I do not trust images.
The MORE literate you are the more effective a piece of text CAN be at influencing you.
The LESS pictorially-literate you are the more effective an image WILL be at influecing you.
Which seems more ripe for exploitation?
I can trust text in the measure that I can trust my own evaluation of my literacy.
The meaning of an image is transmitted to you immediately and without consent the moment you see it.
It is transmitted whole as it is and you do not know what it is composed of until you start to dissect it, if you have the required analytical skills to do so.
Text is speech symbolically transcribed and each unit of meaning is separated by time.
Thus the meaning of a text is mediated through time and requires your consent to see it through that you read a text from start to finish.
Analytical skills are a prerequisite in order to piece by piece construct the meaning of a text whole as it is.
The more literate you are the quicker it becomes apparent if a text is propaganda or not.
The more pictorially-literate you are the more apparent it becomes all pictures are meant to deceive.
“An image says a thousand words.”
If a message could be conveyed with ten words would you trust a man who used a thousand words to do the same?
How easy it is to hide an insidious message among dozens of innocuous ones.
How easy it is to twist a noxious message with a thousand flowery words.
A picture of innocence is a page too long.
Behind your mind they whisper the words.
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