Algorithmic Manipulation

You don't have an opinion - It's assigned to you

Thank you for reading this article. It means you’re smart!

Most of us like to think that we are informed. That our vote matters. I regret to inform you; that you are not, and it does not. I don’t remember who said this:

“What does it matter who I vote for? I am choosing between war and deficits or war and deficits.”

If you haven’t gathered, I’m in the United States.

Let’s dig in.

This past election cycle. I imagine you saw stories that set your hair on fire. I had friends and family reaching out to me about Ron DeSantis.

“Did you hear about those people he had arrested for voter fraud? They only do this to poor people!”

Do you know what I never hear them say?

“Oh my God those poor children in Africa digging in mines so I can feel good about my electric vehicle.”

👀👇

COMBATE |🇵🇷@upholdreality

MELONI: "This is called the CFA franc. It is the colonial currency that France prints for 14 African nations, to which it applies seigniorage and by virtue of which it exploits the resources of these nations..."

8:32 PM · Nov 18, 2022

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9.63K Reposts · 26.7K Likes

The video is about gold however we’re still talking about colonial powers using children to dig in mines for the benefit of rich Western nations.

“But China!”

Shut up. China wouldn’t even be in this position if it wasn’t for the Western elite so spare me.

Do you know what else I heard people talk about.

“I can’t believe all these mass shootings! We need to do something! Vote Blue!! ✊”

The •obvious• counter is, “So have you looked at Chicago?”

I don’t accept that frame because:

1. It’s still part of the Hegelian Dialectic - I’ll explain in a minute

2. I can do much better

Do you know what I NEVER hear them say?

(I’m going to paraphrase the great Scott Horton here.)

“We helped burn Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Somalia, Libya, Syria, Yemen, and Ukraine to the fucking ground. More than two million people are dead. We should do something!”

Night club shooting? 😿🏳️‍🌈

Children in the third world dying by the •HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS•? 🦗🦗

Why is this?

Think about it for a minute…

It’s because they weren’t told to care.

Let •that• sink in.

We’ve known about how the media is used to manufacture consent. Chomsky has been talking about it for almost fifty years. It’s called propaganda. I can do a killer article on it sometime if you’d like. However, what we have in the current age, is a completely different animal. And it’s a monster.

We’ll circle back to the monster in a minute. First, here is that definition of a Hegelian Dialectic I promised you and an explanation.

From Dictionary dot com cos good enough is good enough:

“an interpretive method, originally used to relate specific entities or events to the absolute idea, in which some assertible proposition (thesis) is necessarily opposed by an equally assertible and apparently contradictory proposition (antithesis), the mutual contradiction being reconciled on a higher level of truth by a third proposition (synthesis).”

Hegelian Dialectic defined by me.

The best way to play Fortnite is by picking a good spot near the middle of the circle and camping.

Thesis

No! That’s boring af. Let’s go get those guys.

Antithesis

Well, I think we can agree that there are many ways that different people can enjoy Fortnite, agreed?

Synthesis

We talked about Fortnite because it’s what I brought up.

Not:

Call of Dury

Other video games

Board games

The War in Yemen.

I set the table so we talk about what I say. All that energy goes into the thing I want it to and it wastes your energy. While you’re arguing Fortnite strategy, I’m using money printing to destroy the third world.

It also boosts Fortnite sales ☝️🤌

That’s how HD controls us.

The mainstream, captured, corporate press •IS• who sets the table. Rather their owners are.

Do an internet search for who owns your favorite news source. It’ll shock you. As an example, Forbes is owned by the Chinese.

Back to the monster.

What we have is something I am calling “algorithmic manipulation.”

What this looks like is we have spent the last twenty years on the Internet sorting ourselves into different camps. These are based on our interests, culture, race, geolocation, dislikes, and how we see ourselves. We self selected peer groups that largely mirror us.

There was a belief that the Internet would bring us together. WRONG.

Whites hang out with whites. Blacks hang out with blacks. Nerds hand with nerds. Liberals hang with liberals.

Before the Internet, we had to just sort of figure out how to navigate interacting with one another. Differences would cause conflict and those conflicts would sever or harden bonds.

You still had to deal with one another though.

Now we have system where the preferred response is severing and you don’t even need to talk to the person. Just unfollow them. Or call their boss and try to get them fired. Or go create an online mob to get them killed.

We were more diverse before the Internet. Now we’re in echo chambers. Why?

1. We’re a tribal speciecs. Normally we can have 500 friends and family. That’s it.

2. The Internet has rewired how we think. We are bombarded with so much information, that we have given our sense making over to thought leaders in our tribes. The simplest example is the Left vs Right however that phrasing is meaningless now - An article for another day.

3. Social media companies have incentivised conflict - Outrage and conflict drive engagement. This means that if Hatebook can get us screaming at each other, we’ll stare at a screen longer.

While we have been doing this, the companies that own these .coms have been mining us for data.

