Remember when Occupy pointed at the money? The media pointed us at each other.

Okay peeps, I found something that’s got me thinking I want the you guys to add your two bits. This isn’t tinfoil, it’s the boring kind of evil.

So, Cold War propaganda needed people and payoffs. Today, its the same aim, i.e. control of public attention and long term political steering but it is produced by a system that needs neither.

The collapse of ad revenue, concentrated media ownership, and engagement-hungry algorithms combine into a self-funding machine that weaponises outrage at scale. Read that sentence again because it’s the water table under everything. 

Two bits from my research that got to me.

First: after Occupy Wall Street the media’s general slant or story pivoted cleanly away from structural economic critique and heavily toward identity and culture. The data shows the words of class faded while culture-war language exploded. Not a smoking gun, but a pattern that looks suspicious when you consider who owns the megaphones and what they profit from.  

Second: algorithms don’t have morals. They have objectives. If the objective is engagement, they will, by design, amplify whatever creates moral outrage and tribal signalling. Studies have shown that anger travels faster and farther online. Combine that with owners who don’t want systemic reform and you get a system that functionally does what Operation Mockingbird once tried to do, only this time without direct contact with people.

So here’s the provocative bit I want the thread to riff on: given today’s adtech, data brokers and recommender systems, how feasible is it to engineer someone’s reality?

I don’t mean drugs or hypnosis, not MKUltra style stuff. I mean the modern equivalent: personalised feeds, targeted creative, bot-driven social proof, manufactured consensus, and curated silence until the person believes a new version of the world.

I’m not asking for tactics so please don’t post tips lol. I  just want to hear your view, am I being too presumptive with this one?

This is the kind of thing that looks less and less like conspiracy the closer you are to the tech. If you think this is already happening, post the receipts. If you think it’s impossible, explain why and where the gaps are. Either way, let’s make this a thread with sources and actual thinking.

Lets make it a place for learned people to come, see, and argue a bit until we see what sticks!

Also my rabbit hole dump for today if you fancy a longer dive: Enter at own risk – Burstcomms.com