*An anti-woke podcast focusing on the invasive collectivist species and the widespread confluence of money, boutique ”news” propaganda, psychology, and hyper-connective tech: The Social Media Disease. Toddzilla X @ YouTube.
Episodes
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
Thursday Mar 05, 2020
Thursday Mar 05, 2020
Super Tuesday Politics Dump. How did Biden revive himself? It's simple, really. Fighting extremism with extremism is suicide. Also, fanatical ideological religions, the UK canary in the colony's coal mine, our own wokeflake tumor, the Youthquake fantasy, and your righteous revolution: who's actually buying?
--Don't settle for imitations! Be sure you're subscribed to an authentic Escaping The Cave feed!
--Also check out www.escapingthecave.com
--F*ck Twitter!
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
Thursday Feb 27, 2020
Thursday Feb 27, 2020
Social validation & conformity: the evolutionary default setting. Why choosing intellectual autonomy over the herd is nearly impossible. Also, standing apart in self-reliance, the drifter, and mending holes in the firewall.
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
Wednesday Feb 26, 2020
Wednesday Feb 26, 2020
"Whoever owns social validation..." Performance addiction and how the masses have become junkies gorging on validation's dopamine stream. How various influencers, including podcasters, have monetized validation in the name of "brand building". Propaganda, validation, dopamine, and Ellul's "conditioned response." How social momentum works: Tony McAleer on Your Undivided Attention. Also, how ideological boldness is a surefire sign of a propagandee.
Listen to "Your Undivided Attention" here: https://humanetech.com/podcast/
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
Thursday Feb 06, 2020
Thursday Feb 06, 2020
The Iowa Boner, The Rips Heard 'Round the World, and impeachment fails. All by Wednesday. This is the alternative?
ALSO:
- Scripture, agitation, and The Herd Mind,
- Democracy implodes without the public's consensual trust,
- The means, ends, and Salem Witches,
- Romney, Amash, Manchin, and the Principled Pit of Hell,
- Howard Dean says Democrats will challenge November's election,
* Subscribe on any podcatcher that doesn't suck.
* Also check out www.escapingthecave.com and www.christophermedia.net
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
Thursday Jan 23, 2020
Thursday Jan 23, 2020
Hilary's flared up again, this time on Bernie's groin while Tulsi sues to find out if Valtrex is right for her. Also, It's time for the Democratic Socialist's Red Tea Party to get off the DNC's guest couch, pack their stuff, and find their own place. Go be a dragon, Daenerys.
Also, Toddzilla didn't kill himself.
* Subscribe on any podcatcher that doesn't suck
* Also check out www.escapingthecave.com
Tuesday Jan 21, 2020
Tuesday Jan 21, 2020
Wokeflake Twitter was apoplectic when the Richmond pro-gun rally turned out to be peaceful while the rest of world asked, "What? No Antifa? Do they not believe in their holy crusade against Fascismo de Naranja?" Not really. No one asked that. I discuss Thoreau's Civil Disobedience, how it affected Gandhi and MLK, and how that's an unexpected and possible path for gun advocates to reclaiming the narrative.
Also:
- The Invasive Species has a name
- The Democrat's fracture has gangrene
- Daenerys and the Utopian Teet
- Don't call a backdraft a boomerang
- F**K Twitter
* Subscribe on any podcatcher that doesn't suck.
* Also check out www.escapingthecave.com and www.christophermedia.net
Wednesday Jan 15, 2020
Wednesday Jan 15, 2020
Todd discusses collective human boredom in relation to the need for a sense of purpose, struggle, and the addictive rush of just feeling alive. How a dormant survival instinct comes alive during a crisis and how, absent that, we'll manufacture one just to have something to endure, battle, and survive. Also, some some predictions for the 20's. Book those children's parties now!
Also:
- San Agustin, The Special Tour, and an evening with Pablo Escobar's "chemist"
- A naked man kills a fer-de-lance
- Men, middle age, and the power plant
- Healthy anxiety vs. fear
- This election won't matter
- The tyrant is in the eye of the beholder
- The Titan Tragedy
- Podcasters: they're spammy and slimy.
- ^They call that foreshadowing
* Subscribe on any podcatcher that doesn't suck.
* Also check out www.escapingthecave.com and www.christophermedia.net
* F**k Twitter
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
Wednesday Oct 30, 2019
Wednesday Oct 30, 2019
This episode focusses mostly on disinformation and interference in the 2016 election and includes selected audio clips from the Your Undivided Attention podcast episode "From Russia With Likes" (#1) featuring disinformation expert Renée DiResta. Her expertise connects incredibly well to my Propaganda series. Topics include: the seemingly innocent methods used by the Russians exploiting personal identity to create online communities that can be manipulated via agitative identity politics later on, The Call to Action: The Manchurian Propagandist, more on the propaganda dopamine connection: validation, attacking trust in political institutions and the media, anger and apathy, exploiting freedom of speech, and the silliness of the "Global Public Square. Listen to Your Undivided Attention here: https://humanetech.com/podcast/
ALSO:
- Hillary: probably right about Tulsi Gabbard
- Hillary: definitely right about Jill Stein
- Hillary: absolutely a Trump asset
- Americans subsidize European entitlements
- Trump's "foreign policy" could lead to universal education
- Media and Information Education: stat!
- Be sure you're subscribed to "Escaping The Cave"
*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
Tuesday Oct 01, 2019
Tuesday Oct 01, 2019
An introduction to LeBon, his ideas on mobs, and The Psychology of Revolution--specifically: hatred. The forthcoming electoral reality show, 2020's prepared script, how the spinoffs will be cast, and what happens when our Matrix Avatar Superheroes stumble into the Desert of the Real.
