The Psychology of Slogans | Ep.2

We pick up the thread on what makes a belief “stupid,” using faith, satire, and psychology to test whether the issue is truth or the path we take to it. The film "Idiocracy" becomes a mirror for a societal path we may be taking towards slogans, communication breakdowns, and bias that shape choices today.

• how belief formation differs from being right or wrong
• personal experience versus evidence and when to hold loosely
• confirmation bias and cognitive dissonance in daily choices
• sleep, hormones and hidden drags on decision‑making
• Idiocracy plot beats that mirror modern culture
• charisma, accents and why delivery outruns logic
• loss of subtext and forced warmth in communication
• slogans, illusory truth and processing fluency
• mere exposure, propaganda and repetition effects
• simple habits to check certainty against evidence

Christ is King, Jesus loves you, and He's coming back soon.

Chapters

• 0:00 Tempo: 120.0

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

Welcome back to episode two of Ministry of the Man. And let me tell you something. Episode one did unbelievable. It took off. And I can and all I can say is we made it. Mum, we made it. And and I'm getting us out of the trenches now. There's paparazzi wanting to snap photos of me now. Even going out to the letterbox is a struggle. I've got to wear my hat a little bit lower. Gotta be a little bit more discreet with where I go now. The first thing I did was I cut off all my day ones, leaving them in the dust now that I have blown up in the way that I have. So see ya. Nah, but the first the first episode was a lot of fun. And I got some I actually got some pretty funny feedback from it too, which I'll I'll go through a little bit of it. But one of the things, so like when you start a podcast, and when it's a monologue podcast, there's only one person, there's no guests, one of the main questions is how can you talk for an hour? Like, how can you are you gonna what are you gonna say? And it's so funny because this one of my friends messaged me and was like, Yeah, that's so good that you're doing this. I swear you could literally talk about a blade of grass for three hours, make it interesting, and I'd leave with a new perspective on grass. Yeah, I do have I got a lot of opinions, so I'm happy to take that as a compliment. But one of the things that I'll clear up about the last one, because apparently this is the elephant in the room. Was that it was one big ironic take because talking about stupid people and then me being a Christian and believing in God, if you don't believe in God, then you deem that to be a stupid belief. So it is kind of missing the point of like what I was trying to communicate in the last episode. So obviously, the Bible, the Bible even says that the cross is foolish for those that don't believe. So you can definitely say that someone that believes in God is stupid if you want to say that, but it's the same logic as someone that does believe in God, thinking that someone who doesn't is stupid. So the whole point is that it's not about what it is that you believe. So being stupid isn't just being wrong about something. Like everyone is wrong about something or has been wrong about something, just because you could be wrong or or you believe something that's not true doesn't make you stupid, it just makes you wrong. And it's about how you arrive at a particular belief. So let's say, for example, I believe that fruit is uh is poisonous, and someone goes, why? And I say, I don't know, I just feel like it is. That's a stupid belief because you hit there's no reason there that that got you to that belief. So in the case of Christianity or believing in God, it isn't necessarily a stupid belief, although it could be depending on how someone got to believe it. Someone could be like, I believe in God. One of the funniest things. So there was this like street evangelist that was on TV years ago, and one of his arguments for God was like, look at the size of the banana, it fits right inside the palm of your hand. So it's obvious that God's real because the banana is the same size as the human hand. So obviously, there can be maybe illogical ways to arrive at a particular belief, even if that belief is true. I think that there are people that are atheists that are wrong, that I don't think are stupid for being wrong, because looking at the information that they've been presented with and that they've experienced, I'm like, okay, even though I believe you're wrong, I don't think you're stupid or irrational in that sense, in the in this, in that particular sense. There has to be some sort of rationale. So in the case of, say, a Christian, in my say in my case, I I had a personal experience. So that's obviously that's one of the best ways for anyone to believe anything is what you personally experience. It's not really something you can use for other people in a in a logic point of view, like I had this experience, so you have to believe me now. But it is definitely the one of the better ways for yourself. So in the same way that I've had a personal experience, it makes it easier for me to believe in God, whereas someone that hasn't had a personal experience makes it easier for them to not believe in God. So yeah, there's lots of different grounds, and and you can look at, you know, the history of a thing. So let's say the history of Christianity is there's four uh 66 different books written by 40 different authors that span over a millennia of so over a thousand years, 1500 years that the Bible was written in time. Whereas then you go and you look at something like Scientology, and you're like, okay, so who