Propaganda I'm Not Falling For: A trend that feels like a culmination of things
Let's Talk About it!
As someone chronically online and now working a full time job, leading a social life, etc, etc, I find myself being less and less chronically online. I’ve officially deleted my twitter, it’s gone and I don’t plan on being on there again. I’ve started to only peruse instagram maybe once a day on the train out of work, or TikTok in the evenings after my commute and dinner. I’ve relegated most of my social media use to the weekends, and even then find it overstimulating and boring.
The longer you step away from social media, the more it’s performance starts to wear on you and seem a thin veil of self-centeredness.
I both love and hate social media. Lately, though, it’s more love than hate.
The thing is, I think that Social Media is a great engine to give average people creative access to the world and the money they can make through creating things: art, vlogs, video diaries, conversations, essays, photography. But, I also think we’ve reached a point where all “content” is a commodity towards money.
It’s not a bad thing to make money right, and that comment is not towards anything who is working to actually create out of their spirit and soul, doing something they really love, whatever that is, or how valuable other people may view it. Rather towards the people who are just marketing products, who basically do ads on tiktok. This form of marketing is so aggregious and overwhelming that its pretty much running rancid on any short form content platform you can think of. It’s almost hard to tell what is an ad and what isn’t anymore, when we are being sold to and when we aren’t.
This creates a form of exhaustion with the people we engage with on social media. In a way, it feels we have no way to access anyone’s authentic thoughts or feelings anymore. Influencers and social marketers are not really people but vessels for pushing out product to the masses. We have to run to this new expensive restaurant in east village, we must try that new ice cream, this amazon product is a must have, and that new Target launch changed their life! I mean, have you even thought about how that 30th water bottle they just found at TJMaxx just changed the entire way they consume water?
In so many ways, we are consumed by ads. It’s everywhere, its endless. Hell, some concerts are starting to have ads between sets- when are we not being sold to?
This brings to me to the “Propaganda I’m Not Falling For” trend. Which, even in my absence from the internet, I’ve fallen down this trends rabbit hole… it’s mostly a trend of people saying the things that are being pushed online, or various forms of propaganda, that they aren’t falling for, or avoiding.
For example, my list would be something like:
Generative AI
The New Lilo and Stitch remake
Shopping on TikTok Shop (no matter how badly I want the Velma lipkit from Glamlit!)
“Stardust” Period Tracker
I feel like the first two are self explanatory. As a writer and an academic, I don’t really look to use AI in ways that hinder the learning process or can create parts of the process for me. I have a general rule against remakes, but a remake of a movie about Native Hawaiians struggle to live in a system against them being remade to be a pro-colonial state centered movie is exceptionally evil to me. Then, the stardust app has been advertising to me anywhere I don’t have an ad blocker installed, insisting that I need to delete my “period tracker created by a man” while offering me absolutely nothing in return to convince me why they are better than the app I use. (After one google search, I found they have already sold millions of women’s data from their app, and has little to no security measures… so…. LOL I guess.)
In many ways, this trend has opened a lot of conversation surrounding propaganda. This trend also coincides with a trending audio from the Vietnam war from a woman, dubbed Hanoi Hana during the war, where many Americans are discussing how her radio broadcasts aren’t necessarily “propaganda” anymore, but the truth of our living reality. Some say that her broadcasts were “laughable” others say that it scared soldiers shitless. In the same sense, we are seeing people debate and discuss what really is propaganda, what response is correct, what narrative is tainted by the American Propaganda Machine, and which response isn’t.
Altogether, it has created a level of questioning and response that I think is quite similar to that of the “Propaganda I’m Not Falling For” lists.
Under certain versions of people’s lists, there will be comments like “this isn’t what Propaganda is” or commenting on someone’s reading comprehension. Especially ones that are maybe a bit more silly, or aren’t really traditional “propaganda.”
I am someone who doesn’t view language so staunchly. I see how for the purpose of the trend, Propaganda is being understood as something being shoved down your throat that you just don’t believe in. While there are people who are addressing real propaganda from the west, there are also people who are listing things like “Watching Ginny and Georgia” or “buying a switch 2” which, to me, are equally valid interpretations of the trend, because in a way, there is a sort of pseudo-"propaganda” there. Okay, it’s not the traditional sense of the word, but it has some merit to the interpretation.
In a world where we are innundated with content where we cannot tell what is an ad, what is a real opinion, what is sponsored or unsponsored content, we have a right to feel propagandized by the content that is heavily pushed. All of a sudden, a show which everyone previously found very cringe and mediocre, is a really well done wonderful show with great writing. Yet, every clip I’ve seen has some of the most stilted acting I’ve ever seen, and doesn’t seem very convincing at all. Yet, reel after reel, tiktok after tiktok, creators en masse are convinced we all should be watching Ginny and Georgia… so is this an authentic reaction or has Netflix sent some incentives for people to try and push a viral moment? Do you really want a new switch or are you just watching a lot of people unbox the one they probably got for free, whether they admit it or not, and insist it’s the best thing invented since Flat Screen TV’s.
I think a lot of this pushback stems from the political implications of propaganda. But in an age where our dollar is our biggest policy, and our attention is one of our largest currencies… this great new world we live in is regularly pushing us to question everything on our screens. In every way, the things we see online should be questioned, even if it’s through a TikTok with a list of things you aren’t falling for, at least not now, and hopefully not later either.
Thanks for reading this week! I’m going to try posting weekly. I’m currently working on a larger piece surrounding new age reality tv stars and how they perceive their subsequent careers. And I have a few other pieces brewing throughout the summer.
Let me know your list of propaganda you’re not falling for!
-A