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Manipulation: Navigating Influence in Politics and Media · All About The Joy

• 0:11
  Carmen Lezeth: Hey, welcome everyone to All About the Joy.
• 0:13
  Carmen Lezeth: This is Carmen Talk, and today I really want to talk a little bit about this word manipulation.
• 0:19
  Carmen Lezeth: I think it's an important one, because I don't think we all realize how much we also manipulate people on a regular basis.
• 0:27
  Carmen Lezeth: Now, I know manipulation has a very negative connotation, but the fact of the matter is it's part of how we function.
• 0:34
  Carmen Lezeth: It's part of how we do things.
• 0:36
  Carmen Lezeth: Okay, let me give you a great example of something that happened at work last week.
• 0:42
  Carmen Lezeth: I have this job where I have to go in and talk to clients and tell them some actual truths that maybe their other team members or other people don't want to necessarily say to them.
• 0:52
  Carmen Lezeth: Right, in a lot of ways, the best part of my job is being able to be the outsider who can come in with no emotions attached to it, because I haven't been there that long and I can just tell them the truth.
• 1:05
  Carmen Lezeth: You need to fire this vendor or that vendor, or you need to add this employee or stuff like that.
• 1:12
  Carmen Lezeth: You know Well, one of the things that's really important is that I have to understand how people can take information and in that sense, I have to be able to choose my words, my arguments and my fights wisely, right?
• 1:27
  Carmen Lezeth: I have one client, for example, who never wants to fire anybody, even if they are doing actual damage to their company, because he has this loyalty.
• 1:38
  Carmen Lezeth: He really cares about people.
• 1:40
  Carmen Lezeth: They've been with him for so long and also, people do this amazing job of just constantly milking him because they know he's a great guy, right?
• 1:49
  Carmen Lezeth: Well, I've had to let go of people who are not doing their jobs.
• 1:56
  Carmen Lezeth: I've done it in plenty of other places and one of the interesting things is that at some point I can't fight with people.
• 2:03
  Carmen Lezeth: I have to say you know what?
• 2:04
  Carmen Lezeth: This is my recommendation.
• 2:13
  Carmen Lezeth: You have to do whatever it is you need to do, because I'm telling you this is the answer.
• 2:15
  Carmen Lezeth: So one of the things that ends up happening, right, is he fights back with me and I'm like, hey, I don't care, I don't care what you do, it's your money.
• 2:23
  Carmen Lezeth: If you want to take a million dollars and burn it in the middle of the street, that's your choice.
• 2:28
  Carmen Lezeth: As long as I get paid, then that is my kind of motto.
• 2:31
  Carmen Lezeth: I'm here to give you information, I've given you evidence to that information, and whatever you choose to do with that afterwards is your choice, but I'm not going to deal with it anymore.
• 2:41
  Carmen Lezeth: You know what I mean.
• 2:42
  Carmen Lezeth: I'm just going to move on.
• 2:44
  Carmen Lezeth: And that's what's happened again this past week.
• 2:46
  Carmen Lezeth: I've had to tell them this is not working, and here's why it's not working.
• 2:50
  Carmen Lezeth: You know it's not working.
• 2:51
  Carmen Lezeth: We've been talking about this for a year.
• 2:53
  Carmen Lezeth: Here is the final straw, and what happened was is he started arguing with me about something else?
• 3:01
  Carmen Lezeth: Because the way in which he works is that he wants to change a subject and then most people who have worked with him for a long time will turn around and just start answering those other questions that now he's asking that have nothing to do with the original subject at hand, which is we need to fire this person.
• 3:19
  Carmen Lezeth: And I'm like no, we need to keep talking about this.
• 3:22
  Carmen Lezeth: No, I'm not going to answer that.
• 3:24
  Carmen Lezeth: And it becomes like this fiery fighting match and, honestly, it's one of the reasons why I need to let go of this client at some point, because it's driving me up a wall.
• 3:34
  Carmen Lezeth: My point is is that once I learn how he has to argue with me and I have to keep fighting with him for him to hear what I have to say, like I need him to acknowledge it, then I can let it go.
• 3:47
  Carmen Lezeth: So he then answered the question and I could tell he doesn't want to fire this person and I said you know what, as long as you got it, it's fine, I don't care.
• 3:56
  Carmen Lezeth: And I moved on to the next thing because I understood.
• 4:00
  Carmen Lezeth: Now that's how he understands things, right.
• 4:04
  Carmen Lezeth: So why am I calling it a manipulation?
• 4:06
  Carmen Lezeth: Because I knew that's what was going to happen.
• 4:09
  Carmen Lezeth: I now know that's how he works.
• 4:12
  Carmen Lezeth: It's like one of my other clients.
• 4:14
  Carmen Lezeth: I'll just say that their spouse will always ask for X amount of dollars and they go through all of the channels through the bookkeeper, through the CPA, whatever and at the end of the day those people will come to me and be like I don't want to ask.
• 4:30
  Carmen Lezeth: I don't want to ask Because the wife is using manipulation of the staff people in order not to confront her husband, right?
• 4:40
  Carmen Lezeth: So I have to intervene and I have to say you know what?
• 4:43
  Carmen Lezeth: It's inappropriate for you to involve three or four staff members who don't want to do this because you can't have a conversation with your husband.
• 4:52
  Carmen Lezeth: You can't do that.
• 4:54
  Carmen Lezeth: It's not fair, right?
• 4:55
  Carmen Lezeth: So I'm kind of breaking the mold there.
