Years ago, I discovered a lie in my head. This particular lie came from a news headline.
When I watched the source material directly, the truth was the opposite of the headline. I went hunting for more lies in my head, and I found a lot.
I was forced to realize I had adopted a false belief, so I spent months revisting everything I had learned from "the news".
Like any animal would prefer survival to death, the news prefers revenue over truth. Especially when the truth is inconvenient to those they need for their survival, like advertisers.
The news controls narratives by choosing what stories to ignore and cover, choosing how to frame them, and in extreme cases, just making things up. The news reporters are just paid actors, reading off a script.
Over time, this inauthenticity causes the audience to lose trust, and the audience moves to social media and podcasts. The scale of this move is shocking. The CNN primetime audience is now 30 times smaller than the most popular podcast, and is rapidly declining.
The same people that paid the news to influence you, are now adapting to influencing you on social media and short-form videos.
The ability to control how you think is the greatest prize on Earth. Everyone is now online, so the rewards for successfully influencing you are the greatest they've ever been.
It'd be much more surprising if there weren't campaigns aggressively trying to influence all of your views. Due to this constant propaganda in all media, we are the most propagandized generation by many orders of magnitude.
The best way to influence someone is to let them do most of the work themselves. If you show someone a headline or a video and make them feel something, they'll create the reason for why they feel this way themselves.
Emotional triggers in videos are the most effective form of propaganda. Emotions like sympathy, concern, shock, and the maternal instinct are manipulated and hijacked to bypass higher-level thought.
In 2025, as in 1984, ultimate power is controlling how people think. It's much more powerful than money.
Propagandized people are a valuable resource, and can be mobilized for any purpose. War, donations, social change, political power, even assassinations.
So we’re all the targets of propaganda campaigns to nudge, shove, push, and cajole us, both directly and indirectly via news, media, advertising, and also culture.
Propaganda has no problem appealing to ego and vanity by whispering variations of, "You're smarter, more enlightened, more moral and more compassionate than those other people, who are dumb and probably evil."
Ironically, those who think they can’t be influenced by propaganda are actually more vulnerable to being influenced. Because they think they're immune, it reduces their skepticism in questioning new and existing ideas.
Disgustingly, much of the propaganda isn’t just a simple lie, but the exact opposite of what is true.
The sheer audacity makes it harder to see the lie. Because, surely no-one could lie so shamelessly?
But they did. They are, and they will.
Much of the propaganda pits people against truth and their own nature. The results of harmful propaganda can range from mental illness, bad life chocies, broken relationships, and broken lives. Over time, this turns into a broken society.
I've deliberately avoided including examples, because propaganda's goal is making you think their idea is actually your idea, so you defend the external idea as a part of yourself.
When foundational ideas are questioned, people often have a severe emotional reaction and shut down or lash out, and introspection or discussion becomes impossible.
It's the normal state of affairs for everyone to be wrong about fundamental ideas.
People believed Earth was at the center of the universe for thousands of years.
Doctors used to recommend smoking as healthy, and even had a favourite brand.
If every single person in society was so wrong about things we now see as obviously wrong, what are the chances all of the fundamental narratives in our heads are true? I'd say about 0%.
So for now, my goal is simply encouraging skepticism about narratives:
1) Where did this idea come from?
2) So far, what are the results of this idea?
3) Who would be incentivized to spread this idea and why?
To be clear, many other much more talented writers on X and Substack have written on these ideas. This is my attempt to explain my perspective on propaganda to my friends, in the hopes that they can enjoy the benefits of recognizing and avoiding harmful narratives.