One of the reasons I stopped posting about certain topics on facebook is because the number and frequency of major news events that I consider to be heavily manipulated, and thus most in need of extra attention, had become so great that it would have been a full-time job to dissect them all. It is especially non-productive because at a certain point, once you know the formulas used to carry out the manipulations, you can identify them within about five minutes (or seconds) of seeing them. I think the best and least burdensome way to deal with these events then is to just sort them in the correct category, know them for what they are, and move on. See The List.

An increasing proportion have been wholly or largely fabricated, with actors, pyrotechnics, fake injuries and funerals, false identities, and/or even CGI effects being used. Essentially, cinematic productions, as crazy as that may or may not sound. In others, what is said to have occurred for the most part did, but the perpetrators and/or their backers are not who we are told.

The overwhelming majority, over 99%, of newsworthy events are and will continue to be organic and totally unmanipulated, although, for the moment at least, those do not get as much attention as the others, usually just a passing glance- no witness or victim family interview specials, no candlelight vigils, no hashtags, no locked wikipedia articles, no press conferences- as they in general have no propaganda value. Whether or not this practice makes sense hinges on whether you view these organizatons as news outlets or propaganda outlets. Judging by conversations I’ve had and the recent polls demonstrating mass distrust of and distaste with the media, varying degrees of the latter has probably become the majority viewpoint in America.

If enough people simply stop believing these lies, and occasionally show their disbelief to those around them, there won’t be any kind of confrontation or fight with the people telling them. They will slink out in darkness the same way they came in. Will it then be a utopia? Not even close, but at least we’ll be able to go on without that wool over our eyes.