• 5:05
  Carmen Lezeth: The irony was is then I said you know what?
• 5:06
  Carmen Lezeth: I'm going to set up a conversation with the two of you so that you can have a conversation and I'll be in on the meeting, because I understand why you need what you need and I understand his need to be angry and upset about it every single time.
• 5:16
  Carmen Lezeth: So why don't we just do that?
• 5:17
  Carmen Lezeth: And then, all of a sudden, the spouse was like no, no, no, no, oh God, no, carmen, I'm so sorry.
• 5:24
  Carmen Lezeth: You know what.
• 5:25
  Carmen Lezeth: I will talk to him when he gets home.
• 5:33
  Carmen Lezeth: So that was a form of manipulation on my part, because I knew that the minute I said you know what?
• 5:35
  Carmen Lezeth: I'm happy to intervene and be like a mediator between the two of you, whatever, but what I need to stop happening is that you're involving all of the staff members in this, and the anxiety that they're having is crazy.
• 5:47
  Carmen Lezeth: So I'm giving you examples of manipulation because I think in all of our lives, everyone anyone who's listening to this, all of us have an ability to manipulate other people.
• 5:58
  Carmen Lezeth: I don't necessarily think that's a bad thing.
• 6:00
  Carmen Lezeth: I think the definition of manipulation might be that it is intentional and maybe negative, but I'm using it in a way right now to say we learn how to speak to other people to get what we want or need.
• 6:16
  Carmen Lezeth: We do what we need to do, especially when we learn how other people work.
• 6:22
  Carmen Lezeth: If we're observers of other people, you're going to talk a certain way to your friends and that you hang out with and you go to the club with, or whatever than the way in which you talk to your mom and dad, for example, or the way in which you might talk to a teacher, or the way in which you might talk to a colleague at work.
• 6:43
  Carmen Lezeth: Right, we all have different ways in which we speak to people.
• 6:47
  Carmen Lezeth: Those are also small, nuanced forms of manipulation.
• 6:53
  Carmen Lezeth: We don't talk the same to everyone, and when we want something, we try to think of a way.
• 6:59
  Carmen Lezeth: How can I get this extra money from my mom or my dad so that I can go and buy these sneakers or whatever?
• 7:07
  Carmen Lezeth: It is Okay.
• 7:08
  Carmen Lezeth: So why am I bringing up the idea of manipulation?
• 7:13
  Carmen Lezeth: Because it's so part of our everyday culture and I don't think we realize it.
• 7:20
  Carmen Lezeth: It Back in the 1930s, there was a female director who made quite a few films, but two of them were critically acclaimed and they were technically and artistically spoken of, and also she was a woman.
• 7:39
  Carmen Lezeth: It was in the 1930s.
• 7:41
  Carmen Lezeth: Her name was Lenny Riefenstahl.
• 7:43
  Carmen Lezeth: For those of us who studied film or history, when I say the name, you know exactly who it is.
• 7:49
  Carmen Lezeth: This was a woman in the 1930s who was a master of propaganda films.
• 7:56
  Carmen Lezeth: One of the films is named Triumph of the Will and the other one was Olympia and sadly, because the films were so well done, they were able to manipulate the German people in such a way to have them believe that they were a superior race, that they were a superior breed, if you will, of human beings.
• 8:20
  Carmen Lezeth: Clearly I'm talking about the time during Hitler.
• 8:24
  Carmen Lezeth: It always fascinates me, because I know so many people of German descent or from Germany.
• 8:30
  Carmen Lezeth: It always fascinates me how such good people were so easily manipulated into believing such a thing.
• 8:41
  Carmen Lezeth: And then I started understanding.
• 8:43
  Carmen Lezeth: It's not just the filmmaking, it's the ability to understand who your audience is, or who your boss is, or what your mom and dad need to hear, or what your friends need to know, and hear how you say things in order for me to get what I want, in order for me to get what I want.
• 9:05
  Carmen Lezeth: And it's just next level when it becomes this thing, where we are talking about trying to influence people in such a way to let them know that they are better than other people, that they are superior than other people.
• 9:20
  Carmen Lezeth: It's just the next step, right, it's next level.
• 9:26
  Carmen Lezeth: It's the next level of manipulation, but it's still manipulation, and we are all part of that.
• 9:34
  Carmen Lezeth: We are all easily able to be manipulated.
• 9:40
  Carmen Lezeth: You have to start understanding that Not only do we do it manipulated, you have to start understanding that Not only do we do it, but we are easily manipulated.
• 9:48
  Carmen Lezeth: And the easiest way you can see this is, for example, in social media, the way in which things have changed and how we get information.
• 9:56
  Carmen Lezeth: On the one hand, it's pretty brilliant that we have the ability to get information from all different places, but, in the same respects, we keep getting information from only the places we like that are geared towards what we want to hear, and those people that are in charge of that message and communication and information know what it is we need to hear in order to get what they want from us right?
• 10:32
  Carmen Lezeth: It's just what I was talking about earlier how I'm able to talk to my clients in such a way because I know them so well that I'm able to turn around and do what I need to do to get what I want from them, because I understand how they function.
• 10:48
  Carmen Lezeth: It's the same thing that's happening.
• 10:50
  Carmen Lezeth: It's the same thing that happened in Germany in the 1930s.
• 10:54
  Carmen Lezeth: It's the same thing that happens in social media.
• 10:57
  Carmen Lezeth: It's the same thing that happens in our everyday lives.
• 11:01
  Carmen Lezeth: So why am I so into this and why am I so concerned about it?
