The Story Wars of Hot Political Issues

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

This article is for those interested in digging deeper into how the world is being subjected to gaslighting.

I am fast becoming a fan of Cynthia Chung and that group around her at the Rising Tide Foundation. I wish I had more time to delve into their stuff. When I do manage to find time, I always come back feeling my mind has been enriched.

And that, despite sometimes not agreeing with everything they write and say.

Sometimes it's just enough to go deep and interesting into a topic nobody is talking about to get the mental juices flowing. What's more, these people have no problem with sourcing everything they talk about. You are free to check their sources.

In today's world of nonstop sources qualified like "according to a person familiar with the incident," having free access to sources is like being in intellectual heaven.

We can think for ourselves...

 

Gaslighting: The Psychology of Shaping Another’s Reality
by Cynthia Chung

Quote

It had been commonly thought in the past, and not without basis, that tyranny could only exist on the condition that the people were kept illiterate and ignorant of their oppression. To recognise that one was “oppressed” meant they must first have an idea of what was “freedom”, and if one were allowed the “privilege” to learn how to read, this discovery was inevitable.

If education of the masses could turn the majority of a population literate, it was thought that the higher ideas, the sort of “dangerous ideas” that Mustapha Mond for instance expresses in “The Brave New World”, would quickly organise the masses and revolution against their “controllers” would be inevitable. In other words, knowledge is freedom, and you cannot enslave those who learn how to “think”.

However, it hasn’t exactly played out that way has it?

The greater majority of us are free to read whatever we wish to...

This is the start of Cynthia's essay.

When I first read it, a little voice inside me said, "I'm certainly not free to read whatever I wish in cancel culture..."

And then I stopped.

Of course I'm free to read whatever I wish. Just not on mainstream news and social media platforms. Just not in many university classrooms. Places like that.

The last I looked, there are libraries and bookstores all over the place, not to mention the plethora of ideas all over the Internet.

In other words, those cancel culture places are not places of free-flowing information. They are places of behavior control.

This is so important, let me repeat it. The mainstream news and social media platforms, many university classes, just to name a few, are NOT places to get objective information. They are place devoted to BEHAVIOR CONTROL.

The sooner people learn to call them that, or at least think of them as that, the sooner they will lose their power to shape society in the image of their own goofy, but evil, ideas.

 

So as a complement to Cynthia's brilliant and all-too-short essay, gaslighting only happens in controlled environments.

If you do not want your brain to be subjected to gaslighting techniques: Leave the environments where the leaders do gaslighting.

What else can you do?

Well, there is a second option: Destroy the environments where gaslighting is ascendant. 

And a third option: Destroy the gaslighters.

And finally: Destroy any power gaslighters hold.

Thankfully, a combination of all of these is happening in the world right now. It's a mess, it's a slog, but it's happening.

 

Gaslighting is one of the deadliest tools of the story wars. It comes and goes like waves throughout society. When you beat it down in one environment, it pops up in another.

But fight it, we must.

The alternative is to become obedient to people who despise us and surrender out minds to them. And that's an alternative I, for one, cannot accept. I don't want to live in that world. I am growing to despise gaslighters more than they despise people like me.

Hopefully, with the Internet, essays like the one above, the growing popularity of Cukor's old movie, Gaslight, a flood of pushback, and works and ideas calling on people to think for themselves, to use reason, and so on, these waves will get less and less intense, even as communications get more and more ubiquitous...

Michael

[ThatGuy]

Interesting article that discusses the structure of the internet and its affects on political discourse ("story wars"), and how politicians like Obama and Trump use it to their advantage (and why Biden is a walking meme factory...)

The Fifth Wave: Is the Medium Really the Message?

Ezra Klein, Marshall McLuhan and the question of structure over content

The Fifth Wave: Is the Medium Really the Message? - Discourse

WWW.DISCOURSEMAGAZINE.COM

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In spite of the widely-held belief that all information fights are over content, Marshall McLuhan was right when he said the medium is the...

(intro): "In a recent New York Times opinion piece, Ezra Klein shares a guilty secret: “I didn’t want it to be true, but the medium really is the message.” As a millennial, and thus part of the first generation of digital natives, Klein tells us that he “adored” the new medium with its “endless expanses of information.” He adds: “My life, my career and my identity were digital constructs as much as they were physical ones.”

