*Anti-woke counterrevolutionary podcast focused on the invasive ideological species and the widespread confluence of money, boutique ”news” propaganda, psychology, and hyper-connective tech: The Social Media Disease. Videos on Spotify and ToddzillaX @ YouTube.
Episodes
Thursday Oct 01, 2020
Thursday Oct 01, 2020
"When we start deceiving ourselves into thinking not that we want something or need something... but that it is a moral imperative that we have it... we join the fashionable madmen, and then...the thin whine of hysteria is heard in the land, and then is when we are in bad trouble. And I suspect we are already there." -Joan Didion (1965 ) --As a follow-up to the last episode, this trimmed and updated re-post connects Didion's fanatic test to the moral certitude manufactured by propaganda and its architects using social media as a delivery super weapon. Also, public vs. private opinion, the Cradle of Reason, how propagandees can respond to competing propagandists, and keeping the you in you. Like it? Share it!
Watch The Social Dilemma!
Music: Yellow Candy & Paul Vernon
More: https://www.escapingthecave.com/
Monday Sep 28, 2020
Monday Sep 28, 2020
Todd & Brian discuss whether the "divine" human species is in fact both bipolar and invasive, the difficulties that come from gazing into the Abyss, and moral imperatives vs. self-righteousness: how narcissistic morality becomes naked authoritarianism. Also, where solutions to the informational anarchy crisis must begin, when the ends smother the means, how a species can summon both altruism and barbarity, and let's kill Rousseau's Noble Savage once and for all. Yes! More easy social dilemma listening to help you escape the world's troubles! Like it? Share it!
Music: Paul Vernon and Yellow Candy
More: https://www.escapingthecave.com/
Monday Sep 21, 2020
Monday Sep 21, 2020
Continuing the Social Dilemma theme, Todd and Brian delve further into the social, psychological, and personal effects of more than a decade of social media, including meeting members of their direct families for the first time directly via Facebook. Also, Todd's argument against monetization, digital reunions and the bizarre new expectation that, somehow, everyone from every epoch of our lives now deserves a seat at our virtual table. We also discuss the failed utopian vision of "informational democracy" and the essential nature of gatekeeper, learning how to both use these platforms as tools and sabotage the Zuckorithm, as well as possible macro and micro solutions. Is this a triage situation? The show closes with a surprise appearance by Edward R. Murrow and why informational anarchy and intellectual autonomy, not climate change, is the crisis of our time.
Murrow's Text: https://www.rtdna.org/content/edward_r_murrow_s_1958_wires_lights_in_a_box_speech
More Zilla: https://www.escapingthecave.com/
Music: Paul Vernon
Monday Sep 14, 2020
Monday Sep 14, 2020
Todd and Brian discuss The Social Dilemma, the new Netflix documentary probing the exploitative, corrosive, and polarizing effects of social media, both psychologically and socially. Also, the addictive nature of the medium, how it manipulates evolutionary psychology, the potentially dangerous side effects of performance withdrawal and how, once you escape, you become an organic organism in a digital ecosystem. We also tinker with solutions and discuss the horrific dystopia awaiting us if we fail to find them. Hint 1: It's the people. Hint 2: The tube: it's social media and Google!
Like it? Tell a friend! Even on Facebook! Book your seat on Toddzilla's 2021 Motivational Speaking Tour now! My world famous children's parties are 50% off for a limited time!
More: https://www.escapingthecave.com/
Wednesday Aug 19, 2020
Wednesday Aug 19, 2020
Detailing the gloriously organic results coming from a month of social media, news, and podcasting detox. Also, boutique "news" & democratized opinion's relationship to mob rule: Ibsen's Enemy of the People, the humanovirus and its ubiquitous invasive species traits, the Dennis Doctrine, and podcasting without Sausage Party Hope and with a severed validation stream leaves one pesky unanswered question: "why the f**ck am I doing this?"
More Drew Michael: https://www.youtube.com/user/drewmichaelcomedy/videos
More Me: www.escapingthecave.com
Friday Jun 19, 2020
Friday Jun 19, 2020
On the Social Media Disease: how exhibitionist combat and agitprop disguised as "debate" is having an effect on verbal comprehension and the ability to engage in meaningful organic conversations. Also, demagogues exploit and thrive on chaos, boycotting the for-profit Media Division Complex in favor of each other, and the switch: it's internal. It's still the people. Like it? Share it!
