Good stuff from madperc

(excerpt)

So the mainstream news media knows all about You, collectively, the Time-You on the cover of the magazine, and knows that You are most apt to pay attention to them when they find ways to show you You.

Here’s the rub: They are selling You a version of You that must necessarily be false, because it requires them to tell you about You. So this past week, You wanted to know all about the personality and history of a mass-murderer, maybe because it would help You to identify troubled individuals of his kind in the future (I think he’s rather unique, but also typical, in that he played the Culture that played him, and actually won, albeit posthumously), maybe so You could see that there were steps that could have been taken to prevent this, and then You could have something to do about this - You could help change the system to prevent this kind of thing from happening again. But they don’t want You doing anything beyond watching them and learning exclusively from them about You, until a kind of symbiosis is achieved, You and them, depending on each other for the daily basics when it comes to the ideas and events that order our world.

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