made the doctrine for that? Well, it was one guy who made the doctrine for that who holds the Guinness Book of Record, like title for most books published, and a large majority of that was fictional works. So it's a little bit harder to take it seriously when you know that the author, L. Ron Hubbard, wrote like it was somewhere between 250 to 500 different works of fiction. So that might be considered a touch more irrational than believing in Christianity, which has a little bit more depth and historical backing to it. Um, this is not even necessarily a defense to say that Christianity is true. It's to say that someone that arrives at that conclusion isn't stupid because there is some sort of steps in line that you can that you can look at. Whereas there's beliefs that maybe they got there in a different way. It's not about being right or wrong, it's about how you got to that belief and also how firm you stand on it. So there are things that I believe to be true, but I wouldn't be able to maybe stake a good case. I've maybe heard a little bit of information about it. So I'm not gonna die on the hill of something that I don't really know that much about, even if I believe it. Someone could come along and be like, hey, you believe that? Why? And I'll be like, oh, well, I'm heard a couple of things. And then they go, Well, did you know this? And I'll be like oh, well, no, no, I didn't know that. Maybe I'll factor that in, and that could change my belief now. So I'm not gonna go guns blazing on things that I'm aware that I probably shouldn't be super staunch about this particular belief because I feel like that's also stupid. Anyway, now that that's out of the way, yeah. There's, I mean, but there is lots, there's different things. There's lots of different things. If you want to define a stupid person as being wrong, you can do that. It's just not how I was doing that in the last video. Jordan Peterson, for example, he says the stupidest person in the room is the person that doesn't know but pretends to know and then doesn't ask. So that's another definition of a stupid person. A friend of mine. A friend of mine sent me these uh, there was like a bunch of videos. It must be like an Instagram account dedicated to this. But as this interviewer, like a street interviewer, going up to guys and asking them questions, they're football fans, so English football fans, and they're asking, this guy's asking them, what's your best Premier League 11? So who's gonna be your starting 11 if you were to make the a fantasy dream team? And as he's giving suggestions, so that they'll they might say some star players, but then he goes, Oh, what about Churchill in the middle? And then they go, they go, Who? And he goes, Churchill for Fulham, and they go, Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, he's good, he's good. And then he's talking about Winston Churchill. So he he'll name the name of a curry and be like, What about them? They're good at right back, and they go, Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, no, yeah, I think I like them. And they'll even say, I prefer that fake name. So I think he even said Boyle for Susan Boyle for one of them. But they were they were even preferring these fake people over real players that they just don't like. And the funniest thing about it is that it's so ironic. So, this is what I believe real irony is is that these people were trying so hard not to look stupid because they didn't know these players. So these players' names were not familiar to them. So, in the attempt to not look stupid, they've looked even more stupid. If they had just said, I don't know these players that you're talking about, then they would have looked far less stupid. So that is really funny, but that's just another definition of stupid. So, and I I suppose the other thing to keep in mind is that there's always going to be confirmation bias. So, confirmation bias is just the simple form of you have a belief already, and any information that supports that existing belief is going to be easier for you to accept and believe. And anything that is critical of that belief is gonna be more difficult for you to accept and believe. These things are almost impossible to remove. It is even if you're aware that you have a cognitive bias, that awareness of it doesn't remove the effect of it. It doesn't remove it. So I'm going to be automatically more prone to believing something that supports my worldview or what I believe to be true, whether it be Christianity, whether it be a political ideology, or whether it be something that is regarding to health, like diet, it's going to be easier for me to believe those things. And at the same time, it's going to be easier for me to dismiss the things that are that are contrary to that, because it's much more difficult to have to change an existing belief. So another, maybe a further depth to this is cognitive dissonance. So this is a deeper level where it's easier for you to just completely dismiss logic, facts, reason, evidence, because it completely dismantles your belief altogether. So if you come across something and all of a sudden it is it completely, if if that thing is true, this piece of information is true, that means that everything that I believe about this thing is false. Because it rips the metaphoric carpet out from under your feet. And so you've no longer got any grounding or or anything to stand on. So because of that, because you need some sort of structural belief system, things that disrupt that, it's it's almost like an automatic thing where it's going to try, your brain is going to try to make to not believe it. It's false, they're lying, it's not true, that