by Jon Rappoport
September 16, 2021
(To join our email list, click here.)
In case you missed it, WRITING has fallen behind video.
“Ooo! Pictures! Let me watch! Let me SEE what he’s saying. I won’t remember any details because, how could I? The images flow by. But that’s all right. I just want to form an impression. Then I can tell other people, “YOU MUST WATCH THIS.”
In the new cultural tundra, writers aren’t writers anymore. They’re content providers. Sounds like charity work, or a shipping operation.
“Hello, Mike? Your content just arrived on the dock. We’ll have it at your office tomorrow, after it clears customs. It’ll arrive in a red box with Christmas tree stickers on the lid.”
And writing isn’t writing. It’s TEXT.
Which is a way of saying the words themselves don’t matter. What’s important is the INFORMATION. And since that’s the case, all articles should be boiled down to brief summaries with links. People just want the DATA.
After all, what do biological machines need? Precise packets of digits.
The latest trend is small-print messages below headlines that let us know how long it’s going to take to move through an article: “This is a six minute read.”
We must know that up front.
WAR AND PEACE: This is a 137-hour read.
Notice that “read” is now a noun. You’re not readING. You’re ingesting and incorporating the noun.
Words and writing will soon be seen as raw material for neural loading. Again, the shipping business. “Mike, give us another 30 seconds. We’ll have the data distributed in your cerebral cortex. We’re making room in your circuits, which for some reason are overloaded this morning.”
That issue is called ATTENTION SPAN. Content providers in the workforce must cater to “timing-out” in recipients’ brains.
Editor to content provider: “Bill, your piece is a 12-minute read. That won’t fly. Cut it to 4. Our profiling surveys show 85% of customers encounter a strain after 5.2. And Bill, don’t submit any more RANTS. That 21-minute read you turned in last week is unacceptable.”
Once upon a time, “rant” meant an unhinged outpouring. Now it’s any piece delivered with, what should I call it, EMOTION. That’s verboten. You see, the TECHNICAL CLASS of humans is bred to abhor feeling. It disrupts their arrogant calm. It’s a distraction from CONTENT.
I’m working on a Cliff Notes version of the very article you’re reading. It’s cliff-er than Cliff. I’m shooting for a 1.3-minute read.
Because you’re a machine with very narrow parameters of need, right?
I have to warn you, though. If you’ve gotten this far in the article, you might be human and you might be suffering from Eyes on Page Disease. It’s a psychological hangover from a bygone era. To cure it, watch thousands and thousands of videos, until they repopulate your mind to an advanced degree.
And one day, you’ll never know what you’re missing.
At parties, you’ll jam your cell phone in friends’ faces and say, “YOU HAVE TO WATCH THIS. IT’S ONLY A MINUTE AND A HALF. IT’S INCREDIBLE.”
(To read about Jon’s mega-collection, Exit From The Matrix, click here.)
Jon Rappoport
The author of three explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED, EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, and POWER OUTSIDE THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. He maintains a consulting practice for private clients, the purpose of which is the expansion of personal creative power. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free NoMoreFakeNews emails here or his free OutsideTheRealityMachine emails here.
PSA: THE MASH REPORT
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=PT0ay9u1gg4
TLDR 😉
Just kidding. I love the article and it is so so relevant as we live in times of unprecedented propaganda, mainly by talking heads on videos – scripted, manipulative and as far as you can get from real dialogue, inquiry or exploration.
So, where’s the video for this article?
Hahaha!😂👏
Yes and when I wake in the middle of my sleep from another case of heart burn from intake violations, then taking a shot of The Mother, I reach for more data. Just enough to ease myself back to slumber as I near a day of repeat and reruns of the walking dead. Life couldn’t be better.
When my mom passed a few months ago, we were so comforted by watching the walking dead, same day, on a giant screen. At first I couldn’t believe the tv was fired up in automatic choke and warming up for the new episode on this sad day. We all gathered around it, and have been swell since. I shove snippets of the show at parties to everyone. It is a lot of work but it’s a service. I feel I have have a service mentality. So it just comes natural for me. Your need, my satisfaction.
