Youtube comment sections are widely known to be dumpster fires.
Are youtube comment sections unusual? I talk to folk IRL. Often involuntarily...I seem to code as a good listener in meatspace... It's pretty much a youtube comment section. Regular folks' opinions are all over the place. They have no consistency and no noticeable relationship to the facts.
One exception: everyone but the dumbest motherfucker knows exactly what they're supposed think.
(The other exception: Conquest #1. They know exactly what not-[getting fired] entails. If they have actual customers or some other form of real discipline, they will be genuinely competent at their job and everything. As long as the situation isn't unfamiliar, anyway.)
What if most folks know this? What if they're aware their real opinions are nonsensical and incoherent?
Why would they not be grateful for an offering of a consistent and apparently respectable set of opinions? "Look...bro... I ain't gonna do better. I don't have to actually act on them, bro. Why not just take the off-the-shelf option and get on with living?" Especially as the Hegemon does in fact make very sure everyone knows what they're supposed to think. It's not exactly out of the way. See, in past times, the Church. "It's heartwarming when they [agree with the scholar hierarchy]; it impresses everyone, even me."
There is a bit of a downside, in that the propaganda product that can satisfy the low-IQ zero-attention consumer is full of, shall we say, oversimplifications. Also known as utter howlers. Lies so dumb you can tell someone put huge amounts of effort into making them dumber. Real works of "art."
The more discerning customer still doesn't want to come up with their own worldview. That is indeed a foolish thing to do. It's an enormous amount of effort and all you get out of it is peace of mind, a predictable world that makes sense, and everyone disagreeing with you. Plato forgot to mention one thing democratic man demands: popularity. Popularity and freedom are contradictory of course, but wisdom was abandoned back up when they decayed to timeocracy. The discerning customer wouldn't be caught dead with the idiot prole propaganda, but they still demand propaganda. The internet can elaborately satisfy this demand.
P.S. Google Jaques Elluls if you forgot what this is about.
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New failcomment system also fails to publish my comments, it's not limited to yours. Keep trying, it will usually work, eventually.
Blogger deliberately trying to kill itself, I expect.
Captchas should be off. If it gives you one anyway, it's against my explicit instructions.