I remember many many years ago when I was in school and I went to conferences and met consultants for one on ones to discuss the future of micro and macro targeting, that is exactly what is being done here. In my current field we use data and things like cluster analysis to make decisions.

"Consensus" is driven by interest groups constantly on social media platforms, it is pervasive, wide spread, and unnoticed for the most part. It is undeniable, you can easily access something like EBSCO host and read what I am talking about.

As time goes on social sciences will become hard sciences that use data to shape and drive society in a predetermined direction. Will it work 100% of the time no it never will, but we only need to get buy in to whatever consensus we want with 50-60% of the population. This is not a conspiracy, it is a main stream fact unfortunately.