This Christmas break I guess I was feeling existential, so I read some Noam Chomsky.

In 1988, Chomsky co-authored Manufacturing Consent. His argument was simple: people in power don't need to force us to agree with them. They just use the media to curate what we see and hear until we believe their goals are actually our own.

He broke it down into Five Filters:

1. Ownership: Media outlets are profit-driven corporations. They won't platform ideas that threaten the capitalist system that pays their bills.
2. Advertising: Outlets sell us to advertisers. To keep the checks coming, they avoid anything too "controversial" or anti-corporate.
3. Sourcing: The White House and the Pentagon provide a steady stream of "official" news. If a journalist challenges the source, they lose the access.
4. Flak: If you stray too far from the consensus, you get hit with organized blowback — lawsuits, boycotts, and public shaming.
5. The Common Enemy: You need a boogeyman to unite the masses. It used to be Communism; now it's "external threats" or whichever dictator is currently trending as the villain.

Chomsky actually borrowed the term from Walter Lippmann, who back in 1922 called the public the "bewildered herd."

Doom scrolling at the vet

I was thinking about this while doomscrolling in a vet waiting room. As I sat there, the algorithm fed me a highlights reel of modern chaos: Epstein file screenshots, a clip of Trump fumbling the Declaration of Independence, and Erika Kirk's hauntingly intense gaze.

While my bubble tells me that women's healthcare receives significantly less funding than research on male balding, their bubble tells them they are under attack and need to "reclaim dominance."

It's polarizing by design. AI has taken the consent manufacturing process out of the newsroom and shoved it into a black box.

Individualized propaganda

Chomsky's theory relied on mass media filters that hit everyone at once. AI has evolved this into individualized propaganda. A 2024 study in PNAS found that LLMs craft messages tailored to your specific psychological profile — significantly more persuasive than generic ones.

Custom-fitted dissent

We have entered a world where consent isn't just manufactured; it's custom-fitted. Lippmann's "bewildered herd" isn't being led by a shepherd anymore. We're being led by an algorithm that knows exactly which gate we'll walk through if it just shows us the right patch of grass.