for the 20's. Book those children's parties now!

Also:

• An evening with Pablo Escobar's "chemist"
• A naked man kills a fer-de-lance
• Men, middle age, and the power plant
• Healthy anxiety vs. fear
• This election won't matter
• The tyrant is in the eye of the beholder
• The Titan Tragedy
• Podcasters: they're spammy and slimy.
• ^They call that foreshadowing

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* Also check out www.escapingthecave.com and www.christophermedia.net
* Fuck Twitter

1/13/20: Apocalypto and The Red Star of Moscow

Happy 2020! Are we ready? After a 2-month hiatus spent illegally hunting rhinoceros and snipe in the primitive wilds of the West Michigan wilderness, Todd welcomes the 20's with a quick episode discussing apocalyptic thinking, the coming electoral season, where to find balanced news coverage, and the rarely-used technique of actually listening to "opposition" media simply to understand where they're coming from. Eureka!

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* Also check out www.christophermedia.net
* F**k Twitter and Facebook

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

10/24/19: Presidential Anarchy, Goebbels' Ad Company, and a Prayer

Trump's not actually retarded, is he? Pray with me, won't you?

Also:

• Quitting smoking: it sucks
• No, seriously. I prayed.
• Nicholas Carr and the "influencer"
• Joseph Goebbels and Edward Bernays
• My poor little podcast is attacked by a zombie
• Happy Halloween?
• Fu*k Twitter

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

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

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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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

 

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

9/24/19: Wokeflake Comedy: Sociological Propaganda

A rare ETC podcast: one topic. The stage that was once the playground of Lenny Bruce, Richard Pryor, George Carlin, Bill Hicks, and even Andrew Dice Clay has been stormed by a mob of Social Vengeance Warriors hell bent on using comedy as a delivery mechanism for textbooksociological and agitation propaganda, complete with its own version of the Ten Commandments (now in print!) and a handy scapegoat Satan. When does the "Thank You, Comrade!" showcase start?



ALSO: 

• Controlling speech is controlling thought; Speechcrime is Thoughtcrime
• Unless Nickelback is your standard, nothing great has ever come from timid conformity.
• "Unanimity requires compliance" and defiant creative independence
• Educating and maintaining The Sufficiently Woke Comic

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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

9/18/19: Newton's Third Law of Totalitarian Messiahs

Agitation propaganda doing its work, speechcrime taking root in the form of virtual media mobs enforcing cancel culture and point-of-view authoritarianism, the Wokeflake Messiah will arrive soon, Newton's Third Law of Extremism, the slave's spirituals and frightened children scrambling to the ideological church to be soothed by visions of a future Heaven on Earth.



ALSO: 

• Toxic Compromise
• The Election Won't Matter
• At all.
• Wokeflakes Becoming Trump
• We The Authoritarian People

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