We currently live under extremely heavy information overload. Constantly, day by day, 24/7.
I'm fairly sure this is intentional.
For example, average lifespan of Reddit post is about a day, maybe a bit more. All of social media is constantly regurgitating the same points over and over, arguing about the same topics over and over again, ad infinitum. Which is exactly the point of it all. Create overload so heavy and intense, that nothing really matters anymore.
Human mind is incapable to operate properly under such pressure. There's tons of info unloaded into our heads daily. Good info, bad info. Wholesome info, unwholesome info. Most importantly, lots of it. Hell, I can't even remember when was the last time I was actually bored. Like, not intentionally going out to touch grass or consciously avoiding media, but simply bored... with nothing to do. That kind of thing simply does not happen anymore. There is no reflection, no idle thinking about this or that, unless one consciously decides to do that.
That's the reason why instead of relying on facts, logic, rationality and common sense, most people simply give up and resort to trusting some kind of authority. For some it is government or science. For others it could be some kind of new-age guru or some other truth sayer. It does not matter. What matters is that people have outsourced their reason to someone else. Which is exactly how they want it to be.
In Soviet Russia one single article criticizing the government could travel underground from hand to hand for years. It would be read and reread. It would be illegally reprinted or even rewritten by hand. These days, however, a single article no matter how truthful or how damaging does not mean anything. Hell, even ten or hundred articles mean almost nothing. Everything is being reduced to screaming contest. Whoever makes the loudest or most authoritative scream wins.
TLDR: Constant informational buzz is a psyop of sorts. It is being created intentionally in order to suppress clear and rational though process, to prevent masses from thinking for themselves.
Yes. And they also are removing search capabilities and filtering and sorting from all platforms to reduce your ability to sift through it
They have removed most filters from Google search over the past decade, they removed most of the filters from youtube since 2016, and they have removed more and more history, and flooded the results with recent and low quality (30-60s) videos.
This applies to all search engines. None are good anymore. Not a single one.
I agree. Internet used to be this wast place where you could find all sorts of interesting and unexpected stuff. To some extent it's all still there, but now you have to really want to find it, you have to have some determination. Back then all this stuf was easily findable on the surface. Now, however, simply searching for something will give you nothing but big mainstream sources and AI generated lists.
There is no excuse to remove the filters. It requires nothing to maintain....it was malicious intent from the get go.
Check out a pleasant surprise I encountered when I typed "was 9/11 an inside job" on Yahoo. That search engine still feels like it remained in the '00s, including in terms of results. That link is a bit of a limited hangout compared to what we know in this community, but the results are miles ahead of the propaganda Google feeds you. Brave Search is decent as well.
People have confused information with knowledge and knowledge with wisdom.
Yes, absolutely. My general point though was that this confusion is not an accident - it is by design.
Another tactic is they use the names to flood anything they want. Their favourite way is through movie names and characters, challenges (TikTok), ans most recently they have been using music videos for anything else.
Also.... finally...they have weaponized the Streisand effect. They use it now as a weapon as well....they don't pretend to ignore it...a lot!!! Of bans have been to evoke the fake Streisand effect.
They used this over the past 2 years extremely effectively to ensure they control the opposition
Yes, and there is a whole another topic possible about how extremely fleeting and thin our daily information is. We might think we live in an information age, but that is not necessarily true. Most of the online links functioning now will not be operational in, say, five years. The rate of online information disappearance is extremely fast.
When a book sits on a shelf, it's there and it will still be there in ten, twenty or even hundred years. Information online, however, will most probably be lost in five or ten (unless not actively maintained or renewed somewhere else).
Of course, it is intentional.
One very big pet peeve of mine is the news ticker at the bottom of news broadcasts. I rarely watch any news to get information, as they all are despicable. Once they've lied about anything whatsoever, why trust them about anything?
One day, I happened to be over at my mother's house watching some news broadcast, and a lightbulb went off in my head when I started thinking about a person's mental state when trying to focus on multiple sources of information being received simultaneously, and I figured there had to be something to it, having the ticker, virtually, on every news broadcast I could think of.
