Not to say that I've watched nothing. I've been mooching streaming services and sailing the high seas for a while.
But I'm driving pretty much across the entire east coast of the US to visit my parents for Christmas. So I've stopped in hotels and such, and with nothing else to do I've turned on the TV. And holy shit, the propaganda is blatant. I don't know if its because I've been removed from it for so long or what.
WWF ads using 8 year old cropped videos of Polar Bears on ice. Donate now or they'll die to climate change! Be scared!
A drug ad for some drug to remove a side effect of some other brain-altering chemicals, anti-depressants probably. You finally got your mind sorted out thank to other drugs but now you've got involuntary hand or face movements. Take our drug too! "It's not fully understood how it works but it's believed to work" Literally telling you that.
Government propaganda about kids 5 and older being eligible for the clot shots. Video of children running around playing. Having fun. Being kids. And they still included shots of children in fucking masks.
Not to mention the fact that not a single commercial features solely a white heterosexual couple. I almost got bamboozled by a jewelery ad, because the first half was nothing but white man and white woman. Then they hit you with the mandatory interracial black man white woman and homosexuals.
This was all just one commercial break. People really sit here and see this shit every 20 minutes and they express no disgust or anything at all. Like damn, I knew it was bad from memery and such but seeing it with your own eyes is horrifying
No kidding - When I visit my parents for dinner on the weekends my Dad (as is lifelong tradition) invariably turns on the local network news followed by the network's news show to "stay informed" and it's currently NBC. (It hasn't always been NBC news - just whatever commentator appealed to him the most over the years)
Just watching them is jawdropping. The sheer amount of intentional disinformation and propaganda is jawdropping and yet my dad will happily parrot it, thinking himself up to date - even though he'll fall back on his own personal knowledge "I don't see what they're going to solve with all this rioting" he'll state his support for "big brother"
It's disturbing.
I get some ads still through YouTube so I get glimpses of the culture war though - like Star Wars only white men with english accents are the bad guys. Really liked getting the, literally, pro-communism ad on a recent Razorfist video. Haven't been able to replicate that one yet though...