More: www.escapingthecave.com and www.facebook.com/escapingthecave
Thursday Jun 18, 2020
Thursday Jun 18, 2020
You say you want a real Great Racial Awakening™ dialogue? Great! Quit proselytizing long enough to take a stiff drink and have a listen. Remember: when you clicked you asked.
Also: supporting lockdown protests and the 2A while mocking militia stalkers at the capitol, burning heretics and blasphemers at the free speech stake, influencers exploiting and monetizing catastrophe and chaos, electoral Ground Hog Day, and why Biden's VP choice is maybe more important than anything. Like it? Share it!
More: www.escapingthecave.com and www.facebook.com/escapingthecave.com
Tuesday Jun 16, 2020
Tuesday Jun 16, 2020
When the entire media's just abandoned their "objective" pretenses, where do you go? Also, digital detox and cutting the incoming noise, homogenous consistency of thought throughout a congregation qualifies as "religion", retained ideological attorneys, the difference between organic human beings and their virtual online projections, and the Marrow of Humanity: who we are when no one's looking. Don't worry. I'll get to the protests, riots, and thought-purges soon enough. Prepare yourselves accordingly!
Like it? Share it.
More: www.escapingthecave.com and www.facebook.com/EscapingTheCave
Saturday May 09, 2020
Saturday May 09, 2020
Adventures in leaving the house after 5-weeks, a quick review of the crappy Vaporesso Target PM-80, populism and the supposed "wisdom" of the bewildered herd, belief and truth are mutually exclusive, atheists: leave the non-phallus swinging faithful alone, the crucial crusading distinction between religious & ideological zealots, and why the simple human need for hope probably makes us powerless against tasty propaganda.
--More: www.escapingthecave.com and www.toddzillax.com
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Wednesday Apr 29, 2020
Wednesday Apr 29, 2020
Todd's merciful Bat Plague boycott continues with more spiritually uplifting content like: "F**k Subaru. I hate them and you should, too." Also, 2020's Jill Stein; Steinbeck, Salinas, and digital detox; social media "should" be regulated like radio; data overload is killing democracy; the Wisdom of the People™ doesn't exist therefore populism is pandering to a screeching herd; and rejoice! The Devil's all up in ya! Can you feel him?
--More: www.escapingthecave.com and www.toddzillax.com
--Be sure you're subscribed to an genuine and authentic Escaping The Cave feed!
Saturday Mar 28, 2020
Saturday Mar 28, 2020
Can Detroit and rural Michigan bear what they say is coming? Social distancing as an apt metaphor and how it can be useful. A crisis instinctively prods a frightened herd into a closed-tribe psychology, which is nationalism. How data overload contributes to it and helps obliterate the utopian Brotherhood of Man mythology. Why many quietly want Trump to fail, whether they admit it or not.
--Make sure you're subscribed to an authentic Escaping The Cave feed!
--More: www.escapingtheccave.com
Tuesday Mar 24, 2020
Tuesday Mar 24, 2020
Sacrifice yourselves at Mammon's Altar, proles! As coronavirus cases spike, your president holds a FOX News rally, decides the public health experts are wrong, and that the social distancing guidelines are "too extreme." Re-election trumps public health. Criminal negligence, the Dennis Doctrine, and our vulnerable healthcare workers. Where's Fauci? We're history's lab rats.
--Be sure you're subscribed to an authentic Escaping The Cave feed!
--More: www.escapingthecave.com
Friday Mar 20, 2020
Friday Mar 20, 2020
A potentially catastrophic stress test as the healthcare system drowns inside a divided country who chose informational tribalism over preparation. Detachment is essential.
ALSO:
- Media exhaustion & anxiety
- Governmental malpractice
- Trillions in revenues sacrificed to a "hoax?" Really?
- Coronavirus & 9/11
- You can't be in a play and watch it at the same time
"ToddzillaX" on most social media. LIKE, SHARE & SUBSCRIBE!
