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How To Use Stress To Persuade This is the most brilliant video by Amazing Polly I have seen to date. The oldest advertising trick in the book is to find a psychological pain point in the target that the seller's product addresses, stomp on that pain point with stories and case studies, then twist the knife saying it's even worse that anyone thought and providing even more stories and case studies, then offer the product as a solution. I never thought of this as inducing stress until Polly's video above, but that's exactly what it is. And, just to make sure there's science behind it, she hammers home studies that show people buy more when they are stressed. Another advertising point that is taught everywhere is how to frame a "call to action" (which generally means inducing the target to buy something, but can mean other actions). The element most often used is a ticking clock, which is called scarcity. But time is not the only scarcity. After scaring the piss out of people about their problem, saying it's even worse than they imagined, then saying there is hope (a magic product that makes it all go away) and painting that picture, you tell them that there are limited supplies of the product, there is on a certain amount of time to get it, the window of opportunity is evaporating, and so on. Also go after the price that way. In other words, if you want to manipulate people like an evil genius, scare them then provide hope and whet their appetites (these two turn off their rational thinking), then induce massive stress with scarcity. Social media giants are using more sophisticated techniques like gaslighting and the Alice in Wonderland effect to induce a psychological state called "reactance," which induces stress. See the video for what these things mean if you are not familiar with them. Also, note that the outrage culture is all about stress. Once people are stressed enough, you can get them to do what you want by properly framing offers and calls to action. Do you want them to buy something? Join a movement? Call their congressman? Petition to have a person lose his or her job? Etc. No problem. Stress is your friend if you learn how to induce it... Tech giants like to advertise a lot around stress. And when soda pop or hand cream or breakfast food companies balk at having their ads shown near huge social stressors like acute bigotry and so on, the tech giants censor their users and don't provide anyone with clear rules, causing even more stress, thus serving even more ads. It's good work if you can get it. Let's not forget Google's mission slogan for most of its existence: Don't be evil. Google has formally stopped using it. Money and power works better for them now. It's less stressful--for them. Michael

The Real Roots of the Internet and Social Media The following video from Corbett is quite an education. You can get the transcript and sources here: Episode 359 – The Secrets of Silicon Valley: What Big Tech Doesn’t Want You to Know If you want to know why the claim is bogus that big tech companies are private companies, therefore they should be able to freely censor whoever they please over political preference, take a look at this video. Would one ever make political preference a condition for civil service or joining the armed forces? Of course not. There is a fact that is becoming clearer and clearer to the public as time goes on. Big Tech is Big Government in the guise of private companies. But the big tech companies were and still are funded in great part by the government. And they never strayed from their real purpose, covert surveillance and influence of people in foreign lands--and ditto for American citizens. From that lens, a hell of a lot of mysterious happenings start making sense. Michael

Fake Social Media Since we have a long thread on Fake News here on OL, I believe, given recent events, that here in the persuasion section we need a thread on Fake Social Media. There will be long analyses coming, but for now, I want to use a transcript of something Rush Limbaugh said earlier today to kick this off. Xi Jinping Sends Message to Apple From the transcript (my bold at the end): Add this to the fact that all of these big tech companies were absolutely sure Hillary Clinton was going to win the presidency and thus, the, would be privy to massive influence in the government and lots of juicy government contracts. So they stuffed their employee staffs with thousands and thousands of hardcore Clinton supporters. And you get the mess we have today. I think the Fake Social Media sites are going to go down the tubes before too long. They banked hard on the globalist model where they outsourced their costs for slave-level labor (and other inputs) in developing countries and kept the profits from markets in richer countries. So now they are trying to save themselves by acting like authoritarians. This will not end well. I want to discuss this further and many other things, but there are too many issues for this opening post. So I will save them for later in the thread. Enjoy, because this is going to be an eye-opener if you don't grok just how bad the Fake Social Media has gotten. I'm going to give you some of the addiction algorithms and everything. Meanwhile, think about US companies becoming Chinese, including vast parts of the US government, and see if that feels like a good idea to you. Michael

Alex Jones and Bullying by the Establishment Alex Jones and Infowars are getting slammed in a manner that is not persuasive, to say the least. That is why this thread is in Persuasion Techniques. This is a case of what not to do. Take a look at following crap on a sister site Alex owns. You can't see it on Infowars right now because the establishment bullies have triggered a DDOS attack on the site. Infowars.com Site Goes Down Amid Big Tech Censorship Comes as social media giants try to silence political speech ahead of midterms The subtitle is correct. This is all about the midterms. During the past presidential election, Hillary Clinton complained about Alex Jones by name. Also, Clinton's poodle, Mueller is currently targeting Roger Stone in a Hail Mary attempt to make his investigation relevant and influence the upcoming elections. Roger co-hosts his own show on Infowars. Do you believe in coincidences like that? As this thread develops, I will list the crap the crony corporatists and deep state are doing to Alex, but I want to ask you something right now. You may hate Alex Jones or think he is insane. But after being thrown off Facebook, YouTube, ITunes, Spotify, Pinterest, the autoresponder MailChimp and several other major social media sites, including payment processors, all within the same time frame, and now when you go to Jones's own site, Infowars, you get this: ... because hackers are blasting Denial of Service robot attacks on his site so no one else can access it, do you this this is OK? Is this the kind of world you want to live in? Or do you prefer free speech on the Internet? For me, this is despicable and I am weighing my own options about shutting down my own presences at some of the crony corporatist sites like Facebook, etc. For the time being, though, I'm waiting to see what happens. Need I remind folks that this is how it works before authoritarians take over something big? As in the words of Martin Niemöller: Granted, we are talking about the ability to speak on the Internet and not physical imprisonment, but the way this thing is unfolding, it is serious and the pattern is the same. Luckily, Alex's support has grown because of this bullying. The Internet is just too big right now. And since, thankfully, net neutrality regulations have been neutralized, the government does not have its grubby mits on throttling whoever the regulators find objectionable. So despite the cronies and deep state thinking they can guarantee Democratic Party wins in the upcoming midterms by shutting down popular opposing voices (and they are starting to go hogwild with lots of other sites--if you look into this, you will be amazed at the brazenness), I don't think they understand how this will resonate with the typical American spirit. One thing is for sure. They are not persuading anyone by this bullying. They are only singing to their own choir. And, unbelievably, they have accomplished the impossible propaganda-wise. They have turned Alex Jones into a legitimate victim and martyr for a massive victimization story to be used during the elections. Congratulations, idiots. Un-frigging-believable. Now live with the consequences. Michael