The opportunity for a company's big marketing push can be subliminally buried in viewers' favorite shows, while other programs are less discreet about shoving their products or ideas down the audience's throats.
Curious to hear from strangers online, Redditor Ponymations asked:
"What piece of media is just straight up propaganda?"
TV shows are easily convenient places for propaganda.
Dedicated TV Station
"in my country philippine we got tv station 'net 25' and 'smni sunshine'. pure government propaganda channels run by cults who have deep connections with Ferdinand marcos."
– betawings
Undercover Boss
"At this point, any worker should know if they see a middle aged white guy or woman with a bad wig, make up, and a camera crew behind them should be able to figure out they're on Undercover Boss."
– finmoore3
Hotel Promotion
"Ugh. Even if we were to believe that stuff wasn't staged and people were genuinely surprised to discover it was their boss, it's often a puff piece for the company where the undercover boss finds some problem and takes decisive action to fix things up, and they are shown to be kind and compassionate as they listen to their employees troubles in their private lives and then with the massive life changing gift at the end."
"One episode I watched it was so obviously transparent. It was a guy with a chain of hotels and a massive ego talking about how he pulled himself up on his boot straps and how amazing his hotels are. He talked to some cleaner who basically said life was hard because she gets paid peanuts. So then he announced at the end he was giving her fifty grand or something, no announcement about raising the wages for the rest of his staff though!"
– Corka
About Forensics
"Anything dealing with forensics. A job in forensics is boring. You know when they match a fiber sample and can exclude it from 5,000 other samples? Someone had to compare the fiber in question 5,000 times and say, 'Nope, next.' Not to mention, the paperwork required is painful."
"Source: Three years working in forensics. To this day my signature looks like a doctors from all the chain of custody documents I had to sign."
– beanomly
Getting Into The Crime Lab
"I went to university in the peak of CSI’s popularity and forensic science was one of the most oversubscribed degrees at our uni, thousands of students, they were standing in the lecture halls. Someone explained that given the number of crime labs in the country the likelihood of any one of those kids getting into the industry was super slim."
– Z8pG2yQkZbGMJ
News Featuring Private Stock Owners
"Any news targeting stock owners. Not the big companies, but the private people who have a few thousand dollars worth or less. The way it works is some scandal comes out and it's designed to make people panic and sell, swinging the price down by a lot, some times half the price. Then big companies buy up billions of dollars worth and this swings the price back up. Then they sell it again making a fortune."
– Janfredrikjohansen
Sob Story
"America’s Got Talent. It promotes the idea that talent goes hand in hand with struggle, so much so that genuinely awful acts make it through on the strength of their sob story."
"People have a hard enough time accepting the work that goes into being a creative without having to attach a tragic backstory to it."
– SaltySteveD87
The Struggle Is Real
"That's why I can't watch American Ninja Warrior anymore."
"Once it got to the girl who equated beating the Warped Wall as equivalent with beating her cancer, I was out."
– -RUNPMT-
Sure, films are entertaining, but they're also pushing for more than just box
Push For The Navy
"I love Top Gun. It's a huge guilty pleasure of mine and I can't wait to see Maverick in theaters. That being said, it is 1000% propaganda for the Navy, to the point where the Navy had a lot of say in the script and they set up recruitment booths outside the theatre."
– The_Big_Daddy
Cost Of Getting Equipment
"To be FAIR, almost all western films that feature US military hardware are at least mild propaganda. DOD openly invites Hollywood filmmakers to 'loan' their equipment, giving them access to tanks, helicopters, planes, trucks, bases to film on, etc, provided it gets a say in how it's used, which basically means they want access to scripts, ask to make changes whenever they want, and reserve the right to pull their resources at any time, for any reason. Their general policy is that you're not allowed to cast [the US Military] in a bad light, and usually ask for at least a positive portrayal."
"All that equipment is SUPER expensive to get ahold of outside of this offer, so filmmakers will generally take the deal. Iirc they also provide pilots for planes and soldiers for extras."
– GilligansIslndoPeril
Google's Stake
"The Internship (2013)… just Wedding Crashers but taken over by our Google overlords. Praise be."
– 215487
It Still Holds As Hilarious
"The movie, Reefer Madness."
"Terrible movie, but hilarious today."
– TheSmegger
It's Triggering
"American Sniper. I’m still mad that I got tricked into thinking it was a movie about PTSD."
– LONGSWORD_ENJOYER
Missed Opportunity
"They really took The Punisher and f'ked up the message."
– KittyKenollie
How aware are you of some of your favorite shows shoving propaganda in your face?
Does it bother you or are you indifferent?
Some programs don't bother me with their deliberate endeavors.
The annual ABC Disney Christmas specials are just ploys to get viewers to get out to a Disney park.
Even though the show features various performing artists and A-list celebrities sharing their joys of what the holidays mean to them, it's really one big magical commercial to get kids to convince their parents to whisk them away to the happiest place on earth.
Sounds good, but who's paying?
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I for one am tired of heading about how fitness releases endorphins, therefore I'll super happy and thrilled once I'm on a treadmill. I have never enjoyed one second on a treadmill. So Beach Body... you can shove it!
Avoidance
Friends Moving GIFGiphy"That fat is the thing to avoid in foods taking away the spotlight from sugar."
Not so rare...
"De Beers diamond campaign. Idk if propaganda, but was the best advertising campaign of all time."