"Of course, we all know where this is headed. Trump and Twitter happened. This “felt like a sinister apotheosis,” also known as a Very Bad Thing. Inevitably, Klein fell out of love with the web. To his credit, and unlike most anti-technology crotchets, he looks for an explanation for this failed romance among media theorists who have a lot to say on the subject."

Quote a found interesting, in regards to the nationwide divorce on the horizon:

"As for social media, Klein is absolutely correct that it aims to convert users into a vast conformist herd—but that has come at the end of a process that began in the opposite direction. The early internet brought about a great fracturing of the public. Or, more accurately, it allowed a fractured public to be itself, as the gravitational pull to remain a “mass audience” suddenly vanished. Two decades ago, the public shattered like Humpty Dumpty and has never been put back together again. This means that both conformity and disintegration are at work in the digital medium today: That’s how you get ferociously loyal online war-bands skirmishing over every aspect of reality, from Covid vaccines to the shape of the earth."

 

[ThatGuy]

This quote, from the same article, compares the "fluidity" of one's internet identity to an "indentity crisis", and even offers it as an explanation for the "72 genders" variety...

quote:

Another effect of the digital medium is more indirect but may also be more profound. The moment one enters the online environment, the self begins to liquify. The lack of external or internal pressures makes it impossible to maintain a definite shape or character. On the web, you can be anyone or anything—a vertigo-inducing condition that is equivalent to being nothing. Identity, which in traditional culture was pressed hard upon us by social forces and in modernity became problematic, now dissipates into thin air. Those of us who are of a certain age will borrow attributes from the analog world. But the young make no distinction between virtual and real. They are stuck on a question that is part narcissism and part fear of the monster in the labyrinth: What am I?

Let’s be clear: This is a pathological affliction. It’s the cause of much anxiety, depression, even suicide. The youngest generation boasts of its fluidity: You can be any one of 72 genders, alter your online portrait to fit some ideal of perfection and, if the mood strikes, you can become someone else entirely, again and again. What is affirmed isn’t freedom but necessity. What is experienced isn’t discovery but confusion. The herd instinct in the young runs far deeper than the algorithms of social media. By being told which words are mandated and which are taboo, which opinions are safe and which are “harmful,” an artificial membrane is produced to hold, in a facsimile of identity, the liquid self.

 

end quote

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

TG,

It's good to look at this stuff once in a while. But it's better to see what it is, not what it says.

This is a typical top-down article where people at the top not only describe reality, they determine what reality is, pretend that everyone agrees with them, then act perplexed when examples of reality do not conform to what they say. Then they throw up their hands in a gesture of the wonder of it all. I call this cheap profundity.

 

McLuhan's famous quote, "The medium is the message," is hyperbole, not cognitive identification.

If you want to have some fun and learn how to think through story wars and their impact on culture, then see how empty analyses like the one you posted above are, I have a small mental exercise for you.

Note, I'm not saying it was bad to read that analysis, bad to post it, or even bad to glean an insight here and there from it. All of that is good.

I am saying that bringing it up to look at it, itself, is even better. Because the message it conveys under the surface is not what it says on the surface.

 

So here is the exercise.

In your mind go back to the Civil War in America, see the soldiers hopping mad at each other and scared out of their wits with blood and death flying around all over the place. Then try to imagine the media back then. Was any particular medium or group of media the message that caused the war? Or even influenced the nature of the war?

 

A case could be made for Uncle Tom's Cabin because of what Lincoln said to Stowe, but her work is simple storytelling. If that story was not ripe for that age, no matter how advanced printing and distribution were, they would not have influenced the Civil War in anything.

Next, try Nazi Germany.

Or even go back further to Atilla the Hun and his gang.

Were they the message from the media of the time?

 

Take any one of this scenarios, look through that article, then try to see if there is anything--anything at all--that is relevant to those contexts.

You will find precious little and it's not because the media changed. It's because the article dealt so little with human nature.

 

The truth is, the more powerful the media is, the more it allows humans to amplify their best and worst sides simply because all humans have eyes and ears. The more a person in the audience can see something different than he is told by his environment, the more he is able to process it mentally and change the prevailing stories in his mind--for good and for bad.

The more advanced media connect an individual with the good and bad of more humans.

That is ALL the media does.

 

There is an apparent exception of addiction like what happens in social media. The triggers and payoffs are engineered within the media itself. But when you look, it is not the media causing addiction. It is the human nature responses to relationships, acceptance, impression on others, and so on. More humans. And it all comes from the human brain, not from the media. So even the success of social media can still be boiled down to human nature.

