Subject: Re: Cable ratings update, reality 101,

TV is opium of the people. Ad AI and we are well and truly fucked by amoral greedy oligarchs and the slimy frauds like Trump that front for them.

Orwell stirred fear that a consummate manipulator of information may somehow control our thoughts in a way that is systematic and sustained. He was not alone among prophets of thought control. Karl Marx wrote of religion as the 'opium of the people,'' emphasizing a more passive form of indoctrination.

Television has taken us a great distance toward a society in which abbreviated and superficial transmission of words and images is the dominant organizing force. High profit - not ideals of truth or concerns of governance - sets the top priorities of commercial television's organization of our words and images.

https://www.nytimes.com/1983/1...