You Might Be a Zombie . . . (23 page)

seen Barstow’s name before our research intern told us to type it up there?

It turns out the reports, though impossible to deny, were remarkably easy for TV news outlets to ignore, despite the fact that they were published on the front page of the
New York
goddamned
Times
. When Barstow won the Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting in 2009, most television pundits were busy hyping swine flu. Brian will iams had the bal s to report that the paper had won five Pulitzers, and even mentioned the subject of three of the stories they’d won for. He just chose not to mention the one they got for pointing out that he’s a government stooge.

What it taught us about the media

Hey, those celebrity vaginas aren’t going to expose
themselves
. OK, they are, but that’s beside the point. The system’s not perfect, but it’s not Stalinist Russia either. As long as the
New York Times
is around, we have nothing to worry abou—Oh, hey, look. There’s one more entry on this list.

1. THE DENIAL OF THE HOLODOMOR

When It Happened: 1932-33

News Agencies Involved:
New York Times
,
International Herald Tribune
, and the
Nation
When the harvest of 1932 was poorer than expected in most regions of the Soviet Union, it became pretty clear that there wasn’t enough food for the Russian people. Unfortunately, Stalin’s government was busy convincing the world that Communism was rad, and alerting the world to an impending disaster wasn’t part of the PR plan.

Luckily, America had its best Russian reporter on the ground at the time: Walter Duranty, a Pulitzer Prize winner who had interviewed Stalin himself. As mil ions of Russians began starving to death and Stalin continued itching his bal s indifferently, the
New York Times
’ Duranty stepped up to the plate, informing the world:

“Any report of a famine in Russia is today an exaggeration or malignant propaganda. There is no actual starvation or deaths from starvation, but there is widespread mortality from diseases due to malnutrition.” The people, you see, weren’t starving to death; they were just
dying of malnutrition
. Wait, what the hell?

It turns out that most writers who got approval to enter the Soviet Union were too terrified of Stalin to talk about what was really happening. They pretty much just reported whatever the Soviet government told them to. In Duranty’s case, scoring an interview with the year’s hottest dictator came with a price.

Namely, not alerting the world that 10 million people were about to starve to death.

What it taught us about the media

Everything you’ve ever read is a lie. Trust no one.

BRAINWASHING
doesn’t take a lot of sci-fi gadgetry. There are all sorts of tried-and-true techniques that anyone can use to bypass the thinking part of your brain and flip a switch deep inside that says “OBEY.”

In fact, there’s an entire arsenal of manipulation techniques being used on you every day to do just that. Techniques like:
4. CHANTING SLOGANS

Every cult leader, dril sergeant, and politician knows that if you want to quiet all of those pesky doubting thoughts in a crowd, get them to scream a repetitive phrase or slogan. You know it as chanting, but at New York City’s Cult Hotline and Clinic, the practice is known as a thought-stopping technique.

Guess why.

Why it works

The analytical parts of your brain and those that handle repetitive tasks just can’t seem to function at the same time.

In a 2000
New Yorker
article, Malcolm Gladwel argued that this is why athletes choke in big moments. The heightened pressure turns on the analytical part of their brain while they’re trying to complete a repetitive task. Athletes refer to this as “overthinking a shot,” or “pooping the wedding bed.”

Chanting just reverses the dynamic. It forces your brain into repetitive-task mode so you can’t think rational y. For instance, try solving a complex logic puzzle while screaming the chorus to that “I get knocked down” song over and over again.

Meditation works the same way, with chants or mantras meant to “calm the mind.” Shutting down those nagging voices in the head is helpful for stressed-out individuals but even more helpful to a guy who wants to shut down an audience ful of nagging voices suggesting that what he’s saying might be ridiculous.

3. SLIPPING BULLSHIT INTO YOUR SUBCONSCIOUS

The rise of the Internet has given birth to a whole new, sly technique of bul shit insertion. People who get paid to manipulate your opinion have figured out that most of us browse headlines instead of actually reading the news. And there’s a way to exploit that based on how the brain stores memories.

