this post was submitted on 10 May 2025
-4 points (16.7% liked)
Diary of Anne Frank
66 readers
1 users here now
Personal Diary of Stephen Alfred Gutknecht.
Reddit: https://old.reddit.com/r/DiaryAnneFrank/
founded 4 months ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
It is a media cult. It isn't a Donald Trump cult. Fox News HDTV audience is a cult. Donald Trump images on the front page of Reddit is a media cult. Pope images / kitten images are media cults here.
This is about a nation of Twitter-thinking reactionary values, Tweeting-thinking. Carl Sagan published a book in 1995 spelling all this out, down to manufacturing obsession and "10-second" Twitter-length thinking. The problem is media systems, social media inclusive. People toss their real identity into the trash while rich people like Elon Musk and Donald Trump use their real names. The Death of Donald Trump isn't gong to change the hundreds of millions of people addicted to the entertainment total mockery values of Twitter White House.
“Science is more than a body of knowledge; it is a way of thinking. I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time—when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the key manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness. The dumbing down of America is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30-second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance. As I write, the number-one videocassette rental in America is the movie Dumb and Dumber. “Beavis and Butthead” remain popular (and influential) with young TV viewers. The plain lesson is that study and learning—not just of science, but of anything—are avoidable, even undesirable.” ― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, 1995
His death isn't going to end the cult of his images and mockery shit-talk Tweeting-style any more than the death of Mohammad ended the Mecca / Quran cult.
People have to actually confront media cult problems with education / understanding of meme cults. "Amusing Ourselves To Death" book from 1985 is a starting point.