• 11:04
  Carmen Lezeth: Lives.
• 11:06
  Carmen Lezeth: So why am I so into this and why am I so concerned about it?
• 11:07
  Carmen Lezeth: First of all, I'm fascinated by human behavior and just human workings of the mind and how we choose to do things.
• 11:15
  Carmen Lezeth: But I'm also fascinated as to why so many people cannot see clearly as to what's going on during this political season.
• 11:26
  Carmen Lezeth: And this isn't to make this all about politics.
• 11:29
  Carmen Lezeth: This is about making us better people who understand manipulation and how to fight against it.
• 11:37
  Carmen Lezeth: Manipulation can take so many different forms and I think that's what's so fascinating about what's happening not only on social media and not just about politics.
• 11:47
  Carmen Lezeth: I'm just using this moment to talk about this, but this is just throughout our entire lives and how the Internet is changing and how artificial intelligence is coming into play and how we are relying more on streaming as opposed to network television, for example.
• 12:05
  Carmen Lezeth: So all of this is part of this process, and let me just say that it takes so much more work to see if something is true than it used to in the past.
• 12:19
  Carmen Lezeth: Okay, so manipulation takes so many forms.
• 12:21
  Carmen Lezeth: One of them is propaganda.
• 12:23
  Carmen Lezeth: The other one is like censorship people using fear as a tactic.
• 12:33
  Carmen Lezeth: Manipulation also comes in this form of otherizing right, so making other people to blame for what's going on in your life, right?
• 12:39
  Carmen Lezeth: So in this example, you can just use something like immigration Somehow immigrants are taking Americans' jobs, and we all know that is absolutely not true.
• 12:50
  Carmen Lezeth: Immigrants are not taking jobs from Americans.
• 12:53
  Carmen Lezeth: Americans don't want to do the jobs that most immigrants will do.
• 12:58
  Carmen Lezeth: That's not even an argument or a discussion.
• 13:01
  Carmen Lezeth: It's just factual.
• 13:05
  Carmen Lezeth: People like to use the word fascism right now, or authoritarian, and I don't think most people know what those things mean.
• 13:14
  Carmen Lezeth: So I'm going to give you some definitions, because this has a lot to do what I'm talking about with manipulation.
• 13:21
  Carmen Lezeth: Okay, so fascism is basically the far right.
• 13:27
  Carmen Lezeth: It's a political ideology, so it's an idea that prioritizes the nation.
• 13:34
  Carmen Lezeth: So what's best for what they think is best for everyone, as opposed to individual rights?
• 13:41
  Carmen Lezeth: Okay, and it's based on, like, cultural terms and ethnic terms.
• 13:46
  Carmen Lezeth: So brown people are bad or Jewish people are bad, but all of white Aryan race people are good, right.
• 13:57
  Carmen Lezeth: So if you think about it as simple and it's not simple, but I mean the whole Hitler thing is a great way to think about it.
• 14:04
  Carmen Lezeth: So fascism is this idea that what's more important is the nation, and it's defined.
• 14:11
  Carmen Lezeth: The nation is defined as a cultural subset of greatness or whatever.
• 14:18
  Carmen Lezeth: Okay, it also means that there's a dictator, so there's somebody in power who has no checks and balances.
• 14:25
  Carmen Lezeth: It has somebody who is never going to let people oppose them, because a dictator never likes people opposing them and anybody who opposes them.
• 14:40
  Carmen Lezeth: They want to turn around and say like no, you're going to go to jail or no, you're going to be reprimanded or you're going to be fined.
• 14:47
  Carmen Lezeth: And so when people say fascism, that's what they're talking about.
• 14:52
  Carmen Lezeth: The manipulation here is having you believe that what they're doing is in your best interest and that it's not fascism, right?
• 15:06
  Carmen Lezeth: No leader ever wants to get up and say that they're doing something that is negative.
• 15:11
  Carmen Lezeth: There's no way anyone's going to get up and be like, oh, I'm being a negative person.
• 15:15
  Carmen Lezeth: No, they're going to keep telling you not only is this the right thing to do because it's in the best interest of us as a nation.
• 15:24
  Carmen Lezeth: But those people, those other ethnic, cultural people that are not like us, that are mean and dirty and whatever it is right Murderers and rapists or whatever, or drug dealers, always making others not like us right, not like the people that they're trying to manipulate and corrupt.
• 15:52
  Carmen Lezeth: It is so important to start understanding that by the time people listen to this podcast, we would have already voted in the United States.
• 16:01
  Carmen Lezeth: But the reason why I'm bringing this up is because, no matter what happens on Tuesday on election day and when we find out who the president is of the United States, I still think we are going to have a horrible time of it trying to get people back into the fold.
• 16:23
  Carmen Lezeth: I'm more concerned that there are so many people who don't understand that they have already been manipulated so badly that they keep excusing, and that's the other part of fascism.
• 16:37
  Carmen Lezeth: You excuse exactly everything you can see in front of you because it doesn't align with what the dictator wants you to believe.
• 16:51
  Carmen Lezeth: So, even if you see it with your own eyes, even if you know it to be true, you dismiss it.
• 16:57
  Carmen Lezeth: So you're being manipulated and you're falling in line with that right, because it's human nature.
• 17:05
  Carmen Lezeth: We want people to be good.
• 17:09
  Carmen Lezeth: We want people to be good and we want people to actually be doing good for us as well.
• 17:15
  Carmen Lezeth: So we can easily fall into that trap, evident on point in front of our faces, in front of our eyes, because that's what they've done.