- HuntStag
"Diamonds can actually burn with enough oxygen and heat. They also degrade back to graphite on their own (over a billion years, but still) or much more rapidly if the proper energy source is used (say a high energy laser). The real propaganda is that diamonds are very rare. They are not, just highly controlled by De Beers, who are known to buy any competing mines. Of all the precious stones, diamonds are the most common."
Fused...
"The McDonald's coffee lawsuit. The lawyers made it out to be frivolous but the lady just wanted her medical bills payed after the coffee was so hot (they overheated it so people would go for less free refills) that she burned her lap and had her labia fused to her thighs."
- calvanus
An Error
"Not wartime propaganda. A notational error. "As the story goes, in 1870, a German chemist named Erich von Wolf was researching the nutritional benefits of spinach. In his notes, he accidentally printed the decimal point in the vegetable's iron content in the wrong spot. Wolf accidentally increased the vegetable's iron level to 10 times the actual amount — 3.5 grams of iron suddenly became 35 grams, an extremely high amount of iron."
Just for Bugs...
bugs bunny wtf GIF by Looney TunesGiphy"Myth of carrots being good for eyesight coming from WW2 to hide RAF victories against the german flyers coming from the use of radar."
"It's a myth but it's still true. Carrots are high in lutein and beta carotene which are both good for eye health…"
I've always loved carrots just because I love them. My eyesight is good but I think that's thanks to God. And I have always found McDonald's coffee to be lukewarm at best. So no lawsuit for me.
Worry Now!
Climate Change Earth GIF by GIPHY Studios OriginalsGiphy"Small personal changes will prevent climate change. Until things change at the industrial and corporate level the planet is screwed."
The War
"Vietnam was probably one of the most successful ones."
"I remember reading this comment once, that really pointed out how weird the Vietnam War was handled post-war by the U.S. I don't remember it exactly, but it went something along the lines of:"
"It's strange that we invaded Vietnam and decades later we now make movies about how sad soldiers were while invading and killing the Vietnamese. It's the equivalent of a burglar making a film about how sad they are breaking into someone's home and beating them up."
Reuse...
"Recycling plastics. Something like only 9-10% of recycled plastic is actually… recycled. Plastics that we all recycle are sent to a recycling center where they are melded/smashed into big cubes. Plastic using companies, say Coca Cola, have to then buy these cubes to use for their bottling."
"It typically is more labor intensive and expensive to use these recycled cubes than to just use new plastic. Therefore, after some time, these cubes are discarded by recycling companies just like normal trash is. Big oil pushed recycling propaganda HARD to make people feel better about using plastics when they switched over from glass."
Anne & Jane
"Pretty much anything about Anne Boleyn and Jane Seymour. All historical evidence shows Anne as a sweet, kind, generous woman who genuinely loved Henry (they were together for around a decade), whilst all contemporary accounts show Jane to be nasty, conniving and abusive to her maids."
"Anne's reputation was initially smeared because Henry's advisors disliked how much money (that they wanted spent on them/their projects) she gave to charity. They started a mass smear campaign, and executed her based on trumped up charges that most historians agree were utterly false. The propaganda continued after her execution to ensure that Henry didn't look bad."
"Jane Seymour only has a positive reputation because she was paraded around as a sort of angelic type, in large part to justify Henry's relationship with her to the public (who contrary to popular fiction, were fond of Anne due to her charity and advocacy work) so as to prevent unrest. This reputation continued after her death and was intentionally emphasised to further enhance/legitimise Edward's claim over Mary and Elizabeth's."
The Best 'Actually, You're Speaking To The Boss' Experience | George Takei’s Oh Myyy
Being a Bruncher
Gay Want GIFGiphy"Breakfast is the most important meal of the day. Nice little marketing campaign by major breakfast food manufacturers to increase sales."
- llcucf80
The Real Succubus...
"I'm gonna pick out a much less recent one than a lot of people... hey, turns out Cleopatra was actually pretty average-looking! What she WAS was a really intelligent and sharp political operator who terrified the Romans. They ran a very good smear campaign, painting her as a succubus to disguise that."
Not so Rare
"Diamonds are forever. super successful commercial, made it the go-to engagement stone. Die ewige Juden - spreading anti jewish propaganda for maybe a decade has inflamed hatred/violence in he mid east to this day. It wasn't a picnic before, but it's gotten a lot worse."
"Diamonds also are not even rare, the whole industry is just manufactured scarcity."
Saturday Night Live Nbc GIF by HULUBeautiful...
"Keep America beautiful" still has people believing that it's the job of the end consumer to clean up "littered waste" instead of forcing companies to stop high waste practices for higher profits."
"Recycling of plastic was devised as a way to take the burden of the environment impact of the plastic industry and put in on the consumer. When in reality, we should just not be using single-use plastic for most things."
"bankrupt"
"Installing universal healthcare in America will "bankrupt" the country. Several countries have, successfully, had some form of a universal healthcare system for over a century and their economies aren't hurting b/c of it."
Lost Cause...
"Lost Cause mythology convinced 5 generations that the dirty traitors fighting to enslave children were the GOOD GUYS."
"The worst part of Lost Cause revisionism is that the Confederate leaders thoroughly documented why they seceded. It was so overwhelmingly about slavery that they couldn't shut up about how much it was about slavery."
- CHIM_Jim
Shot Up
President Biden Politics GIF by NowThisGiphy"That vaccines cause autism and other harm. Not everyone believes, but those that do will die (literally) on that hill."
We really will believe anything. Won't we? Or maybe that's what we're manipulated to believe? Who knows.
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