If, however, you secretly get paid to push a message in a specific way, you may be a propagandist.
Take TikTok.
This is the video-sharing social media site so popular with young people. It’s been controversial; I’ve discussed it before. But I’m no expert. Still, I was not surprised to learn that Democrats have been paying “social influencers” on that platform to serve up the Democratic Party line.
A TikToker named Madeline Pendleton made a video about how the Democrats offered “nearly $15,000” to talk about “how awesome the Democratic Party is.” She found the idea ridiculous, characterizing the offer as a way to distract attention from the party’s “genocide.” But she recognizes that it can be effective. Many of her “mutuals” on TikTok are indeed spouting the same lines that she was “pitched” by Democrats, and they did so within 48 hours of her receiving the offer.
She went on to say that she received two offers: one to make ongoing videos up to the election, and the other to scarify Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, which she is no fan of, but thinks is not that big a deal.
“You guys should be aware that that when you see videos like that, the Democrats are actively paying people to talk about how awesome the Democrats are.”
Awesome propagandists, anyway.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Illustration created with Midjourney and Firefly
—
See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
A sane being wished for peace and serenity, not to be the mortar in which the ingredients of destiny are finely ground.
David Brin, The Uplift War (1987).
October 11, 1890, marks the founding of the Daughters of the American Revolution.
On the same date in 1976, President Gerald R. Ford approved a congressional joint resolution, Public Law 94 – 479, to appoint, posthumously, George Washington to the grade of General of the Armies of the United States, as part of the bicentennial celebrations.
John J. Pershing (1860 – 1948) is the only other American to attain this high title, and the only one to achieve it while alive.
Well, a public official did indeed put parents on notice not to talk further about the problem they came to discuss. However, a student who carries a firearm to school and threatens to murder his or her peers does perhaps warrant some smidgen of dialogue.
“According to sources with knowledge of the situation,” WJLA informs, “the student is allegedly connected to the MS-13 gang and is in the U.S. illegally.”
Parent Abbie Platt divulged that her “daughter is terrified to go to school with him.”
Four parents addressed the school board regarding this student; each was cut off by the board’s chair who accused them of “breaking the school board policy” by “providing information that could identify the student.”
“Everything that was brought up in this public comment is already public knowledge,” explains Tiffany Polifko, a parent and former school board member, telling the board that to “stop your constituents from speaking” is a classic violation of the First Amendment.
A spokesperson for Loudon County Public Schools defended the board’s speech squelching: “Even some minor details could lead … to the identity of a student, that’s just not a situation we’re comfortable with, that we’re going to accept.”
So, your kid needs to accept the risk of brutal torture and death, and you need to be quiet about it — because even discussing the danger might reveal the identity of the murder-and-mayhem-threatening student.
Those are public school priorities.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Illustration created with Midjourney and Firefly
—
See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
There is only one way to read, which is to browse in libraries and bookshops, picking up books that attract you, reading only those, dropping them when they bore you, skipping the parts that drag — and never, never reading anything because you feel you ought, or because it is part of a trend or a movement. Remember that the book which bores you when you are twenty or thirty will open doors for you when you are forty or fifty — and vice versa. Don’t read a book out of its right time for you.
Doris Lessing, Introduction to The Golden Notebook (1962).