Some experts are saying that this is shaping humans (which is the payoff of the McLuhan quote). Well, eating too much junk food is making people fat. So what? The human race is not going to change into a a meat-machine of autonomatons programed by masters because of these things. The human race is not going to become an innately fat race because of a generation or two or thee overeating crap.

An aspect of human nature the people who preach this stuff always leave out is that everyday people get really pissed off once they become aware of the damage being done to them. And they change--not themselves--but the people doing the damage. They throw the goddam bums out.

 

The story wars issue is not to blame human misbehavior and limitations on technological advances in media, but instead, to teach people how to think for themselves, resist glitches in cognition inherited from evolution, and create stories that widely appeal to the underbelly of the mind while enhancing human life and painting authoritarians in a bad light.

That is what our side needs to do constantly.

 

Here is the correct framing, and you will see how easily media--all media--fall under this.

The individual as a member of the human species. That is our frame and such individuals are our heroes. They have innate human characteristics, but they can exercise their free will to change things to flourish.

The human species with disposable individuals. There is factual basis to this if you pretend you can see existence from the perspective of the entire species. But human stories are for human individuals, not for a species-like intelligence. We don't make and pass on stories about a single human species intelligence that exercises freewill while the human individuals cannot. So our story wars frame is not this.

What's more, our villains are the megalomaniacs who try to speak in the name of, and assume control over, the species as a whole. In their minds, only they get to exercise free will. All others must obey them.

Everyday vanilla-flavored authoritarians are villains, too, but they are minor versions of the megalomaniacs.

A Christian way of saying this is the villains want to be God. But no matter what words we use, when we look, this division, individual humans versus individuals who want to rule humans, it's always the same crap in all systems.

 

When someone says meme-things like, "The medium is the message," they are trying to focus public attention away from the reality of human nature. They like being on the ruling side.  

As Rand says, "... there's always a purpose in nonsense. Don't bother to examine a folly--ask yourself only what it accomplishes."

Rand was having Toohey explain "sacrifice is the message" in that quote, but that quote became famous on its own due to the deeper epistemological truth it conveyed for many contexts. What is the purpose of a folly in propaganda? It can be paraphrased as: "Thinking you are thinking is the message."

All you have to do after that is ask what that accomplishes...

 

Michael

[ThatGuy]

55 minutes ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Note, I'm not saying it was bad to read that analysis, bad to post it, or even bad to glean an insight here and there from it. All of that is good.

I am saying that bringing it up to look at it, itself, is even better. Because the message it conveys under the surface is not what it says on the surface.

So, you're saying that the medium is even better than the message?
(Sorry, I couldn't resist...)

 

[ThatGuy]

56 minutes ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

You will find precious little and it's not because the media changed. It's because the article dealt so little with human nature.

In all seriousness, though, your point is noted.

[ThatGuy]

2 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

he human species with disposable individuals. There is factual basis to this if you pretend you can see existence from the perspective of the entire species. But human stories are for human individuals, not for a species-like intelligence. We don't make and pass on stories about a single human species intelligence that exercises freewill while the human individuals cannot. So our story wars frame is not this.

What's more, our villains are the megalomaniacs who try to speak in the name of, and assume control over, the species as a whole. In their minds, only they get to exercise free will. All others must obey them.

This is weird (if a little silly), but I was just reading something about a comic book villain, DC's Darkseid, whose very goal is just that, usurping the free will of humanity. (What makes this more interesting in the political context of this conversation is the real-life models for the character: Adolph Hitler and...Richard Nixon? Not only that, but one of his minions, "Glorious Godfrey" was originally modeled after preacher Billy Graham, but has been used in later depictions as a stand-in for...Rush Limbaugh. If it's not obvious that the comics industry was just as leftist as Hollywood, well...but even the association of the Right with fascism is telling in how the left has used the "story wars" to its benefit...)

 

Quote

Darkseid (/ˈdɑːrksaɪd/)^[1] is a supervillain appearing in American comic books published by DC Comics. Created by writer-artist Jack Kirby, the character first made a cameo appearance in Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen #134 in December 1970, before officially being introduced in the debut issue of The Forever People in February 1971. He is depicted as the tyrannical Lord of Apokolips whose ultimate goal is to enslave the multiverse by eliminating all hope and free will in sentient beings.

