1. The truth is you can’t. And it is almost certainly happening. “Our” propaganda vs. “their” propaganda. One of the things that reading Ellul’s “Propaganda” will teach you is that the more immersed you are in mass media you are, the more easily manipulatable you are. https://t.co/KlwO32o7Xk

2. If you don’t want to be manipulated by propaganda and want to regain your own thoughts, stop paying attention to the news. The rise of propaganda comes with the invention of the printing press, but mostly with the newspaper and the idea of “the news.”
3. Being caught up in “the news” makes you susceptible to propaganda manipulation. Why is this? You would think that being well informed would make you less able to be manipulated, but that is not the case. It makes you more vulnerable.
4. One of the characteristics of “the news” —and this only intensifies with TV, internet and social media like Twitter—is that it is always changing, it is always “new.” If you follow the news, what happens is that over time your thoughts start to lose their grounding.
5. Your consciousness is simply a stream of of every shifting content and stories. You become hungry for the next story and the next new thing to absorb and react to. You begin to see this as a strength, you are “informed.”
6. The truth is that your consciousness is nothing but a collection of ever shifting images and words. You have no direct experiences except as mediated through the ever shifting narrative of the news. You have no thoughts apart from the news. You are the news.
7. This is why, once you understand propaganda, the whole “I support the current thing” is so funny. You think you are clever by mocking those who support the current thing, don’t you? But what are you talking about, even negatively? That’s right: the current thing.
8. Even your reaction against the current thing is determined by the current thing. You are as much manipulated in your opposition as those who are manipulated in their support. Your thoughts are limited to debating over the current thing. This is how insidious propaganda is.
9. Do you really want to reclaim your own thoughts? Unplug. No news at all. No TV. No Internet. No social media. Just unplug and live with events as they occur in the real world that you experience. Give it a few weeks and you will discover an amazing transformation.
10. Why do I stay on Twitter then? Am I a hypocrite? Yep. But, like you, I am a news junky and Twitter is the pure stuff. And I am forever on the verge of quitting cold turkey and walking away. Maybe today will be that day?

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So the cryptocurrency industry has basically two products, one which is relatively benign and doesn't have product market fit, and one which is malignant and does. The industry has a weird superposition of understanding this fact and (strategically?) not understanding it.


The benign product is sovereign programmable money, which is historically a niche interest of folks with a relatively clustered set of beliefs about the state, the literary merit of Snow Crash, and the utility of gold to the modern economy.

This product has narrow appeal and, accordingly, is worth about as much as everything else on a 486 sitting in someone's basement is worth.

The other product is investment scams, which have approximately the best product market fit of anything produced by humans. In no age, in no country, in no city, at no level of sophistication do people consistently say "Actually I would prefer not to get money for nothing."

This product needs the exchanges like they need oxygen, because the value of it is directly tied to having payment rails to move real currency into the ecosystem and some jurisdictional and regulatory legerdemain to stay one step ahead of the banhammer.
So the cryptocurrency industry has basically two products, one which is relatively benign and doesn't have product market fit, and one which is malignant and does. The industry has a weird superposition of understanding this fact and (strategically?) not understanding it.


The benign product is sovereign programmable money, which is historically a niche interest of folks with a relatively clustered set of beliefs about the state, the literary merit of Snow Crash, and the utility of gold to the modern economy.

This product has narrow appeal and, accordingly, is worth about as much as everything else on a 486 sitting in someone's basement is worth.

The other product is investment scams, which have approximately the best product market fit of anything produced by humans. In no age, in no country, in no city, at no level of sophistication do people consistently say "Actually I would prefer not to get money for nothing."

This product needs the exchanges like they need oxygen, because the value of it is directly tied to having payment rails to move real currency into the ecosystem and some jurisdictional and regulatory legerdemain to stay one step ahead of the banhammer.