that that study's faulty or whatever it could be. You can you can make up things or whatever. But yeah, so that's just another thing. We we also tend to believe that we're not like humans in general will tend to believe that we aren't susceptible to the things that other people are susceptible to. So everyone's got, oh, well, that would never happen to me, or I would never do that. So you you you read about some of these psychological studies of people conforming or whatever, and you're like, well, I would never conform to those things. I would know what's going on. And the truth is, you probably wouldn't. Like, I know heaps of things, um, I know about heaps of psychological studies that even the awareness of it, it doesn't make me immune to it. Like, I would hope that it does. I would hope that I can identify it in the present time, but sometimes you just can't. Sometimes your brain just does things. So, I mean, here's an interesting way to describe it. If you lose even one day of sleep, your decision-making ability is impaired for up to three days after. So you think you're making the right decisions with the information that is available to you, but there's an impairment there. You're not looking clearly through the lens to see that information in uh in the best light. So, and then you've got an other things as well, like even diet, there's there's so many things that can impede your decision-making skills. And when you're deceived, you don't know you're deceived. There's been studies on women that are on birth control that because it disrupts their hormones, it impacts their mate-selecting preferences. So the person that they would normally be attracted to or normally go for without any hormonal disruption is different. And so you've got these cases where women are coming off birth control and they're losing attraction to their husbands or their boyfriends or whatever. So this, yeah, there's so much that goes into decision making. But ultimately, it's it again, it doesn't necessarily matter what it is that you do if there's some consistency in the decision. It's not about the right decision or the wrong decision, it's about utilizing the information and the data that you have available to you to make the right decision and then land on what would be the right decision with all things considered. Anyway, that's my little rant about the first episode. But this episode I am just as keen for because so when I filmed the first episode, I went to Bali and then when I was there, I watched a movie called Idiocracy. And I had never seen this movie. I'd heard about it, but this is like the most perfect movie for the theme, I guess, to continue on. That's kind of similar to my last episode. So I just want to do a breakdown of some of the key points. So, first, I'll give a little bit of a plot summary on the movie if you haven't seen it. So, what it's about is that there is a man who is completely average in every single statistical area of life. So, in IQ, in physical ability, in I don't know, whatever, intelligence. And he gets frozen, he's supposed to get cryo-frozen for one year, but something happens where the guy that was meant to wake him up gets arrested. He ends up going 500 years into the future, and he wakes up to find out that he's now the smartest man on earth. This completely average dude, this average Joe is now the smartest man on earth. And it gives you a bit of an insight into the things that took place to make that happen. So, right from the get-go, it's basically like, well, the reason that they explained how it got to that way is that I suppose more intelligent people decided not to have kids anymore. So they were they were saying things like, oh, you know, the market's just not the best time to have kids. Whereas people that were less intelligent were having like 10 kids and just being like, oh, whatever, I will just do, you know, all this other stuff. So the smarter couples kind of just weren't having kids. The the less intelligent people were having lots of kids, and over time, it just created a world where things had deteriorated, which is kind of a funny concept. But yeah, so like some of the things like to so to make to paint a picture of what this world kind of looked like, that one of the first things you see is this guy, like when he wakes up and he he goes into the first house, and this guy's watching a TV show called Owl My Balls, and all it's just it's just a guy getting hit in the balls or like jumping off something and landing on his balls, and that's that's the whole show. And then him just going, owl, my balls. It's the dumbest show. So obviously that's what like they're trying to say that the level of humor has no longer got any nuance to it, it's just a dude getting hurt in the balls. So they've got things like pokey machines at the hospital, people's names are all brands and advertisements. So there's like Dr. Lexus, you've got Tylenol Jones, you've got Dwayne Elizondo, Mountain Dew, Herbert, Camacho, whatever. There's just trash everywhere. Houses are made of plastic, all this sort of stuff. So it kind of um it kind of sets the tone a little bit. So all these like little details in the world is showing you what what it's like. This is one of my favorite things. And I've shared this with some of my friends because I actually, this is the one detail I knew about before watching the movie. So the the writer, the guy, the um, the guy that wrote the the story, he was like, I need to get like clothing that kind of matches you know what the world would look like if they were wearing a particular kind of shoe. More for the jail, the people that were in jail. So they found this little tiny niche