ALSO:
- Unrealistic expectations inside the steaming pile of Twitter
- Was it your childhood dream to be Saul Goodman?
- More on pseudo-environments and internal narratives
- Fcuk Twitter. (Not a big part of the episode. Just felt like saying it.)
*Like it? Share it. You are the "marketing" team.
*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
Wednesday Sep 18, 2019
Wednesday Sep 18, 2019
Agitation propaganda doing its work, speechcrime taking root in the form of virtual media mobs enforcing cancel culture and its point-of-view authoritarianism, the Wokeflake Messiah will arrive soon, Newton's Third Law of Extremism, slave's spirituals and frightened children scrambling to the ideological church to be soothed by visions of a future Heaven on Earth.
ALSO:
- Toxic Compromise
- The Election Won't Matter
- At all.
- Wokeflakes Becoming Trump
- We The Authoritarian People
*The Propaganda and Social Media Disease theme resumes soon. It's a good time to catch up on what you may have missed.*
*Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, and your favorite podcatcher.
*Also check out www.christophermedia.net & www.escapingthecave.com
Tuesday Sep 10, 2019
Tuesday Sep 10, 2019
Social validation, dopamine, and social media's Walter White; the predictably ridiculous reaction to Dave Chappelle's latest Netflix special and how comedy has evolved from truth telling to Wokeflake proselytizing; more on how people are more willing and eager than deceived when it comes to swallowing fiction and disinformation; choking on data leading to confused gullibility; honestly in a crisis; Sausage Party Hope: children demanding their happy ending. Where's the spring of genuine hope?
ALSO:
- The Battle of the 21st Century
- The iceberg bobbing off our bow
- Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube: Walter White cutting his meth supply?
- Pinker's Utopian vs. Tragic Vision
- Evolution and self-awareness
- The apocalypse and its "chosen ones"
- Progress's Myth and becoming organic
*Subscribe to the YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCjdLR140l--HufeRSAnj91A
*Like the pod? Share it ! You are the "marketing" team.
*More: 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
*Like it? Share it.
*More: www.escapingthecave.com
Wednesday Aug 28, 2019
Wednesday Aug 28, 2019
This quick primer episode is the uncomfortable preface to Jacques Ellul's agitation propaganda. I explore how our Matrix Avatars themselves act as agitation propaganda and the way the informational cyber-swamp has actually managed to monetize it. Also Ellul on the dangerous effects of suppressing innate drives and human nature, the Ideology of Happiness, the universal violent human instinct, the devastating effects of dissolving human domestication to unleash and exploit primal hatred, and the self-defeating ignorance of poking the hibernating Crackerbear.
When it's done, to quote William Munny, "Have a drink, kid."
Jacques Ellul's "Propaganda": https://www.amazon.com/Propaganda-Formation-Attitudes-Jacques-Ellul/dp/0394718747
*Like the pod? SPREAD IT! You are the "marketing" team.
*Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, and your favorite podcatcher.
*Also check out www.christophermedia.net & www.escapingthecave.com
Thursday Aug 22, 2019
Thursday Aug 22, 2019
Propaganda's ambiguity and contradictions including: creating tensions while relieving others, the Outrage Media Complex and introduction to the companion propagandas: agitation and integration and how they overlap; self-justification and imposed guilt; attachment and ostracizing oneself to join the "enemy; politicization and privatization; "Why die for Danzig?' and how political orphans benefit extremists and authoritarians.
ALSO:
- Andrew Sullivan on the boomerang
- Post-Truth hatred and division: a bigger threat than climate change
- Don't blame the bartender for getting you drunk
- Twitter, Facebook, and Typhoid Mary
- Atomic Ping Pong
- Our personal broadcast stations
- The Russia investigation saved the Democrats
- Setting up your triage tent
- Forget the mob; save yourself
- Information or Propaganda? Can you tell? Does it even matter?
- The Matrix & Propaganda
Jacques Ellul's "Propaganda": https://www.amazon.com/Propaganda-Formation-Attitudes-Jacques-Ellul/dp/0394718747
*Like the pod? SPREAD IT! You are the "marketing" team.
*Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, and your favorite podcatcher.
*Also check out www.christophermedia.net & www.escapingthecave.com
Saturday Aug 17, 2019
Saturday Aug 17, 2019
On Ellul's "The Need For Propaganda." We've both developed a tolerance for and a psychological dependency on propaganda's certainty-stoking, justifying, and and self-worth generating narratives, social media is a propagandist's dream, desensitization and an increasing desire for the excitement felt from being immersed in the constant, and necessary stream of propaganda, how our addiction has allowed both traditional media and social media "influencers" to monetize the Outrage Industrial Complex, our role as retained ideological attorneys, and wishful thinking (and possibly disastrous effects) of suddenly eliminating 320-million people's propaganda narratives. Sometimes the cure is worse than the disease. Grab a sammich for this one. And maybe a stiff drink. Hey! I never said this would be easy!
ALSO:
- This is a triage situation; not a search for the "cure"
- Disinformation bit me again!
- Why we won't quit the informational drug
- A possible path to empathy
- The culture war is a War of Narratives
- Chosen perspective becomes "personal truth"
- Provoking shame as a "debate" tool: a boomerang
- Social media "influencers": personal brands hocking a product while posing as "journalists"
- The IDW: agitation propaganda
Jacques Ellul's "Propaganda": https://www.amazon.com/Propaganda-Formation-Attitudes-Jacques-Ellul/dp/0394718747
*Like the pod? SPREAD IT! You are the "marketing" team.
*Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, and your favorite podcatcher.
*Also check out www.christophermedia.net & www.escapingthecave.com