Narrative Warfare: The Reality Of The Pop Cult Problem

Pop Cultists, when confronted with the reality that there's plenty of not-Brand alternatives to Big Brand they're whining about:

And the fan channel complex that enables this is the worst of the lot. Could be pushing alternatives, but don't because outrage about Big Brand brings in revenue while promoting alternatives--being #BrandZero--does not.

I suspect that this is not accidental, but not necessarily deliberate.

Let me unpack that.

It is not accidental in that a lot of the social media changes meant to promote Big Corporate over smaller alternatives, such as NBC or the BBC over Mike Cernovich. The effects are intended to affect news media to control political narratives, but have the acceptable benefit of exerting control over cultural narratives as well. As politics is downstream from culture, the effect is accepted because it is seen as a delayed-onset political narrative shift.

It is not deliberate because this specific form of control is not the objective. The objective is to control the 2020 election cycle in the U.S., and hopefully influence elections elsewhere, but cultural control was not in the minds of the Big Social galaxy brains pushing these changes through. They weren't thinking in cultural terms as such, even if it is clearly cultural control that they pursue. This is not the Big Picture Team at work, despite seeming so; this is the mid-level management tier implementing directives from above.

And the Pop Cultists go along with it because they're long accustomed to the false religion of their cult satisfying their religious needs, however improperly and imperfectly, so they are disinclined to go outside the boundaries proscribed by the Pop Cult. Hell, many of them won't go beyond the specific idol they worship- not even entertaining other idols, nevermind going outside the cult. (See above pic, again; "read" is not just metaphorical, but literal for many Pop Cultists.)

We've got a lot of work to do if we're going to make #BrandZero succeed.

This is a cult. Approach the problem accordingly.