This is why it is so difficult to have a real discussion
about anything remotely controversial, because it becomes
one jump to conclusion after another with no reasoned
argument; only facts (true or false) and statements.
A real argument (I don’t mean a row) involves
possibilities and hypotheses and logic.
Also most people seem unable to consider that the mass media tells lies, usually mixed
with true statements to cover the lies.
Jon,
Just wondered if you had any insight into Phil Valentine’s illness and death.
Yay! I’m human! I really dislike information coming from videos. It’s a pervasive problem. As a crafter, even instructions are served up in video. Aggravating! Preferring reading, real books over texts, and writing with pen and paper over typing often makes me feel old fashioned. Thanks for your intuitive and informative articles.
Thanks Jon. That article hit the mark for me! The WORDS matter. The rhythm of phrases matters. The mouth feel of the words when spoken gives meaning and connects the reader physically to the writing. Your reference to “Reads” was shocking, because in response to my latest story so many people referred to it as a “Read”. But at least they read it.
Affirmed wholehearedly. (Did you know that ‘blog’ is contraction of the compound noun ‘web log?’! ) Low precision brutality: tire iron or two by four; high precision brutality: curated content. Or how about “healthcare delivery system?” Or, labels on architectural drawings indicating “outside awareness;” I was told that means a window goes there. Alas, language, (I have yet to read War and Peace, however I have read Anna Karenina, Ulysses, and a book about living by Ernest Becker. All illuminating pleasures. Rilke, E.B. White, Melville, Dickens…all recommended.) Many thanks for your linguistic agility, wit, eloquence, and enduring insights.
“Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?”
T.S. Eliot
TEMPUS FUGIT
NOW & THEN
I think, I might, get what you’re saying.
Reading & Writing are indeed action verbs.
However, Sci-fi me wonders it, in this possible way. It’s just a hypothesis.
Time “seems” to be flying at swift pace, these days forlorn, with Covid, etc.
Just for a picture quick, in the Matrix movies, Neo, et al. “may” receive info directly & right quick, via a neural metal shunt. Neo & Trinity use the info quickly for defensive purposes (karate & motorcyclin’ escape).
So… I’m not sure.
Maybe, just maybe. When back against a wall or in a pinch. This method might Work.
It’s just a Workin’ hypothesis.
What do you think?
The whole Matrix story is a metaphor, about disconnecting from the artificial/ego/limited awareness and accessing/operating from the Greater awareness outside of the system of belief that is The Matrix.
Downloading knowledge is really about intuition, revelation, and inspiration from beyond, from that Something Greater than our limited experience/identity/awareness.
It’s less about knowing how to fly a helicopter without experience and more about knowing what we need to know when we need to know it. And this is regarding the process of waking up, expanding awareness sourced from Truth/Love, in service to that, “miracles” are possible.
“The Matrix” is in the mind, a system of belief within a very small part of the consciousness of the Infinite that momentarily turned away from Truth and dreamed up something different.
It forgot Truth, and dreamed a nightmare(compared to Reality, that’s what this world/Matrix is), but It cannot completely separate, The Truth is within, The Real, it has been suppressed and repressed, eventually The Spirit/Real Self will not tolerate this anymore and will put out a plea to The Divine for help/rescue.
When It realizes It’s in over It’s head, and the ego has sinister plans, that the ego is completely insane. The opposite of The Real.
Christ. It’s the ego that went after him(through “them”), but, “he” wasn’t/isn’t what the ego “thinks” he/it was.
The Greater part of The Son is Spirit, The Real, True, NOT fallen into illusion, but being aware of the disruption of communication . The Son is One with THE ONE. Salvation is reawakening to Reality.
This “world” is not worthy of The Son of GOD, it was just a momentary testing of a fictional idea.
Holy= Whole=Complete. Re- Member= reassemble completely what was and is.
