The X-Files: Wetwired Rewatch
May 8, 2020 7:03 PM - Season 3, Episode 23 - Subscribe
Mulder and Scully go to Braddock Heights, Maryland, to investigate the case of a man who had murdered five people, one of them his own wife, believing them all to be a brutal dictator whose career he'd been following closely on the news.
Anderson does psychosis well.
I remember the first time I saw this episode. I started laughing at at the absurd things that Scully was doing out of paranoia... then I stopped laughing, because she was so terrified and it wasn't funny.
Why resort to brain-hacking/ neurolinguistic manipulation when good old fashioned low-tech group psychological manipulation (ie., propaganda, "real" fake news, disinformation, echo chamber, gaslighting, in-group identification) is even more effective and possibly even more controllable/ predictable.
Because the usual methods of propagandizing are too banal and real world to get Mulder's interest. He's so busy chasing aliens and ghosts and so convinced that there is a conspiracy withholding the truth from him that he has no time for the run-of-the-mill evils that are in plain sight.
I liked the moment when Mulder said he's red/green colour blind and held out his tie as evidence. I suppose that might explain his sometimes unfortunate taste in ties.
posted by orange swan at 12:32 PM on May 11, 2020 [1 favorite]
I remember the first time I saw this episode. I started laughing at at the absurd things that Scully was doing out of paranoia... then I stopped laughing, because she was so terrified and it wasn't funny.
Why resort to brain-hacking/ neurolinguistic manipulation when good old fashioned low-tech group psychological manipulation (ie., propaganda, "real" fake news, disinformation, echo chamber, gaslighting, in-group identification) is even more effective and possibly even more controllable/ predictable.
Because the usual methods of propagandizing are too banal and real world to get Mulder's interest. He's so busy chasing aliens and ghosts and so convinced that there is a conspiracy withholding the truth from him that he has no time for the run-of-the-mill evils that are in plain sight.
I liked the moment when Mulder said he's red/green colour blind and held out his tie as evidence. I suppose that might explain his sometimes unfortunate taste in ties.
posted by orange swan at 12:32 PM on May 11, 2020 [1 favorite]
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'Contact' (film) was 1997, 'Contact' (novel) was 1985. I wonder how consciously the writers cribbed the splitting the oscilloscope first into RGB colour channels then the 2D signal sideband into 3D making the difference.
In a roundabout way, the writers acknowledged the influence of media on population behaviour - but completely missed on what ended up being effective ("reality" TV priming unthinking belief/ gullibility, social media priming viral dissemination of ideas, political extremism leading to social splintering).
Why resort to brain-hacking/ neurolinguistic manipulation when good old fashioned low-tech group psychological manipulation (ie., propaganda, "real" fake news, disinformation, echo chamber, gaslighting, in-group identification) is even more effective and possibly even more controllable/ predictable.
posted by porpoise at 8:52 PM on May 8, 2020