 

 

Quote

 

Publication history

 According to writer Mark Evanier, Kirby modeled the character's face on actor Jack Palance, while the villain's personality was inspired by Adolf Hitler and Richard Nixon.^[6][7]

 

and
 

Quote

 

"Darkseid's goal was to eliminate all free will from the universe and reshape it into his own image. To this end, he sought to unravel the mysterious Anti-Life Equation, which gives its user complete control over the thoughts and emotions of all living beings in the universe. Darkseid had tried on several other occasions to achieve dominance of the universe through other methods, most notably through his minion Glorious Godfrey, who could control people's minds with his voice. He had a special interest in Earth, as he believed humans possess collectively within their minds most, if not all, fragments of the Anti-Life Equation.

 

 

Darkseid - Wikipedia

EN.WIKIPEDIA.ORG

 

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

TG,

WEF.

Michael

[ThatGuy]

16 hours ago, ThatGuy said:

This is weird (if a little silly), but I was just reading something about a comic book villain, DC's Darkseid, whose very goal is just that, usurping the free will of humanity.

Silly, maybe...but talking about literal "story wars":  Did you know that there is a real-life "deep state" connection to comics artist Jack Kirby, the Iran Hostage Crisis, and the CIA? (To be fair, in this instance, the CIA is in the role of the "good guys", contra Iran...but it does show the connections and influence that the CIA held/still holds in Hollywood, i.e., "Operation Mockingbird") It all revolves around a movie project from 1979-80, LORD OF LIGHT...The movie was never made, but there WAS a movie made ABOUT it in 2012, called ARGO, with Ben Affleck...there was already much controversy around it the proposed movie,  involving money laundering and such...but then the CIA/Iran connection comes in...
 

Jack Kirby's LORD OF LIGHT Concept Art Used By The CIA For ARGO

COMICBOOKMOVIE.COM

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If you're a fan of the legendary comic-book artist Jack Kirby, who co-created the Fantastic Four, the X-Men, and the Hulk with Stan Lee...

Jack Kirby, Mindbomb: Iran, the CIA and the Lord of Light

 

THE LORD OF LIGHT

Along the way, Kirby was hired to do design work for one of those post-Star Wars pipe dreams: a major motion picture based on Roger Zelzany's 1967 novel, Lord of Light. If the Luciferian title or the All-Seeing Eye there don't get conspiracy buffs in a lather, perhaps the book's premise will:

LORD OF LIGHT is a novel about a future world after the destruction of Earth, conquered by men who, through ultratechnology, give themselves godlike powers and set themselves up as the old Hindu gods to rule the common people. Called The First, they have achieved a kind of immortality by transferring their identities from old bodies to new ones...

 

Drawing on the same themes Kirby mastered with The Eternals and The New Gods, Lord of Light played directly into Kirby's greatest strengths as a designer and visionary. Kirby was also contracted to make designs for a multi-million dollar theme park, whose preposterous untenability boggles the mind. Sadly and predictably, the project ran around after a producer made off with the seed money for the project.


Then it gets weird.

One of the artisans signed on to bring Lord of Light to life was Planet of the Apes makeup maestro John Chambers, who doubled as a disguise maker for the CIA. A fellow agent contacted him, looking for an abandoned script to use to coax the newly-installed Iranian mullahs into signing on to a film project. 

 

The Iranians needed money and were looking to set up business deals to keep the revolution afloat. The CIA in turn was looking to sneak some hostages out of the country, and needed ideas. One enterprising agent was looking to cozy up to the mullahs by pitching a film project to them. In those days, Hollywood's eldritch power could soften the most hard-bitten theocrats. 

(read full story here...)

The Secret Sun: Jack Kirby, Mindbomb: Iran, the CIA and the Lord of Light

SECRETSUN.BLOGSPOT.COM

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A blog about esoteric symbolism in pop culture and the media.

Argo (2012 film) - Wikipedia

EN.WIKIPEDIA.ORG

 

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

This is not O-Land's Alex Epstein. This is The Blaze's Alex Stein.

For story wars, he makes a good point.

When you ramp up fear, people go into fight-and-flight mode with tons of neurochemicals pumping (hello cortisol and adrenaline). This is physical and involuntary. (You can override it with voluntary intent, but the default mode is involuntary.)

From that frame, people don't see details and incongruencies. They just see large looming enemies and threats.

That's why the news industry these days pours on the fear porn. But it's more. They pour on the fear porn before they pump the political agenda and calls to action.