Wednesday Mar 11, 2020
Wednesday Mar 11, 2020
The Sober Majority and why Biden's resurrection and surge should surprise no one. Bernie's "revolution" was always fueled by Clinton disgust and a foolish dependency on a Youthquake fantasy. Mike Pence is a Biden asset, Jill the Vulture is back, and embrace Biden: he's far from certain but all you've got; the only thing that "can" work. Also, a 2024 wokeflake warning.
--Don't settle for imitations! Be sure you're subscribed to an authentic Escaping The Cave feed!
--More: www.escapingthecave.com
Wednesday Mar 11, 2020
Wednesday Mar 11, 2020
COVID-19: the media sounds like the Weather Channel sensationalizing a hurricane. They'd better get it right or the Aftertruth Age fully arrives. "There can be no liberty for a community which lacks the means by which to detect lies." Why doesn't matter.
Also:
-Competing incompatible "realities"
-Personalized Informational Warfare
-Informational becoming literal anarchy.
"ToddzillaX" on most social media. LIKE, SHARE & SUBSCRIBE!
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCjdLR140l--HufeRSAnj91A
https://toddzillax.substack.com
Friday Mar 06, 2020
Friday Mar 06, 2020
The Michigan primary is here. Which will it be? The invasive ideology or the country? An extremist biopsy and how they're using our own poorly guarded institutions and exploiting hatred to hijack the political parties. "The fascists seize power to forestall the communists; the communists seize power to forestall the fascists": choosing between authoritarians and totalitarians means we all lose. Also, "Lizzie was sunk by sexism!" Was she? Was she really?
--Don't settle for imitations! Be sure you're subscribed to an authentic Escaping The Cave feed!
--More at www.escapingthecave.com
Monday Mar 02, 2020
Monday Mar 02, 2020
How will the for-profit boutique/reality show/agitation news media model affect how we respond to the virus? Have a drink. Make sure it's not bleach. Includes a quick introduction to Matt Taibbi's book Hate Inc. and material from Your Undivided Attention on the reality apathy and the abandonment of trust in public institutions and each other.
"ToddzillaX" on most social media. LIKE, SHARE & SUBSCRIBE!
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCjdLR140l--HufeRSAnj91A
Rachel Botsman's Book: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1541762703/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
Your Undivided Attention: https://www.humanetech.com/podcast
Saturday Feb 29, 2020
Saturday Feb 29, 2020
"God will not have his work made manifest by cowards." Genuine courage is required to stand apart against the deafening conformity of the cowardly mob. Ask Andrew Sullivan! People are inherently tyrannical. Shared secular delusions: our 21st century religions. God needs the devil; Sapiens need an enemy. Lippmann, the fragility of free speech, and democracy's Achilles Heel: an ignorant "public."
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCjdLR140l--HufeRSAnj91A
https://toddzillax.substack.com
https://www.twitch.tv/toddzillax
https://www.escapingthecave.com/
Music by Yellow Pills! https://open.spotify.com/artist/7rDvBzvGcNPV3BYZ1n5VdZ
Sunday Feb 23, 2020
Sunday Feb 23, 2020
Of course Putin's playing both sides and assisting Bernie in the Democratic primary. It's about agitation, discord, and eroding the public's already fractured belief it itself, not ideology. This is the perfect insurgent agitation storm: who in this country are more divisive than Bernie, AOC, and Trump? The Russians aren't to blame. We are. Also, why Informational Education programs aren't coming, the simple and cynical reason our for-profit media outlets and political "leadership" won't help us immunize ourselves from foreign propaganda, and Walter Lippmann on free speech and why Facebook must eventually take the fall for our unwillingness to tell truth from falsehood. Includes a quick refresher on 2016's multi-pronged disinformation/partitioning campaign as well as a recap on Jacques Ellul's agitation propaganda material regarding the unleashing of hatred. Introducing: The Rant Alert!
Listen to "Your Undivided Attention" here: https://humanetech.com/podcast/
Don't settle for imitations! Make sure you're subscribed to an authentic Escaping The Cave feed!
Friday Feb 21, 2020
Friday Feb 21, 2020
On independent thought, authenticity, social momentum, and permitting redemption. Also, You're not the Elephant Whisperer, let Dumbo feed! Detecting doctrinaires, the Warm Glow of the Herd's Fellowship, manipulative monkeys dancing for their lunch, and a mask, the core, and the id walk into a bar.
