I Remember so It Has to Be True
Social media is an effective brainwashing tool
Memory is like a broken vase — when we glue the pieces back together it doesn’t hold water.
To stop the leaks, we improvise and patch it with scraps of information that align with our values and beliefs. We’re unaware our brain is producing a subtle distortion of the truth.
How does this happen?
After all, we’re not outrageous liars. (There are exceptions!)
How is it we’re able to distort events and sometimes even create new ones? Misinformation taps into that ability, interfering with what we know, to create a new reality.
How we store memory
Our brains are more complex than a computer with storage.
You don’t just click Save and there it sits in a folder, ready to retrieve whenever you wish.
There are four steps: encode, consolidate, store and retrieve.
Our memory is messy!
As the memory enters, our neurons encode the bits of information and break them down into temporal, spatial, and emotional aspects — each of which are stored in a different area of our brain that specializes in processing and storing that kind of material.
Each time we retrieve the memory, our neurons withdraw bits from the storage areas and encode again — a place, a mood, a time.
But when we glue the broken vase, it’s never the same as the original.
Our brains get clever and fill in the gaps with what we believe to be true, producing a picture that make sense.
What is brainwashing?
The term came into use in the 1950's in describing totalitarian regimes’ methods of behavioral modification techniques.
Edward Hunter, a newspaperman who had covered the rise of fascism in Europe and joined the Office of Strategic Services, forerunner to the CIA, during World War II introduced the concept of brainwashing.
The Korean War had just begun in 1950 when The Miami News published his article “Brainwashing Tactics Force Chinese into Ranks of Communist Party”.
