Everybody Does Want To Rule The World.
Infiltrations and Funnels; conditioning, compliance, consequences.
This article is for everyone who’s not exactly sure what brought them here.
It’s Sunday, November 6, 2022… There is the most consequential midterm election in years with final day of voting being this Tuesday, though that’s ramping up every perennially earned victory or not. Teeth are gnashed and chaos has become a daily expectation for online political forums from smear opposition campaigns to “Astroturf” quackery and lobbyist activity as we all head into the whirlwind of high stakes national politics that could shape the way our country works for the rest of anyone that is old enough to vote’s natural lifetime.
And so, maintaining the ability to communicate clear and true Ideas and cheerlead a bit for good old reality, the sheer number of us using our first amendment is a privilege and a gift during numerous occasions in the past, when faced with hostile infiltration campaigns like “Project Veritas” that will clip videos together, or play out of context sound bytes and run entire campaigns discrediting any clearly factual media that stands in the way of the 50 years long right-wing fallacy that somehow you, the average citizen, don’t work hard enough to deserve better than trickle down economy and no healthcare.
{The same Project Veritas who’s James Okeefe was fraudulently alleging that ACORN (a charity for the poor) was responsible for stealing our election from Republicans}
and staunch enemies of democracy like hostile foreign and hostile foreign funded influence campaigns by various third-party vendors.
Anyone not sleeping understand how things have ramped up since then. There is around 900 (update: around 1000) or something cases in the USAO because of the violent and treacherous act of terror that happened in our, everyone’s, ours, whether you like me or not, democratic republic’s Capitol building. Where for the first time a confederate flag was flown by people wearing t-shirts making light of a holocaust. In a place that should be “holy” to anyone sentimental enough to actually be patriotic, and anyone who uses the word “patriot” and “America” as often as that confidence trickster and his shills that sent them there on that, shameful, January 6th.
And for the last few years carnival barking churchesque roadshows and political action events starring authoritarians live and in person, and satellite and am radio hosts that engineered what it means to have dark money in politics, and all the forums you see have been choked up with what you know, and we know is bullshit.
Everyone is abuzz making accounts on every single social media platform, who can blame them. Elon Musk who recently took over Twitter keeps throwing 10 lb corn and peanut laden shovels full of verbal waste on the superfund site that actual free speech has made of his advertising income (according to himself) as well as the sudden rise it provided competitors. It’s possible that he quite clearly knows what his words are capable of considering his past record of SEC investigations and fines and is not just bumbling around as I have seen some of the more extreme “journalists” and “researchers” inform others. I think the reaction to a publicly traded*** company getting dumped by many of the advertisers as every other space fills up with Twitter’s biggest commodity, which is yourselves, while Elon fans the dumpster smoke into 280-character symbols on his massively viewed (now more than ever) account may be warranted for many.
***{correction. Musk’s holding company, X Holdings, finalized the transaction to take Twitter private on Thursday, October 27, 2022, in a deal that would garner $54.20 dollars a share for every shareholder but will prevent any board member to sue and means shareholders no longer retain any right to the company, with only 2% of the board having dissented}
While everyone is testing out new platforms, I can’t help but think of all the different ways organized hostile activity has already permeated our information space no matter what platform is your current preference, no matter who you are or what your topic of interest.
Whether you are an enemy made or a friend earned let’s remember something about the nature of what the myriad of companies like the famous Cambridge Analytica helped to pioneer.
Here is an example of how what I consider to be a highly unethical data scrape and “Micro Targeting” of fellow western citizens, by revolving door type staff who were paid very well by firms like this, and still are.
"This strategy involved identifying all the voters... who would be easiest to persuade... Then bombarding them with blogs, websites, articles, videos, ads.. until they saw the World the way we wanted them to."
Brittany Kaiser
Business Development Manager at Cambridge Analytica
Social influencers (and “social” engineers or as I’ve referred to them confidence tricksters) are everywhere online now, from large brand to political influencers, nonprofits and charities to media, art, and entrepreneurial up-starts to “Reputation” boosting companies. Yes, there are above-board voluntary groups on social media that you can work with on a scheduled basis to do what is referred to as “storm” sharing and other types of crowd-sourced public facing awareness building activity.
There are also groups of people online which have demonstrably set out for malign reasons. They build their base of human “assets” or “useful idiots” out of the unaware who may be seeking community to anything from an ailment to a hobby.
Much like the I discussed in my post, “Told Ya So” many of the malign camps have an element of division as they will employ fake opposition in order to boost a narrative or discussion to the general public. Often it can be something that would not have happened organically and is most often counterproductive to the cause they claim to represent should it be anything that would benefit at large the public. These malign division ops are also budgeted and carried out by hostile state actors for the purpose of achieving their foreign policies or simply their goals of crushing democracy. there are a range of exploitative methods and tools used to separate and control groups of unwitting people for compliance, co-operation, malign recruiting efforts.
Random direct message groups from strangers or being incessantly tagged into large groups without being asked first to volunteer should be a huge red flag and was abused and annoying to the point of Twitter finally making a specific button to mute or leave conversations. Being part of a focus thread or group that limits your speech within the group when the business and terms of service do not is also a massive blinking red beacon that some of your friends are not at all. And if you can’t see half of the thread, see people that seem like they are having conversations with themselves, or are pre-emptively blocked these are also warning signs that the group may be conducting larger scale clandestine *funneling* or cult-like recruiting operations
As I’ve previously discussed susceptibility to this sort of onboarding and suggestion based trickery isn’t based on one’s level of intelligence.
“Groups enthrall us with their ability to amplify the range of individual achievements. On the one hand, groups provide us with the opportunity to reach heights far greater than any individual might accomplish. Yet, groups also entail considerable risk for they also have the potential to produce unimaginable destruction. Explaining why these outcomes occur has been a daunting task for social and organizational researchers. A quarter of a century ago, Irving Janis proposed a theory to help answer at least some of these questions. That theory, groupthink, would go on to be one of the most influential in the behavioral sciences. Janis's classic formulation (Janis, l9'72,1982) as well as his. Nore recent reformulation (see, for example, Janis, 1989) hypothesizes that decision making groups are most likely to experience groupthink when they are highly cohesive, insulated from experts, perform limited search and appraisal of information, operate under directed leadership and experience conditions of high stress with low self-esteem and little hope of finding a better solution to a pressing problem than that favored by the leader or influential members.”
-Twenty-Five Years of Groupthink Theory and Research: Lessons from the Evaluation of a Theory Marlene E. Turner San Jose State University and Anthony R. Pratkanis University of California, Santa Cruz
On that note, as you explore around out there looking for the next Twitter, be yourself, be curious, but try to retain as much of your personal data as possible, don’t give any more than you have to. When someone asks you to be a part of something consider if you will have to say or do things that you don’t necessarily agree with and whether anything they are asking you to do is something that you could be implicated in, or face risk, and whether there are contrasting groups that support the cause in better more constructive ways without possibly leaving you with the bill. If the people in the group are making you feel upset or excited but not really giving much information about the journey steps or method to the goal, and instead performatively screaming and mirroring extreme ideations, especially if they are unethical or unprofessional to other volunteers when they decide to no longer employ or work with them. IMO you should just get the fuck out of there.
Real nonprofits, real charities, and honest public facing causes use volunteers, not targeted marks.
Be curious, stay safe
-Ted MD
Everybody Does Want To Rule The World.
Loved this Ted.
Ted you sad fuck, did you learn what haiku is yet