Having explored the physical and psychological mechanisms of control in Part One, and their deployment through cultural engineering in Part Two, we now turn to their ultimate evolution: the automation of consciousness control through digital systems.
In my research on the tech-industrial complex, I've documented how today's digital giants weren't simply co-opted by power structures - many were potentially designed from their inception as tools for mass surveillance and social control. From Google's origins in a DARPA-funded CIA project to Amazon's founder's familial ties to ARPA, these weren't just successful startups that later aligned with government interests.
What Tavistock discovered through years of careful study—emotional resonance trumps facts, peer influence outweighs authority, and indirect manipulation succeeds where direct propaganda fails—now forms the foundational logic of social media algorithms. Facebook's emotion manipulation study and Netflix's A/B testing of thumbnails (explored in detail later) exemplify the digital automation of these century-old insights, as AI systems perform billions of real-time experiments, continuously refining the art of influence at an unprecedented scale.
Just as Laurel Canyon served as a physical space for steering culture, today's digital platforms function as virtual laboratories for consciousness control—reaching further and operating with far greater precision. Social media platforms have scaled these principles through 'influencer' amplification and engagement metrics. The discovery that indirect influence outperforms direct propaganda now shapes how platforms subtly adjust content visibility. What once required years of meticulous psychological study can now be tested and optimized in real time, with algorithms leveraging billions of interactions to perfect their methods of influence.
The manipulation of music reflects a broader evolution in cultural control: what began with localized programming, like Laurel Canyon's experiments in counterculture, has now transitioned into global, algorithmically-driven systems. These digital tools automate the same mechanisms, shaping consciousness on an unprecedented scale
More insidiously, Netflix's content strategy actively shapes social consciousness through selective promotion and burial of content. While films supporting establishment narratives receive prominent placement, documentaries questioning official accounts often find themselves buried in the platform's least-visible categories or excluded from recommendation algorithms entirely. Even successful films like What Is a Woman? faced systematic suppression across multiple platforms, demonstrating how digital gatekeepers can effectively erase challenging perspectives while maintaining the illusion of open access.
I experienced this censorship firsthand. I was fortunate enough to serve as a producer for Anecdotals, directed by Jennifer Sharp, a film documenting COVID-19 vaccine injuries, including her own. YouTube removed it on day one, claiming individuals couldn't discuss their own vaccine experiences. Only after Senator Ron Johnson's intervention was the film reinstated—a telling example of how platform censorship silences personal narratives that challenge official accounts.
This gatekeeping extends across the digital landscape. By controlling which documentaries appear prominently, which foreign films reach American audiences, and which perspectives get highlighted in their original programming, platforms like Netflix act as cultural gatekeepers - just as Bernays managed public perception for his corporate clients. Where earlier systems relied on human gatekeepers to shape culture, streaming platforms use data analytics and recommendation algorithms to automate the steering of consciousness. The platform's content strategy and promotion systems represent Bernays' principles of psychological manipulation operating at unprecedented scale.
Before social media turned billions into their own content creators, Reality TV perfected the template for self-commodification. The Kardashians exemplified this transition: transforming from reality TV stars into digital-age influencers, they showed how to convert personal authenticity into a marketable brand. Their show didn't just reshape societal norms around wealth and consumption - it provided a masterclass in abandoning genuine human experience for carefully curated performance. Audiences learned that being oneself was less valuable than becoming a brand, that authentic moments mattered less than engineered content, that real relationships were secondary to networked influence.
This transformation from person to persona would reach its apex with social media, where billions now willingly participate in their own behavioral modification. Users learn to suppress authentic expression in favor of algorithmic rewards, to filter genuine experience through the lens of potential content, to value themselves not by internal measures but through metrics of likes and shares. What Reality TV pioneered - the voluntary surrender of privacy, the replacement of authentic self with marketable image, the transformation of life into content - social media would democratize at global scale. Now anyone could become their own reality show, trading authenticity for engagement.
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