> making the unsupported assumption that every government / Hollywood cooperation incident is a propaganda op, instead of far simpler explanations like "Joe in Langley publicity gets to brag to his family that he made the Top Chef episode happen."
To me it's like /r/hailcorporate, it doesn't primarily matter if it's intentional or not. There are many people exhausting their potential, credibility and dignity for the sake of identifying with some Moloch or other. Here, there, elsewhere. What had to be mostly forced, on people who had to be broken and tamed in the first place, now comes flowing freely, because Stockholm Syndrome is the gift that keeps on giving. So? Not everything is a propaganda "op", just like a piece of moss is not a fabricated carpet. It still has the effect of a carpet among other things, and grows systematically, consciously or not.
By the way, even the White Rose considered their own leaflets propaganda, then there's things like agitprop, I kind of wonder when and when that became such a hard word to use in earnest without theatrical eye rolling. The problem isn't propaganda, the problem is the lack of integrity and morals. In a more decent world, I would absolutely LOVE to have firefighters and cops and IT security people and whoever make propaganda, I would help them make it. There would be no soldiers obvs, because the only use those have is to defend against other soldiers at best, murder civilians at worst, which is a net negative.
Anyway, the problem to me is the corruption of institutions, not the institutions. A non-corrupt institution "being cute" or "posing as cool" actually is cute or least dorky in a likeable way respectively. Otherwise, "op" or not, propaganda or not, it's always way over the nasty line for me, certainly when money, lies and murder are involved.