A format change is underway. Make sure you're subscribed to an Escaping The Cave feed!* More at www.escapingthecave.com.
Tuesday Feb 11, 2020
Tuesday Feb 11, 2020
Toddzilla's latest Message of Hope formally introduces the loyal listener to Mr. Lippmann: a Man of the People! Touched on are Lippmann's "The Phantom Public", his iconoclastic thoughts on technologically pre-historic data overload, emotional detachment, objective reality, the presumed wisdom of We the People™, and democracy's fate. Have a drink first. Also, institutions and trust are dead, less-not-more is the answer, a defense of the "elites", a need for collective humility, and generalists vs. specialists.
* Subscribe on any podcatcher that doesn't suck.
* Also check out www.escapingthecave.com
Saturday Feb 01, 2020
Saturday Feb 01, 2020
"Imitation is suicide." How independent thought gets smothered in infancy, the need to belong: why standing apart from the impaired herd is not only hard, it runs against our social and evolutionary grain. Also, collective and self-delusions protecting us from unpleasant discoveries that might destroy our notions of being special, divine, or even "good."
ALSO:
-Tending to personal and commercial attachments
-How political and marketing swine manipulate attachments via identity
-Meditation and Buddhist philosophy as tools to disconnect
-Blank Slatists: Beware
-Emerson's Self-Reliance: read it.
-Subscribe on any podcatcher that doesn't suck.
Tuesday Jan 28, 2020
Tuesday Jan 28, 2020
The next great war: intellectual autonomy. The bold certainty of the herd, the challenges of independent thought and why seeing someone who is genuinely their own Man is so rare, the media has supplanted the church, disengaging from the ideological Holy War in favor of political atheism, and Toddzilla's Paradox: the conflict between intellectual independence and the desperate human need to belong. Still available for children's parties! Now doing bat mitzvahs!
ALSO:
- A quick impeachment fart
- You want an authoritarian
- Political Vampires
- Algorithms, Lippmann, Bernays, and You
- Silver Spoons: A Hate Crime
- The filthy Centrus Americanus
- Friendship: Loyalty & Support vs. Honesty
- Nothing can be done about climate change
- Data Overload revisited
* Subscribe on any podcatcher that doesn't suck.
* Also check out www.escapingthecave.com
Monday Jan 13, 2020
Monday Jan 13, 2020
Happy 2020! Are we ready? After a 2-month hiatus spent illegally hunting rhinoceros and snipe in the wilds of the West Michigan wilderness, Todd welcomes the 20's with a quick episode discussing apocalyptic thinking, the coming electoral season, where to find balanced news coverage, and the rarely-used technique of actually listening to "opposition" media simply to understand where they're coming from. Eureka!
*Subscribe on any podcatcher that doesn't suck.
*Also check out www.christophermedia.net www.escapingthecave.com
Thursday Oct 24, 2019
Thursday Oct 24, 2019
Trump's not actually retarded, is he? Pray with me, won't you?
Also:
- Quitting smoking: it sucks
- Nicholas Carr and the "influencer"
- Goebbels ❤️'s Bernays
- My poor defenseless podcast is attacked by a zombie
- Happy Halloween?
- Fu*k Twitter
*Subscribe on any podcatcher that doesn't suck.
*Also check out www.christophermedia.net www.escapingthecave.com
Wednesday Oct 09, 2019
Wednesday Oct 09, 2019
Are you stuck trying to build a well-reasoned, impartial, and detached impeachment snowman from competing piles of steaming cable news shit? Yeah. Me too. The only lens that works: the wide-angle agitation propaganda lens. First, a virtual colon cleanse in the form of a micro-pod.
ALSO:
- Fcuk Twitter
- Twice
- Hard
*Subscribe on any podcatcher that doesn't absolutely suck.
