Sophists and Squealers

Open to arguments on any of the below opinions. Mind is open to being changed.

I have been consuming quite a few podcasts of late and i think a lot of people have. They offer up great guests and topics that were hitherto unavailable unless you really went searching. Thankfully now we have big fat tech companies to pump us full of all the content we could ever dream of. I am generally glad these alternative medias exist but there is plenty of risk involved. In the course of this consumption I have come across a few character archetypes that are coalescing in interesting ways; sophists and squealers.

The sophists were a group of traveling intellectuals and teachers in 4/5th century bc Greece, i.e greece at the culmination of its societal achievement, autonomous city states (sometimes democratic), pre macedonian dominance and empire building. Protagoras, man is the measure of all things, Gorgias, nothing exists but even if it did we could not comprehend it and Hippias, natural law exists , elites exist and should treat each other as equals. They taught as well as verbally fought and they made their names from literally just speaking more persuasively than the next fellow over and winning over crowds in a debate. These ideas have not really gone by the wayside and they have formed an intellectual foundation and pragmatic method for societies to discuss ideas, particularly western societies, for centuries and realistically millennia afterwards. Well, why do a bunch of dusty, old, kiddy fiddling greeks matter to us civilised humans at the pinnacle of achievement?

They matter because they were some of the first people on record to employ rhetoric and the power of persuasion through speech and language. There is some level of formalisation and standardisation as well as strategy employed to persuade people of an argument, regardless of the consequences or content of such an argument. Whatever the objective of the speech is, whether to persuade or call to action, there is a method that can be followed to 'win' against opposing opinions. Truth does not really matter to a sophist, only that you win the argument. It is the foundation of debate, regardless of what you believe to be true, as long as you can convince the target audience that what you are voicing is the truth, you win!

So what am i getting at: We have a whole new breed of sophists emerging on the internet, people who are oppurtunistically using rhetoric and persuasion in a well formulated way to convince people of their opinions, garner a following and oh as a side note, sell you on a book or another podcast. And realistically they never went away they were always on the news or on the tv/radio in some way or another with their lines. A lot of people will argue oh this is just the diversity of human opinion and these people just happen to be put into the public limelight because they have good ideas that people agree with. That is fair enough and i am sure that for the majority this is true but amongst the sheep there is the scent of the sophist. A new formalisation of how to get clicks, what to say, how to say it, when to place ad breaks, who to talk to to get clicks and views and hence $$$ etc. Just take whatever podcast you enjoy and make the comparison that this podcast is a stage with an audience. Then follow the guests that appear on this stage around to the other stages they visit. Examine who they claim to be and how they speak. Are they an 'expert' in something? Do they make it very very obvious that they are an 'expert' or 'qualified' in something? Is this the only subject they speak on? Do they make a wide variety of carefully constructed claims on topics not related to their field of expertise? Is there pushback or how critical are hosts? What narratives do they buy into or what narratives do they bash? Do they propose new narratives? Is it often in direct opposition to what you might see in, say, traditional media? Do they promote their own platform or book in subtle ways during the course of their opinions? Everyone is entitled to opinions of course but is it just an opinion or is there an element of persuasive speech which is trying to convince you of something? Do you find your own opinions changing as a result of listening to these people? Why is that? Do you genuinely believe in/agree with what they are saying or have they persuaded you in some way or have you just not bothered to have an opinion on that topic yet and they handed you one?

I am not of the belief that everyone who appears on these popular new platforms is a sophist but there are a certain percentage of these guests that appear on one popular platform and then trot around to all of the different popular ones with the same basic formulation of opinions and no real divergence or space for criticism. I think that this new alternative media is in a way turning into the exact same thing as traditional media, which was probably inevitable as soon as profit became involved. These sophists become ever more popular because they can convince people of what they are saying, then people like to listen to things they agree with, it soothes them and the sophists reinforce their worldview and the audience follows them from stage to stage, boosting the profits for all of these platform hosts. I am not going to name any names, i think it is a fun exercise for anyone who reads this to dig a bit into who they're listening to and examine why theyre listening to them, what opinions are they enforcing in you and why do you agree with them.

Now i mentioned that perhaps the new alternative media which purports to be a bastion of free speech and diversity of opinion etc, could just be evolving into the traditional media we all know and love. I have good reasons for this, namely the advertising. You look at your old media and you get fed your headlines, with a commercial break, 3-5 minutes, in between and then sports and the weather followed by a reinforcement of the headlines. You consume your new media on the other hand and you get fed a narrative or an opinion or a debate or whatever else and you get interrupted by a five second ad or a twenty second ad every 5-10 minutes. then you switch to a new video and so on and so on. Then during the course of the content there is a shameless plug (or 3) by the host for something. So in the end the ratio of advertisement to content is roughly the same between the two. The difference of course is the variety, interest, relevance, personalised content yadayada. But what is interesting here is the amount of self flagellation that goes on with these new media folks, who have convinced themselves they have toppled traditional institutions and brought new ways, revolutionised the space etc etc, but at the end of the day it will devolve and is devolving to the same base conversations and the same base topics that garner mass appeal, eyeballs and money. So what.

