Speaker 1: If stupidity is truly a societal problem, why does it
Speaker 1: consistently make so many people rich and powerful? Why do
Speaker 1: we pay for it every single day with our time,
Speaker 1: our money, and our attention. Look around your feed. Reality shows, outrage, clips,
Speaker 1: and manufactured scandals dominate the conversation and the headlines. The
Speaker 1: loudest voices gain followers, brand deals, influence status, and predictable
Speaker 1: income streams from our distracted attention. You might assume this
Speaker 1: is a generational failure or an accident of technology and
Speaker 1: changing cultural taste. But this is not random, and it
Speaker 1: is not harmless. It is a carefully built commercial industry.
Speaker 1: Ignorance is produced, packaged, and marketed as consumable entertainment, just
Speaker 1: like any other product on a shelf. Companies, platforms, advertisers,
Speaker 1: and political operators refine what hook's attention and what keeps
Speaker 1: viewers endlessly scrolling. Content that shocks, flatters, simplifies, or confirms
Speaker 1: bias consistently outperforms nuanced difficult truth. In distribution and monetization,
Speaker 1: the economic logic is ruthless, cheap to produce, fast to spread,
Speaker 1: and enormously profitable to monetize its scale. Every click, like,
Speaker 1: and share converts into data, attention metrics, and marketable inventory
Speaker 1: sold to advertisers and platforms. Algorithms learn what triggers our emotions,
Speaker 1: then amplify the easiest, most addictive stimuli for maximum engagement
Speaker 1: and revenue. When outrage becomes currency, sensationalism is rewarded and
Speaker 1: careful thought is systematically sidelined, mocked, and dismissed as elitist.
Speaker 1: This is not merely culture breaking down. This is an
Speaker 1: attention economy optimized explicitly to monetize distracts and emotion, And
Speaker 1: once ignorance becomes the most reliable product, strategies evolve to
Speaker 1: reproduce it at greater volume and lower cost. Smart people
Speaker 1: begin performing simplicity because the payoff is real. Even subtle
Speaker 1: wisdom is packaged as entertainment. The result is a feedback loop.
Speaker 1: Attention funds production, production trains taste, and taste demands ever cheaper,
Speaker 1: louder content. We are not merely passive consumers here. We
Speaker 1: are investors funding the next round of our own collective distraction.
Speaker 1: So ask yourself this single urgent question, who benefits most
Speaker 1: when intelligence is replaced by spectacle and sales? When you
Speaker 1: see the business model behind the spectacle. Culture stops looking
Speaker 1: accidental and starts looking deliberately engineered for profit and outright
Speaker 1: corporate control. Ignorance today is not just an unfortunate side
Speaker 1: effect of modern life. It has become an intentional output
Speaker 1: of the systems that shape culture. For decades, we were
Speaker 1: told that rising literacy and technology would create a more
Speaker 1: informed public. But the opposite happened. Information became cheap, and
Speaker 1: so did the thinking behind it. The problem is not
Speaker 1: that new generations are less intelligent. The problem is that
Speaker 1: intelligence is no longer the profitable choice for those who
Speaker 1: control what we see. Truth is expensive, It takes time
Speaker 1: to discover, time to explain, and effort to understand. Complexity
Speaker 1: cannot be compressed into ten seconds of entertainment without losing
Speaker 1: its power. Ignorance, on the other hand, is cheap. It
Speaker 1: is emotional, fast, and simple enough to digest while you
Speaker 1: are half distracted. It travels easily because it demands nothing
Speaker 1: of the audience except a reaction. The modern media machine
Speaker 1: learned this lesson. Early platforms do not ask whether something
Speaker 1: is true, only whether it is clickable. Clicks become data,
Speaker 1: Data becomes revenue, and revenue becomes the incentive to produce
Speaker 1: more of the same. The result is a factory model
Speaker 1: of culture. Attention goes in at one end and profitable
Speaker 1: stupidity comes out at the other. You can see this everywhere.