• 17:36
  Carmen Lezeth: They've manipulated us.
• 17:38
  Carmen Lezeth: That's what Leni Reifenstahl I don't think I'm saying her name correctly, but that's part of what she did with these movies and these campaigns, these propaganda films, to make the German people, who were good and decent people, turn around and believe that other rising Jewish people and people with disabilities and anybody who wasn't like them, that were not blonde and blue-eyed and of whatever they thought was perfection.
• 18:10
  Carmen Lezeth: That's how that was done.
• 18:12
  Carmen Lezeth: Can you even fathom in your head for one moment that anyone would believe such a thing, that they were better than other people?
• 18:22
  Carmen Lezeth: Of course not, because you're a good and decent human being, you know that all of us have our strengths and our weaknesses.
• 18:31
  Carmen Lezeth: And so when we're talking about immigrants that come to this country and to the United States, when we talk about immigrants that come actually to any country, when we put that label on them, what has happened?
• 18:44
  Carmen Lezeth: Instead of it being about people who come from another country and come into the current country.
• 18:51
  Carmen Lezeth: What we've done is we've made the word immigrant a really bad and dirty word and we've made it a really bad and horrible thing to want something better for your country, for your family, for your life.
• 19:03
  Carmen Lezeth: That's what we've done.
• 19:05
  Carmen Lezeth: We've been manipulated into believing anybody who's an immigrant is a bad person, even though 98% of people who live in the United States are not native to this country, so I don't care how far back your lineage goes.
• 19:23
  Carmen Lezeth: Most people came to this country for a better life.
• 19:29
  Carmen Lezeth: That's how this country became established and again I apologize to all Native Americans who live here.
• 19:37
  Carmen Lezeth: I don't even know what to say because that's a whole other story and conversation, and it always breaks my heart when I think back on how much I love the United States and how much I hate all of our history that we seem to just dismiss all the time Because again, we've been manipulated into believing that this belongs to us, that all of this is ours, right?
• 20:05
  Carmen Lezeth: And for those of you who don't know, who've never seen the show, I am Latina and Black, so there's a whole other subset of this doesn't belong to me that we can get into right, because Brown is the bad thing in the United States, especially if you're an immigrant who came to this country.
• 20:23
  Carmen Lezeth: So I digress, but we're still on the topic of manipulation.
• 20:27
  Carmen Lezeth: So here's what I want to suggest.
• 20:29
  Carmen Lezeth: This isn't just about Donald Trump, because it's not.
• 20:34
  Carmen Lezeth: This is about all of it.
• 20:36
  Carmen Lezeth: This is about trying to figure out how we move from where we are right now as people who are being manipulated on a regular basis.
• 20:48
  Carmen Lezeth: Sometimes it's a small thing, right, it's something we do with our family and friends or our mom and dad to get what we want, or at work, when I'm manipulating the situation so that I know that this husband and wife will talk to each other and I don't really have to intervene.
• 21:03
  Carmen Lezeth: Right, going back to what we were talking about in the beginning, the question is how do we walk through this, knowing in our heart of hearts that social media is just getting more infused in our lives and it's just going to be harder and harder as we walk through, with artificial intelligence as well?
• 21:24
  Carmen Lezeth: So one of the things I want to talk about here is, besides Donald Trump and the upcoming election, understanding what fascism is, that word that keeps being thrown around.
• 21:38
  Carmen Lezeth: Trying to.
• 21:39
  Carmen Lezeth: I'm not comparing him to Hitler, but I am comparing the manipulation of the German people to what is happening to people in the United States, so that you can understand that the way it happens is so seamless you don't even realize it.
• 21:58
  Carmen Lezeth: And here's how I know that.
• 22:00
  Carmen Lezeth: So many people that even in my own family I don't even talk to half the people in my family anymore because they are Trump supporters and have been for a long time.
• 22:08
  Carmen Lezeth: So I keep my distance.
• 22:09
  Carmen Lezeth: But here's how I know.
• 22:12
  Carmen Lezeth: It's such a simple thing the portrayal that people have of Donald Trump whenever they're doing pictures or they're trying to show it's always some odd, weird, fantasized idea of what he looks like.
• 22:32
  Carmen Lezeth: He's always muscular and fierce and strong and he's none of those things Physically.
• 22:34
  Carmen Lezeth: It's like if we did that with Joe Biden, I could see doing it with Barack Obama, because he's still a young man.
• 22:41
  Carmen Lezeth: But it's just a weird ism where you can start to see they really think this is what he looks like.
• 22:47
  Carmen Lezeth: This is really what they think he embodies.
• 22:50
  Carmen Lezeth: I mean, there's a lot to it, why?
• 22:53
  Carmen Lezeth: No, it's so many people have been confused and manipulated.
• 22:57
  Carmen Lezeth: It's also just the denial of all the things he does wrong every single day.
• 23:04
  Carmen Lezeth: This isn't even about his convictions and all that other crap and all the other lies I could get into, because that just becomes like this partisan tit for tat thing.
• 23:10
  Carmen Lezeth: But I know for a fact that the people that I love in my heart and soul are not this stupid.
• 23:18
  Carmen Lezeth: I know they're not, but I also know that they've been so hoodwinked and so manipulated they cannot see, and it's not for me to teach them or show them, because I love them, I have to let them go Because I can't help them.
• 23:34
  Carmen Lezeth: Something else has to break that, and it's frustrating because, again, I think about the German people, and I'm sure there's somebody out there listening to this who's a Trump supporter, who's like well, why don't you think you've been manipulated?