company, and they had, you know, they sell these shoes, they weren't really doing super well, they weren't really known, and they were just like the ugliest shoe. And then they're like, Oh, we can use these for the costume design. And the director was like, Oh, I don't know, that like what if? Because like the movie's gonna come out, what if in like five years this shoe becomes really popular and then it's no longer like a futuristic shoe and people start wearing it? And they're like, Oh, no, no, no, no, that'll never happen. This shoe's so ugly, that'll never, that's not something we ever have to worry about. And it turned out that the shoes were crocs, and it is something that they have to worry about because everyone's wearing them now, and they're effectively wearing idiot shoes. So that is the funniest thing. It's again, it's prophetic. How did they pick no one will wear this shoe? It's so ugly. No one is gonna be wearing it, and half the Western world is wearing crocs and loving it too. They, if you're a croc croc wearer, you swear by it. I'm sure they're comfortable, but but it but it's still an idiot shoe, I'm afraid to say. So shout out the people that are never caved. You know, one thing that's super annoying is that like people that were super against them, and then they they just end up buying a pen. You're like, you were saying how ugly they were for like years, and now you're like, you like them. I mean, I guess that's fine, you can change your mind on things, but I guess, yeah, yeah, well, whatever. Change your mind then. But anyway, so that's kind of the the premise and the the look of the show. So I suppose in addition to that, everyone that was kind of smart and was intelligent, they weren't they stopped working on trying to make the future better and more advanced, and they kind of focused on more consumer affairs. So rather than I don't know, new new inventions of that would advance society, they were looking at hair loss treatment. They're looking at, you know, erectile dysfunction treatments, like they're looking at all these things that are just so superficial in a lot of ways. Still looking for a cure for male pattern baldness. I don't hear any awareness on that. I'm gonna start a charity for male pattern baldness. Luckily, I'm not going bald, but I'm maybe I will one day. So start the research now. But that is also a concept that that's kind of a real thing. I know that in Australian sports, we don't have a great soccer team because all of our gun athletes play so many different sports. Like Australia is so versatile with its sporting, and we don't have the population for one. But I remember going through school and all of the guns in primary school, all of the aspiring stars that were like making the district teams and the state teams, they just played footy. Like they played Aussie rules or they went to NRL, like whatever, some form of rugby. But a lot of gifted athletes left soccer. So that's a shame. Anyway, so there's a few key things that I want to look at. Now, the first one I wanted to look at was communication. So the world that they live in now in this futuristic, hyperbolic, you know, deteriorated society or dystopian future, was like their accent would signal intelligence, which is still kind of a thing even now, but it got to the it got to a point where they no longer listen to logic because like there was a one of the guys he was in court, and they it says that they weren't listening to him because of his effeminate voice. They perceived his voice to be like girly or just like feminine, and so they're like, no, we're gonna listen to this guy. So it's less about what's being said and more about how it's said, which is going back to like the con man thing, like being a confidence man, having charisma, being likable, being aware of those things is like I don't know, it's kind of important. You kind of have to be like, am I listening to this person because they're speaking really well, or are they actually making logical sense? Like, am I being influenced by their demeanor and because they're charismatic? It's that's another thing that's really it's hard to be aware of and not let it affect you. Like you can still kind of be aware of it and it still like affects you. Like this guy's probably convincing me from his charisma, but uh what are you gonna do? What are you gonna do? And yeah, they uh there's a phrase where oh, it just kind of talks about him going up to people and them just kind of like dismissing him because he's trying to talk to him. They don't really understand him. He can understand them, but they don't really understand him, and everything's kind of deteriorated into hillbilly language, valley girl, inner city slang, and various grunts is how it's described. And yeah, they couldn't really understand him. He sounded pompous. There's even a part where they were they clearly had forgotten words that maybe were more difficult, so they don't they didn't say tortilla. There was a one of the guys mentioned burrito coverings, and I feel like it's because people call it a tortilla or a tortilla, and there's confusion there, and so over time people just dismissed it and was like, it's just a burrito covering, but the yeah, the whole deteriorating of communication I find so interesting because look at what's happening to the youth. Brain rot is at an all-time high. People are saying six seven, and it's the dumbest thing ever. Like, I learned about that against my own will, I suppose, just from random videos popping up explaining it. I can't say I've really heard that many people say, I've just seen videos of it, but apparently a lot of kids are just saying six seven, and it doesn't really