Speaker 1: News cycles repeat the same outrage stories with minimal facts
Speaker 1: because outrage keeps you glued to the screen. Social feeds
Speaker 1: amplify drama, conflict, and humiliation because nothing drives engagement like
Speaker 1: emotional spikes. Even education has been infected. Instead of teaching
Speaker 1: how to think, many institutions now reward memorization of slogans
Speaker 1: and fashionable opinions. Graduates are pushed to fit narratives, not
Speaker 1: to challenge them. This is why ignorance feels contagious. It
Speaker 1: is not spreading randomly, It is being mass produced, like
Speaker 1: fast foods food for the mind. Fast food is not
Speaker 1: cheaper because it is better. It is cheaper because it
Speaker 1: is stripped of substance, engineered to hit pleasure centers, and
Speaker 1: designed for speed. Shallow content works the same way. The
Speaker 1: system rewards what is scalable, and ignorance, unlike truth, can
Speaker 1: be scaled to billions instantly without the cost of careful
Speaker 1: research or real accountability. So when you wonder why every
Speaker 1: platform looks the same full of noise and outrage. Remember this,
Speaker 1: it is not because humanity suddenly lost its intelligence. It
Speaker 1: is because humanity discovered that ignorance could be monetized. And
Speaker 1: in a world that chases growth at all costs, anything
Speaker 1: that can be monetized will be mass produced. That is
Speaker 1: why we live in an age where stupidity is not
Speaker 1: simply tolerated, it is celebrated, promoted, and turned into a commodity.
Speaker 1: Because in this economy, ignorance is not just a problem
Speaker 1: to fix. It is the product that keeps the entire
Speaker 1: machine running. If ignorance is a product, then we have
Speaker 1: to ask the next question, who designed this product and
Speaker 1: who figured out how to sell it at scale. To
Speaker 1: answer that, we need to talk about Edward Burnei's, the
Speaker 1: man many call the father of modern public relations. Burnet's
Speaker 1: was not just a marketer. He was a strategist, a
Speaker 1: social engineer, and the first person to weaponize psychology for
Speaker 1: mass persuasion. He was the nephew of Sigmund Freud, the
Speaker 1: man who pioneered the idea that human behavior is driven
Speaker 1: by unconscious desires. Burnez took those ideas and applied them
Speaker 1: not in therapy, but in advertising and politics. He believed
Speaker 1: that people do not make rational decisions. They are guided
Speaker 1: by emotion, habit, and the need to belong. This insight
Speaker 1: was radical. Before Burne's advertising simply showed you the product
Speaker 1: and its features. After Burne's advertising sold you a dream,
Speaker 1: a status, symbol, an identity. One of his most famous
Speaker 1: campaigns was called the Torches of Freedom. At the time,
Speaker 1: smoking in public was considered taboo for women. Cigarette companies
Speaker 1: wanted to double their market by including women, but social
Speaker 1: norms were in the way. Burnet's hired young women to
Speaker 1: march in the New York City Easter Parade holding cigarettes,
Speaker 1: calling them torches of freedom. He framed smoking as an
Speaker 1: act of rebellion, a statement of independence, a symbol of
Speaker 1: female liberation. The media covered the event, and suddenly cigarettes
Speaker 1: were no longer just tobacco. They were a political statement.
Speaker 1: Sales skyrocketed. Burnet's had proved something shocking. You do not
Speaker 1: sell the product itself, sell what it means. And if
Speaker 1: you can attach meaning to almost anything, you can get
Speaker 1: the public to desire it. This was not limited to cigarettes.
Speaker 1: Burnets worked with politicians, corporations, and even governments to shape
Speaker 1: public opinion. He believed that the masses needed to be guided, managed,
Speaker 1: and sometimes manipulated for society to function. In his own words,
Speaker 1: he described this as the engineering of consent. He saw
Speaker 1: democracy as a system where elites had to quietly lead
Speaker 1: the public by shaping what they think they want. This
Speaker 1: is where the business of ignorance truly begins, because if
Speaker 1: you can sell products by attaching them to powerful emotions,
Speaker 1: you can also sell ideas. You can sell war as patriotism,
Speaker 1: conformity as progress, distraction as entertainment. Burnet's did not invent
Speaker 1: human irrationality. He simply learned how to exploit it systematically.
Speaker 1: He understood that people do not want pure truth. They
Speaker 1: want a story that flatters them, a story that feels good,
Speaker 1: a story that reduces complexity. This discovery changed the twentieth century.
Speaker 1: Every major advertising campaign, every public relations stunt, every viral
Speaker 1: political message is built on this foundation, and the technology
Speaker 1: we use today has turned Burnet's insights into an automated machine.
Speaker 1: Algorithms test millions of variations, discover what makes you react,
Speaker 1: and deliver more of it faster than any human could plan.
