Showing posts with label Weaponized Words on the Web. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Weaponized Words on the Web. Show all posts

Making War Real

Atrocity propaganda is a term referring to the spreading of deliberate fabrications or exaggerations about the crimes committed by an enemy, constituting a form of psychological warfare.

Similarly to propaganda, atrocity rumors detailing exaggerated or invented crimes perpetrated by enemies are also circulated to vilify the opposing side.

The Language of Persuasion

What's the best way to get laid?

Advertising is a force that makes it possible to sell more merchandise due to its persuasive nature. As a tool of marketing communication, advertising is the structured and composed, non-personal communication of information. It is usually paid for and usually persuasive in nature. The language of persuasion is employed for successful advertising campaign thereby, boosting patronage of idea, product or service.

Advertising has been vigorously attacked on the ground that it is unnecessary and wasteful and that through it, people are induced to buy worthless products. It is further argued by the objectors that much advertising is misleading and untruthful.

Those Memories of Disney World

Remember your childhood visit to Disney World?

Cinderella's castle glistening, the cartoon characters laughing, grouping for photos, the many rides with their height requirements, the smells of freshly cooked food, and Bugs Bunny shaking your hand?  As you bring that experience to mind, you may have the feeling you are reliving it, seeing your childhood pass through your mind's eye, much like reviewing a videotape.

But the way human memory works is very different from that of a video tape recorder—our memories are actually reconstructions of bits and pieces of information we have obtained over time.

Sometimes those reconstructions are very similar to what we experienced; other times we are "tricked" and remember things differently than how they actually happened.

In Fact, Most of what you recall didn't happen. 

A Powerful Technique Rarely Recognized

If we're all in sales, as the old saying goes, then we're all in the persuasion business. And this is particularly true for entrepreneurs. Whether you're asking investors to hand over their money, potential customers to try your product, or employees to give their best, much of your day is probably spent persuading people. So how do you do it well?

Propaganda - Description and Feel

PROPAGANDA IS EFFECTIVE BECAUSE it works on an emotional level. Most of our decisions are based on a combination between the perceived results of previous experience, the emotions we experience regarding the current situation, and logical analysis of the problem. Inside that mess is also perceived estimations of our skills, probable success, and evaluation of the forces and elements against us, if any.

What motivates us is not logic however, but emotion.

The propagandist uses symbols, attitudes and morals that are embedded in the target audience to control and limit the emotional state of his target. This is desirable because the emotional response is deep, powerful, long-lasting -- and not controlled by rational awareness or evaluation of the situation. An intellectual, rational response is not desired and is not sought.

There is a novel, one of my favorites by Philip K. Dick, We Will Remember It for you Wholesale, which posed a question -- If you remember spending six weeks as a Billionaire touring Europe and socializing among the world trenders. If it is a pure memory, wired into your matrix, did it happen? Did it? -- if it did, if the vacation could be authored, crafted by experienced and expert travelers, and tailored to your preferences and desires, would not that experience (which you could acquire in only a few hours, rather than six weeks) be more appealing than real travel to foreign lands with its reality of bungles and lost luggage and missing reservations, menacing dark streets, and weird toilet paper in the bathroom?

PROPAGANDA TECHNIQUE:
SELF-EVIDENCE.

It's been a long time since I wrote anything on the technique and usage of propaganda. So let's drop down and talk about a common technique used in our media today which has been a standard due to its reliability.

The Self-Evidence Technique has the longest list of methods for use, it is also quite possibly the oldest technique in recorded history, dating back to Aristotle. A list of the commonly known methods for this technique are posted on a page here

In this article the questions and counter view points are to lead you through the methods of countering this technique and understanding the power it has to stop the victim from questioning facts which are likely not presented in clear terms, and often, while the article using this technique may not 'lie', the context and composition doesn't presentt the information in true form either.So whether you agree with the argument or question -- keep in mind that those are the points, not the simply there to be argumentative.

So, what is this technique, and how is it being used by our Government and current Media today?

Sometimes news articles assume US policy statements are true and treat such statements as matters of fact rather than political argument. We can call this self-evidence, as in "We hold these truths to be self -evident."

Military level Propaganda Campaigns

Propaganda is the communication of a point of view with the ultimate goal of having the recipient come to “voluntarily” accept the position as if it were his or her own. In addition to the pejorative flavor, propaganda has some essential and distinctive features:
• Propaganda has a strong ideological bent.
• Propaganda is institutional in nature.
• Propaganda involves mass persuasion.
• Propaganda tends to rely on ethically suspect methods of influence.
Current News Articles on the Military level Propaganda Campaigns currently engaged on the Internet

The Guardian
Russia's sprawling propaganda network may have failed to persuade much of the world that Ukraine is run by Nazis, that Crimea was annexed in a popular uprising and/or that Germany is a failed state. But the barrage of misinformation has convinced some ...

