> The dopamine chemistry is just too good: you've got an enemy, the feeling of being in a dramatic narrative where nothing's what it seems, the superiority of knowing that you've spotted something everyone missed
People on social media sites just love to think that they've got everything figured out in a way that isn't obvious to the people around them in the real world. These sites create a feedback loop wherein people are encouraged to post more content that feeds the hive minds' ideas while downvoting/rejecting anything that doesn't match.
Why would anyone need to manufacture content? There’s plenty to grab from already. But you have to wonder if we’ll learn in the future that the reason my Facebook feed is flooded with outrage about the treatment of Uyghurs, and the reason my Tiktok feed went from being memes and dances to a live stream from Black Lives Matters protests was due to organic growth of content or due to State sponsored manipulations.
I don’t think anyone would argue that the content is manufactured, but most the time, most people just don’t care about these things and will stick to their baby-falling over memes on both Facebook and Tiktok, so when the platforms turn into politically oriented outrage machines it’s natural to wonder if it’s due to those who stand to gain from these narrative, of if it’s just because there weren’t that many babies that fell over that particular week.
IE I used to think the phrase "lifting a billion people out of poverty" was a dead giveaway for state-sponsored PRC shills.
Then it occurred to me: anyone who had heard that phrase enough, and was sympathetic to it, would naturally (and often times subconsciously) repeat it.
https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2022/04/01/l...
"China" is the subject of the sentence, while "800 million people" is the subject.
The implication being that China - or the CCP - was doing the lifting. The people just kind of passively did got carried upwards.
Even the choice of verb is illuminating. "Lifting", making the number after it add a sense of difficulty to the achievement that "China" accomplished.
People do not talk this in real life. No one is broke, moves to Boise, Idaho, and then says "Boise, Idaho lifted me out poverty".
So yes, "China lifed X people out of poverty" is 100% a canned propaganda phrase. The more neutral description of what actually happened is "China transitioned from a low income economy to a middle income economy".
"American dream" / land of opportunity"
"Government Assistance Lifts 45.4 Million Out of Poverty in 2021" - US Census Bureau
>odd phrasing
And accurate.
Governance systems > individual effort. Populations do as well as their system allows. At scale of large nations, it's mostly down to management, even suggesting it's a team effort is being charitable. Contrast how India is doing under same timeframe, ergo accurate to say CCP governance was/is primarily responsible for lifting 800m people out of poverty.
TLDR of "China lifted 800 million out of poverty" is fine.
More accurate and neutral TLDR is "Chinese Communist Party lifted 800 million out of extreme poverty"
But for some reason most western press like to minimize/trivialize the CCP part with China.
LOL indeed. Celebrities rarely say "real shit" about the government. They are good at the thing that made them famous. They are... tertiary sources, at best, when it comes to talking about things relating to government. Celebrity didn't give them insight, just a larger megaphon to shout through.
Doesn't matter what their political beliefs are.
I'm probably psyops too.