NOBODY buys something just because of an ADVERTISEMENT ...

[mr_lebowski]

And along similar lines ... absolutely nobody is currently a member of a cult.

[Buckeye_Democrat]

1. I wish!

Excellent book that proves otherwise.

[mr_lebowski]

2. Nobody believes they can be utterly and reliably manipulated by propaganda

of which advertisements are just a particular form of it.

And absolutely nobody who's clearly IN a cult ... believes they are, at least not at the time ... maybe later.

One of the first orders of business for President Biden, in my estimation, should be to find a way to reduce the propaganda flowing into this country that's originating from places like Russia, and other enemies of the US.

Back in the Cold War days, the government was pretty acutely aware of the damage information warfare could cause to a Nation. Our 'guard' has entirely slipped in the days of the internet. And there's a lot of enemies of our country who've been perfected the art of manipulating populations (esp. their own) over the past ... century in some cases.

Hell our own CIA is very good at it as well.

[Buckeye_Democrat]

3. That's probably true!

Propaganda and ads can affect me too sometimes, despite how I regularly work to be hyper-aware and vigilant about it.

It's their little "seeds of doubt" that I think are most dangerous, especially for someone like me who often questions my own perceptions of the world. It's like, "No, the evidence and reasoning are strong! Those charlatans almost made me doubt it!"