Speaker 1: In other words, the business of ignorance did not just
Speaker 1: happen it was designed, refined, and perfected over a century
Speaker 1: of learning how to trigger human emotion. Burnet's proved that
Speaker 1: people will line up to buy the very thing that
Speaker 1: keeps them distracted if you package it with meaning. And
Speaker 1: once you realize this, you can never look at a
Speaker 1: viral trend the same way again, because behind every meme,
Speaker 1: every outrage clip, every carefully crafted controversy, there is a
Speaker 1: business model, and that business model depends on you staying reactive, emotional,
Speaker 1: and just distracted enough to keep consuming. Once you understand
Speaker 1: that ignorance is a product, the next step is following
Speaker 1: the money, because every product has a market, and every
Speaker 1: market has winners who profit when you buy media companies
Speaker 1: learned long ago that they are not in the business
Speaker 1: of informing you. They are in the business of capturing
Speaker 1: your attention and selling it to the highest bidder. Think
Speaker 1: about the typical news cycle. A shocking story breaks, Details
Speaker 1: are scarce, but coverage begins immediately. Every channel repeats the
Speaker 1: same speculation because staying first matters more than staying accurate.
Speaker 1: Why Because attention spikes translate directly into ad revenue. Each
Speaker 1: viewer equals a data point, a metric, a number, advertisers
Speaker 1: will pay for social media took this logic and put
Speaker 1: it on steroids. Your clicks, likes, shares, and comments are
Speaker 1: constantly measured, refined, and fed into algorithms that optimize for engagement.
Speaker 1: Engagement means profit. The longer you stay angry, amused, or addicted,
Speaker 1: the more ads you see, and the more data is harvested.
Speaker 1: And here is the uncomfortable truth. The cheapest content to
Speaker 1: produce is often the most profitable because it spreads widely
Speaker 1: with almost no cost. Outrage videos, celebrity scandals, and fake
Speaker 1: controversies are cheap to make and endlessly recyclable. They require
Speaker 1: no expensive research teams, no fact checking, no deep investigation,
Speaker 1: just emotion, packaging and distribution. This is why outrage pays.
Speaker 1: It is a perfect business model, low production cost, high
Speaker 1: emotional response, maximum engagement, and exponential reach. Even politics now
Speaker 1: runs on this economy. Campaigns no longer need to win debates.
Speaker 1: They just need to dominate the conversation, hijack attention, and
Speaker 1: polarize voters. The formula is brutally simple. Ignorance is cheaper
Speaker 1: to produce, faster to spread, and easier to monetize than wisdom.
Speaker 1: And because capital flows where profit margins are highest, the
Speaker 1: market naturally favors the content that makes us dumber. This
Speaker 1: is not ideology, this is economics. Every click is a
Speaker 1: tiny financial transaction, a vote for what gets produced tomorrow.
Speaker 1: The more you engage with noise, the more noise the
Speaker 1: system will create. And when ignorance becomes the most lucrative commodity,
Speaker 1: the smartest players are those who can manufacture it at scale.
Speaker 1: So the next time you wonder why everything feels louder, dumber,
Speaker 1: and more extreme, follow the incentive. The system is simply
Speaker 1: doing what it was built to do, turn your attention
Speaker 1: into profit, no matter the cost to society. Once ignorance
Speaker 1: becomes profitable, the machine does not simply keep producing it.
Speaker 1: It starts optimizing it. The goal shifts from informing the
Speaker 1: public to maximizing engagement at any cost. This is where
Speaker 1: the feedback loop begins. The more outrageous the content, the
Speaker 1: more clicks it gets, and the more similar content gets
Speaker 1: produced tomorrow. Creators learn quickly what performs best. If drama
Speaker 1: gets rewarded with views, they make more drama. If outrage
Speaker 1: earns money, they turn every topic into outrage. Even intelligent
Speaker 1: people eventually adapt when being thoughtful is ignored, but being
Speaker 1: provocative goes viral. They choose provocation because survival depends on visibility.
Speaker 1: The audience adapts too. After consuming constant stimulation, our attention
Speaker 1: spans shrink. Subtlety feels boring, nuance feels like work. We
Speaker 1: demand faster, louder, simpler content. This is the trap. The
Speaker 1: system produces ignorance because it sells, and we keep buying
Speaker 1: it because it is addictive and effortless, and every click
Speaker 1: we make teaches the algorithm to give us more of
Speaker 1: what keeps us hooked. The result is a culture caught
Speaker 1: in a cycle of self reinforcement. The shallower the content,
Speaker 1: the stronger the engagement. The stronger the engagement, the more
Speaker 1: shallow content gets produced, and over time, stupidity is no
Speaker 1: longer just something we tolerate. It becomes a career path,
Speaker 1: a strategy for fame, influence, and power. In this loop,
Speaker 1: the smartest strategy is to act the dumbest, because that
Speaker 1: is what the market rewards. When ignorance becomes a business model,
Speaker 1: it does not just shape what we watch. It begins
Speaker 1: to shape what we believe, how we vote, and what
Speaker 1: we value as a culture. Public discourse stops being about
Speaker 1: truth and becomes about entertainment. Political debates turn into shouting
Speaker 1: matches designed for television ratings, not solutions. Important issues are
Speaker 1: reduced to hashtags and memes, stripped of complexity until they
Speaker 1: fit inside a trending topic. Real problems remain unsolved, but
Speaker 1: the spectacle keeps us distracted enough to forget. When this
Speaker 1: happens long enough, smart people stop trying to contribute. They
Speaker 1: withdraw from public life because depth no longer pays. Why
Speaker 1: waste time building thoughtful arguments when noise wins every time.
