this post was submitted on 23 Dec 2025
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Leopards Ate My Face
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Yeah they do. Its on the person to verify them. The only time they dont is when the individual decides for themselves to ignore the facts. Its people choosing to hold onto thier own prejudices and assumptions rather than accepting the truth for what it is. This is what propoganda depends on, stereotypes, assumptions, and a lazy mind unwilling to challenge itself.
That's just not borne out by statistical evidence. Study after study (not to mention my own experience) disprove this idea.
Sure, but relying on that to help assumes that the propagandists haven't captured sources of verification, or convinced victims that they're unreliable.
That's literally what propaganda does to someone. It seems like you're thinking of just standard misinformation. Propaganda is a whole different thing; it has been intentionally crafted by very intelligent people who have been paid a lot of money to make you believe what they want you to believe. It's not just a choice someone makes, it's a virus that they're infected with.
Your mind isn't magically immune to propaganda, either. You likely have a stereotype of conservative people as dumb and uncurious, for instance (and, to be sure, many are), but in reality many are quite clever; that intelligence is just turned toward selfishness, or some other warped view of reality.
A lot of propaganda works on that exact kind of binary, black and white view that dehumanizes other people. Propagandists know that you can be convinced to act more easily if you can first be convinced that others are fundamentally worse than you in some inherent way.
This is what I mean about "intentionally crafted." Propagandists have been honing enough messages that they can likely tailor one to you. The only way you can escape one is if you (1) know it's happening, and (2) are willing to think about it critically and with nuance. I'm probably being targeted by propaganda right now without realizing it.
The mental gymnastics required to believe some of the things that propagandized people accept actually require more mental work, not less. You can call it cult programming, or even mind control, but it's not laziness.