mean anything. It's like reference to a meme, whatever. But it's dumb. Like, and there's this quote by Vladimir Lenin that says, if you want to destroy a nation, destroy the thinking of its youth. And I kind of feel like someone's trying to destroy the nation when I hear that, because the youth are just dribbling, they're just talking so much rubbish and nonsense. We've got to put a stop to it, dude. But yeah, anyway, one of the things, this is like a really interesting part of the breakdown of communication, is that one of the things is there's this giant supermarket, it's a giant Costco, the size of a city, it's huge. And as the guys are walking into the shop, there's a greeter there, and he just goes, Welcome to Costco, I love you. You know, the next person, welcome to Costco, I love you. And that that is dystopian. So obviously, what's happened is they've lost the ability to be able to communicate outside of direct language, when like I would say more than like 80% of our communication isn't the words that we use, it's how it's communicated. So instead of the greeter showing and expressing love through being like, Welcome, great to see you, come on in, like this sort of thing. They're not able to do that because, first of all, they probably don't have the ability to be able to communicate like that. And the other people on the receiving end don't have the ability to interpret like indirect speech. Indirect communication is vital to humanity. It's one of the core things that make us human anyway. You'll even see on like these days, on maybe someone's Twitter account or X or whatever, there'll be a business like Wendy's or something, and it will be they'll be talking as if it's a person. So they they communicate from the business as if it's just like one person talking like that, and they say like funny things now, and they kind of say jarring, like weird things you wouldn't expect, but it's more personable. So because they're trying to convey I don't know, they're trying to convey love in a different way, I guess. Or they're trying to convey personhood and relatability, they're trying to build rapport so that you trust them more. So they've obviously lost the ability, so it's just like I love you, that's what that's what it is. I love you. So that was an interesting portion, but yeah, indirect communication, it's kind of something we we can't ignore anymore, even in direct communication, there's still indirect communication being involved amongst it, like in the gaps, in between the gaps. So we do these kind of weird rituals as a human species where we might say, Hi, how are you going? Good, how are you? Yeah, good, it's getting through the day. Ha ha ha. Anyway, and you go off. And it's like that whole part of communicating, that's just a courtesy. That there is not, you're not really interested in how someone's day is, but you you do the dance, you do the thing of like it's it's showing something, it's conveying commonality, it's conveying some form of peace, that we are amicable, that we're a species or we're just two people that are giving a sniddle. Yep, everything's good, everything's good. So even in like dating, you'll find women will communicate indirectly far more than men. And I'll talk about this in another episode, but you'll find so that there's this age-old thing of you know, once upon a time, women would try to make the first move by dropping their handkerchief and in front of a man that they're interested in. And so if the man was interested, he would he would grab it and he would return it to her and they'd strike up a conversation. So she has made an indirect advance to the towards the man. And the man has then made a direct advance towards the women because men are typically more direct and we're seem to be a little bit more, what's the word, illiterate when it comes to interpreting indirect uh communication from women, but that's uh I'll talk about that another day. But anyway, that is it's just an interesting theme, is that there's so much communication breakdown in this futuristic place. And if we're not careful, like that is a very high possibility because people are just shouting catchphrases, people are just shouting unconscious responses. I remember when YOLO was a thing and I started saying YOLO to like make fun of it, and then it got to a point where I couldn't stop saying YOLO. And I was really like annoyed with myself because it really got there. A lot of my friends used to say you to mock people that would say you. And then all of a sudden, they're all saying it on legitimate, they're doing it the same way, and so they became the thing that they swore that they hated. So yeah, so that's just one that's one of the themes that I found really interesting. Number two, the second theme that was really interesting was slogans. So this gets me fired up, this one. So there's this one slogan. So there's this drink called Brondo, and Brondo is like this, it's it's a cup name of a company, but it's also the name of like a sports drink. It's kind of like a Gatorade, and it's the main brand of everything like throughout the show. It's everywhere, and everyone drinks it and everyone loves it. It's literally like in the like you go to the water fountain, you're drinking Brondo. And the slogan for Brondo is first of all, it just says it's got electrolytes. That's it, that's all you need to know. It's got electrolytes, and so people were like, Oh, well, that's what we need. But the main issue of the movie is that the smart guy has to solve a problem with the crops, the crops aren't growing, and it's because the company Brondo found that their biggest competition was water, and so and so they were using