Reality is the only thing that’s real.
There is a scene in Ready Player One where the antagonist shows his vision for the Oasis, the virtual world everyone escapes to in near-future dystopian Ohio.
It’s littered with ads that overwhelm the senses and murder user experience.
He proudly states, “We estimate we can sell up to 80% of an individual’s visual field before inducing seizures.”
What a win.
The media today is Nolan Sorrento.
Pushing us to the brink of catastrophe and expecting the world not to break.
The cycle of chaos we never subscribed to
I love psychology but not in the wrong hands.
And these folks have mastered manipulation through a deep understanding of marketing funnels: what makes their audience move the quickest and how to keep them hooked.
It’s honestly a basic formula. But that is also like Heisenberg telling Jesse it’s simply chemistry.
Might is only right if it’s in the hands of someone with decent intentions.
You can think of it like a 7-layer bean dip your neighbor brought for the Super Bowl partly: three of those layers are drama, one of them is comedy, one is heart-warming, two are tragic.
It’s delicious and addicting.
And just like your cousin who ate half the dip like an inconsiderate prick — you’re gonna be sick if you have too much.
We’re not watching the news. We’re responding to marketing funnels stacked like snack food.
The chemists who manufacture the chips to be addictive have partnered with the bean dip people who want you full and lazy.
Now everyone’s just lying on the couch — sad, stuffed and traumatized.
Media wasn’t a marketing funnel under Walter
Walter Cronkite was a legend.
Impartial and unbiased. He’d report things as they were, be damned the party lines.
He saw his role as a sacred duty, one that required him to remove his own emotions and motivations in order to serve the people with the stories they deserved.
We’ve by-and-large lost that. Or at least, that is no longer the metric we are all striving to achieve.
Even our best voices have buried their feet in the sand of one side.
Now we live in an era of marketing funnel agendas
You don’t know why anyone does anything anymore — only that it’s probably selfish.
Culturally, we’ve lost the sense that true altruism even exists.
Because voice and opinion are now built and designed for the highest bidder.
You don’t get news like Walter delivered anymore.
You get branding in a blazer. Zaslav is gutting CNN like it’s a bloated film division. Tucker spun commentary into chaos. Maddow delivers op-eds like sermons for sale.
I honestly like the latter two. They’re funny and smart — as long as you are listening to both of them with an open-mind and discernment, like any good American would.
Even the new marketable-altruism is under fire.
MrBeast cured blindness and the internet couldn’t decide if it was heroic or a marketing stunt.
Because that’s where we are…
Monetizing miracles.
The bill that made brands gods among men
Citizens United made companies people.
Now, “people” own most of the legacy media. Everything is housed under single portfolios — magazines and journalism publications that have decades or centuries of independent history are now run by the same organizations.
Most brands rely on a few media giants — right now, several holding companies own every recognizable agency on earth.
These firms shape campaigns for the majority of the Fortune 500 companies that dominate our marketplaces — deciding what the world sees, how it sees it and when.
To sum it up real clean: you have a few rich people who own all the news and then a few companies who do all their media and advertising.
There are like 20 people who know Walter White’s cultural formula and they decide what billions see. They decide how brands show up, what matters, and where your focus lands.
They’ve forced you into groups and then weaponized your identity.
From macro economics to cultural decay, the needle does not move until they blow the whistle.
Truthfully, all I see is the Monopoly man and his stupid fucking monocle.
The Founders hated this dynamic
Our Founding Fathers hated the idea of consolidated media.
They wanted a way to halt propaganda and ensure truth had a channel. They emphasized a “plurality of voices” and a free marketplace for ideas to keep the republic healthy.
They recognized the threat power consolidation put on the people. Their entire revolution was driven by the idea that a few should not decide the fate of many.
That someone sitting on a throne thousands of miles away should not be calling shots.
In many ways, the Crown is now the Fortune 50.
The throne is just an office chair and the tax collector is a marketing funnel.
It’s important to read the rules of any board game
The Sherman Antitrust Act is an oldie but important.
It was designed to dismantle monopolies and stop any one entity from gaining enough economic power to rig the system.
It worked for a while — trusts got broken, oil barons got humbled, and the idea of one company controlling an entire sector was treated like a national threat (it is).
But today?
That same legislation hasn’t caught up with how power works now. Instead of one company owning everything directly, conglomerates own dozens of brands under different names.
The game isn’t gone — it’s just disguised.
And when wealth and influence concentrate behind closed doors — when a handful of corporations run both the message and the method— the spirit of the Sherman Act gets trampled under legally sanctioned strategy.
The law still exists.
It just doesn’t matter when the people enforcing it are sitting at the same table.
We can decide how much dip we eat
Our voice has been stolen by consolidation.
We’re being manipulated by a combination of misused power, weaponized psychology, and concentrated wealth.
Triggers to make us click.
Trauma to help us purchase.
It’s the same manipulation — packaged prettier. The same illusion — tailored to fit your algorithm.
Just layers of a bean dip that are quite fantastic.
With quality ingredients…
In moderation.
And with the power to know when you’ve had enough.