I remember watching this so called documentary based on the recommendation of an acquaintance of mine after telling her about the obvious gaslighting the media does. It was also all the hype when it came out earlier this year on social media and among co workers and other acquaintences. Here is my brief analysis on The Social Dilemma as well as the Joe Rogan interview with it's creator during the publicity your.

First suppositon: The best lies always contain a grain of truth. The Social Dilemma likes to portray itself as very critical of Big Tech and how it manipulates people to monopolize their attention. In many aspects this part of its critique is mostly true and the issues it addresses like depression and self harm also seem to check out. Although all the normies that recommended it made it feel like some sort of hidden revelation. To me and to many other critical thinkers I'm sure, this did not come as a surprise. I've been reading about these issues and abuses by Big Tech for years. This in my opinion is to establish some sort of credibility in order to build the propaganda narrative explained below in top of it.

Second supposition: "Big Tech coming clean". I know liars and addicts and I've done my share of both. One effective technique I learned as a teenager to regain someone's trust (via manipualtion) is to come clean about something small such as smoking tobacco in order to draw suspicion away from something bigger such as smoking weed. By admitting to the lesser my parents thought that explained all my suspicious behavior and I got off the hook for behaviour that was in their eyes much worse. By admitting the small stuff mentioned above they try to absolve themselves from the deeper malicious activity that they are conducting. A classic bait and switch.

Third supposition: The Finesse. Two things jumped out at me while watching this farce. I watch a lot of documentaries about all sorts of different topics and rarely if ever have I seen this type of dramatization before. I work in Media, specifically video advertising, and studied film. Usually dramatization or dramatic reenactment is much more conservative, either serving purely as visual aid to help viewers imagine abstract situations such as burial rights of ancient cultures or some battle. Sometimes these are accompanied by narration or dialogue between historical figures which reasonably conforms to what one would expect of the situation. Never have I seen so muxh creative liberty taken. 1) personifying the algorithm in the film as three 'bots' in a command center with the human as a zombie responding to their nudges. 2) and here's the kicker: the narrative of the young man addicted to news and alternative media who then joins an eXtReMe protest movement called the "Extreme Center" with it's personalities being portrayed as caricatures of alex jones or other independent journalists. How insidious is it to plant the idea into the heads of normies of an "extreme" center. The center by definition is the opposite of extreme and that term is a well chosen oxymoron/double speak.

The Origin: So let's look at the source, a bunch of "former" big tech employees with sob stories about how they noticed the excesses of big tech and decided to become pure and good again, leaving to 'educate' the world about the evils of big tech. There is no reason Soy-Boy mcHipsterface, Fatty Blue-Haired Tumblrella and these other bozos should be trusted and their words taken at face value. Additionally this whole project is a production of netflix, another Big Tech silicon valley monster with this own proven track record of excesses such as Cuties, revisionist history and intersectional propaganda. Netflix as a company has clearly picked a side in the culture war, and to me it's a no brainer that they're in on it. Another example of one Big Tech company running cover/colluding with other Big Tech companies.

The 'Solution': at the end of this farcical mess comes the part with the optimistic music. The extreme center boy and his older sister finally reconnect after they get arrested in a heartfelt bitter sweet moment. The bots in the command center are wearing white now signalling they're angelic transformation implying "big tech is good now, see? We recognize how we fuck people up with depression and stuff" and the verified check marks doing the interviews tell us to spend a little less time on social media but it's ultimately a force for good and TO RELY ON AUTHORITATIVE™ TRUSTED™ NEWS SOURCES LIKE NYT, WashPo and the fact checkers. Big tech will regulate itself and anyone who's into conspiracies is just lost down the rabbit hole of the "extreme center". We end the film feeling a little bit better about ourselves without having to do much. Now that the information is out there society will somehow do something about it. Yay hugs and puppies for everyone.

Meanwhile in the real world we see how big tech censors, memory holes, fact checks, shadow bans and drives anyone out who doesn't conform to the approved narrative. They other abuses still go on with depression, addiction and the like and the election interference is the cherry on top of the mountain of dung that is silicon valley.

There's more I could say about it, but I'll save that for a video essay or review some day.

Interested in your thoughts... Do you agree with my analysis? Do you think I'm wrong? Please let me know and why.