The depressing reality is you can't, hence why avoidance is necessary. It's not possible to watch any media and not be effected by it in some way. What people tend not to get about propaganda is that it works even if you know it's propaganda.

quite simply, meditation. But sure there are many types of it, and while putting it like this it seems 'simple' it's also very difficult.

more specifically, it all stems from the practice of self-observing how you react to something "virtually", without getting carried away by it.

Doing this for any stimuli, good, bad, scary, exciting, is what it's all about, that way you can notice yourself getting carried away, and instead of going with it, you observe it pass by you.

But this is a practical discipline, you gotta keep doing it until you get good at it and so on...

That is a good method, another is actually studying the methods of advertising. The methods they have now are not much better than what they had 50 years ago. The only big differences are volume, intrusiveness, and rate. All of those have increased tremendously in the past few years. But learn about anchoring, A/B choice, timed choice, and so on. Helps quite a bit.

So being conscious that most forms of video media are trying to sell you something. Nothing is on that screen/audio unless someone put it there. Cynical but there are so many different ways to advertise. One cute one I can not unsee is product placement. Ghostbusters was my first time seeing it. The pop can in the fridge. Always at the right angle to see the label. The funniest one was in a movie called Cobra. He stops in the middle of a scene to drink a beer, in front of all the signage. It was literally a commercial right in the middle of the movie and 'fit' the scene.

One thing I have noticed after removing massive amounts of advertising in my life is that what does get through is much more effective. So you have to be very diligent in not being quick to buy anything. Buying something could be an idea or item. I also usually use a timeout method. Basically I set the 'thing' to the side and revisit it a few days later. It removes most of the urgency that most advertising tries to create.

I agree with most of your points but I strongly disagree here:

> The methods they have now are not much better than what they had 50 years ago.

The methods are much, much more refined and quite a bit better. You are being sold to and you may not realize it. Everything you interact with on social media (including reddit) has a good chance of being part of an advertising funnel. Even reviews and unboxings are usually advertisements.

One of the best new tactics is ragebait - when someone talks about how bad/evil something is. This is almost always a lead up to a covert sales pitch.

Marketing is everywhere and it has gotten much, much better in the last 50 years.

Fair point. However, if you read the literature of the time. You will see the exact same methods. The missing bit they could not do was mass targeting. It just was not feasible to do. They knew very well how to do it though. One on one sales where it was more feasible to do and more of what you see today. It is not refined per se, but more simpler to do. My father sold life insurance for years. One summer I was bored and took the advert classes on how to sell (mid 70s). It is all very familiar to what is done today.

Ragebait is not really new. You can see the exact same methods used in 'yellow journalism'. That is not a new term.

You can also read old magazines and see 'reviews'. When they are little more than thinly veiled adverts for that thing. Take the show 'computer chronicles'. Neat show, showed off tons of tech. But it was one giant advert for whatever they were showing off that week.

The only real big change is volume and cost of targeting has dropped to near 0. I could give that realtime A/B testing of campaigns is new.

>The methods are much, much more refined and quite a bit better. You are being sold to and you may not realize it. Everything you interact with on social media (including reddit) has a good chance of being part of an advertising funnel. Even reviews and unboxings are usually advertisements.

100% concur with this. Conventional advertising may have not changed much but conventional advertising is now a much smaller proportion of marketing than it ever was.