• 23:47
  Carmen Lezeth: I'll tell you why.
• 23:48
  Carmen Lezeth: Because I do things to make sure I'm not manipulated.
• 23:52
  Carmen Lezeth: I do them every single day.
• 23:53
  Carmen Lezeth: I diversify my sources.
• 23:56
  Carmen Lezeth: Okay, I make sure that I consume media from all sources and not just.
• 24:11
  Carmen Lezeth: I love people who say this because then they're like on YouTube listening to conspiracy theorists.
• 24:14
  Carmen Lezeth: That's not what I mean, actually legit resources that actually have the backing of bona fide organizations that are trustworthy.
• 24:20
  Carmen Lezeth: There is also an idea of critical thinking.
• 24:24
  Carmen Lezeth: If you hear something and it sounds a little off.
• 24:27
  Carmen Lezeth: Investigate it, look into it.
• 24:31
  Carmen Lezeth: Find three references before you open your mouth, and I think that's a big one.
• 24:35
  Carmen Lezeth: Listen if you do not know, I don't talk about what I don't know.
• 24:39
  Carmen Lezeth: People hate that.
• 24:40
  Carmen Lezeth: I say this all the time and I say it and I will keep saying it.
• 24:43
  Carmen Lezeth: If you don't know, you don't have three or four different resources to show.
• 24:49
  Carmen Lezeth: Prove what you're talking about, then don't talk about it.
• 24:52
  Carmen Lezeth: Show, prove what you're talking about, then don't talk about it.
• 24:57
  Carmen Lezeth: Don't retweet shit unless you know it to be true.
• 24:59
  Carmen Lezeth: Right, don't redo something on TikTok unless you're positive.
• 25:01
  Carmen Lezeth: Oh yeah, that's absolutely right, because I got that from two or three other sources.
• 25:05
  Carmen Lezeth: I know it's going to slow you down, I know it's going to make you back up a bit, but isn't that where we're at right now?
• 25:13
  Carmen Lezeth: The problem with social media is that everybody wants everything instantaneously and no one takes the time.
• 25:19
  Carmen Lezeth: Critical thinking is part of that.
• 25:22
  Carmen Lezeth: Who's the source?
• 25:23
  Carmen Lezeth: Can I get two more sources?
• 25:26
  Carmen Lezeth: Is this something really important for me to retweet or reshare or re-give without looking into it?
• 25:33
  Carmen Lezeth: Nine times out of 10, half the crap that most people are sharing are not only lies but things they can't back up.
• 25:41
  Carmen Lezeth: But they've decided, because so-and-so, their friend, cousin or whatever did it, that they're going to do it too.
• 25:48
  Carmen Lezeth: And that's how this spirals out.
• 25:50
  Carmen Lezeth: Not everything you read, not everything that you consume, needs to be resent to your followers and friends.
• 25:59
  Carmen Lezeth: Not like.
• 26:01
  Carmen Lezeth: We've got to stop doing that.
• 26:02
  Carmen Lezeth: We got to get back to a place where we specialize in the things we're great at and leave everything Like I don't retweet things that I know nothing about.
• 26:13
  Carmen Lezeth: If somebody's writing something about medicine and I'm like, okay, well, that's my friend talking about some drug thing, I'm like, yeah, no, I'm not going to send that to anybody else, cause I don't.
• 26:25
  Carmen Lezeth: I know my friend is not a doctor or a researcher or whatever, and I know that thing sounds wrong and, no, I'm not resending that to my friends and followers because it's probably wrong and I don't have the time or the effort or the energy or the need to go and research it to find out.
• 26:42
  Carmen Lezeth: Stop retweeting, resending things to people if it's not that important.
• 26:49
  Carmen Lezeth: You can consume information just for yourself and be like, eh, maybe I do believe that, eh, maybe I don't, and then stick to the things you know and you're going to be so utterly thrown by how much less time you spend on social media because you realize you don't know jack shit.
• 27:08
  Carmen Lezeth: You know what I mean.
• 27:09
  Carmen Lezeth: I think that's the other part of this that fascinates me.
• 27:12
  Carmen Lezeth: You know what I mean Like, I think that's the other part of this that fascinates me is that people don't even realize how people are being manipulated and how they are being manipulated on a regular basis because they know you're going to resend that to all your friends.
• 27:25
  Carmen Lezeth: So let me talk bullshit about something I believe in and you don't have to do any research for it because you trust so in.
• 27:33
  Carmen Lezeth: It's the stupidest thing ever.
• 27:35
  Carmen Lezeth: Use critical thinking as part of that.
• 27:37
  Carmen Lezeth: There's also media literacy.
• 27:40
  Carmen Lezeth: What do I mean by that?
• 27:42
  Carmen Lezeth: Understanding that there is media bias.
• 27:44
  Carmen Lezeth: I don't think there's anything wrong with that.
• 27:46
  Carmen Lezeth: I think this idea that old school media was more objective, this idea that, like Tom Brokaw and Walter Cronkite and all these old timers, they were the better journalists, because it was.
• 28:00
  Carmen Lezeth: No, it wasn't.
• 28:01
  Carmen Lezeth: If you go back and watch any of those, it is pretty clear to me.
• 28:05
  Carmen Lezeth: Like Peter Jennings, all of them.
• 28:07
  Carmen Lezeth: It's pretty clear to me.
• 28:09
  Carmen Lezeth: All of these people, you could tell where they landed as far as what they believed in Tim Russert, all of them.
