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George Orwell popularised the notion of ‘Sheeple’. Conspiracy theorists ran with the term from then on, but just how manipulated are we by the world’s media? It seems to me, that stories about all sorts of seemingly unrelated things, from the use of the dark web to backdated reports on climate change, that we are delivered a prepackaged sample of what our governments want us to think.
Take the motion picture, Unfriended, released in August of 2018. This sets out to use the dark web as the vehicle for a horror film. It assumes that everything within the dark web has negative repercussions. Using browsers to access websites hidden from mainstream surveillance, is portrayed as illegal, or motivated by terrorism. It alludes to shocking consequences, such as contact with paedophilia gangs, or slasher movie type murderers.
Although most would see this as harmless entertainment, it begs the question of whether those backing the film steered funding to deliberately reinforce sensationalist myths. Was their real aim to scare the average person away from investigating the benefits of transferring to the dark web?
Censorship is nothing new, but how far do our governments go in the manipulations? Does it flex the great secret service muscle, in controlling what our streaming services offer? Was that the real reason for axing the popular…