MEDIA SCHIZOPHRENIA
Every quantum leap in mass communications also made possible a vast improvement in propaganda techniques. Nazi and Soviet propaganda looks as crude to us as a Babbage calculating machine.
Virtual reality isn't something that's coming. It's here. It's been here for a while. The potent combination of media budgets and crowdsourced social media distribution has allowed for a previously unparalleled level of propaganda that creates and inhabits its own virtual reality.
There's a name for that sort of thing. Schizophrenia.
What happens when the schizophrenic media reality collapses after it comes into too sharp of a conflict with reality is the same behavior that schizophrenics exhibit when their perceptions of the world conflict with the real world.
The people venting and rioting and screaming were living in a cozy reality. Everyone in their social media bubble, except a few crazy uncles agreed with them. All the celebrities were on board. And then the holodeck got switched off.
It wasn't a unique experience. Most Nazis didn't understand what was happening when the tanks broke through to Berlin. The average Russian wasn't prepared for the fall of the USSR.