• 28:17
  Carmen Lezeth: If you just listen to them, you can pretty much get an idea of where they landed.
• 28:23
  Carmen Lezeth: On political issues or whatever.
• 28:26
  Carmen Lezeth: I don't think news is objective and I think that's okay.
• 28:30
  Carmen Lezeth: We're all human beings.
• 28:31
  Carmen Lezeth: We come to the table with information and biases.
• 28:35
  Carmen Lezeth: There's nothing wrong with that.
• 28:37
  Carmen Lezeth: However, can you deliver the news and that information and then also give that other side?
• 28:45
  Carmen Lezeth: People do not seem to understand that.
• 28:47
  Carmen Lezeth: If you can go to a source, or various sources and also get backup when you listen to stuff, that's how it's going to be.
• 28:58
  Carmen Lezeth: And look at, this is a lot of work, isn't it?
• 29:00
  Carmen Lezeth: It's a lot of work so that you're not hoodwinked into believing crap.
• 29:05
  Carmen Lezeth: Because we don't want to be fascist, we don't want to have an authoritarian government, we do not want to live under a dictatorship, so we need to be responsible for the knowledge and the information we are consuming, and the better that we do that, the more informed we are, the less manipulated we will be.
• 29:30
  Carmen Lezeth: I don't talk about anything unless I have three or four different sources.
• 29:34
  Carmen Lezeth: I really don't, and even then I'm like I'm so exhausted I'm not even going to talk about it.
• 29:39
  Carmen Lezeth: The other thing that is important is to educate others, your children, for example, one of the problems I'm having right now.
• 29:46
  Carmen Lezeth: I love kids I don't have any, but I have godchildren and nieces and nephews and I'm disappointed in some of the parenting because parents get really tired.
• 29:55
  Carmen Lezeth: They don't want to keep explaining to their children right from wrong when they turn a certain age, because it gets harder when they're teenagers.
• 30:03
  Carmen Lezeth: But to me, I'm like that's when your parenting actually matters.
• 30:08
  Carmen Lezeth: It's like when kids are being swayed into the wrong thought process.
• 30:13
  Carmen Lezeth: Yes, they have to come up with their own ideas or whatever, but there's got to be some guidelines, right, we don't just leave kids once they turn 13 to start figuring it out on their own.
• 30:24
  Carmen Lezeth: They still need some guidance.
• 30:27
  Carmen Lezeth: So I know it's hard and that's why I'm not a parent, because I was never stupid enough to believe I could do it.
• 30:33
  Carmen Lezeth: But I think the parenting part of this is key and it's not just about your children, it's also about educating others.
• 30:41
  Carmen Lezeth: It's also about sharing this kind of information with other people, which is what I'm trying to do now, because I know we're down to the wire here in the United States with voting, in the United States with voting, and I just think the political aftermath, regardless of who wins the presidency is going to be a difficult time for the United States, and I feel like we need to start being really hardcore about this issue of manipulation and social media.
• 31:08
  Carmen Lezeth: So let me talk about social media and the algorithms.
• 31:12
  Carmen Lezeth: I think it's really important to understand that as well.
• 31:15
  Carmen Lezeth: You need to tweak your social media settings so that you get a broader range of content.
• 31:22
  Carmen Lezeth: So, whatever social media you're talking about, what they do is, the more you watch or listen or whatever it is, some certain content it keeps bringing you down that rabbit hole.
• 31:34
  Carmen Lezeth: You have to force yourself to go into another direction in order to see other content.
• 31:41
  Carmen Lezeth: So I would suggest that that's part of what we need to do.
• 31:45
  Carmen Lezeth: We need to start changing the way in which we consume social media and news in general.
• 31:51
  Carmen Lezeth: We need to fight against it, not just keep consuming it.
• 31:55
  Carmen Lezeth: So if we take something on and we're watching it, we realize why am I down this rabbit hole?
• 32:01
  Carmen Lezeth: Like I'll be honest, I found myself on TikTok and somehow I ended up in the gay lesbian TikTok area.
• 32:08
  Carmen Lezeth: I was fine watching the content, but I'm like why am I just getting this information?
• 32:13
  Carmen Lezeth: It's because I had liked someone's comment on something about whatever it was.
• 32:19
  Carmen Lezeth: I don't even remember what it was, but that's what happened.
• 32:22
  Carmen Lezeth: It ended up forcing me down and I was like, okay, I'm fine watching this content, but I need to bring myself back.
• 32:28
  Carmen Lezeth: So that's what happens in all content on social media.
• 32:30
  Carmen Lezeth: That's what happens in all content on social media.
• 32:34
  Carmen Lezeth: Yes, I want to consume all types of things on TikTok and I love my gay and lesbian people on TikTok, but I also want the dancing and the awesome, just fun makeup tips and all that great stuff.
• 32:48
  Carmen Lezeth: I'm also into the like over 40 group on TikTok, so I force myself.
• 32:53
  Carmen Lezeth: I love there's also just music DJing stuff.
• 32:58
  Carmen Lezeth: That's happening too.
• 32:59
  Carmen Lezeth: I've also just started looking at the gray haired women thing.
• 33:02
  Carmen Lezeth: There's like a whole group of women who are just letting their hair go gray.
• 33:06
  Carmen Lezeth: I guess men too, I don't know.
• 33:08
  Carmen Lezeth: But you can force yourself into certain aspects of social media, but you got to look for it and you got to find it because it's easy as going into the search engine and typing in something else, right?
