In the information age, paradoxically, data overload has generated a disturbing phenomenon: collective anesthesia. The new feudal lords—technology corporations, mass media, and economic elites—have found in excess content and irrelevance an effective weapon to divert attention from the structural problems affecting society. This phenomenon is not very different from the strategy that feudal lords used in times past, when they kept the people entertained with spectacles and distractions while ensuring their dominance and privileges.

Today, distractions are not medieval tournaments or lavish celebrations. Instead, they are empty entertainment programs, sensational news, and a constant flood of content designed to generate clicks and feed algorithms. The reality show culture, debates over trivialities, and manufactured conflicts that populate social media and the news media are not incidental: they are part of a carefully orchestrated system to keep the population occupied with the trivial.

The “bread and circuses” strategy has evolved. Where once there were amphitheaters, there are now platforms like TikTok, Instagram or YouTube, where the spectacle of egocentrism and superficiality is celebrated. The business model behind these platforms depends on keeping the user’s attention captive, fostering endless cycles of content consumption that rarely transcends the anecdotal. Meanwhile, the problems that should really concern us – climate change, social inequality, job insecurity and the concentration of power in the hands of a few – are relegated to the background, eclipsed by the latest celebrity feuds or viral trends.

This is no accident. Modern elites understand that an informed and critical population is a danger to their interests. For this reason, they have perfected the tools of manipulation to turn information into white noise that confuses and deactivates critical thinking. It is as if Salsa Rosa programs—those emblems of trash TV—had moved to the core of the new information ecosystems. The formula remains the same: make the irrelevant spectacular and trivialize the important.

The impact of this dynamic is devastating. The capacity for outrage is diluted, and social priorities are distorted. We find ourselves trapped in a bubble of continuous entertainment, while the new feudal lords consolidate their economic and political power with little resistance. In the end, control is exercised not only through repression, but through distraction. There is no need for explicit censorship when minds are saturated with content designed to entertain, not to question.

Getting out of this collective anesthesia requires a conscious effort: questioning the narratives we consume, recovering the capacity for critical analysis and investing in media and platforms that prioritize what is relevant. Because as long as we remain intoxicated by irrelevance, the new feudal lords will continue to rule, invisible but omnipresent, ensuring that the common people never wake up from their lethargy.