[HN Gopher] Brainwash '72 [video]
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       Brainwash '72 [video]
        
       Author : petethomas
       Score  : 21 points
       Date   : 2025-07-08 18:34 UTC (4 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (archive.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (archive.org)
        
       | thomassmith65 wrote:
       | It's like a 2D version of Brainstorm
       | https://youtube.com/watch?v=K_ZtqsFP1Uc
        
       | superkuh wrote:
       | This video is only a tiny bit more absurd than the current moral
       | outrage over "screens". At the center of both beliefs in
       | "brainwashing" is the idea that multimedia on screens is somehow
       | special like drugs are special in bypassing human senses and
       | acting on the functions of the brain directly. Conflating the two
       | can lead to treating humans like they don't have volition and
       | need to be controlled. Or protected from that control by force.
       | 
       | But they're just screens. Brainwashing doesn't exist. I look
       | forwards to the people of the future laughing at us in our
       | contemporary forms of "Screen Addiction '25". I hope it has as
       | nice of musical score as '72 does. I enjoyed it up to the
       | smoking/cancer/surgery gore stuff started.
        
         | stevenAthompson wrote:
         | Literacy rates have been declining in lock-step with the
         | increase in social media usage. We are now at the point that
         | 54% of Americans read below the sixth grade level. 1 in 5 are
         | functionally illiterate. Those numbers will be worse next year,
         | and probably in every subsequent year.
         | 
         | The average person now spends more than 4 hours per day looking
         | at their phone, but only about 60% know that social media
         | companies make their money via advertising. Around 48% know
         | what a privacy policy is.
         | 
         | These massively uninformed, heavily manipulated citizens make
         | up the majority of voters now and democracy may die because of
         | it. Worse, anti-science madness in the form of anti-elitism and
         | populist zero-sum economic lunacy have begun to prevail above
         | reason.
         | 
         | Screens may still spell the end of personal liberty and an
         | abrupt end to the forward march of human progress. It's just
         | taken a bit longer than parents predicated when they tried to
         | ban Beavis and Butthead.
        
         | duderific wrote:
         | I don't know that most people think that phone addiction is
         | akin to brainwashing. Rather, endless scrolling robs people of
         | time to pursue potentially more noble or productive pursuits,
         | and tends to shorten attention spans.
        
       | xbar wrote:
       | Good news: I am not smoking.
        
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