Speaker 1: The result is a society led by the loudest voices,
Speaker 1: not the wisest minds. Policies are made for clicks, not
Speaker 1: for the long term health of the nation, and when
Speaker 1: truth becomes unprofitable, it disappears from the marketplace altogether. Lies
Speaker 1: are cheaper, outrage is faster, Ignorance is easier to sell,
Speaker 1: so that is what dominates the feed. This is the
Speaker 1: real danger. When ignorance pays better than wisdom, society stops
Speaker 1: producing wisdom. The next generation grows up thinking this is normal.
Speaker 1: What you get is not a free marketplace of ideas.
Speaker 1: You get an idiot factory, an economy that mass produces
Speaker 1: distraction and confusion at industrial scale, and the longer this
Speaker 1: machine runs, the harder it becomes to remember what an
Speaker 1: informed culture even looked like. The most important thing to
Speaker 1: understand is this You are not just a victim of
Speaker 1: this system. You are also the fuel that keeps it running,
Speaker 1: and that means you have the power to take the
Speaker 1: fuel away. Step one is awareness. You have to see
Speaker 1: your attention as a form of currency, because that is
Speaker 1: exactly what it has become. Every view, every click, every
Speaker 1: comment is a vote for the type of content that
Speaker 1: gets created next. So take an audit of your attention.
Speaker 1: Look at the shows, channels, and accounts that take your
Speaker 1: time every day. Ask yourself, honestly, do they make you wiser, calmer, stronger,
Speaker 1: or just more outraged and distracted. Once you see where
Speaker 1: the leaks are, start cutting them off. Unfollow the accounts
Speaker 1: that thrive on drama. Mute the topics that are engineered
Speaker 1: to make you angry, turn off notifications that demand your
Speaker 1: constant reaction. This is not about disconnecting from the world.
Speaker 1: It is about choosing carefully what you allow to shape
Speaker 1: your thoughts. It is about regaining the ability to decide
Speaker 1: what deserves your focus. Step two is rewarding depth. When
Speaker 1: you find content that challenges you, that forces you to think,
Speaker 1: support it, leave a comment, share it with a friend,
Speaker 1: subscribe so the algorithm knows this is what you want
Speaker 1: more of. Platforms do not care about good or bad.
Speaker 1: They care about engagement. When you engage with something meaningful,
Speaker 1: you signal that there is a market for it. Enough
Speaker 1: people doing this can shift what gets promoted in your feed.
Speaker 1: Step three is to become a producer, not just a consumer.
Speaker 1: You do not need millions of followers. You just need
Speaker 1: to share one thoughtful idea with the people around you.
Speaker 1: Start a conversation at dinner, send a long form article
Speaker 1: to a friend, ask real questions instead of sharing the
Speaker 1: latest outrage clip. Small actions like this add up every
Speaker 1: person who refuses to consume cheap ignorance makes it slightly
Speaker 1: less profitable to produce. When enough people do this, the
Speaker 1: market starts to notice, because every click you make is
Speaker 1: not just entertainment. It is a signal. It is telling
Speaker 1: someone somewhere make more of this. So stop voting for ignorance,
Speaker 1: start voting for wisdom. So here is where everything comes
Speaker 1: full circle. Ignorance is not just something that happens to us.
Speaker 1: It is something we keep paying for. Every click, every scroll,
Speaker 1: every moment of attention is part of a transaction that
Speaker 1: decides what tomorrow's culture will look like. If we keep
Speaker 1: spending on distraction, distraction will keep getting cheaper, louder, and
Speaker 1: harder to escape. But the opposite is also true. When
Speaker 1: we stop rewarding ignorance, we starve the system that profits
Speaker 1: from it, and slowly the market begins to shift towards
Speaker 1: something healthier. The question is simple, but not easy. What
Speaker 1: are you willing to stop consuming starting today? What noise
Speaker 1: will you cut out to make room for something that
Speaker 1: actually strengthens you. Your attention is not free. It is
Speaker 1: the most valuable thing you own. Spend it like it matters,
Speaker 1: because the day we refuse to buy ignorance is the
Speaker 1: day we force this machine to build something worth paying for.