Thank you for this written article! I’ve really enjoyed READING what you think! I’m guessing you’re probably in my age group since you value the beauty of the written word. I refuse to watch people whine about their opinions on their Vlogs. Sadly, that is what our “news” has become on mainstream. Whatever!
Anyway, words are beautiful! They move the soul when placed with intent. This allows the reader to discover what’s around the next corner and form a unique personal opinion about the content. Seems to me that the contemporary world we are living in has completely forgotten that they too can think critically. So sad. Keep it coming! ❤️
You recommended walkout in one article.
That is not a good solution. Just stay in corporation as long as possible and sabotage it from inside. And ask for a rise. That is what we did in Easter Europe with communism. sabotaged everything.
Now, the bad thing is that 90% are zombies. but some start to wake-p
Interesting. What kinds of things did people do? How did they decide that sabotage was the way to dismantle the machine? What were some of the effects?
It seems that solutions for what is happening today are difficult to find. We need solutions to stop the tyranny.
I agree with you about “flow,” especially in the following context of “flows-on-by.” That is, in a bye-bye way.
However, & a small point for sure, is, “could” our present neural-processing be amping up, in some form or fashion?
Such that, certain MEANINGFUL & IMPORTANT INFORMATION, flowing on by, is indeed retained within. And can be utilized, when necessary.
I know I know, it sounds all too New Agey. But I’m trying my best.
I do feel that there is a possibility, as crazy as it sounds, that, that phenomenon, is indeed taking place. Here & now.
Again, just a hypothesis.
A picture tells a thousand stories. Even if moving.
Just wondering?
Glad I came here to read your “read”. There are so many ways to read and time is not counted when you find a good book, so who knows how long is spent, and who cares?
Maybe there are some who plan their time in such a way, who set aside the allocated minutes for priority “reads”. Maybe they also set aside rationed “quality time” for their children, or their partners?
Ramblers and those coasting along being happy at random, or enjoying whatever must be done, seem to have wisdom on their side.
Love this Jon…so very true. Thank you for this piece and for all your work. From…a “human” who still likes to read. God bless and take care…
(three minute read)
Can’t sleep, it has all crept in at the corners and now I running program at night. Commercials are playing out in the interrupts of my dreams. I can here the clear voice of the controllers and I awaken suddenly.
So here I am at 4 am reading your three-minute rant…and so I’ll rant…
I’m ahead of you in all this, I notice the attention warnings a while back and wondered at how did we get here now. Everything is bleeding. And I’m wasting time reading.
This is clearly a version of Dick’s “The Man in the High Castle”, we are running parallel universes and they are all getting to point of a multi-merge, which personally I feel is going to be an astounding and earth shattering clusterfuck of big-bang proportions. And I use the term big bang waggishly, because I don’t believe a goddam word I’m saying.
Have you noticed how audible it got? And for the life of me I can’t seemed to get the message across to those involved in this “pastime” that audible does not qualify as a book read.
“How many books have read this week?”
“Oh, fuck I listened to thousands, I have advanced to listening to them at triple speed. It’s-a little-garbled-if-I-don’t-pay-complete-attention-much-ado-to-the-Chipmunks-Christmas-albums-of-long-ago. You remember, don’t ‘you’? InfactI’m-always in a Christmassymood when I do use my audible app. LaLa fucking la.”
The secret to good ranting, is, you have to breathe…
Breath in.
Listening and reading are two separate forms of consciousness, one being more critical and the other more passive and attentive “Like mommy voice reading a bedtime story, to me when I was a little one.”
*Gag, cough, spit, never fuckin happened, the Irish never read to their kids, they send them to bed with a good spanking*
The former allows for a re-read and a more qualified logic of the information. An actual looking at the written word and asking if the author really believes this specific goddam point, or is he bullshitting me because he needed to add words to this piece of crap book of his…and why am I wasting any more time with it? How much did I pay for it and who the hell recommended it?