Brondo to water the crops, they purchased the rides and convinced everyone that Brondo was better for plants. So their slogan was Brondo's got what plants crave, it's got electrolytes, and so that's kind of repeated a little bit, and every time the guys like the smart guys trying to convince them to use water, the response is but hang on a second, Brondo's got what plants crave, it's got electrolytes, and they're kind of saying it. As like as if it's true, just because it's a slogan that they're familiar with and that they've heard. So and then he he goes, Oh, but we can try water. What if what if we just try it and see? And then someone else will go, but Brondo's got what plants crave. And then someone else is like, Yeah, it's got electrolytes. He's like, What are electrolytes? Do you know what they are? And they're like, Well, electrolytes is it's what plants crave. So it's it's this thing that if you hear something enough times, it becomes true. So this is actually a real psychological effect that that happens to humans. I say humans, like like I'm an alien. You humans are affected by this. So there's a thing called the illusory truth effect. There was a study that was done in 1977 that basically concluded that there is a tendency to believe false information, even any information, to be correct after just repetitive exposure. So the more you're exposed to it, the easier it is for you to believe. So when you're processing information, you're processing, is this information that I'm receiving true? You're filtering it through what you already know. So the information that you that you are already aware of, and you're all you're you're assessing if it kind of kind of comes into alignment with that, if it's with something you already know, which is which is normal. Like obviously, if you hear something and you're like, oh yeah, like that kind of still fits in with the things that I know, it's not contradictory. I've heard all this stuff, it's a it's much easier. So because of that, you hearing something once, and then a week later, a year later, you hear it again, someone says, Oh, you know, I actually I've heard that. I've heard that. And so you're way more receptive to believing it just through repeated exposure. That's literally all it is. There's no, yeah, no other determining factor in that. Now, the biggest issue with the illusory truth effect is that it can impair even when you know the truth. So you're more likely to trust false information than information you might already know if that information was stale and it was kind of like older. Like you might be more inclined to trust it if it just keeps getting repeated, that is. So obviously, hearing something once doesn't fall into the category. It needs to be repeated multiple times in order for it to start to deteriorate your already known information. And it doesn't need to be true, it can be completely false. There's this there was this American Psychological Association article that I was reading. So out of this article, I just want to read this little excerpt. So it says, research on the illusory truth effect demonstrates that repeated statements are easier to process and subsequently perceived to be more truthful than new statements. Contrary to prior superstitions, illusory truth effects occurred even when participants knew better. Multinominal modeling demonstrated that participants sometimes rely on fluency even if knowledge is also available to them. Thus, participants demonstrated knowledge neglect or the failure to rely on stored knowledge in the face of fluent processing experiences. So people were trying because the information was easy to understand, easy to comprehend and to digest, they relied on that more than their previously stored knowledge about it. So just from it being more palatable, that's the only reason. It was like, oh, well, that's easy to understand. So the things that I previously knew about it that are contrary to that is probably wrong. There's a thing in cognitive psychology called processing fluency. It's just basically like it's the ease of which your brain is able to, I guess, interpret things or like entertain an idea. So the more familiar something is, like, the easier it is for you to understand. And if the easier it is for you to understand, the easier it is for you to believe to be true. So there's another thing called fluency heuristics. So, first of all, I'll explain. So, heuristics is like a mental process, it's something that happens in the brain that creates mental shortcuts. So once you've learned something, you don't need to use brain power to keep evaluating it because you've seen it so many times. So it's making these kind of shortcuts. It just helps, yeah. I guess it's an energy-saving thing, it's just an efficiency thing the brain does. So this is literally why someone might say, Hey, what's up? And you respond with good thanks, because your brain has made a shortcut in that moment to be like, he's about to say, like, we're about to do this little ritual greeting thing. And they're probably going to say, Hey, how are you? So that's what I'm familiar with. So you say, good thanks, but then they uh they pulled a sneaky and said, What's up? So that's what heuristics is. That's your brain just like screwing you over, basically. So fluency heuristics is something that can be processed more efficiently, easier, faster, smoother, whatever it is. And your brain is going to lend it more value. So, in other words, the better an idea is communicated, more likely it is to be considered serious. And it kind of doesn't matter whether it's logical or not. Like your brain isn't interpreting the logic, it's interpreting how