Lo and behold, and not that long into looking into it, surprisingly, I found way more than I could have ever imagined.
I searched something like "when was the first news ticker debuted", and on Wikipedia, of all places, I found that 25 News stations simultaneously debuted the news ticker. That part, of course, is very, very suspect. The day they debuted the news ticker?
September 11, 2001
This is a very good find indeed. Didn't know about that.
Yeah, I hate those tickers as well. There's really no other purpose for them except to distract and prevent occurence any clear thought. As soon as you start concentrating on some topic there's an immediate distraction in a form of a ticker. And then there's adverts and various other unrelated bits of information all thrown at you in a haphazard manner.
Lately I've started to ask people I visit to kindly switch off TV when I'm there. Or at the very least, to avoid that thing they call the news.
I agree with the premise of your post.
But I think you should add on a discussion about attention span.
Someone with a long attention span can focus on one topic of study for a very long time. Maybe even years.
There's some people who try to learn a little bit about everything. There's other people who try to learn everything about one thing.
I have known people who were heavily specialized in one topic or field but completely stupid in everything else. I'm talking about high level executives that could manage a half billion dollar organization's finances but couldn't figure out how a toilet lever connects to the flapper with a chain. LOL I am heavily specialized in impalement. Otherwise I am generally a know a little bit about everything jack of all trades kinda guy.
Also, there's people who want content delivered to them and curated for them. There's other that seek out specific content for themselves. If you sit around and just want netflix or TV to feed you content, you're going to be fed mostly shit. But if you seek out content yourself, you will discover interesting information. Usually I want to seek out and curate content for myself and be in control.
This website is sort of designed for short attention spans. Good posts get buried and replaced by newer posts. New posts move into the HOT section too quickly.
Also, people are just inherently too lazy to read today. Most of my comments probably get skipped by the TLDR crowd. I type fast. I was never as fast a reader as my peers because i like to think about what I'm reading and other related thoughts pop into my head while I am reading so it is a patient exercise. Or I have to pause and dwell on what i read to picture it in my mind. Others probably read differently. When I read novels, it takes me much longer than my friends to read the same book. I even re-read paragraphs sometimes to try to fill in details of how i imagine the plot and setting.
Oh, yes, attention span is a big part ot it. To make it as short as possible is also one of the goals of this constant flood of information.
Of course some people will be more inclined to think deeply and some others won't. The point is that it's the general direction what matters. Currently general direction is to think as little as possible up to the point where all your critical thinking is essentially outsourced to someone else. Sure, some people will resist it (like us), but most won't and that's the real purpose of it all.
Yep, I too am kind of a know everything a bit guy (except that impalement thing of yours) and I too prefer to find information on my own.
Also, one other thing I didn't mention in OP is energy consumption. In addition to fucking up our brains, this information overload consumes enormous amounts of energy. Consider all that gigantic amount of energy poured into endless screaming contests and repeating the same things over and over again on a daily basis. Imagine what could be achieved if not for this waste of energy.
Basically, fruitless non-stop consumption and generation of information is just as they want it to be. Masses are too exhausted and brain fog from constant info buzz is too heavy for any meaningful change to happen.
a) consenting to suggested information (temporary) tempts one to ignore perceivable inspiration (ongoing).
b) as temporary (life) within ongoing (inception towards death) one can be tempted by temporary (suggested information) to ignore ongoing (perceivable inspiration).
c) nature sets itself apart from whole (perceivable) into each partial (perceiving)...others utilize suggestion (fiction) to tempt one to ignore perceivable (reality).
d) consenting to suggested (want or not want) tempts one to ignore adaptation to perceivable (need)...the resulting conflict (want vs not want) is called reasoning. The few utilize suggestion to divide the many into reasoning.
e) choice (consent) to choice (suggestion) contract law represents the inversion of balance (perceivable) to choice (perceiving) natural law aka reaction within enacting.
f) RELIGION, noun (Latin religio; to bind anew) represents being bound by consent to the suggested choices of others.
g) choice exists at the center of balance (need/want); others tempt one to ignore this for suggested imbalance (want vs not want).