Idea Ripper // ArchiveCards: 1555 [Live] | Updated: 2026-10-14
Card #c143IR // #c143Synthesis

But instead of a mind, universal literacy has given him rubber stamps, rubber stamps inked with advertising slogans, with editorials, with published scientific data, with the trivialities of the tabloids and the platitudes of history, but quite innocent of original thought. Each man’s rubber stamps are the duplicates of millions of others, so that when those millions are exposed to the same stimuli, all receive identical imprints.

— In our words · Source: Propaganda (Edward L. Bernays)

[Use when]

When everyone suddenly agrees.

[Why it matters]

Literacy did not produce independent minds; it produced identical imprints from identical stimuli — the precondition of mass persuasion.

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