*Also check out www.christophermedia.net www.escapingthecave.com
Friday Sep 27, 2019
Friday Sep 27, 2019
Institutions fail and democracy descends into mob rule when representative are paralyzed and terrorized by fear of their voters. Trump, Ukraine, and 2020's year-long electoral reality show disguised as an idealistic impeachment. Informational sectarianism and how it's easy to see "their" propaganda. Yours? Never! Their demagogue is your savior. There may be a way for a detaching informational unicorn treat that. MSNBC, CNN, and FOX are Pepsi, Coke, and Dr. Pepper; when everything is spin and propaganda, who's a political infidel supposed to believe?
Also:
- Alternate Informational Universes
- Half-assed media sophistication: not enough
- Why can't we watch the opposition's media without going nuts?
- Our dueling scandals aren't automatically mutually exclusive
- More on the the Current Events Man
- Media isn't free. You are the product being sold.
* Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, and and podcatcher that doesn't suck.
* Also check out www.christophermedia.net & www.escapingthecave.com
Thursday Sep 26, 2019
Thursday Sep 26, 2019
"The fiction is taken as truth because the fiction is badly needed." A quick introduction to Walter Lippmann and the commonality between him, Ellul, Bernays, Haidt, and Harari. People can't personally perceive the world beyond their own sliver of firsthand experience. Therefore, the Current Events Man is beholden, dependent upon, and therefore exploited by the propagandist and his digital distortions. If democracy is demands an "enlightened citizenry", it's likely doomed from the start. Paradoxically, there's a stab at some hope in here too. Weird.
ALSO:
- Te Nosce, bitches
- Competing Scandals; Competing Networks; Competing Narratives
- Smoking, Facebook, and associative dopamine addiction.
- The Matrix and the Internet
- The responsibility and danger of exposing "their" delusion
- All Cats Meow
- Why we believe the ridiculous
- Finding hope in human imperfection
- More on likability and art
- The Hobgoblin
- Where the hell is Jill Stein? #NeverForget
*Like it? Share it. You are the "marketing" team.
*Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, and and podcatcher that doesn't suck.
*Also check out www.christophermedia.net & www.escapingthecave.com
Tuesday Sep 24, 2019
Tuesday Sep 24, 2019
A rare ETC podcast: one topic. The stage that was once the playground of Lenny Bruce, Richard Pryor, George Carlin, Bill Hicks, and even Andrew Dice Clay has been stormed by a mob of Social Vengeance Warriors hell bent on using comedy as a delivery mechanism for textbook sociological and agitation propaganda, complete with its own version of the Ten Commandments (now in print!) and a handy scapegoat Satan. When does the "Thank You, Comrade!" showcase start?
ALSO:
- Controlling speech is controlling thought; Speechcrime is Thoughtcrime
- Unless Nickelback is your standard, nothing great has ever come from timid conformity.
- "Unanimity requires compliance" and defiant creative independence
*Like it? Share it. You are the "marketing" team.
*Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, and and podcatcher that doesn't suck.
*Also check out www.christophermedia.net & www.escapingthecave.com
Thursday Aug 29, 2019
Thursday Aug 29, 2019
Agitation and Integration: two often closely related but very different types of propagandas: one used to provoke internal conflict the other to shape members of a population into a mold. Agitation: The propaganda of insurgency and revolution. Includes how internal enemies are used as scapegoats to manufacture then exploit hatreds as means to an insurgent's end, Mao's view on "the enemy residing in every man" and fitting him into the "Socialist Mold", Hitler's internal agitation, spontaneous volunteer propagandists, and how facts and "truth" are irrelevant to the person burning with primal hatred.
ALSO:
- Agitation propaganda during the American Revolution
- Triggering revolution by provoking hate? It's easy!
- Exploiting hatred and the path to genocide
- Hatred: small investment, high return
- Agitation and Integration can be used simultaneously
- Utopia is totalitarian
- Intellectuals: More susceptible to integration propaganda than dolts
- Intellectuals and self-bigotry
- "Can I hate you?"
- Justification, rationalization and stampeding enraged elephants
- Agitation to Integration: extremely difficult
- Successful Agitation + Failed Integration = Mob Rule
- Winter Is Here
- Yep. It's a doozy.
Jacques Ellul's "Propaganda": https://www.amazon.com/Propaganda-Formation-Attitudes-Jacques-Ellul/dp/0394718747
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*More: www.escapingthecave.com