If you are a storyteller, or want to do propaganda, or want to analyze it, here's a tip. Instead of looking for the gotcha, the contradiction, the thing that doesn't make sense, look instead for where the fear porn happens in the message. For the majority of people, it doesn't matter what is said after that, just so long as it sounds like getting them to safety. You can convince anyone of anything this way. And you can take them anywhere.

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

To add to the previous post, here is a clip by Jack Murphy with a video by Scott Adams quoting him.

Quote

He who tortures his people the hardest shall be President.

Political campaigns are a competition between two teams to see who can torture their own people the worst. 

. . .

Democrats tortured and abused their own people into voting to make the pain stop. 

Republicans do the same. 

And the people who amplify those messages are complicit. 

This is what I mean by fear porn.

Done right, it actually makes neurochemicals squirt in the brain, turns on fight-and-flight mode, and eliminates normal discernment in people so they only see a looming enemy and threat.

The one who promises to make the threat stop that is believable to them is the one they will follow.

So for storytellers and propagandists, add this to your toolbox.

 

As an aside, if something seems familiar but off, Jack Murphy is a character who gets into everything, makes messes galore, but gets back up and goes out into the public over and over after suffering humiliation piled on humiliation. And he sometimes says some good things.

He used to be a regular guest on Tim Pool. Then he was busted for doing porn and went off hard on the lady who busted him. The more you look into this guy, the more you see a demolition derby. But out of the mess sometimes comes wisdom. This is the kind of person who can only be made in America. In any other culture, we would be part of an untouchable elite or shot.

 

Michael

 

EDIT: As another aside, I am pretty sure Jack got this idea from Glenn Beck. I heard this from Glenn in the early Obama years. And I am also pretty sure Glenn got it elsewhere.

[ThatGuy]

On 9/6/2022 at 7:04 PM, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

This is not O-Land's Alex Epstein. This is The Blaze's Alex Stein.

For story wars, he makes a good point.

When you ramp up fear, people go into fight-and-flight mode with tons of neurochemicals pumping (hello cortisol and adrenaline). This is physical and involuntary. (You can override it with voluntary intent, but the default mode is involuntary.)

From that frame, people don't see details and incongruencies. They just see large looming enemies and threats.

That's why the news industry these days pours on the fear porn. But it's more. They pour on the fear porn before they pump the political agenda and calls to action.

 

“Dostoevski said that taking a new step is what people fear most. Any revolutionary change must be precedented by a passive, affirmative, non-challenging attitude towards change among the mass of our people. They must feel so frustrated, so defeated, so lost, so futureless in the prevailing system that they are willing to let go of the past and change the future. This acceptance is the reformation essential to any revolution." - Saul Alinsky, RULES FOR RADICALS

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

If you want to play the story wars game, you have to use your brain. You just have to.

When you don't, you get really weird things like the following.

 

1. Today was one of the worst financial days of all. Some people are saying we have crossed a point of no return re inflation, the bond market, the stock market, all of it. 

2. And what do the Biden people do in the story wars department? They put James Taylor out on the White House lawn singing Fire and Rain. In case you don't know, but everybody knows, that is a song about a man contemplating suicide.

 

Fail!

Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz... 

Out comes the crooked cane hooking itself around the neck of the performer and pulling him offstage...

What on earth are these people smoking?

 

Michael

[ThatGuy]

James Taylor performing "Fire and Rain" during a disaster?
I got three words for that: "Simpsons did it!"

(But did he change the lyrics mid-song for Biden like he did for Homer?)


(from "Deep Space Homer):

(NASA Mission Control): "Uh, some good news, gentleman...we've been able to coax superstar James Taylor in here at Mission Control to wish you well and play you a little of his own brand of laid-back adult contempory music!"

(Homer): "Wow, former president James Taylor...

(James Taylor): "How ya doin', fellas?"

(Buzz Aldrin): "With all due respect, Mr. Taylor, this isn't the best time for your unique brand of bittersweet folk rock..."

(James Taylor): "Listen, Aldrin, I'm NOT as laid back as people think! Now here's the deal: I'm gonna play, and you're gonna float there and like it!...

"When you're down, and troubled, and you need a helping hand..."
 

Oh, and:
"Sweet dreams and flying machines, lie in pieces on the grou-" (Stops, changes lyrics:)
"Sweet dreams and flying machines, flying safely through the air..."
 

 

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Here is the power of a core story when it is allied to mass formation psychosis.

This Canadian actress, Jennifer Gibson, was damaged by the COVID jab so that half of her face became paralyzed.

This state is causing her untold pain.

Yet she says she would do it again.

