Fending For Yourself Against Media Manipulation

Photo by Sara Kurfeß on Unsplash

"The anxiety of the media becomes the anxiety of the world, and it becomes the weakness by which the powerful are able to control and direct us." -  Ryan Holiday, from Trust Me, I'm Lying

It's difficult to hold faith in the future when you know the majority of the population is enslaved by intentional distraction they are not only unaware of, but also unable to defend themselves against. This is psychological warfare to its fullest extent. Especially in light of the current crisis we are facing as humanity.

First, let me preface this by providing fair warning. By choosing to continue here, you are taking a red pill. How far you decide to climb down the rabbit hole is up to you. As Morpheus reminded us in The Matrix: "I can only show you the door. You're the one that has to walk through it."

I am no expert here and I'm not claiming to be. So don't trust me. Do your own research thinking. I'm a traveler just like you.

I tend to have faith in the universe presenting me with obstacles and challenges as a mode of growth. It will show me the door, but I'm the one who has to open it. That requires an open mind and a big heart, most of all.

Lately, I've been feeling like this situation we're experiencing is an undesirable and dystopian future. We're running straight towards it, too, already having crossed the boundary between past and present. And let me be the gazillionth person to say this: handing our 8-year-olds the iPad or the phone at the dinner table sure as hell isn't working. That much is clear.

So some questions arise: How do we teach our youth to think about their online consumption? How do we teach them to disseminate truth from what seems like truth? Further, how do we help people from reacting to this unreality and turning it into their own (and, consequently, the collective's) warped reality? How do we get back on track?

Attempting to dissect this with adults is extremely difficult because we already possess ingrained neural pathways. Our thinking processes are nearly carved into stone. But with children, if we can help them understand this soon enough, we stand a better chance to return to a critical-thinking society who questions things and sees the truth in knowing we know nothing.

The COVID pandemic currently sweeping the globe has had my mind running circles and chasing echoes. I sense many misalignments in our general well-being. Media manipulation is a source of this and it's affecting all of us, whether you'd like to admit that or not. We need to acknowledge that.

In America, people are buying and hoarding toilet paper because of our unpreparedness in handling the coronavirus containment. I won't point fingers here, but it's quite obvious we have an unfit leadership trying to manage a nation in panic. A book can be written about that alone, but I'd be doing a disservice if I chose not to include that fact. People look towards their government to lead and organize. Not progress capitalism, fascism, or misinformation. That's typically a byproduct… and currently making the problem worse.

Furthermore, people should understand that our continued evolution with the internet has led to an information overload. The Information Age has plugged us into a global nervous system. That means any action or reaction of one individual is acknowledged and often echoed collectively. Neurobiologists refer to this as "mirroring" -  a psychological behavior where one person unconsciously imitates the gesture, speech, or attitude of another. In the age of Twitter and Instagram, this causes much harm if not truly understood. (Look at all the plastic surgery and post-photo filter effects. Or the boomer vs. millennial Twitter storms.) An individual who does understand is likely capable of fighting off the urge to check their constant updates, though not always perfect. This also means they're more apt to adapt to their own cognitive dissonance, rather than fall victim to it unknowingly. As we evolve more and more into a "hive mind" entity, this becomes harder to accomplish. More and more of us are ignorant of our own psychological patterns here.

This is why companies like Facebook, Google, and Amazon are constantly competing for your attention by feeding you things their algorithms deem approachable. Traditional news and media outlets have known this for decades; yet, they lacked the technology to do so.

"Facebook would never put it this way, but algorithms are meant to erode free will, to relieve humans of the burden of choosing, to nudge them in the right direction." -  Franklin Foer, from World Without Mind

Photo by Kon Karampelas on Unsplash

The problem here, beyond our own misunderstanding of ourselves, is that these companies have zero accountability in what "news" they provide. Fact-checking has become irrelevant and fewer and fewer publications are holding such practice. Why? Because they need clicks. Clicks turn into ads and ads turn into money. Click data is the new oil.

"Capitalism has always dreamed of activating the desire to consume, the ability to tap the human brain to stimulate its desire for products that it never contemplated needing. Data helps achieve this old dream. It makes us more malleable, easier to addict, prone to nudging." -  Franklin Foer, from World Without Mind

In the attention economy, data is big business. These companies are literally fighting for our attention so that they'll make enough money to sustain their lifespans. They quote tweets and blogs and Wikipedia as sources. This is why you see obnoxious and completely far-fetched headlines. Memes and conspiracy theories run rampant on the front page of Reddit. I mean, even take a look at the titles on Medium. Look at the articles included in their monthly newsletters. Notice any patterns? They hone in on our human psychological behavior in hopes that you'll click. They tap into our fears, doubts, and anxieties. Sure, sometimes they're wholesome, but those typically don't garner as many clicks.

