Invisible Reprogramming: Reels, Ads, and Series as Factories of Mental Frameworks

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There is a phenomenon many people perceive at home—in arguments, in sudden accusations, in labels that don’t fit real life—but struggle to explain: reprogramming. It’s not hypnosis or a conspiracy theory; it’s something more banal and more effective: the combination of short formats, repetition, emotional charge, and algorithms that optimize what you see to keep you watching. The result isn’t “being informed,” but learning to interpret reality with a prefabricated script.

And it’s not just about social media. Reprogramming comes from an entire chain: reels and short videos, advertising, series, soap operas, influencers, headlines, and the “cultural climate” that all of these fix in place. Each piece on its own may seem insignificant; the sum of them creates a mental framework.

Old propaganda aimed to convince. Modern propaganda aims to condition. A reel doesn’t argue; it stages: victim and culprit, relief and liberation, a “moral flag” and instant applause. An ad doesn’t reason: it associates a product with identity, autonomy, desire. A series doesn’t give you syllogisms: it puts you in a character’s shoes so you feel that bad is good and that good is oppressive.

I’m not saying this just based on feminine intuition. The psychology of narrative persuasion has studied for decades how stories can change beliefs and attitudes when the viewer enters a state of “narrative transportation” (absorption/immersion), lowering critical defenses and making it more likely to adopt the story’s “world.” The clearest contemporary synthesis on the topic describes precisely this mechanism: when the mind immerses itself in the narrative, the message installs itself as experience.

In the field of communication, cultivation theory has long been known: continuous exposure to certain messages (formerly television; now multi-platform) tends to shape perception of what is “normal” and how “the world works.” Not because people are foolish, but because the brain uses shortcuts: what is frequent on screen feels frequent in life. Gerbner and his school explained this clearly in their foundational texts on cultivation analysis (in case any reader wants to delve deeper).

In today’s ecosystem, this cultivation is intensified by two new factors.

First is personalization: we no longer consume “television for everyone,” but a custom-tailored stream that reinforces our biases.

Second is the high emotional dosage: outrage, fear, tenderness, eroticization, victimhood, mockery… emotions that cement memory and behavior.

But we mustn’t forget the role of algorithms: they don’t show you what is true, but what hooks you. Here lies the great difference from the old soap opera: now there’s an invisible director adjusting the script in real time. Recommendation systems prioritize what maximizes what’s known as engagement (time, reaction, conflict), and this can reinforce dynamics of polarization or hostility. Recent research shows how the ordering of content on social media can influence levels of partisan animosity.

Said without technical jargon and for general understanding: you’re not “seeing reality”; you’re seeing a menu optimized to keep you in the app. And such a menu tends to reward what causes a reaction, not what conveys truth.

Reels and ultra-short formats add another element: reward rhythm. Constant jumps, endless novelty, micro-climaxes every few seconds. This trains the brain to seek the next stimulus. Research into short-form video has already begun to show clear results: a recent systematic review and meta-analysis in Psychological Bulletin associates short video use with cognitive and mental health correlates (attention, distress, etc.). Not every study implies direct causality (many are correlational), but the pattern is consistent with other broad syntheses on mental health and social media use: there are associations between problematic/intense use and troubling symptoms in both adolescents and adults. So much so that public health agencies now treat the issue as a health concern: the U.S. Surgeon General published a report on the impact of social media on youth mental health, highlighting risks, evidence gaps, and recommendations.

And how does this show up in our homes? With slogans that replace facts. The typical sign of reprogramming isn’t “someone thinking differently.” It’s that the reproach doesn’t describe concrete behaviors, but labels: “you’re controlling me,” “you’re manipulating me,” “you’re oppressing,” “that’s violence.”

The reproach comes with a script: victim/prison/liberation. Discussions focus less on facts and more on pre-packaged moral categories. When someone internalizes such a framework, they stop seeing reality “live” and instead see it as if through filtered glasses. That’s why the other person feels like they’re being spoken to from a video—not from a shared life.

Let’s also not forget that modern advertising doesn’t sell objects: it sells identities (“you deserve it,” “don’t let anyone tie you down,” “be yourself”). Series and soap operas often teach an emotional map where duty is oppression and breaking away is self-realization. Repeated episode after episode, ad after ad, the moral instinct changes: the stable seems dull; the transgressive seems authentic. There doesn’t need to be an overtly “militant” scene. It’s enough that the pattern is constant: the husband as a burden, the family as an obstacle, the moral norm as trauma, the boundary as abuse. That’s cultivation.

But can one “argue” against reprogramming? Often, not. Because this isn’t a thesis that can be defeated by a fact, but rather a habit of interpretation. The most effective response tends to be: returning to the concrete (“talk to me about what I did today, not about categories”), rejecting the labels without entering the spiral (“I don’t accept that framework; let’s talk about facts”), and above all, reducing the source that feeds the framework (less exposure to the stream that reinforces it). The age-old solution: the virtues.

Contemporary reprogramming is powerful because it presents itself as spontaneous—this is its greatest danger, in addition to the previous ones: “I’ve realized,” “I’ve woken up,” “they’ve opened my eyes.” But many times, it’s not awakening: it’s that they’ve changed your script and made you believe you are… free?

Sandra Conde

Translated by Daniel Alejandro Rodriguez Guerra.