[pnexk]

TFA’s author notes they’ve watched Adam Curtis’s Hypernormalization. As someone who is vary of his Century of Self documentary, I think it’s worth remembering how deceptive visual mediums can be.

It’s not that textual arguments and essays cannot mislead and make muddled arguments… but presentation and style in documentaries/video essays have an immense capability to convince the average viewer of an articulated idea or claim’s factuality in a way that text cannot.

None of this is to say documentaries or YouTube essays cannot make correct points or share beautiful ideas that are grounded, but that it’s far more difficult to disentangle half-truths, correct statements from half baked ideas presented with historical footage and sober background music.

[_nxwj]

Yes I’ve become aware of the fact that documentaries are still mostly audio-visual entertainment masquerading as something more. A lot can be said about the medium as the message and so on, which is why I still value deliberate careful reading and conversation the most. To add on to the complicated world, younger people don’t read much at all, and their reading is becoming shallower thanks to the internet.

[plaguuuuuu]

Also worth reading, especially today in LLM age: Simulacra and Simulation by Beaudrillard. Heavily inspired The Matrix. Although unlike the movie, he saw simulacra as irreversibly replacing reality, ie you can't get out of the matrix.