• Almacca@aussie.zone
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    22 hours ago

    I remember a few years ago John Oliver flew to Russia to interview him. He showed him a bunch of vox pop interviews of young people in America asking if they knew who Edward Snowden was and what he did, and almost all of them had no idea.

    You could visibly see him die inside after watching it.

    • MrFinnbean@lemmy.world
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      3 hours ago

      I have to belive that most of these quizzes where “reporter” walks around asking questions are fake or just show the stupidest answers.

      It has to be so. No way the general populace is that stupid. Please say they are fake.

      Edit; Love how many people take their time to comment how obscure Edward Snowden is now, when i meant these quizzes as general.

      • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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        4 hours ago

        No way the general populace is that stupid.

        It isn’t an issue of stupidity. Not like “Edward Snowden” is a name you can conjure up from first principles.

        He was headline news back in 2008 and now he’s not. Anyone who wasn’t following national news nearly twenty years ago likely won’t be familiar with him. No more than a Millennial is going to know who Daniel Ellsberg or Robert W. Jackson are.

        The entire Wikileaks project has been more or less obliterated.

      • crunchpaste@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        5 hours ago

        He has been largely forgotten. Recently we were talking about data collection with my slightly younger gf (21) when I mentioned him. Turns out she never even heard his name. It’s not that she’s stupid or does not care about privacy, he just hasn’t been mentioned in mainstream media for over a decade, nobody makes reels about him on Instagram/tiktok. Tbh I haven seen him mentioned all that often on lemmy too.

        With the rise of fascist parties worldwide, and especially here in the EU, and talks of AI, privacy seems to have taken a back seat in mainstream discourse.

    • Herding Llamas@lemmy.world
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      15 hours ago

      Meh. I saw someone being interviewed who didn’t know who hilter was. Apparently genuine. They even gave hints. When the interviewer told her who he is, she wasn’t even shocked or just having a brain fart. She blamed it on her history teacher…

      • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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        3 hours ago

        I saw someone being interviewed who didn’t know who hilter was. Apparently genuine.

        There was a bit that Conan O’Brian used to do back when he had a late-night show. He’d go out and do Man-On-The-Street interviews in… Times Square, I think? Can’t remember if he was LA or NY. But he’d ask some absurdly complex question and get this excellently reasoned and well-thought out answer from randos. And then he’d ask what they did for a living. It was inevitably some NASA engineer or finance professional or other well-educated individual. And they were all just… in the crowd. Because in a city as big as that, of course you’re going to get this extremely mixed bag.

        On the flip side, there’s Sailor Socialism, a podcaster and aspiring actress who baited an interview with an InfoWars reporter, in which she was dressed in a sailor fuku, then went viral talking about how she wanted universal health care and liked Bernie Sanders.

        Interview twenty people and edit the content down to the one or two who make for good entertainment. It’s a tried-and-true strategy.

      • Bluewing@lemmy.world
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        7 hours ago

        Of course, it was all her teacher’s fault and not her being too cool for school to actually pay attention in class.