Propaganda and The Christian Enslavement

When you think about Propaganda, 
why do you think WWII?
We've had many military engagements since then (Korea, Vietnam, Nicaragua, The War on Drugs, Egypt, Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq), and each of them used propaganda against the enemy. Each campaign from one to the next learned from the last becoming stronger, more effective, complex, sophisticated. How many Propaganda Wars are going on right now, on Twitter, Facebook, in the News Media, and other Social Media sources? How many people died this week from the publication of words on the web?

THERE ARE TWELVE MILITARY LEVEL PROPAGANDA CAMPAIGNS currently active on the Internet. Associating Propaganda,  with military actions isn't a huge leap. There are many other campaigns out there as well. Such as the Campaign to turn Christians into enslaved machines.

Are You Legit?
What makes you Qualified to Write?

"What Qualifies you to be a writer?" is likely the most negative question I've experienced since I began writing at 17.

I use to answer, "I passed 9th Grade English" or "Because English is my First Language"  In my 30s I was a little meaner -- "What qualifies you to breathe?"

Now that I'm 50 I don't answer at all.

Doubts plague every writer, as fierce as the Furies, as terrible as the Harpies. This particular doubt should never bother you.

Putting words in the mouth of a Great Speaker

Not much of a post, I know -- it is more of an announcement -- or perhaps, fair warning. I've received several emails from various groups who are urging me to act in particular directions -- because the President is urging us to move in those directions. Not one of them are even close to what the President has been focused on for the last two months. I've reminded each of these parties that the President gives a weekly 'State of the Union' address which goes out on YouTube and can also be seen on the Whitehouse web site -- where he also keeps a running blog. It doesn't take much to find out what is on President Obama's mind.


Selling compliance to the unwilling requires Inovation

You might believe that that Corporate use of Aggressive Persuasion is something you don't need to be concerned about -- and that belief might be yours, or painstakingly inserted into your decision matrix for you. After all, you do want to be compliant, right? So you were eventually going arrive at that belief anyway, right? So, no problem then.
Corporations -- All about Convenience

From the strategy page of a Corporate Marketing Agency:
Compliant behaviour is associated with conformity to institutional rules, and so, when people choose not to comply they stand answerable to consequences, which in an institutional or legal framework, could result in penalties such as fines, community service or legal action  (cf. Harvey and McCrohan, 1988; May, 2005). Thus, the word voluntary must be used with some caution in the context of social marketing frameworks. 
Social marketers should encourage compliance by using message appeals (in this context not simply message framing) to link the socially desired behaviour to something that is of value to the individual. These appeals must be packaged or presented in a way that enables the individual to see the direct benefit (value) of their action.  
This value could be something which avoids negative consequences or which are positive incentives to behave in a certain way (Staub, 1997; Atkin, 2001). It could also be an empathetic motive rather than a personal one (Taute and McQuitty, 2004; Sturmer, Snyder and Omoto, 2005). Message appeals can be either positive or negative in nature, and they can additionally be divided into informational (or rational) appeals versus emotional appeals.   

These are not unique strategy descriptions, but I was a little surprised to find them stated with such brazen openness.


The Malleable Variance of What We Call Time

In his Rhetoric, Aristotle acknowledges that it would be better if we could make our case without either browbeating or flattering the audience; nothing should matter except "the bare facts." He laments, "other things affect the result considerably, owing to the defects of our hearers."

Your perception of time does not adhere to "world time." You might have the opinion that I should have said, 'does not always adhere to world time', but that's a lie. Your sense of time is as easily disturbed as a puddle of mud, and just as transparent.

If a man with a bass voice reads a script at exactly the same speed as a man with a tenor voice, the bass voice feels slower, by a notable degree.

When your body temperature is high, your sense of time is also slowed. In one experiment, subjects with fevers were asked to count to 60 at one number per second. Without exception, they counted much faster.

Having a low body temperature  you would count slower, as the sense of time moves much faster.

Under the influence of blue light, time is underestimated -- which is why nightclubs use it, to give you the sense that you really haven't been there that long.

Under the long wavelengths of red light, time is overestimated and every thing feels like it is in slow motion.

A look at Aggressive Persuasion on the Internet

The Condition is well known and implicit.The Indoctrinated will fight to defend their conditioning -- Jane Robbins on Using Social Engineering on the Internet to Maintain Party Loyalty, Jan 24th 2013


She's right of course. It is a fool's errand to fight against those who have accepted a conditioning -- expecting to win. And, I want to be upfront on this -- the conditioning, it is not a sign of weakness, any more than having a bleeding hole in your chest is a sign of weakness after you've been shot.

The human brain, in evolutionary terms, is still fairly young -- with the frontal lobes and upper hemispheres being even younger than that. Language is also more powerful than we give it credit.

I was first introduced to indoctrinated minds when I was 20. I took the position as the personal security of a man named Ted Patrick.

Where the Wild Things Are...

Chess is a Wild game I've only been playing for a short time, but I've gained enough understanding to realize that the angles of ...