“To be completely cured of newspapers, spend a year reading the previous week’s newspapers.”

Nasim Taleb said that in 2010, and you can find similar sentiments running back a long time. Sensationalism has been the name of the game all along.

Back when we were on ARPANET, when using the network for business like that could lead to direct reprimands.

Back before the start of the Eternal September.

Back before there were masses.

Someone from the so called msm complained out loud recently about social media and how they the so called msm used to control information but are subverted by social media. They came to the conclusion we need the government to pass laws to control information.

I don’t know if they are naive, stupid or genuinely are saddened by their loss of control.

No, I am saying it is the same. There is no "AI apocalypse".

AI generated "content" is just fulfilling the demand. Before AI we had army of human copywriters, the same person would write articles about movies and nuclear physics. And lets not forget SEO spam and SEO farms.

AI is just generating slop in a cheaper way, and much faster.

The AI will probably start relying more on twitter and instagram videos posted by people allegedly on the scene, trascribing quotes and fabricating a story.

You can't sell fraudulent things in the US either. The x-ray glasses ads have a clarification in them about not actually using x-rays, but being an optical illusion. I would bet that whatever country you are from probably has some novelty item that requires a cultural understanding or fine print to know what it truly is.

It is really frustrating as an American Native (as in I was born here not Native American). Caring about being deceived marks you as a conspiricy theorist. If you get frustrated about "made with real milk" not being precise enough to describe if the milk was used to stir the concoction or if it has any milk in it or if its the only milk like thing in it, then you worry too much.

But companies pull that crap all the time. It's because when people do good faith things we don't correct them on their technical loopholes. We don't ask people to cut the loophole off we just presume that they wouldn't use it.

I saw an ad today that said $999 desktops and PCs. Most people think it's fine. That ad is deceiving you though. It's trying to make you feel like they are giving you information. They aren't though. I can go on Amazon and buy a computer at nearly every conceivable price. They don't say it's a good PC or even what that might mean. They are just saying the will take $999 from you and a lawyer probably wouldn't go to court about the definition of a computer over it.

Well it was obviously an ad for "x-ray glasses," not x-ray glasses.

Here's my hot take: conspiracy theories and outlandish myths are America's version of Old World superstition and folklore.

Study any European culture and how it was Christianized, and how the local culture, folklore, and mythology melded with religion to become a unique tapestry. Look at Ireland for a really pronounced example. Look at the folktales and revered fables that came out of those cultures for a synthesis of what rural folk really believed and talked about over dinner, and by the hearth in the evening times after work was done.

But the United States has none of that. The New World came of age during the Enlightenment era of reason and rationality. Now we're in a post-Christian society, one rooted in science and empiricism, but we're still yearning for the supernatural, and it's manifesting in unique ways for us. Americans don't have faeries or unicorns or goblins, we've got chemtrails and little green men. Furthermore, as the U.S. and other New World cultures progress, we're making our own mythology and legends. Look at how much of the American Revolution and Civil War is already steeped in pious fairy tales, such as young Washington's cherry tree, Betsy Ross, Paul Revere, or that utterly fictional, feminist chick who supposedly rode horseback like Revere.

Personally, I believe that this fake stuff that people believe is one of two things: either there are kernels of truth and allegory to them, that they're masking a deeper truth that's too dangerous to discuss openly or brazenly reveal; or that they're utter distractions and designed to keep people busy and concerned about utterly irrelevant things. Panem et circenses.

You joke, but we don’t have to support it. Most of it is already paid for by the Russians. I just think it’s silly how they can get away with recycling the content they created for the US and still be successful with it even though a lot of it makes absolutely no sense in a Danish context.

The article does not mention a specific location for this "culture" war, and not being specific can lead to inexact ideas (is this restricted to the anglophone sphere?...). Similar to when I see studies like "doing X results in Y" only to read in the actual study that it was made on Australians (or something far away from me with different environment/society/etc.), which means it might not apply at all to my surroundings.

I'm not exactly sure what you mean, but maybe when you see someone trying simplify you confuse it for idiocy and when you see someone trying to be specific you confuse it for 'pedantry'.

> The world hates everything we produce -- our food, our movies, our culture -- but they end up consuming it in droves.

How can you honestly believe this with a straight face?

People consume American culture abroad because they enjoy it. It’s not like they are colonies.

> The world hates everything we produce -- our food, our movies, our culture -- but they end up consuming it in droves.

The US has for the most part produced the best movies since... The beginning of movies I'd assume.

The “world” doesn’t consume US-produced media “in droves” anymore, there are still some locations where that probably still happens (like Denmark, probably, I’ve never been there so maybe I’m wrong), but at the same time there are also places where US media used to dominate but it doesn’t anymore. For example in Romania, where I live, the Spotify year-end charts for 2023 had the first US artist (not Taylor Swift, mind you) in about 15th or 16th place, and Spotify is a platform generally used by the more Westernized cohort, /trending on YT is absolutely dominated by Romanian-only songs and media.

I’d go even further and say that (some) Americans’ mistaken belief that their culture/media still dominates stuff at the global level, unencumbered, is a good explanation for many of the US’s geo-political missteps from the last 10-15 years or so. The age of Rocky/Rambo and Michael Jackson is long gone.

> The world hates everything we produce -- our food, our movies, our culture -- but they end up consuming it in droves. They complain that it has no taste, and they're right

I think it is even worse for people who live in US.

"American" food is different outside of US. For example there are norms in most countries for meat, so the "beef" burger has more meat. We have less limitations on allergens, so we can add peanuts for a taste. Also foreign Coca-Cola has proper sugar, not corn based fructose (Mexicoke). I can never eat in US, even chocolate tastes like vomit!

As for cinema, only good stuff is released outside of US. There is no oligopoly in cinema, you get way more diversity in movies. Some countries have censorship that removes some type of scenes. And garbage TV shows, are never released on foreign markets.

We do have the advantage of being a very small country by comparison. Social Media made it worse because the village idiots suddenly had a place to form communities with other village idiots. None of us live far from each other though, you can drive from one end of our country to the other in around 5 hours. So it’s almost impossible to not be mixed up with all sorts of people. I think the “ghettos” we have that are the most isolated are actually the rich people. The rest of us are all mixed in together.

We don’t really have a “rural” area as such. In the way you will have in huge countries like America. We obviously the the same urbanisation everyone else has, and the issues which comes with it. Even if you live in the parts of the country which are “left behind” or however it’s described you’re still very likely to have neighbours who work in a large city that just wanted a “country side” home. Which is possible because 95% of our rural non island areas are typically less than an hour in car from one of our major cities.