You are being played…for that matter we all are!
This past year I have seen the world, especially the mass media and pop-culture world, in a whole new way. Those who are pulling the strings with what we see, read, hear and think are much more prevalent and devious than I ever thought. My good friend Rick Dolphin suggested a book for me to read last year, “Trust Me I’m Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulator” by author Ryan Holiday. It has opened my eyes to the ways media gurus scheme; plot and plan to make us normal saps think the way they want us all to think. Social Media is the modern day “Vulcan Mind-Meld.” Here is a summation of Holiday’s findings…
“Well, television is no longer the main stage of culture. The Internet is. Blogs are. YouTube is. Twitter is. And their demands control our culture exactly as television once did. Only the Internet worships a different god: Traffic. It lives and dies by clicks, because that’s what drives ad revenue and influence. The central question for the Internet is not, Is this entertaining? but, Will this get attention? Will it spread?”
Two things to note:
- The goal of Social Media is traffic: the more hits a site gets the more money it makes.
- The means is shock or attention.
This is why sex sells, it grabs instant attention. But the author says there are even more compelling ways to hook people than seeing a girl in a bikini — if you can arouse anger or fear, you are sure to pull people in. That is why so many of the articles, tweets and news headlines you read are designed to tick you off. In other words, “Conflict Works!”
Let me show a couple recent headlines that people have sent to me and see if you can see the conflict:
“‘This is Not Incest’: A Man Leaves His Wife to Engage in a Sexual Relationship With His Mother.”
“Much Scientific Research Published Today is False”
“45% of Americans Pay No Federal Income Tax.”
Each one of these headlines is meant to have you say, “What???? You have got to be kidding me?” They are purposely designed to attack just those areas that mean something to you. They want you to wonder if the society you desired for your kids to grow up in is now being seriously threatened and on the verge of total collapse? Or they are trying to pit you, the decent law-abiding American, against the no good dirty scoundrels of this world who are stealing your peace and joy.
Take the first article for instance: The word “incest” is meant to make you recoil in horror. And it works! Then the writer wants the reader to consider if what we once all agreed was taboo, a boy sleeping with his mom, can possibly be acceptable behavior in our new enlightened society? “What???? You have got to be kidding me?” See how it works?
I think this desire to arouse attention through conflict is more dangerous than the media experts think or allow. When they are attacking well-established norms and healthy moral boundaries in order to profit, they aren’t just getting people angry, but they are unknowingly, and I would even argue knowingly, helping society to establish new sick norms. The human heart is definitely twisted and prone to deceit (Jeremiah 17:9) but left on its own it really is not that creative. When articles are thrown out there to shock, people start thinking in ways they would have never really thought about before.
Why is there such a rise in transgender experimentation? Because when kids are alone in the backyard playing hide-n-go-seek they really are wondering if they are a different gender, or because they saw media stories and articles on it that made them think about it in ways they never would have on their own? Evil is, for the most part, taught and caught, like a virus of the mind. I can never forget watching “Deliverance” uncensored on a Saturday afternoon when I was 12. It was disturbing because it caused me to consider the actions of morally sick people I would have never, ever considered before.
Look at the first article again: How many boys do you think naturally wonder if their mom is hot? On their own, very, very few because they are our mom, ”You just don’t don’t go there!” But if you were to read an article on it, have experts discuss the new acceptance of it in our more socially mature (warped) world, little un-creative and defenseless minds will start thinking things they never would have thought before. That is why I think so many normal people seem to be breaking to the bad.
Out of sight out of mind. But not anymore, we want to sell advertising so let’s be innovative with evil in order to shock and anger. Why else would parents even consider letting biological boys in their daughter’s locker rooms? It is because some sick new social engineers convinced writers and bloggers and news sources (Slate, Huffington Post, CNN) to make it seem normal and healthy. And those news sources knew that topic would be explosive! Money, money, money!
Conflict doesn’t just sell advertisements, it steals minds in order to destroy lives. That is why Ephesians 2:2 calls Satan the Prince of the Power of the Air! He is the malicious string puller behind the scenes and he is using our fancy new social media tools to magnify his work.
C. S. Lewis has a quote that encapsulates these thoughts perfectly: “A sick society must think much about politics, as a sick man must think much about his digestion; to ignore the subject may be fatal cowardice for one as for the other. But if either comes to regard it as the natural food of the mind—if either forgets that we think of such things only in order to be able to think of something else—then what was undertaken for the sake of health has become itself a new and deadly disease.”
Moral perversion is meant to arouse anger, so bloggers use it. But as C. S. Lewis notes, once we ignore it and then regard it as natural, we have become filled with its virus. I once heard a debate between a liberal and a Christian. The liberal asked the Christian, “Why do you only talk about the sin of homosexuality, abortion and transvestism?” The Christian said, “Because you keep pushing it on us as normal – – we didn’t start the fire!”
Yes, anger is the proper emotion for perversion. But how we handle our anger is the big question. We don’t just ignore those things that make us angry; but we do use sound arguments, reason and kindness to get people to see God’s beautiful design for man. So be angry and sin not!
