They are fictional archetypes of established historical patterns, their reason to exist in pop culture is as shorthand allegories and extrapolations for common despotic behaviors that are already clear to everyone with a sense of history.
It's so trivial that it's pointless because the intended reader is presumed to have already done it himself, excising that triviality is the purpose of any kind of shorthand.
See: North Korea. (I'm sure everyone there is completely up to date and accirate on the character of the world around them!)
See: Russia(Same)
See: Chinese Communist Party (Same)
See: United States and... Well, every nation really. (Same)
See: Propaganda(Literally exists to create skewed perceptions in allies/foes)
See: Filter Bubbles
See: Locality (Physics)
See: Perception Management
(general category of activity)
See: Truman Show
See: Information Asymmetry (If you don't know it exists, woo boy, you might want to look into doing something about that)
See: The Great Firewall (Unrestricted access to the Internet is too dangerous to be allowed by an incumbent power structure)
See: DMCA Takedowns (unmanipulated information access is too dangerous to be allowed by am incumbent power structure)
See: Classification (Secret/Top Secret; unrestricted access to information is too dangerous to be allowed by an incumbent power structure)
See: Every Diplomat and liar ever
I mean, if you're going to play the source card, you may want to pick something that doesn't have so many real life examples that actually enumerating them, and the various contexts from which they have arisen, the timelessness in terms of what generation of humanity is in the process of manufacturing/experiencing said perceptual distortions, and level of infiltration into even the most basic levels of human interaction that requiring further requests for further explanation only serve to show one in a poorer or less flattering light. People lie. Period. The more that is at stake, the easier the act of lying becomes to stomach/justify.
You cannot have achieved adulthood without encountering some level of the type of practice being discussed. Even realizing that you have is in and of itself a formative moment in knowing oneself as a free agent.
It's cognitive dissonance. It:s coping. It's repression. It's distortion. It's for your own good, or more probably for the good of someone in a position to decide what is good for you in your stead.
If this is your first time thinking about or realizing this... I'm truly sorry. My condolences. Integrating it into a naive worldview is not a fun or enjoyable experience.
Locality and filter bubbles? DCMA takedowns? The mere existence of classified data? Every liar ever? Every nation that is and possibly has ever been or will be, either as concrete things or abstract entities? This is loose association of ideas, man, and still not the concrete examples from history I asked for.
But the coda makes up for it, and I thank you for the giggle.
Hey man, giggle away. You do you. Glad you can put off having to deal with how the world operates that much longer. Lotta people go their lives never noticing it, or putting a finger on it. Fewer still are ever in a position to put a finger on it and do anything about it.
I gave concrete examples of instances where an institution or root of authority implements by dicta a distortion on how information, and what information will propagate. If it's any comfort, I reacted the same way when someone pointed out to me the absurdity of duck and cover, and the impossibility of that squaring with the concept of a government conducting itself with integrity when I was more gung ho with regards to the integrity of my own government. It took a while for it to sink in that yeah, there's just stuff that ends up getting done because the unfiltered truth is so much more destructive to the status quo, that the ability to just waltz it in front of consenting to be governed people really seems like an idea that's pauseworthy.
Russia with their propaganda mill, China with the Great Firewall, media/copyright industry with DMCA, U.S. Government with executive privilege/classification authority.
It's universal. You either drive yourself mad, ignore it, work around it, or just deal with the fact info asymmetry is one of the fundamental pillars of power, and play along with the dog and pony show, trying to help the next group of sods not get burned so hard by it.
So tell ya what. Lemme turn it around on you.
How are any of these not things that if just about everyone knew about them in intimate detail would not have substantially changed the way things are today?
MKUltra
The Tuskeegee Syphilis Experiments.
COINTELPRO.
Operation Mockingbird.
The Sugar industry's great success at just conveniently not reporting studies that didn't make their cash crop seem the best way to go. Tobacco industry too. Hell, lets throw in pharma. Thalidomide happened too.
IBM sold machines to facilitate concentration camps.
DuPont happily working with IG Farben to scale Zyklon B production.
Petrochem, burying climate analysis over the last century.
19th-20th century capitalists hiring Pinkertons to bust union organization or get dirt on prospective partners/hires/competitors.
The American Fruit Corporation, and the Banana Republics.
Each one had it's veneer. Each one, frighteningly, may have had a legit claim to "being the right thing to do at the time" from the understanding underpinned by the information that was allowed to propagate for consideration at the time.
I can go on. I'm just weary of it. I see more banal and lower impact examples every day.
Coworker X not doing something because it won't be his problem by the time the consequence comes around, and fuck it, management doesn't care.
Management doesn't care because they've got an acquisition on the hook that'll just shitcan the business to keep it from disrupting the same old business model.
Like I said. Just look around. Info asymmetry is everywhere, and the benefactors (of which the little guy makes up not an insignificant number) like it that way.
It's bugged me for the longest time. Still bugs me.