“If the service is free, you are the product.”

This data is the most valuable thing on the planet. It’s more valuable than gold, oil, bombs, anything. The reason is, this data is the key to unlocking human behavior. They can use this data to maniuplate us to do anything that is possible - And we’ll think it was our idea.

This goes way beyond manufacturing consent. Far beyond getting you to buy a Toyota.

What I am talking about is the ability to target market down to the level of the individual and get them to do anything that is possible, for them.

This is going to be abstract so stick with me here.

Let’s say we have three people:

1. Conservative

2. Moderate

3. Liberal

(We’re going with the Second Iraq War definitions of these terms. Not the digitial hellscape we have been in since 2015.)

I am going to assign a value to each one:

• Conservative: 10 - 20

• Moderate: 5 - 15

• Liberal: 1 - 10

You and me. We’re gonna start a war baby! It doesn’t matter with who. We gotta earn those bux! 💰💪

For our war to get going. We need to create a consenus. In fact, we need create a consensus score of 45 to get it done.

With our scale of 1 - 20

1 = Won’t even put up hands to stop getting hit in the face

20 = Setting the house of someone who hit them in the face, on fire, with them in it

We need to get conservatives, moderates, and liberals, all pissed as humanly possible in order to move this forward. If we can get the liberals so say, “Gee, well I mean, I guess we need to do •something• about this,” we win.

Got it friend?

Cool. So here’s what you and I are gonna do. We are going to use the data from the giant tech platforms to A/B test marketing that will have even the wimpiest liberal screaming for blood. We take the results of that data and refine, refine, refine. We make better ads and build better profiles on target markets.

Lucky for us people tend to be like their peer group. Especially in crowds.

This means with enough testing friend - we can target •entire• segments of society - with one ad - and it will work. Further, we can automate it. Let me explain.

For our war to work, we need to get buy in from everyone. You and I are going to assign a letter to everyone possible in our society. We’ll use the alphabet. A - Z.

You create ads that will work on every letter and I’ll make sure that they get them. Every A on the Internet will see the same ad. Same with every Z.

I will create a campaign called “War Maximizer” and target each segment with the ads you create. The way I do this is I use social media to target market each letter with the corresponding ad. Further •and this part is great I’m sure you agree• you and I are going to use the social pressure of crowds to bully people into compliance.

All the letters of the self selected peer groups like each other. As are friends with As, Bs with Bs, and so on. They’re in the same tribe.

By targeting each group with their personality specific propaganda, we can create an outcry in that specific community. Everyone in the community will get the same message and if anyone disagrees, they will be kicked out of the group.

Ostracization baby!! They’re kicked out of the tribe! They gonna starve to death in the wild now hahahaha!

JK LOL. They comply.

Get this. Not everyone in the peer group needs to see the ad. If 20% see it, that could be enough. It’ll get the consensus algorthim going and everyone else will pick up on the sigal. You ever try disagreeing with the Internet when it has already made up its mind? LOL

(There’s a great old podcast titled “Follow The Herd Mentality” which explains this phenomenon.)

Even better. AND YOU’RE GONNA LOVE THIS. You and I can make sure that the other letters NEVER see the ads the others are.

How?

I’ll just write a program called “This not that.”

•All As only see AdSet A and not B-Z•

Then all Bs, Cs, Ds, and so on.

Boom friend. You and me got our war.

End scene.

The above example is just that, an example. This methodolgy can and •is• being used against us everyday. Social issues. Politics. Environmental issues. The f-ng clothes we wear.

All of this can and is being A/B tested to manipulate us into whatever the people who control the levers want.

Back to you an me for a minute.

“Let’s see. I want everyone to, drive an EV, wear a hat, and buy a gun. You go make the ads and I’ll get them in front of the right eyeballs.”

You create ads talking about climate change, peak oil, how nice EVs are, the benefits of shaving your head, what hats the celebrities are wearing, lice, crime, why the Founding Fathers wrote the Second Amendment, and responsible gun ownership.

I will target these ads to the most susceptible and make sure they •NEVER• see anything on rare earth mineral mining in the third world, the amount of water that goes into fashion, cool hairstyles, or information that most gun deaths are accidents or suicide.

Back to the article.

This is algorithmic manipulation. I trust you see the point.

What can •you• do about it?

Well there’s a number of things

1. Turn off your screens and go outside.

2. If you use a screen, play a video game, preferrably something with no plot.

3. Talk to people in real life. Don’t play with your phone while you’re doing it.

4. Just stop watching the news. It’s lies. Look at the advertisers during commercials. It’s •their• news. Not yours.

5. Share these concepts with your friends and family. We don’t need to be slaves to trillionares and Silicon Valley.

6. Don’t expect a political party to save you. They’re all slaves to the system too.

If this stressed you out, you can read the article below to chill out. Best!

https://open.substack.com/pub/jacobrobertson/p/let-it-go-bish