There is a great book called Animal Farm which i think a lot of people have either been told what to believe about it or have not read it. I have spoken to a few people and they usually say oh its about communism or socialism etc. Personally i think it is about 2 things: human dynamics in a regime change (revolutionary) and in authoritarianism. orwell himself might say that it is about communism etc but that is purely recency bias, most regime changes and power vacuums follow the same pattern so it is not surprising communism would too. After all if there is a violent disturbance, aren't the most violent or the ones with the most capacity for violence in volume terms most likely to win? Can get bogged down in linguistics and semantics and definitions all day but at its core that is what the gist is. There is a pig involved named squealer who is one of the most fascinating characters to me because he represents so many people but also contexts. He is basically the pig propagandist, and pumps the pig party line whenever it needs pumping and regularly speaks to the other animals at their level reassuring them and assuaging their doubts, essentially the buffer between the new owners and the workers. How many people who are touting a narrative of some description are squealers? Constantly reinforcing the line whatever it may be and then joining other squealers to speak to the target audience at their level. Most notable example in my head is Tucker Carlson of course, i do not mean to call names but it is so blatant it made me laugh when i thought of the link between the two, man is worth hundreds of millions of dollars, worked for corporate news for decades and now all of a sudden he is a country bumpkin/working man who endorses trump because murica and family (tax cuts). The man is the definition of a squealer - he will say the trump line and the free speech line and the new media line regardless of what it means, because that is who butters his bread. He will also carefully construct criticisms on non important things often from the past so as to keep up appearances of representing the people - exactly like squealer. But what is the context - traditional media giving way to new media and new media turning into traditional media. Pigs getting rid of humans and pigs becoming humans. You can think of the squealers out there in your own lives either offline or online - please tell me about them because they are fascinating people. Anyway, i have alot more to say on the change of context we are going through, i think media is just one tiny aspect of it.

How does this all tie in: the sophists and squealers appear at the height or the ascent of some sort of organisation or development or movement. People to convince you and to persuade you but also to reassure you and 'inform' you. I believe that we are watching the reconsolidation of media via alternative sources but at the end of the day it will be absolutely no different in intent or in influence. Audiences will convene at their 'local digital hub', a sophist will appear and tote whatever the line is, you will digest it because you are busy and this person is an expert in blabla, the host will reinforce the line via other guests and other appearances and the squealers will help explain the line, no different to anything we see on ' mainstream' media now. Headlines, segments, opinion pieces. Not yet, but once the transfer is complete, once the regime is complete, these revolutionary sophists and swine squealers will begin walking on two legs and accepting rather large sums of money in return for a 'quick commercial break'. I mean they've already started, why would it not continue. It will be as bad as television on any streaming platform you enjoy. The commercial breaks will need to be optimised and standardised and then boom you will just have another television but on your phone now. Unavoidable in some ways.

This is possible via technology and a sophist mentality/morality which seems to drive most media anyway - truth is relative and is simply the result of persuasion, honesty is not always beneficial and can be avoided if inconvenient. How much fiddling is there going on hmm the old sophistry at work. What are the narratives that are really being pumped across different sources, what do they say and why. It is a global as well as local issue, plenty of tripe and sophistry afoot in the local papers and news as well. These papers are owned by belgian families and all sorts (independent<mediahuis<random families) and big monoliths so who knows what narratives they are spewing in their internal corporate propaganda.

There is a great Machiavelli quote which goes along the lines of 'most men judge by eye rather than hand for all can see the appearance but few can touch the reality', meaning it is much easier to just look or have something explained via third party than it is to go find out what the f@@k is happening. Try be critical of what you listen to wherever it comes from, don't just swallow it placidly and go about your day. You will find your beliefs and mentality changing or morphing if you do not query and question what you are hearing, regardless of source. The sophists are intelligent and they are aware of their impact on public opinion and they are aware that there is power, money and influence up for grabs on the internet - sophists from all sides by the way, old and new, traditional and modern, this is not a slamming of anyone in particular, eyeballs have been given a monetary value now and they all want yours. Look up 'the attention economy'. You are all intelligent readers regardless, so you are probably already aware of this. I am an ignorant mutt and i constantly fall into a placid hole of just accepting what i am hearing without having a bit of mental rigour and saying hold up wtf was that.

Anyway, let me know what you think. Again, this is probably very basic and everyone already knows this, but I am a paranoid one and i cannot shake the feeling that there is some transfer of power going on and somehow the watcher/listener is the one that will be fucked in the ass in the end and be left with that same shitty feeling of swallowing absolute tripe just because you happened to enjoy a piece of content/a show/a film/ a song for christsake at one time . Or am I a sophist perhaps?

If you read this far fair play. Please inform me of your opinion in your most persuasive sophisty way.