Talk about creating collective anxiety and panic. As Matt Haig said in his book Notes On A Nervous Planet, "We are being sold unhappiness, because unhappiness is where the money is."

So how do we fend for ourselves against such disregard for humanity's mental well-being? Enter Ryan Holiday again:

"The more an article feels like it is true, the more skeptical you should be about it. If you haven't heard of the website before, it's probably because it's not legitimate. Be discerning. Be cynical. Don't let 'close enough' be your standard for truth and opinion. Insist on accuracy and on getting it right." -  from Trust Me, I'm Lying

Photo by Jason Strull on Unsplash

Please know, I'm not trying to create additional anxiety here. There's no reason to put yourself into a deeper panic than you might already be in. That is not my intention with this article.

Rather, I'm trying to highlight some of the techniques the mega-media outlets use against us.

Again, I am no expert on this matter. I'm a teacher. I value education and learning and critical thought for what they are. I'm trying to empower you in helping you recognize that you possess such ability in you already. And you can hone it. You can sharpen it. You can use it to overcome the global challenges we are about to face with the COVID crisis.

Over the next several months, we are going to witness a flood of information from every single outlet possible. (Have you seen your inbox lately?) We must be ready - both individually and collectively - to fend ourselves against misinformation from the unmeditated and uneducated. That includes our governments. We must learn to sort fact from fiction. We must be aware of our psychological footprint.

Because if we don't - if we choose to let things unfold as they currently are - we are putting ourselves at risk of losing the very thing that makes us human: our ability to love. And that'll put us one step closer to Ray Kurzweil's Singularity prophecy… no longer hardware, but software.

So here are some takeaways to help guide you down your own rabbit hole:

1. You own your psychological accountability. No one else. Don't let the hive mind become your mind. The first step is in understanding how you can be manipulated.
2. The second is learning how to prevent that from happening. Learn to see how the media is attempting to manipulate you. You possess this already, but it takes exercise to remain sharp this day & age. And we're going to need that as the rest of 2020 plays out.
3. Thirdly, as the Latin phrase goes, temet nosce. Know thyself. Understand your weaknesses and use them to your advantage. Highlight the parts of your mind that need an extra eye. We're born with this knowledge but only end up finding it if we're able to share it.
4. Teach those around you how to hone this power in themselves. Especially those younger than you. Ignorance is not the answer and critical thought will help the collective consciousness thrive.

And finally, here's some food-for-thought as you transcend into the unknown:

• "We have a dim awareness that we're being subconsciously influenced, but never know when and how." -  Franklin Foer, from World Without Mind
• "We shouldn't allow the glories of technology to blind our inner watchdog to the possibility that we've numbed an essential part of our self." -  Nicolas Carr, from The Shallows: What The Internet Is Doing To Our Brains
• "To read with diligence; not to rest satisfied with a light and superficial knowledge, nor quickly to assent to things commonly spoken of." -  Marcus Aurelius, from Meditations
• "We seldom realize, for example, that our most private thoughts and emotions are not actually our own. For we think in terms of languages and images which we did not invent, but which were given to us by our society." -  Alan Watts, from The Culture of Counter Culture
• "Undistracted by schooling, one studies best during vacation." -  Carlo Rovelli, from 7 Brief Lessons On Physics
• "The Internet is the first thing that humanity has built that humanity doesn't understand, the largest experiment in anarchy that we have ever had." -  Eric Schmidt, former Google CEO
• "It's knowledge that helps you read situations correctly and get what you want." -  Malcolm Gladwell, from Outliers
• "The brain - and the mind to which it gives rise - is forever a work in progress. That's true not just for each of us as individuals. It's true for all of us as a species." -  Nicolas Carr, from The Shallows: What The Internet Is Doing To Our Brains
• "The contemplative life remains freely available to us through our choice - what we read and buy, how we commit to leisure and self-improvement, the passing over of empty temptation, our preservation of the quiet spaces, an intentional striving to become the masters of our mastery." -  Franklin Foer, from World Without Mind