And the narrators are all so concerned — in this little acting gig of theirs — to keep your attention with that audible voice, ya know the one that follows everybody in the house, wherever they go — really it is the instrument, and so they can’t help finding a right timber, the exactitude of the tonality for that specific character narrated, for what is orating for if not to practice the vocal craft of some loser actor? who will do anything to open their mouth to an audience.
I bored with this reality, and I am going to retreat to my studio and nail the door shut from the inside and have my meals slipped in under the door.
First, I think I’ll stick pins in my eyes until the pain stops and the echo recedes and now, I have the key to the lock and I will paint in there until the world burns down all around me in this technocracy of the mad or, the paintings become the reality I have always knew existed. And I’ll walk into one an live there…
We are clearly past crazy and into uncharted human psychic territory and in a way, that’s a good thing for individuals. At least for painters.
How much longer are you going to speak of Covid. I checked and it has dropped as a search term used in Google query from 100% of the questions asked in May of 2021 to just over 52% now.
I think if we stop talking about it will go away, and we can talk more interesting things like, ranting.
You’re right. It seems that “words themselves don’t matter.” The plethora of videos is spreading the use of meaningless words faster than the corona virus.
No one in most videos can get through three sentences without the gratuitous use of sounds that resemble words. It seems there is a requirement to start every other sentence with “so..” and end it with “,right?”. Neither of which contributes to meaning.
“Sharing” has become a banal counterfeit word used to smuggle warm fuzzy feelings where none have been earned.
Then there is the increasing use of some form of “going forward”. I’ve yet to see an instance of this that could not be removed without changing the meaning of the sentence. Someone moron actually wrote this: “Going forward, here’s what’s going to happen.”
A lot of people don’t think about what they say. Which means they don’t think. They just babble.
I hate videos and very rarely watch them. Too much extraneous noise. So please keep writing and I’ll keep reading your thoughts.
‘just the facts ma’am’
That’s the world now, I’m afraid. Reading by most younger people, 35 and under, is looked at as somewhat unnecessary. Skimming is the new “reading.”
The days of Dorothy Parker and Mailer and Henry Miller and Carson McCullers and you name them, all the greats and semi-greats are gone. The READERS still read but what’ll happen in a generation or two? The internet and social media, including youtube, have driven a stake into true engagement with literature. OTOH, during the plandemic the internet has kept many of us going and truly informed us. Double edged sword.
Another problem is these technologies are addictive. Reading can become obsessive but computers and the internet are actually biologically addicting. This all ties in with the previous piece about education and adhd. Children need to be taught that books give something that short info blasts online can never give and videos can’t even approach. That they go into your soul and FORM your soul.
Education. The key.
I was asked by my daughter to write out various responses to questions about my personal history for succeeding generations. I told her that the way it’s going, no one in the relatively near future will be able to write or read anymore, other than using some sort of text letter/number combo with various emoji. I told her I’d record an audio answer to her questions – maybe people will still have the capacity to listen in the future.
The latest trend is small-print messages below headlines that let us know how long it’s going to take to move through an article: “This is a six minute read.”
____________________________________________
Indeed. I admit that I use Kindle, although I consider the concept of “virtual” books that one purchases but doesn’t really own to be malignant.
I despise the time-related footers at the bottom of the page informing readers how much “time” is allotted, or remains, in the book. Fortunately, they can be removed by the user.
But I always wonder who the hell wants, or uses, this “time-check” nonsense. Perhaps the designers think it’s somehow a analogue to eyeballing a physical book to see how much is left.
It seems like something created for old-fashioned industrial “efficiency experts”, disciples of the Frederick Taylor School of “Scientific Management”. They saw all human activity as a series of robotic elements to be monitored with a stopwatch.
I don’t know any literate humans who obsess over how many minutes it might take to finish a chapter or book.
But then, I also despise the now-settled format of TV/video “news” programming presenting a constant distracting “creeper” of, er, “text” at the bottom of the screen.
