Headlines are Already Mind Control
So why not replace them with something better? Seriously, not that hard.
A few years ago, a Tesla engineer made a decision to display certain text on a screen in the Model 3 at a 13pt font. A Department of Transportation worker, after a prompt review, looked at this screen and in order to justify his job and said “Nah, that font should be at a 14.4pt font.” Tesla then said “Sure, whatever. You’re the regulator. We’ll do an over the air software update and next time they start their car the font size will be changed.
So what happened next?
A reporter got hold of the story and wrote it all out.
Then the reporter gave that story to an editor and that editor said “I will write a truthful, factual, honest headline that would give someone a very solid understanding of this story even if they didn’t read the whole article. I am a person of deep integrity and it is my duty to guide people toward the truth in all things, wherever that leads.”
Nah, just joking.
They asked, “How am I going to stir up enough worry, panic, or concern to get someone to click on my article? What’s the sexiest way I can sell a font size change? Also, I don’t particularly like Elon Musk so is there a way I can make this sound like he did something really shitty to his customers?”
Tesla recalls 2.2 million cars
And after they wrapped it all up in their own agenda they published it for your view. And you just kinda… accepted it. The plural, royal you. The body politic you. You might be a news junkie like me and know “well, this happens a lot and they always frame the story as a recall even though a common person would think that meant there was some massive financial hit to the company and Tesla was really bad.”
In the age of print you had no choice but to accept that this was the reality under which you lived. If you were Elon Musk you had no other choice. But this is not the age of print. This is the digital age and now, yes, you do have a goddamn choice. If somebody is just out there lying, you could filter these things so you never even see the bad headline and that almost nobody else does either.
So you create a browser extension, or an iPhone app after you beg Tim Cook for permission, that has a look-up table and when one of these bullshit headlines is queued up to load it gets swapped out with “Tesla is changing the font on certain screens from 13pt to 14.4pt in an over the air software update*” where the * denotes that the headline was changed from something deceitful and you can click on it or hover to see the original headline. Or it’s a different color. Whatever. The point is, nothing is hidden, nobody is trying to get one over on you, and there’s finally some force that can stand in the way and create meaningful every day consequences for bullshit.
So who writes the new headline? How does the change get made to the look up table? There’s something I call a Trust Index running in the background. In the same way you follow accounts on substack or X or wherever, you follow certain journalists who do these kinds of things on your behalf. You participate, or not, in a review process so nobody can just go off and their own and make these changes. There’s reputation scoring so people can act with the benefit of the doubt. Different people belong to different groups within that system and there’s cross-group scoring, similar to Community Notes, that determines which headline becomes the one that is displayed to normie people who don’t spend all their time participating in this system.
At first, as a sheer display of power, you could take a crawl of major news sites every day, or a few times a day, feed them into ChatGPT, and have it spit out summarized headlines for you to automate the look-up table updates. I don’t like that, but you could do it and have it run in the background as a utility for places that are basically so dishonest it would take forever for an honest person to correct all their mistakes. Kind of like the ultimate “stand in the corner” punishment where you don’t even get to annoy someone by making them stand and watch you.
All of this is at our fingertips.
Why don’t we reach out and grab it? Media could be almost impeccably honest, and from there, almost all other problems become easier to solve. In an environment of truth, honest action is rewarded.
Follow me as a show of support and maybe Substack will be more likely to build some of these features.
I don't think your example of the Tesla recall is great for this idea because there isn't anything untruthful or inherently deceitful in the headline "Tesla recalls 2.2 million cars for software recall" or headlines like it. It may be phrased in a way you personally don't appreciate, but nothing about it is inaccurate. It does summarize the idea that a font size update (the need for the recall) was sent over the air (which is a recall) for 2.2 million Tesla vehicles.