easier, faster, smoother it is to go in, to understand. So, yeah. So your brain in that form is making a shortcut to truth. So instead of it's harder to weigh up the logic, it's easier to just understand the consistency, maybe, or the digestibility of it. And so it'll lend itself again more value. So you you you will just automatically think it's true. Which is these things, like finding out about these things is kind of it's interesting, but it's like kind of annoying at the same time because I'm like, oh great, my brain. There's a so this is the last kind of psychological effect that I'll give to, I suppose, support it a little bit more, because otherwise I'm just there's too many. So there's another one called the mere exposure effect, which so this is a psychological phenomenon which people tend to develop a liking or a disliking for something just because they're familiar with it. So an example an easy example is you don't like a song, and then you heard it three or four more times, and now you love the song, and now you're playing it all the time, and you're like, I hated this song before. So the mere exposure effect is you were just exposed to it. Like you like it more now just because you heard it more, and that's literally it. The song didn't change, it didn't get better. Like it's just you were exposed to it more, and so now you like it. Same thing can happen with disliking something. I go for a I go for a run around the area I live, and every day, every time I go, no matter what time of day, there's this same dude that wears this strong cologne, he's got no shirt, he's walking his dog, and I see him all the time, and I started to grow this like disdain. I'm like, oh, is this guy again? It was just because he was just there all the time, and he doesn't do anything wrong. Like he's just he's probably the nicest guy ever. But I'm just like, oh, I'm sick of seeing him, and that's probably more because when I go for a run, I'm always like struggling, so I don't like anything repetitive. Anything repetitive annoys me if I'm already disgruntled, I guess, or like I don't know, whatever. That poor guy, he's my enemy, doesn't even know it. No, he's all right, but anyway, so I suppose the reason why this is a problem, because they're putting it in the movie to show a dystopian future, right? So the reason why slogans can be a problem is because they weren't able to they trusted that uh Brondo was what plants craved. It has electrolytes and that plants like electrolytes. They didn't even know what electrolytes were. He's like, What are electrolytes? They they couldn't answer it. They're just like, it's what plants have. And so when you just trust a slogan so much, it removes you, you're just like, well, that's true. I've always heard that. And there are so many slogans that even I've at one point believed to be true, and then thought, wait, why? I feel like this is just not a good slogan. Like there's this one that I always think of. It's like, well, when people go, oh, where there's smoke, there's fire. So like if someone's being accused of something and it's kind of dicey and you don't really know the details, and someone's well, when there's smoke, there's fire. And it's like, well, yeah, that's true when there's a fire, but it's not true if someone gets falsely accused of things, which happens all the time. People have gone to jail for falsely accusing people. People lie, people lie all the time. This is not a new thing. People like, I don't know, man, with the smoke, there's fire. And it's like, well, I've I've heard that. I've actually heard that saying, and so that land that lends more value to it in my brain. Like, so there's heaves of them like that. Like, if like if I I've said this as well to a bunch of friends, like, who do you think the king of the jungle is? When you hear the the king of the jungle, you think of the lion, right? But the lion doesn't live in the jungle. Like, why is the lion the king of the jungle? He doesn't even live there. But because you hear it over and over again, it's like it becomes true. I mean, the lion is such a boss, he's a king of a place he doesn't even enter. It's so cool. I mean, there's there's definitely times where it's okay to, you know, shout a slogan. Alex O'Connor mentions this about from when people say from the river to the sea. So the people supporting Palestine that go to the rallies, you'll see interviewers sometimes, street interviewers going up to them and being like, you know, why are you here? And they're like, you know, we support the thing, from the river to the sea, and they go, what river and what sea? And they're like, Oh, well, oh, I don't know. And so they don't know the details of it. And the interviewers trying trying to make them look stupid, basically, by asking these questions. But Alex O'Connor made a an interesting point about saying you don't always need to know every single detail about a thing to support it. So it really depends on the slogan. So he made he mentioned that, you know, fasting is good. You know, someone might be like, I like to fast because I listened to an Andrew Huberman podcast, and he mentioned fasting was healthy, and they go, What's healthy about it? And you're like, Well, I actually can't really remember all the details. And it's like, yeah, the podcast went for three hours, and I listened to it once, and I was kind of driving at the time, and I heard the information and it sounded good, and I agreed with it. And I'm like, Yeah, I'll try that. I tried it and that felt good. And then, yeah, I'm just not able to recite every little bit of information about it. So, like, you should be afforded some grace to be able to support something