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Comment by bmwracer | Hacker News Reader

"The Century Of The Self" by Adam Curtis is a great documentary series on Bernays and the PR industry he invented. Gets scary towards the end when you realize that mainstream political discourse is now managed using the same PR methods that took over the business world a generation before.

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Great recommendation. His newest long work "HyperNormalisation" (2016) [0][1] is even more timely and covers PR in a modern context, and explores how it fits in with modern hacktivism, international proxy wars, warlords current and former, Occupy movements and Arab Spring, and he even manages to fit in the Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Barlow's Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, and early phreaker culture icons Phiber Optik and Acid Phreak.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HyperNormalisation

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fh2cDKyFdyU (full 166 minute documentary)

Here's a better source for Adam Curtis's series:

https://thoughtmaybe.com/by/adam-curtis/

  The Century of The Self

https://thoughtmaybe.com/the-century-of-the-self/

  HyperNormalisation

https://thoughtmaybe.com/hypernormalisation/

  All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace

https://thoughtmaybe.com/all-watched-over-by-machines-of-lov...

  The Power of Nightmares

https://thoughtmaybe.com/the-power-of-nightmares/

  It Felt Like a Kiss

https://thoughtmaybe.com/it-felt-like-a-kiss/

Nice set of links. Do you know much about the site thoughtmaybe.com? Seems interesting but I am always wary of sites like these with subscription links and unclear provenance of the videos they use.

For what it's worth, here are some links to Adam Curtis videos on the Internet Archive and a bonus link to Curtis chatting with the director of the Dick Cheney biopic "Vice," Adam McKay.

https://archive.org/search.php?query=creator%3A%22Adam%20Cur...

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/jan/18/adam-curtis-and...

You're wary of sites with opt in email list subscription links?

From the site header ABOUT page:

https://thoughtmaybe.com/about/

"Thought Maybe is a 100% independent, autonomous, not-for-profit, self-directed project that exists to inspire action on a whole bunch of issues surrounding modern society, industrial civilisation, globalised dominant culture.

This website does not use nor support corporate “communication networks” such as YouTube, Facebook, Google, Twitter, etc. We think its important to maintain an independent platform for publishing—insofar as it’s possible to do on the Internet of corporate-controlled gateways or ISPs.

We run this project using Open Source Software and embrace the notion of Creative Commons, and supportive sharing.

We don’t run advertising on our site because we find it repugnant, compromising and unwanted!

This project is entirely not-for-profit—an open library funded by a small crew of dedicated media activists throughout the world. This freely accessible library is our labour of love project for positive social and political change. Even though it is a hard job, we don’t get paid.

We don’t receive any outside funds of any type, and we don’t receive nor would we accept money from any corporate or government entities. Our vested interest lays solely with humanity and the natural world, not this culture, not this system.

This library is independent and autonomous. It is a labour of love run by a small crew of dedicated activists throughout the world. We have no affiliations and are not part of any organisation or group, which means no vested interest, which means we can publish what is needed without interference, censorship or vetoing.

We don’t work with any commercial organisations, religious groups, political parties, etc—we’re entirely independent and self-determined in order to remain effective about what we set out to achieve, which is to cultivate and nurture an effective culture of resistance to the pertinent social and political issues outlined in this library. It is why filmmakers make films, it’s why we do what we do to support getting them seen and acted on. Where it goes from here is up to you…"

I’m wary of “countercultural” sites run by a “small crew” not identified soliciting emails with no privacy policy in place. If it isn’t a honeypot it’s indistinguishable from one. Assuming it isn’t, the email list itself is ambiguous regarding GDPR compliance. It seems counter-intuitive to me that the intended audience would sign up for such an email list under such a cloud of uncertainty. With anonymity comes avoidance of accountability. Why would I visit such a site if I have nothing to gain and so much to lose from interacting with a site whose operators have inscrutable and seemingly paradoxical intentions?

I’ll ask more directly since I was vague before. Are you associated with thoughtmaybe.com? I only ask because you seem to be advocating for using it under the guise of a user or fan of the site, and not as operator or staff of the site; to not identify yourself as staff when commenting on the site could be interpreted as commenting in bad faith. If not then please disregard this paragraph.

The threat model you sound concerned about could easily be mitigated in several ways. Use a proxy/VPN/TOR to visit the site, don't sign up for the email list. Maybe use a spare email address? I'd assume the email list is just alerts for new documentaries. News letters and email sign ups are extremely common?

Why does this site look like a honey pot?

Paradoxical intentions? Can you clarify what by visiting a website, you'd have "so much to lose"? That seems excessively paranoid.

I'm not involved with thoughtmaybe.com - if there were any other website hosting Adam Curtis films, please feel free to share.

My threat model is “if the site gets hacked and the user list gets leaked, who benefits and who is harmed? Certainly not the anonymous operators of the site. I only want for the users what the operators want for themselves.”

I do agree with your remediations by the way. It’s not any one thing that makes me suspicious. It’s the subject matter itself. TLAs will MITM and send you a 0day just to find a specific user if they are known to use a site so it’s more of a concern of visiting single purpose sites or niche sites in general as they don’t benefit nearly so much from your signal remaining hidden in the noise of otherwise innocuous traffic to a benign url such as archive.org or youtube.com.

Now that I mention it, it seems that the only indexer blocked by thoughtmaybe.com’s robots.txt is the one for archive.org. Why that may be is curious but I don’t know how common blocking that specific crawler is so I won’t speculate as to the reasons why.

This Adam Curtis link now has deleted youtube videos but is still useful for searching episodes by title http://adamcurtisfilms.blogspot.com I've watched everything he's done and flew to NY from the west coast to see Massive Attack vs Adam Curtis which is probably the best live event I've ever been to. https://youtu.be/yv_S8GdylEA

For those wishing to watch this, it's all on youtube here

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJ3RzGoQC4s

While dated by now, it's rather disturbing how clear the lineage is from where the show ends to the current "social media" era. The breadth and efficacy of public manipulation is arguably greater than ever, and it's a clear threat to democracy IMHO.

i think it's less a threat to democracy and more that it's already ended democracy (what little was implemented in the first place) in the u.s. (i'm just repeating your use of the word democracy, as there's an implicit assumption there that democracy is a cherished thing being destroyed.)

adam curtis' other documentaries build upon similar ideas, converging to the (relatively) recent hypernormalization.

It is a constant and universal truth that irrationality of the masses exist. And then there are those who think that they can manipulate through propaganda

Given the way they are pushing the systems they control to the breaking point for the sake of ever-more-marginal gains in their already staggering wealth and power, it's harder and harder to view elites as any more rational than the masses.

I almost regret watching this documentary 2 years ago because it caused me to question various fundamental assumptions about _who_ I am and as a result triggered an identity crisis that I'm still in the grips of.

Definitely a top doc. It's a good starter, but I'd recommend any viewers to continue exploring adjacent topics further with the primary reference materials mentioned in the doc.

This documentary series forever changed my view of the world and how it works. Everyone should see it (and to be thorough, read it's criticisms).

I also recommend his follow-up series "The Power of Nightmares" for the same reason — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTg4qnyUGxg

I was going to post something similar. AC is where I first learned of Bernays.

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