• 33:22
  Carmen Lezeth: So if you're only following democratic information or whatever, then you put Republican or whatever, so you can consume some of that as well.
• 33:32
  Carmen Lezeth: And look, I know that's hard because you don't want to keep listening to stuff you don't agree with, but this is why we're in the mess we're in right now.
• 33:38
  Carmen Lezeth: This is why we're all in our own separate silos, right?
• 33:43
  Carmen Lezeth: We've been manipulated into believing that only our side matters and only our thought process and only what we believe in is good and perfect.
• 33:52
  Carmen Lezeth: Okay, so adjust your algorithms on social media, and it's something as simple as going into the search engine and doing the opposite of whatever it was you were doing earlier, or making sure you put in cooking.
• 34:06
  Carmen Lezeth: Like I never look at cooking, I don't care about cooking on TikTok, but maybe I'll go check out cooking, you know.
• 34:11
  Carmen Lezeth: But it is that simple of a thing to be able to change some of the algorithms and interacting with other people who are not like you.
• 34:18
  Carmen Lezeth: So that's something else.
• 34:20
  Carmen Lezeth: Let me also give out I'll put these in the show notes reliable fact-checking sites.
• 34:27
  Carmen Lezeth: Okay, you can always go in here.
• 34:29
  Carmen Lezeth: Do all three of them.
• 34:31
  Carmen Lezeth: Go, do all five of them if you need to just get reliable information and to get it fact checked.
• 34:38
  Carmen Lezeth: Because sometimes, even when I'm reading something that I think is oh my, even if it's something I believe in, I'm like this sounds a little bit too good to be true.
• 34:47
  Carmen Lezeth: I'll go in and fact check it.
• 34:49
  Carmen Lezeth: Okay, so Snopes or Snoops, I don't know how they call it, but they're one of the oldest and most reputable, so it's S-N-O-P-E-S.
• 34:59
  Carmen Lezeth: There's factcheckorg, and that one is nonpartisan as well and it's a university affiliated.
• 35:06
  Carmen Lezeth: There's also PolitiFact, you know, and they have their truth-o-meter ratings.
• 35:11
  Carmen Lezeth: I don't generally love this one so much, but I do check out things there as well.
• 35:16
  Carmen Lezeth: Reuters fact-checked is another one.
• 35:19
  Carmen Lezeth: They're all from the major global news agencies.
• 35:23
  Carmen Lezeth: By the way, that's also a good one.
• 35:24
  Carmen Lezeth: Check out what's going on in other news areas around the world.
• 35:31
  Carmen Lezeth: Everyone in the United States should understand what the differences are with parliament and our form of government.
• 35:39
  Carmen Lezeth: You should understand that because it would make you appreciate both forms of government and give you some insight into why we are the country we are.
• 35:51
  Carmen Lezeth: You know simple things like that.
• 35:53
  Carmen Lezeth: The Associated Press is another great place to get some fact-checking done.
• 35:58
  Carmen Lezeth: They're another credible news source.
• 36:00
  Carmen Lezeth: Again, I don't just go to one.
• 36:02
  Carmen Lezeth: I use three of them most times when I'm fact-checking something.
• 36:06
  Carmen Lezeth: And you know you do the best you can with the information you have in front of you, right, but definitely try and also be more global about your outlook, don't just be about you and your own circumstances.
• 36:21
  Carmen Lezeth: When you know more about what's going on around in the world, you can also get a better idea of what's going on here in your own house, in your own state or country, and it also gives you different feedback and information and, again, helps you not to be so manipulated.
• 36:40
  Carmen Lezeth: It's just another resource.
• 36:43
  Carmen Lezeth: Why is this so important to me?
• 36:46
  Carmen Lezeth: Because if you speak to German people today and you talk to them about what happened back in the 1930s, they have not forgotten by any means what has happened.
• 37:01
  Carmen Lezeth: They tend to want to talk about it as a dark and tragic period in their history.
• 37:10
  Carmen Lezeth: They've made significant efforts to talk about it and educate their citizens and to know what the dangers are, and the dangers are so similar to what's happening today in the United States.
• 37:27
  Carmen Lezeth: It's the perceived economic hardship.
• 37:30
  Carmen Lezeth: Like if you talk to a Trump supporter today, they keep talking about how the economy is not any good, which is not true.
• 37:38
  Carmen Lezeth: The economy is doing great.
• 37:39
  Carmen Lezeth: The economy in the United States today this is I'm doing this on Friday, right before the Tuesday election in the United States for president.
• 37:49
  Carmen Lezeth: The economy is fantastic.
• 37:51
  Carmen Lezeth: We are the strongest economy still in the world and we have recovered so greatly after COVID.
• 37:58
  Carmen Lezeth: We are doing well, but if you talk to any Trump supporter, they will talk about how bad the economy is.
• 38:05
  Carmen Lezeth: So that's one of the key things that people in Germany will tell you, which is why it was so easy to be manipulated, right?
• 38:14
  Carmen Lezeth: Economic hardship, because it was the Great Depression of the time and there were the harsh terms of the Treaty of Versailles that created a widespread economic hardship and political instability for Germany in the time, so that, along with propaganda, again, we talked about Leni Reifenstahl.
• 38:35
  Carmen Lezeth: But it wasn't just those films, it was all of the propaganda, right, but it was like this sophisticated propaganda to manipulate public opinion and to promote this ideology, right?
• 38:49
  Carmen Lezeth: This ideology that involved basically a superiority in a culture and ethnic cleansing of other people who did not belong, other people who were let's call them rapists and murderers.
