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Everything we like is a psyop?

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Re: Everything we like is a psyop?

#61

Post by phpnode »

autoexec wrote: post #48
johnfn wrote: post #11

But Geese is a good band. I just listened to 3D country to verify this. Yep, they’re still good. If it is a psyop, the psyop was only successful because they were a good band in the first place.

I would hope that any band who is actually good wouldn't need a psyop campaign to become popular. Have we really reached a point where marketers have polluted our lives with so many ads for garbage that we're incapable of discovering anything worthwhile unless it has a massive marketing agency behind it? That feels a lot like a racket. "Pay us to solve a problem we created!" is the sort of thing that should be regula…

> Have we really reached a point where marketers have polluted our lives with so many ads for garbage that we're incapable of discovering anything worthwhile unless it has a massive marketing agency behind it?

Yes, exactly this. It is extremely difficult to get attention these days, no matter how good your offering.

Re: Everything we like is a psyop?

#63

Post by ericjmorey »

majormajor wrote: post #55
simplyluke wrote: post #5

I think most users of websites like reddit, x, and yes even HN don't realize how much traffic is inorganic. Marketing firms, government agencies, and many other interested parties with money to burn are absolutely aware that you search "best {product} reddit" I've commented on this before, but I strongly suspect much of the narrative around AI is being formed with strong inputs from these patterns. What's your basis…

Remember Quibi? All the money in the world can't actually turn a turd into a market leader. If you have a good product you have to play the marketing game to avoid getting left behind. If you have a bad product you try to play it and you still don't get picked up. (This last bit is where things usually turn into an argument about "no, obviously [this thing I don't like] is bad and is only popular because of the marke…

Quibi doesn't seem like a good example. It wasn't marketed as the next big thing. It was a trial balloon that popped.

Re: Everything we like is a psyop?

#65

Post by ryankrage77 »

vermilingua wrote: post #53
squigz wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems infinitely more likely to me that this is simple coincidence than something nefarious.

Don’t get me wrong, I agree; but the odds of that coincidence are extremely long.

I'm sad my second thought about this (after dismissing it as a coincidence) was that it could be used for marketing - "I randomly thought about this book/show/movie whatever, and hey what do you know? The sequel is coming out!". Basically another variation on 'organic' advertising in comments that's been around for a while.

Of course I highly doubt that's what actually happening here, but the idea is unpleasant. I hate advertising, I don't want it messing with real interactions with other humans. I'm not sure how to express the idea, it's like its so pervasive I'm thinking about it when its not even present.

Re: Everything we like is a psyop?

#66

Post by NicuCalcea »

autoexec wrote: post #41

It's such an insane amount of waste that there are rooms filled with cell phones just to churn out spam. The same job should be doable by a single server. I imagine that it's only required because platforms are fingerprinting the phones to check for spammers but obviously those systems have gone from being simply useless to becoming harmful since it's now generating massive amounts of e-waste. This seems like somethi…

You can get cheap Android phones for like $15, and they each get a difficult to ban cellular IP. You also need to buy the server box to make it all work, they're about $300 on Amazon and cheaper elsewhere. So you can get 20 devices going for $600. All in all, I think it would pay for itself pretty quickly.

Re: Everything we like is a psyop?

#67

Post by GolfPopper »

lmm wrote: post #57
Chaosvex wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like how that article claims PR firms don't lie and then proceeds to discuss how their best PR campaign was effectively a lie. > We estimated, based on some fairly informal math, that there were about 5000 stores on the Web. We got one paper to print this number, which seemed neutral enough. But once this "fact" was out there in print, we could quote it to other publications, and claim that with 1000 users we had 2…

It sounds like they did good-faith estimate that there were 5000 stores out there and really believed they had 20% of the market? I wouldn't call that a lie as such.

They made up a number, and then quoted that number to other people (presumably with the intent to benefit themselves) without disclosing that they'd made up the number in the first place. That seems to jump right past 'lie' into 'fraud' or worse.

I have this growing belief that what's wrong with America is that we've tossed a great deal of virtue (both personal and public) into the woodchipper, using a lot of euphemisms like "marketing" or "puffery". And the rot is not in any way confined to marketing - it's just that marketing is a very obvious example of it. The rot has made its way into education, relationships, entertainment, governance, infrastructure, what used to be called 'news', and on and on.

We collectively gaslight ourselves to avoid dealing with the reality that we're constantly defecating in our own minds, contaminating ourselves with patterns of thought and action that are antithetical to our own continued well-being as individuals and collectives. To borrow a word from Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, we are poisoning the noosphere.

Re: Everything we like is a psyop?

#68

Post by geerlingguy »

autoexec wrote: post #43
kylecazar wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A good reason to find specific individuals with relevant knowledge and follow their writing directly. Think simonw and his pelicans... but there are lesser known trustworthy voices as well. It just takes some time to find them for a given area of interest. Also bring back blogrolls.

> A good reason to find specific individuals with relevant knowledge and follow their writing directly. As soon as they get popular enough they'll be approached with offers to shill in exchange for huge piles of money. That's the entire point of "influencers". Trusted people being turned into secret advertisers and billboards.

Not all are swayed.

The hard thing is finding which ones are, and which ones aren't.

I rely on a web of trust. When I see another new hot AI trend, I check it against whether any of the people I've followed via RSS or manually curated on Twitter, Mastodon, etc (many of whom I met IRL) have said anything about it.

There's still a an undercurrent of people blogging and posting and chatting who are trustworthy and haven't sold their soul to marketing. Or at least are clear when they say things that are marketing.

But it is ever harder to find those voices, especially if you're new to an industry.

Re: Everything we like is a psyop?

#69

Post by qq66 »

johnfn wrote: post #11

But Geese is a good band. I just listened to 3D country to verify this. Yep, they’re still good. If it is a psyop, the psyop was only successful because they were a good band in the first place.

Being a good band isn't nearly enough to be a famous band.

Re: Everything we like is a psyop?

#70

Post by plastic041 »

> “Unfortunately, a lot of the internet is manipulation … Everything on the internet is fake. One thing that we always say is all opinions are formed in the TikTok comments,” Chaotic Good co-founder Jesse Coren noted.

Why is this guy talking like this? YOU are literally co-making internet full of fake!

It's worse if you read the context[0]:

Interviewer: What would you say to someone who’s freaked out by these ideas that we are talking about — who feels like they’re being manipulated by artists and marketers online?

Coren: Unfortunately, a lot of the internet is manipulation. Andrew(Chaotic Good co-founder) would always say everything on the internet is fake. All opinions are formed in the TikTok comments — which is a reminder to us of what we can help with. I don’t know if this will make anyone feel better, but a lot of what we do on the narrative side is controlling the discourse. Most people see a video or something about an album that came out, and that first comment they see becomes their opinion, even when they haven’t heard the whole album. It’s really important for us to make sure we’re ahead of it and controlling that narrative in the direction we want.

[0] https://www.billboard.com/pro/digital-marketers-secret-tacti...

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