The propaganda effects of repetition

In 1976, as a junior in college, I decided to try vegetarianism, thinking I could save money. A classmate suggested I buy Frances Moore Lappe's Diet for a Small Planet as a guide. In an introductory chapter, she said that relentless advertising by the beef industry, from the 1940's onward, had hoodwinked Americans into believing that a daily dose of animal protein was essential to anyone's health; whereas Indians, for example, have thrived for millenia without it.

I was skeptical, even though I can recall some of their slogans: "Beef: Real food for real people." "Beef: It's what's for dinner." But could mere advertising really have such effects?

For years, I have been irritated with the reels FaceBook insists on posting on my timeline. Different kinds come in waves. First, it was all these clips from the occultist fraud Billy Carson, posted from dozens of different platforms, and I must have blocked dozens of different platforms before I finally got rid of him. Then it was all these shorts, again from dozens of different platforms, about night life on the street in a Thai red light district, the Walking Street in Pattaya. The joint relies so much on tourism, that all the signs are in English.

Most recently, this week, the clips have all been Roman Catholics bashing Protestantism or vice versa.

In May 2025, the overwhelming majority of the reels were, it took me a long time to find out, "episodes" from "vertical dramas." These are low-budget movies divided into 3-5 minute "episodes" that they mean you to watch on your phone. Ideally, you'll subscribe to a site like goodshort.com, and pay perhaps $0.75 to watch each episode. There may be 20 or more "episodes" to a movie.

Well, if one episode that I watched piqued my curiosity, not knowing how it all worked, I found myself in a mad scramble to find and watch the others. In the course of which, I might wind up watching one particular episode dozens of times. Which is the rest of this story.

Turns out almost all these "movies" came from a single source, Journey Entertainment. It has no website. The names of the producers, writers, and directors were all Chinese; so, these were esstentially Chinese stories set in the United States and played by caucasian actors. I began to wonder what Chinese values or cultural features might appear without American viewers' ken.

The most common motif is of a group of people standiing in a circle hurling baseless insults at one individual, mainly calling her an imposter who cannot possibly be as rich as she pretends. The next "episode" is simply the same people doing the same thing at a different location. In the end, the supposed imposter is revealed to be the richest and most powerful of them all.

In Don't Mess with the Lady Billionaire, Juliet Marsh has just returned after living abroad for seven years. What exactly she was doing in those seven years, we're never told, though one person after another says she was "selling herself." On her way to reunite with her boyfriend, Charles Hughes, she literally bumps into Tristan Griffith, CEO of the Griffith Group, one of the most powerful business enterprises on the west coast.

Charles is the most sought-after AI engineer in the nation. Juliet had been covertly funding his research the whole time she was abroad, and she just pulled strings to get him hired by the Griffith Group. But now, when she does meet him moments later, he summarily dumps her: with his newfound status, she means nothing; he has bigger fish to fry; he means to romance the president of the Rose Corporation, the richest woman in town. And his mother, standing by, nods in approval.

Tristan is still standing outside, and she goes out and accepts his marriage proposal.

That night there is a party to celebrate Charles' on-boarding with the Griffith Group. Juliet attends. Tristan's mother harangues him repeatedly that he should dump Juliet and return to his former fiancee, Belle, because she's the richest woman on the west side of town.

That's the episode I saw again and again and again.

Now, throughout the movie, people refer again and again to "the president of the Rose Corporation," in awe, in exactly those words. Somehow no one knows this person's name. In the upshot, in the end, she will be revealed to be Juliet herself.

So, in these folks' world, one's wealth is one's worth.

Having seen this so many times, I began to wonder if that's really how the Chinese see things, or how the rich see things, or how it really is in real life.

And so I became aware of the propaganda effects of repetition.