For folks that don't appreciate the power of marketing and advertising, I would strongly recommend the book Alchemy by Rory Sutherland. The point isn't to say "well ackchyually marketing is good," but is instead to say that the human mind has some built-in irrationality, and understanding the our behavioral predispositions interact with the world means that we can make better decisions in life and in business.
Everything we like is a psyop?
241–250 of 262 posts
Re: Everything we like is a psyop?
#242This isn't new, Theodor Adorno was making the point in the 1940s that taste isn't something formed in a vacuum and then expressed in the market, it's something the market produces in you and sells back. Chaotic Good is just an extension of the same tricks from back when Eddie Bernays was staging fake suffragette marches to sell cigarettes to women in 1929. The more disturbing implication is that it's not just "everyt…
"... and that possibly every thought you have ever had and will have is a product of these influences."
Obligatory "Cerulean Top" clip:
Re: Everything we like is a psyop?
#243Dang, that hurt to read. I'm starting up a new news-ish site like the old TheServerSide.com, at https://bytecode.news , and I'm faced with the question of "how do I generate traffic in the face of AI and all the people willing to market, market, astroturf, market, market?" I'm not that kind of personality, I don't want to do tiktok or whatever the kids do, I'd far rather accept organic and slow growth over meteoric a…
I like your work but I'll echo others : the title font is too narrow and hurts readability. I've advise for a regular Garamond.
The entire site looks like typical AI design
Re: Everything we like is a psyop?
#244The meta is that Wired (Conde Nast) is peak psyop.
Re: Everything we like is a psyop?
#245Earlier quoted context omitted.
This man will build a product no one uses and then complain about the world not being ready for his genius instead of using the tools that everyone else uses to give himself a chance at success.
In all honesty and writing it straight: this kind of success you're writing of would best be not achieved at all, as it's poisoning society and civilization.
I'm not talking the success of a Facebook or an Amazon. I think to successfully make an impact in terms of helping fellow humans, reach is a multiplier just as important as the quality of the product.
Re: Everything we like is a psyop?
#246Lots of social sites are facing this problem. It's nearly impossible to grow on Twitch without viewbotting: https://x.com/Reedjd/status/2028533060632010759 and Nikita is calling out Perplexity on X: https://x.com/nikitabier/status/2044902122995548330 The problem is that social platforms benefit from this behavior as long as it doesn't get too egregious. Bots contribute to metrics just as easily as real humans as long…
I have thought exactly as you do for a long time. Recently a side project of my blew up and it was completely organic. I'm just a solo dev. No marketing budget at all. No PR team. Made me realize that it's still possible for things to organically get big. It's just way way harder now.
I think it's still possible, but to your point it is way harder. Not only that, but as a consumer I never know what is authentic.
Re: Everything we like is a psyop?
#247Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you check on average every three years, the odds of you checking the very same day the book comes out are about 1‰, which is improbable but not _extremely_. Add that together with all the probabilities of things that would make you think "wow, that's improbable" and we have pretty high odds of something improbable happening.
Okay, I squinted hard at that notation “1‰” and had Gemini explain it to me, and it appears that you made no typos, but I couldn’t let that go unexplained!
Couldn't skip an opportunity to use an unusual character, could I‽
Re: Everything we like is a psyop?
#248I had a very odd experience the other day; while waiting for a doctor’s appointment, I had a book I’d read pop into my head (Mercy of Gods, very good) and looked up when the sequel was going to release. It had come out that morning. I can’t remember seeing any marketing about the sequel, I don’t use any app or service that would have told me it was upcoming or released, and I block ads; but it feels too enormous a co…
I don't know if this fits the definition perfectly, but synchronicity is a thing that exists.
Re: Everything we like is a psyop?
#249I had a very odd experience the other day; while waiting for a doctor’s appointment, I had a book I’d read pop into my head (Mercy of Gods, very good) and looked up when the sequel was going to release. It had come out that morning. I can’t remember seeing any marketing about the sequel, I don’t use any app or service that would have told me it was upcoming or released, and I block ads; but it feels too enormous a co…
I don't know if this fits the definition perfectly, but synchronicity is a thing that exists.
[dead]
Re: Everything we like is a psyop?
#250Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's so weird to see empathy-speak be regularly co-opted by habitual mass manipulators. "I don't know if this will make you feel better... but we're concerned with manipulating the reactions to the reactions as well! See how much we care?" It makes me do a double-take every time someone shows actual empathy, because it's used so often as a manipulative tactic to shield oneself against critiques of soullessness.
Manipulation is emotional more than it is logical, about feelings than ideas, more in women than in men, and therefore for the majority of the audience of tiktok etc
Do you have any objective data for this? In my experience, most subjective claims about men vs. women are unresolvable as either true or false. At best, the discussion degenerates into a Jung-like discussion of anima and animus.