When I see people refer to people who use the internet to get a broader perspective on world events, as being brainwashed by propaganda...

Yeah, it's the people that take their time to get information from multiple sources and don't believe everything without question to the point that they contradict themselves that are the brainwashed ones.

It's definitely not the people who believe absolutely everything a small number of state sponsored mega corporations who just want money say and are unable to even explain their beliefs who are the ones brainwashed by propaganda.

Could have sworn that looking through history, the propagandists were the big governments or corporations who were hostile to any sort of free exchange of information as that could threaten their power or money.

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Keraunos · 36-40, M

Either perspective can be "correct" so long as one pays attention primarily to the ways in which it is at the expense of the ways in which the other is. We unfortunately live in an age of almost universal institutional corruption and incompetence in the West, so while most ideas found "outside the walls" may be deranged and idiotic, it is also currently where you have to go to find virtually [i]all[/i] ideas that aren't.

But that doesn't mean "grassroots" derangement and idiocy are harmless, either. Which one looks scarier depends on the individual's temperament, knowledge, and circumstances. The kind of people you're talking about, for any number of reasons, consider idiosyncratic bad ideas more dangerous than systemic bad ideas, which is a valid position, although not one I'm sure I personally share at this point.

What is [i]less[/i] valid is that such people are often a bit on the low-information side and may not realize that the systematic bad ideas are there and incentivizing people to go "outside the walls", since idiosyncratic bad ideas can only thrive and grow on the malaise engendered by systemic bad ideas in the first place.

pianoplayingsteve · 31-35, M

@Keraunos I hear you, there are indeed so many crazy ideas on the internet. Reality is not black and white, there are facts that point to one idea being right, and other facts that point to another. A power structure, be it government or religious institute, will take whichever facts support their ideology, and then declare the other facts a "conspiracy theory", "heresy" or whatever the buzzword of that society is. It is astoundingly pathetic how many people seem to think that the government that they live under just happens, out of pure luck, to not engage in the same manipulation that every other state and organisation in history has done. For some reason, powerful people stopped manipulating things to get more power. (but then at the same time, they constantly post statuses about wanting to topple the patriarchy, eat the rich etc).

A lot of things seem very crazy at face value and reality is often a lot weirder than expected. Mainly because we see things through the lens of only what we've been allowed to see as normal. I love learning, I like to take the best ideas from absolutely everywhere to best shape my world into a way that helps me accomplish what I see as important. it does not matter if you are right wing, left wing, christian, jew you name it.

"The kind of people you're talking about, for any number of reasons, consider idiosyncratic bad ideas more dangerous than systemic bad ideas, which is a valid position, although not one I'm sure I personally share at this point."

I hear you there! I think you commented on my socialism post too. I mentioned to a friend how my coucil tax had charged me £600 a year for 6 years for a service I'd never used. That's £3600 for something i'd never used. I told him I'd rather pay £350 on the once in the blue moon I'd need it, and then invest the thousands i had left over, heck I could even create my own service to use anytime, with the money. He just awkwardly insisted that I should just keep paying £600/yr and would not explain. I found that incredibly annoying, but what I find worse is when people go a step further and believe the negative labels the power structure might attribute to someone with the "wrong" ideas. And encourage violence against them. When I link them to say, the full unedited video of what said person actually said, they wont watch it because somehow they already know it is propaganda. The full, unedited original video, straight from their mouth (so primary source) is propaganda, but a mega corporation selecting 5 seconds of speech and applying their own context, isn't.

" We unfortunately live in an age of almost universal institutional corruption and incompetence in the West" also rather annoyingly, many people can rant about how corrupt the system apparently is, but then turn around and tell you that you need to believe and obey every ridiculous lie that same system spews.