(2023-08-23) Hunt Freedom Of Speech Rich Men Of Reach

Ben Hunt on Freedom of Speech, Rich Men of Reach. Many (if not most) Americans believe that one of these two people — either rich-men-north-of-richmond singer Oliver Anthony or teenage-climate-activist Greta Thunberg — is an authentic overnight sensation. Zero Americans, however, believe that both Oliver Anthony and Greta Thunberg are authentic overnight celebrities

How does this happen? It happens through the intentional combination of imagery, media distribution technology and weaponized language to create common knowledge — what everyone knows that everyone knows — within a target audience.

Just like Dick Clark did with American Bandstand. “I don’t make culture. I sell it.”

Dick Clark used a new content distribution technology — television (TV) — to show his target audience images of a crowd of attractive young people acting as if the music he wanted to promote was popular.

Dick Clark was in the business of selling the musical equivalent of vanilla ice cream made with the cheapest possible ingredients.

American Bandstand was one long TV commercial for vanilla ice cream

Dick Clark tapped into the behavioral power of a crowd watching a crowd, the hardwired neural response every human being has to watching crowd behavior and incorporating that as our own preferred behavior.

Dick Clark was the entrepreneur who brought common knowledge to television. Common knowledge is why television sitcoms have laugh tracks.

Today, political entrepreneurs on the left and the right have brought common knowledge to another new content distribution technology — social media.

The celebrity of both Oliver Anthony and Greta Thunberg — or rather the instantaneous fame of both Oliver Anthony and Greta Thunberg, the viral nature of the celebrity of both Oliver Anthony and Greta Thunberg — has been constructed in exactly the same way

Let’s start with the construction of Oliver Anthony

Oliver Anthony is different from all of these other performers in two crucial ways.

First, Oliver Anthony sings directly about the modern trifecta of MAGA political entrepreneurship: Dollar DebasementTM, Elite PedophiliaTM, and that old classic, Welfare QueensTM. All in a song that directly references a national North/South divide and the capital of the Confederacy.

Second — AND NOT COINCIDENTALLY — Oliver Anthony has been promoted on social media by MAGA political entrepreneurs to a degree that all of these other musical performers could only dream about. Not only have MAGA political entrepreneurs promoted Oliver Anthony in a concerted, coordinated fashion, but they have done so in a way that would make Dick Clark proud. They have done so in a way that calls your attention to a vast crowd of like-minded, politically-aware citizens who are really, really enjoying this song.

It doesn’t feel like a political campaign. No, in true American Bandstand fashion it feels like a party to which you are invited

Note the date on these tweets, by the way. The three from 8/11 all appear within an hour or two of each other. It’s almost as if there’s a coordinated effort to make Oliver Anthony a star.

The biggest fish in these waters is Joe Rogan, with 11.6 million followers, and it took about 24 hours to land him, but land him they did.

the Greta celebrity construction effort makes the Matt Walshs and Dan Bonginos of the world look like the pikers that they are. The construction of Greta Thunberg’s fame is the most over-the-top, coordinated, out-of-whole-cloth media effort I’ve ever seen.

In May 2018, at age 15, Greta Thunberg won a student essay contest on climate change sponsored by a local Swedish newspaper. Within 4 months, as the public face of several climate change advocacy organizations who began promoting her, she had ‘organized’ her first student strike. Within 9 months, she had a TED talk and had spoken at WEF in Davos and the UN Climate Change Conference (COP24). Within 12 months she had an audience with the Pope.

You’ll notice that there is zero mention in any of these social media posts of Greta Thunberg’s profoundly radical political message, that carbon emissions should not just be reduced, but must be eliminated entirely. By any means necessary.

This is the preferred ice cream flavor of an eclectic set of political entrepreneurs that I would characterize as WEF-adjacent bureaucrats, EA accelerationists, Green Party radicals

Within 3 months of her How dare you! speech, Greta Thunberg was named Time Magazine’s person of the year.

this is exactly why Greta Thunberg was chosen to be the ‘authentic’ celebrity face of truly radical environmental policies – because she’s an English-speaking photogenic child and she has Asperger’s. My god, what kind of a monster are you to criticize her?

Of course it’s the same thing with Oliver Anthony, who is similarly presented — not as a child — but as an innocent nonetheless.

How do we break the spell?

Well, as my good friend and media oligarch Elon Musk says, there’s a difference between freedom of speech and freedom of reach

But there’s a corollary to this that I don’t think enough people have grappled with yet.

Any content that reaches you on a social media platform has been bought and paid for.

Not just ads. Least of all ads!

If you’re reading anything on social media that originates from or travels through a big account — what I call the Rich Men of Reach — the most important thing you can ask yourself is this: Why Am I Reading This Now? ((2020-09-25) Hunt Why Am I Reading This Now)

Politics ain’t ice cream. Because your political autonomy is far too important to let it be nudged away from you by these lying political entrepreneurs on the left and the right. When it comes to politics, you deserve to make up your own damn mind.