• 39:04
  Carmen Lezeth: Do you see where I'm going with this?
• 39:06
  Carmen Lezeth: You call those other people bad people, or the Haitian people, or the Puerto Rican people.
• 39:12
  Carmen Lezeth: I'm mixing those two things in for a reason, because it's the same thing.
• 39:18
  Carmen Lezeth: What they did back in the day of the Hitler regime, they said about Jewish people, is what they're doing right now about immigrants, what they're doing right now about Puerto Ricans is what they're doing right now about Haitian people.
• 39:36
  Carmen Lezeth: Other rising.
• 39:37
  Carmen Lezeth: It's this whole other rising right.
• 39:40
  Carmen Lezeth: And here's the weird thing that kind of kills me is I know you know better, I know you do, but that is part of the propaganda.
• 39:51
  Carmen Lezeth: And also along with that is the fear and the coercion right.
• 39:55
  Carmen Lezeth: You fear that if you step away from the Hitler regime, the Nazi regime, or you step away from the Trump, trump has already threatened that people who don't agree with him, people who have whatever, who go against him, will be be imprisoned.
• 40:13
  Carmen Lezeth: It's all the same.
• 40:15
  Carmen Lezeth: It's all so tragically easily the same, and it's because of manipulation.
• 40:21
  Carmen Lezeth: It's because you have been told things, you've been manipulated into believing things, because it's so easy to blame other people and because it's human nature.
• 40:34
  Carmen Lezeth: It's human nature to want to believe in somebody else who can find the answers and take care of you.
• 40:42
  Carmen Lezeth: But it goes against everything we believe in as Americans.
• 40:45
  Carmen Lezeth: It goes against everything that created the Constitution.
• 40:50
  Carmen Lezeth: That's exactly what they were against.
• 40:52
  Carmen Lezeth: And for all my problems with the Constitution because you know it's not a perfect document but one of the things that's great about it is how important it was to not do what has been done in the country that they left to establish this amazing government, and it's sad for me to watch so many people be so hoodwinked is basically what I'm going to say.
• 41:21
  Carmen Lezeth: No matter what happens on Tuesday at this election, I hope that we all understand that there's work to be done, not just as a country, and not just as neighbors and friends being human that we easily fall into, but also do ourselves right.
• 41:59
  Carmen Lezeth: That's how I started this whole conversation, and when we can understand that.
• 42:04
  Carmen Lezeth: I think the rise of social media is a great thing.
• 42:08
  Carmen Lezeth: It has connected me to so many people.
• 42:10
  Carmen Lezeth: It allows me to do something I love to do on a regular basis.
• 42:12
  Carmen Lezeth: It has so many people.
• 42:13
  Carmen Lezeth: It allows me to do something I'd love to do on a regular basis.
• 42:14
  Carmen Lezeth: It has so many possibilities it keeps me in touch with people around the world that I wouldn't be able to, and I don't think that social media, even artificial intelligence, is such a bad thing.
• 42:27
  Carmen Lezeth: I think what is bad is how lazy we've become as individuals to work hard to understand that all the information we consume is not correct and it is not easy to digest, or should not be easy to digest, that we still have to do the research and the information that we get.
• 42:52
  Carmen Lezeth: We still have to do the work with the information that we get in.
• 42:54
  Carmen Lezeth: We still have to do the work with the information that we get in front of us to make sure that it is correct before we start sharing it with other people, because this is how it happened before.
• 43:07
  Carmen Lezeth: We are not protected in any way, shape or form from doing what happened in Germany, and you can start seeing it happening right now and it breaks my heart.
• 43:18
  Carmen Lezeth: And so, no matter what happens on Tuesday, whether Vice President Harris is elected or whether Donald Trump is elected, I hope that we understand that we need to do a lot of work in this country to get people to see clearly and to understand that what we are believing on a regular basis needs much more research, much more factual-based information, and just listening to people on YouTube is not good enough.
• 43:50
  Carmen Lezeth: I'm so sorry.
• 43:51
  Carmen Lezeth: I know a lot of you are like, oh, but I listen to YouTube.
• 43:53
  Carmen Lezeth: No, you need to have people who are credible people.
• 43:58
  Carmen Lezeth: Maybe they are on YouTube, but they're not YouTubers.
• 44:01
  Carmen Lezeth: You see the difference.
• 44:02
  Carmen Lezeth: So, with that said, thank you so much all of you for following us, for helping us create such a great community here.
• 44:11
  Carmen Lezeth: We had a great weekly show this past Thursday.
• 44:14
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• 44:29
  Carmen Lezeth: If you want to check that out, go to our YouTube page on All About the Joy.
• 44:33
  Carmen Lezeth: You can check out where the YouTube page is on allaboutthejoycom.
• 44:37
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• 44:38
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• 44:42
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• 44:43
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• 44:47
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• 44:54
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• 44:58
  Carmen Lezeth: We are having a great time and loving this so much and we hope you'll join us next Thursday at 6 pm Pacific, 9 pm Eastern.
• 45:07
  Carmen Lezeth: And yeah, that's it.
• 45:09
  Carmen Lezeth: Thank you so much for listening to this version of Carmen Talk and I hope you have a great weekend.
• 45:14
  Carmen Lezeth: But remember, no matter what, at the end of the day, it really is all about the joy.
• 45:20
  Carmen Lezeth: Thanks for stopping by.
• 45:22
  Carmen Lezeth: All About the Joy, be better and stay beautiful folks, have a sweet day.