The Drudge Report lives off this. A single anonymous source will report to a news blog that, say, Senator Smith runs a secret gay bordel o. Drudge will run the headline:

NEW QUESTIONS ABOUT SMITH’S SECRET GAY BORDELLO

Or perhaps there’l just be a question mark on the end:

SMITH: SECRET GAY BORDELLO ASS MASTER?

It doesn’t matter that the headline merely involves “questions” about the bordel o. The idea has been planted, and two months later when somebody mentions Senator Smith around the water cooler you’l say, “The gay bordel o guy, right?”

Why it works

It’s called
source amnesia
. According to a 2008 article in the
New York Times
, it’s the reason why “you know that the capital of California is Sacramento, but you probably don’t remember how you learned it.” The brain has limited storage, so it stores just the important nugget but usually discards the trivial context, such as when and where you learned about it.

In the era of information overload, that’s a mechanism that can be easily exploited. A piece of information can be presented with all sorts of qualifiers, but often the brain will only remember the ugly rumor and completely forget the qualifiers. It happens even if the headline we read was
specifically
about the rumor being untrue.

You’ll see this every election cycle. The entire point of putting a shaky rumor into the press is to force your opponent to deny it, because denial works just as wel as the accusation to secure the rumor in the brains of voters. Thanks to source amnesia, for mil ions of people all three of these: 

SMITH DENIES GAY BORDELLO RUMORS

SMITH REFUSES COMMENT ON GAY BORDELLO RUMORS

SMITH ADMITS STARTING, VISITING, BURNING DOWN BORDELLO-ORPHANAGE

register as the exact same headline.

2. CONTROLLING WHAT YOU WATCH AND READ

Restriction of reading material is common to every cult. The idea is to insulate the members from any opposing points of view. That’s why the guys claiming to be sex messiahs tend to start their polygamous compounds out in the middle of the desert. Not a lot of dissenting voices out there.

It turns out that technique works just as wel out in the real world. Only nobody has to drag you into the desert and tell you what to read. Your brain handles that part for them.

Why it works

Our brain is wired to get a quick high from reading things that agree with our own point of view. Scientists at Emory University actually hooked scanners up to the brains of staunch conservatives and liberals and asked them about political y divisive issues. The scans showed the brain’s pleasure center lit up when people heard something they agreed with and lit up again when intentional y dismissing information that they disagreed with. Yes, our brain rewards us for being closed-minded dicks.

This is why the Right and Left each has its own publishing arm, and why each one’s favorite topic of discussion is how corrupt and ridiculous the other side’s media is. Most of us will gladly close ourselves in whichever echo chamber of talk radio, blogs, and cable news outlets give us that little “I
knew it
!” high.

1. KEEPING YOU IN LINE WITH SHAME

You can win any formal debate in col ege by using our patented technique of simply repeating your opponent’s argument in a high-pitched, mocking tone while wiggling your fingers in the air. There really is no defense.

They cal this the
appeal to ridicule fallacy
. To which we would reply, “Ooh, appeal to ridicule fall acy! well, I’ve got a
phallus
you can
see
right here, college boy.”

Professionals have more sophisticated methods, but they still know that if they can portray an idea as ridiculous, the listener usually won’t bother examining it any closer to find out if the ridicule is justified.

For instance, the UN recently released a report that found more greenhouse gasses come from cattle than the tailpipes of cars. Luckily for whichever side of the global-warming debate that information pisses off, this statistic can also be stated thusly: “So now they’re tell ing us that—get this—global warming is caused by cows farting! Priceless!”

And now it’s ridiculous. Why even consider a piece of information that ridiculous? That’s only something a ridiculous person would do! And you’re not ridiculous, are you?

Why it works

There are these primitive, lower parts of your brain called amygdalae that control base, emotional reactions. That’s where things like contempt and shame come from, and stimulating the amygdalae can completely shut down the analytical part of your brain. The gang cal s you a coward, and the next thing you know you’re wedging a Roman candle between your butt cheeks.

You can thank evolution for that. Mockery developed as a conformity enforcer, to keep people in line. Way back when humans started forming groups and tribes, social status was everything. Making a person, idea, or behavior the target of mockery gave it a lower social position. If you were associated with the idea, you were left out of the hunting/eating/ orgies that made life worthwhile. Thousands of years later, a good dose of mockery can still shut down critical thinking and make us fall right in line.