Distinguishing reality from fiction is useful, but it doesn’t shape our desires or define our values. As a culture, we’ve grown colder and more detached. Think of the first Dracula film—audiences were so shaken by a simple eerie face that some reportedly lost control in the theater. Compare that visceral reaction to the apathy we feel toward far more shocking imagery today.

If media didn’t profoundly affect us, how could exposure therapy rewire fears? Why would billions be spent on advertising if it didn’t work? Why would propaganda or education exist if ideas couldn’t be planted and nurtured through storytelling?

Is there any meaningful difference between a sermon from the pulpit and a feature film in the theater? Both are designed to influence, persuade, and reshape our worldview.

As Alan Moore aptly put it: "Art is, like magic, the science of manipulating symbols, words, or images to achieve changes in consciousness."

In my opinion the old adage holds true, you are what you eat. And we will soon be eating unimaginable mountains of artificial content cooked up by dream engines tuned to our every desire and whim.

> Distinguishing reality from fiction is useful, but it doesn’t shape our desires or define our values. As a culture, we’ve grown colder and more detached. Think of the first Dracula film—audiences were so shaken by a simple eerie face that some reportedly lost control in the theater. Compare that visceral reaction to the apathy we feel toward far more shocking imagery today.

Huh? The first half of this contradicts the second. We haven't "grown colder and more detached", we've adapted to the fact that images are no longer reliable indicators of reality. What we do and don't value in the real world hasn't changed.

> And we will soon be eating unimaginable mountains of artificial content cooked up by dream engines tuned to our every desire and whim.

Always has been. Multi-channel TV was already that, and attracted the same kind of doomerism.