How Propaganda Works

The near incomprehensible number of humans on the planet allows for mass manipulation and deception. If I could choose which events and stories you hear about, even if everything I tell you is completely true and accurate, I would have massive control over your perceptions, control over your thoughts and fears, and therefore, a lot of control even over your actions. If, for example, I made sure you were told about it and saw the gruesome images every time someone was injured by a chainsaw (which happens about 80 times a day), you would think it was an intolerable and shocking epidemic; a crisis! And if you weren't very good at statistics and critical thought, you might even be joining protests to have chainsaws banned (or at least have them licensed and heavily regulated).

If I made sure you heard about it in lurid detail every time someone with red hair mistreated an animal and you were exposed to that day after day, over time you would consciously or subconsciously or both, start thinking that all red heads are sadistic animal torturers. Just do to the sheer numbers of people on the planet, there could be a news channel reporting only red heads mistreating animals without repeating the same story twice and without ever running out of stories provided they had means to finding all those stories. For those who want to check the math, there are estimated to be 100 million red heads in the world. If even one out of one hundred thousand of them was nasty to an animal at some point, that would give our Red Heads Being Mean To Animals Network around three unique stories a day for a year, never mentioning the same individual twice.

If your perception of any group, any race, nationality, religion, fans of a particular band, people who wear a certain fashion, people who are born in a certain month, is based on what you see on a screen or hear on a radio, keep in mind that you are allowing someone else to mold your opinions for you. And if your view of that group doesn't match your own direct first hand experiences, then you're probably being lied to. Someone is probably intentionally instilling fear or hatred into you in order to serve their own agenda.