In our time, political propaganda and conspiracy theories are kissing cousins. One opens the gates and the other drags you in. The way they do this is not very imaginative and so it is possible to squitn and see how the process works.
Below is a full transcript of the episode.
Hi, and welcome to another video on this channel.
My name is Vimoh and here we talk about atheism, Indian culture, popular misinformation, that sort of stuff. And I want to talk today, not about any specific creator or any specific bit of misinformation, but about something slightly meta.
If you, if you zoom out and you look at this entire circus, what becomes apparent, a larger trend or a rather a larger pattern of behavior that becomes apparent when you zoom out and look at this. And we're going to call it the marketplace of secrets. Like, sounds very Harry Potter-ish, no? It's a market where you go and you find secrets everywhere being sold.
My question has to do with the fact that the people who are selling you these secrets, where are they getting those secrets from? Imagine you're scrolling down your YouTube feed and you find a number of YouTube videos. One video says, secret meeting between political leaders that you need to know about right now. And you click on it and find out that there was actually no secret meeting. Somebody is just giving their opinion. And the reason you clicked on the thumbnail is because you thought there was something in this video that you could not find elsewhere. It turns out there is nothing in the video.
The person who made the video and made the thumbnail knows that you are looking on YouTube for things that you cannot find elsewhere. And if they can appear to be the person who can give you those things, then they have your attention.
You keep scrolling and you find someone saying, secrets of ancient Indian history that are being hidden from you according to some conspiracy by liberals. Now, in addition to finding information that you could not find elsewhere, you are actually being provided information. You are actually being offered information that someone does not want you to see. Someone is actively suppressing so that you may not find out about it.
You are, by the way, in the dark about many things. You don't know many things and the reason you don't know them is because you really don't care about it. There are facts all over the world that you never looked into and that's all right because the world is quite large and you are one person and you have a set of interests and it is not your job to go look and find everything. So you are only going to look at things that are of interest to you. Right.
So then you keep scrolling down your YouTube feed and you find another thumbnail. This one says secrets of ancient Indian history, culture, something, something that are being hidden from you by people that you don't like. Now it's become even more personal. Now, A, it's secret information that you don't know. B, it has been hidden from you and specifically hidden from you by the people who you don't like. Now, in addition to lack of knowledge, there is also anger. How dare these people keep this valuable information from me?
The people who are keeping this information from me must be my enemies. In fact, I already think they're my enemies. This just reinforces it. And now when you click on this video and you watch something, you may still be disappointed with the content, but something else has happened. Something else has been triggered in your head. The bias, which you already had against certain people has been reinforced. And this reinforcement works on a subconscious level. You're not always aware of it. It's not as if you would have stopped disliking those people if you had not seen this video, but watching this video reinforced that and made you trust this person more because sure, maybe their video doesn't contain much good content, but at least they're on your side. They are working to help you. Sure, they got some facts wrong and they got some information wrong and they lied about some things, but they want what is good for you because they agree with you with regard to who your enemy is.
Now, let me point out something else. Think about this from the point of view of the people who create these videos. What do they know about you? They know that you are a large chunk of the population, as in your religious background, your cultural background, your political biases make you a prime candidate for a certain kind of content. They want to give this content to you. But they also need to make sure that you will be interested in the content that they're giving you. So they create a box and they put stuff in this box.
What is this box? This box, if you want to put a label on this box, this box will be labeled things you don't know or things they don't want you to know or things that are being kept secret from you. This is a broad label and a lot of subcategories may be also applied to this box. But broadly speaking, this is the label on the box that you should be aware of.
Now they have a box and they need to put stuff in it. Where do they find stuff to put in this box so that you would be interested? They can do it in a number of ways. There are, there is more than one method using which they can get stuff to put in the box.
The first method, the most honest method is to actually go and find stuff, you know, actually go do historical research, actually go do what academics do, actually go do what archaeologists do. Find out stuff that is true. but unknown and then put it in this box and package it and give it to you. This would be the honest thing to do.