without knowing every single mining detail. So that's I guess one thing to look at. But I think it can also be a little ironic sometimes, maybe a little foolish in in some times, like one of my one of my favorite ones. So in the the pro-abortion world, the my body, my choice is like the main slogan. And so they'll say my body, my choice, but they don't really that's not anywhere near as good as you think it is because they weren't saying that for the vaccines. It was one of the I went to a few rallies when the vaccines were a thing, and we were chanting my body, my choice there, which is so funny because obviously most of the pro-abortion, my body, my choice people, very liberal, kind of, yeah. I guess, yeah, very liberal people, whereas most of the people at the anti-lockdown rallies and stuff, and just like the anti-vax rallies, were more conservative, typically. And so it's kind of it was kind of funny to see the the you using the slogan against them in a way. But there's tons of like even with that, if you break it down, like there's so many things where it's your body and not your choice. Like, you're not allowed to walk around naked, you can't cook meth, you can't just do that in the comfort of your own home. You can't have it, you can't even have it yourself. If I want to have meth, that's illegal. It's my body. There's various drugs you can't put into your own body. That's that's not your choice. Like, you can't drink and drive. And there's verbal abuse laws. You can't even say certain things. You know, you can't just there's a lot of things you can't do. And there's also things that's like you you can't or you shouldn't smoke meth while pregnant either. Like you shouldn't do a bunch of drugs, you shouldn't drink, you shouldn't even have raw fish when pregnant. There's a bunch of things you shouldn't do that would make that slogan a bad slogan to use. Like, make whatever case you want. Like, this like this is not this is not a politically charged thing. I'm just breaking down the the I guess the my body, my choice slogan as a as a general slogan. But there's tons of things where it's not. Whoa, dude, this is the worst, the worst slogan thing that I heard was this guy was on one of those Omega, you know, chat roulette things, and Omegle, whatever it's called, and he was speaking to someone and he goes, 40% of like, so he goes, What do you think of the fact that homosexuals make up 2% of the population, but uh, but also make up 40% of child abuse cases, right? So, first of all, I don't actually think that that's true. I've done I would be very surprised if that was true. So I'm not saying that that's a true statistic, I actually don't think that it is, but the person receiving that information didn't question it, and he goes, So what do you think about that? And they go, Love is love. Oh like that is psychotic. Like, even if that's not true, the statistic, your response to that shouldn't be the slogan love is love. That is crazy. This is the oh I'm moving on from slogans now. That one has sent me over the edge. Like, there's so many problems with slogans, dude. Like, the thing is companies know this, advertisers know this. This is not new information. All these psychological studies were done in the 60s, done in the 70s. These are things that they use on us intentionally, banking on the fact that we don't know what they're up to, and that we're just gonna be swayed in whatever direction. Propaganda works on us as a species. We can't we have to like be aware that that's a tool that they use frivolously. It's crazy. Oh dude. Okay, I am not gonna get through what I had. I'm not even halfway through what I had. Oh my gosh. Okay, I can't believe it. What have I been waffling on about, dude? Okay, well, that's alright. I mean, I've got two other massive topics that I'm probably gonna have to go into because it is what it is, but anyway, I'm probably gonna end it there because the next two topics are gonna just take way longer to go through. So, and I don't want to do two-hour podcasts because they're gonna go forever. So, anyway, I suppose the last one went for an hour and six minutes. This one can go for just under an hour, so it'll work out fine, but but yeah, that movie Idiocracy. So, I'll so next week I'll do the next one, like the part two, I suppose, because I feel like it's just as interesting, if not more. But yeah, there's so much going on in the world, like propaganda-wise, that I I do think it's helpful to just be aware of these kinds of things, just to like not be so arrogant and not be so prideful in the in thinking, well, I would never fall under these things. Like, these have been studied for years, they've been replicated. The psychology of the human, at least what we are able to be swayed by, people can use that against you. People can use it against you, and they often do. I mean, all it takes, like I know for me, I never feel like having, I don't know, a lot of food, a lot of junk food. But if there's an ad that I see like a bunch of times in one day and they catch me when I'm hungry, I'm like, there's gonna be a big chance that I'm like, oh, maybe I'll have that, maybe I'll try it. Yeah, it's not that hard. There are people that know how to use propaganda to get more money or to support a particular movement, ideology, or belief. So again, yeah, thanks for listening, and that's it. Yeah, I'll wrap it up. Okay, cool. And let me and let me just tell you this because this is the most important thing you'll ever know. And I'm gonna say this every single episode because nothing else matters but this, okay? Christ is King, Jesus loves you, and he's coming back soon. So do with that information what you will.