It really is “Orwellian”. In fact the reduction of words, languages, vocabulary in general into “text”, tweets, chats, & “shortform” is 1984 on steroids
The tactile experience of reading a book held in your hands, turning its pages, smelling its paper and ink, increases your knowledge well beyond any video. The eye needs reinforcing.
I prefer reading to watching a video of the same speech any day. I read reasonably fast so it is much more time-efficient.
“I’m working on a Cliff Notes version of the very article you’re reading. It’s cliff-er than Cliff. I’m shooting for a 1.3-minute read. Because you’re a machine with very narrow parameters of need, right?”
People today like things that are ‘Quick and Easy’.
It’s a generational thing. It started up after The Greatest Generation up to the 1940s had kids.
The Greatest Generation did things that were not quick and definitely not easy. They lived through the Great Depression. They fought and lived through World War 2. They struggled with low wages and hard work to gather some funds together and take on mortgages to buy homes in the new things called suburbs.
And like any good parents, they wanted better things for their kids. And one of the things they began to give them was this idea of ‘Quick and Easy’.
Now, there’s nothing wrong with Quick and Easy in itself. Who wants things to be more hard than they have to be?
But in gifting Quick and Easy to the generations that followed, the Greatest Generation made their offspring begin to seek Quick and Easy over almost anything IN everything. This isn’t to say that the offspring generations had a cakewalk. They didn’t. The loss of JFK. Vietnam. The offshoring of good American jobs and the wholesale sell off of The American Dream. Nine Effing Eleven. Today, the Pandemic of Utter Stupidity. But those are big things.
Think about the thousands of television commercials you’ve seen over the years. How many of these instances of visual blight has a voiceover that eagerly says… “It’s Quick and Easy!”
At the individual person level, people began to get soft. They began to seek the easy ways out. The easy path. No big commitments. In short, the big Quick and Easy took hold of much of the American people.
And today we see the results of the seeds that were sown after The Greatest Generation handed the reins over to those who came after. We are living with the results of where Quick and Easy takes you.
And, things are a mess. Lesson learned? Quick and Easy isn’t going to get us out of this morass we’re in. It’s going to be hard, long, and difficult.
Somehow and in some way, we’ve got to find some of The Greatest Generation inside of each of us.
Otherwise, we’re going to take the Quick and Easy way right into oblivion. Rest assured, THAT slide will indeed be Quick and Easy. And one thing it isn’t is fun.
I use ‘text to voice’ reader to HEAR these articles you write… I hear it better than I read/pay attention/understand… This has been a God send to me, when it has always been WORK for me to read.
The trouble with “content creators” of the e-begging type you see on platforms various is they never get to the point. What could be said in a few minutes has to be stretched as the “creator” shows you his or her so-called knowledge about a subject. If the “creator” heads off in a direction of no relevance to the topic promised it’s “move on” time. No need to be “tight” and correct because they know the droolers and dribblers will sit through anything, especially the ads, with mouths agape.
“A three minute read”? It’s as bad as “Your weekly shop”.
I don’t know how many times I get drawn in by a headline, I click on it, and it leads to a video. I close it right away. I don’t want a video, I want written words, preferably well written. I like to ponder, and re-read sections if necessary. It’s a shame it’s a lost ability to younger generations.
Hey, Jon.
Well, I read, and though I don’t always click on your site to say so, I read you nearly every day~
But, yes, these kids can hardly watch video. I know only a few who read, and by read, I mean anything more than comics, or, “graphic novels.”
Oy.
Everything is ‘incredible’ these days… Just incredible!
I encouraged my kids to read, and made sure they both know how to write. Good teachers in charter schools made that happen. Success in both endeavors.
Both indulge in video games but just for fun, not excessively. Both committed to their paths through practical education to a tangible career goal.
I will never abandon the written word. I am learning to be a copywriter. Given this, I do know that not all videos are bad. The best need a script written, a plan followed, to facilitate communication.
Video’s just another channel, neither good nor bad, except for how it’s used for either one.