The second method is just make something up. Just imagine something, just create something out of thin air and call it a secret that people don't want you to know and put it in the box. The end result remains the same. You get an interesting thumbnail and a title and you don't have to do actual work in order to get that content. You just make s**t up and put it in the box and people will come and take it.
The third method is probably used by people who have a little interest in being honest, but they're also extremely lazy. So they don't want to go out and do the hard work of bringing you actual secrets, but they do want your attention. So what they do is that they find average garden variety information that is common and well known to everyone. but they package it as if it is being hidden from you. They package it as a secret that some people don't want you to know.
You will remember I mentioned earlier that you are not interested in everything and that's normal because you cannot be interested in everything. But if they found stuff out there that is boring to you, but they packaged it as if it was being hidden from you according to, as per a conspiracy of some sort, being enforced by people you already don't like, then you might become interested in it. For example, I might not be interested in termites from South America, but if someone made a video about termites, Here's a fact about termites from South America that is being hidden from you by the people you don't like. Then you might get interested, right?
So that's what they do. They take average garden variety school and college level textbook stuff and they label it super secret conspiracy stuff that is being hidden from you and they put it in the box. Now they again have actual content, which is partially true even, but they have an interesting headline and title that goes with it.
By the way, this is what is happening to a lot of engineering students these days. When they were in school, they had zero interest in history and under normal circumstances, they still would have zero interest in history. But since history is being marketed to them specifically, by labeling it secret information that those people don't want you to know or cultural pride that is being hidden by liberals, everyone has suddenly become very interested in what they consider to be history. They're not interested in history. They're being turned into consumers of propaganda by labeling propaganda as history.
You know this problem we have with chips packets, right? There will be a packet of chips and there will be like four chips inside it and the rest of it will be air. So the goal is to make the packet look full. And if the thing you have to do in order to make the packet look full is fill it with air, then that's what they do. The point of the packet was chips, but there are no chips. There is mostly air. The packaging takes over the content.
The thing that conspiracy theorists try to hide from you, the thing that conspiracy theorists actively try to hide from you, and I know I'm doing the same thing here, but this is to make a point. The thing that they hide from you is that their packaging is almost the entirety of their message. There is no actual content there. More than 90% of what they give you is fluff, emotional fluff that is designed to make you angry sad disappointed and quite possibly hateful after conspiracy theorists do this thing for a number of years after they have sent videos towards you where almost every single video is telling you that something's being hidden from you Something is being kept from you.
Some people out there in the dark shadows are trying to hide information from you with the express intention of keeping you down or enslaving you or preventing you from having access to knowledge. After such videos, such content is sent your way every single day for years and years and years, if someone comes along and says, this is false, this is not true, your mind will be very quick to take that person and put them in the same folder of enemies from whom you are being told you need to be careful.
So the conspiracy theorists entire toolkit is based on keeping you afraid. It is based on keeping you down. It is based on keeping you from accessing actual information. So in a very roundabout way, the thing that you should be afraid of, the thing that is keeping you from reality, the thing that is preventing you from having access to real knowledge about your culture and the world and science and everything... is the conspiracy theorist.
This is a little like one of those movies where the hero has a friend whose job it is to protect the hero and the hero eventually finds out that it was the friend who was the real danger all along.
A lot of you leave angry comments under my videos because you are deeply hurt by the things that I say about these conspiracy theorists. But I want you to think a little bit about what feelings history is supposed to evoke in you. Are you being made more knowledgeable? Are you being made more aware of facts? Or are you only being left with a feeling of anger and rage and disappointment? If all you get out of history is anger and sadness, then it is not history you're studying. You're studying propaganda.
History is supposed to be an objective understanding of the past. And if after reading a history textbook, you don't feel like you know more or that you are more aware or you have a fuller understanding of the past and all you are left with is sadness and disappointment and anger and hate, then you need to reevaluate your priorities in life, my friend.
That's it for this video. I hope this made sense. It was just an off-the-cuff observation, not really a deep dive into any single topic. Let me know if you are interested in more such meta-analysis of the market of secrets and I will do so. Until next time, take care of yourselves.
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