In Randian terms, we call this "sanction of the victim."

And, yes, altruism is right there at the root along with the core story.

 

Compliance on this level is the sole reason for story wars from the perspective of the predator class.

And it works.

Just ask this poor actress.

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

The sound is a bit fried so just turn it down.

The following is one of the best descriptions of how to deploy story-wars on social media I have seen up to now. It includes some neuroscience, too.

And do you know who is deploying it?

China.

It takes a friggin' Muslim to tell us this.

At least I think he's Muslim from the garb and music in the background.

I don't know who he is, but people on that thread say they play around with TikTok using VPNs from all over the world and the monkey-business is real.

 

This is just on the Story Wars level. If you want some fries with that, the surveillance algorithms on TikTok are out of this world. And they all send data back to the CCP.

Michael

[ThatGuy]

5 minutes ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

The sound is a bit fried so just turn it down.

The following is one of the best descriptions of how to deploy story-wars on social media I have seen up to now. It includes some neuroscience, too.

And do you know who is deploying it?

China.

It takes a friggin' Muslim to tell us this.

At least I think he's Muslim from the garb and music in the background.

I don't know who he is, but people on that thread say they play around with TikTok using VPNs from all over the world and the monkey-business is real.

 

This is just on the Story Wars level. If you want some fries with that, the surveillance algorithms on TikTok are out of this world. And they all send data back to the CCP.

Michael

I saw this video the other day, can't say it shocked me. I refuse to use Tik Tok directly, myself. But I have played videos on FB, Twitter that are watermarked as TikTok...

I am wondering, though, and maybe you know, but does watching a Tik Tok video that's shared on Twitter, FB etc have the same effect as it does by watching it directly on the app (as far as info being shared/sent to China?)

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

1 hour ago, ThatGuy said:

I am wondering, though, and maybe you know, but does watching a Tik Tok video that's shared on Twitter, FB etc have the same effect as it does by watching it directly on the app (as far as info being shared/sent to China?)

TG,

No.

You need to be on TikTok for it to suck out all your info. They made the fucking algorithm in assembler language (lowest level possible). I saw that in the early days and the programmers I saw said they had never seen anything like that before except in viruses. They said the way Facebook gathers data was child's play compared to TikTok, that the difference was between an eyedropper and a firehose. What's worse, TikTok goes into the accounts of people you follow and sucks data from there, too...

But there is no way to transmit that algorithm through a copy of an image or video on another site. With one caveat. If the site you are on automatically links you to TikTok and you watch the video there, that sucking sound you will hear will be your data.

Talk about information overload.

You know the CCP is saying thank God for artificial intelligence so they can massage all that stuff...

 Michael

[ThatGuy]

On 10/18/2022 at 9:15 PM, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

TG,

No.

You need to be on TikTok for it to suck out all your info. They made the fucking algorithm in assembler language (lowest level possible). I saw that in the early days and the programmers I saw said they had never seen anything like that before except in viruses. They said the way Facebook gathers data was child's play compared to TikTok, that the difference was between an eyedropper and a firehose. What's worse, TikTok goes into the accounts of people you follow and sucks data from there, too...

But there is no way to transmit that algorithm through a copy of an image or video on another site. With one caveat. If the site you are on automatically links you to TikTok and you watch the video there, that sucking sound you will hear will be your data.

Talk about information overload.

You know the CCP is saying thank God for artificial intelligence so they can massage all that stuff...

 Michael

"China-based team at TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, planned to use the TikTok app to monitor the personal location of some specific American citizens, according to materials reviewed by Forbes. "
 

TikTok Parent ByteDance Planned To Use TikTok To Monitor The Physical Location Of Specific American Citizens

WWW.FORBES.COM

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The project, assigned to a Beijing-led team, would have involved accessing location data from some U.S. users’ devices without their...

"The project, assigned to a Beijing-led team, would have involved accessing location data from some U.S. users’ devices without their knowledge or consent."
 

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

The following link from JSTOR Daily is not just some comments on moral panics. It's a series of 29 articles about 29 different moral panics.

I haven't had time to dig in correctly, but now I have a place where I visit and this article is available. This is extremely valuable information on crowd behavior through story.

Story wars anyone?

Moral Panics: A Syllabus

Quote

Research-backed stories that consider how and why moral panics begin and spread, who they serve, and what becomes of them in the end.

A lust for alcoholic beverages and a taste for illicit drugs. Liberated women in search of sexual pleasure and the menace of racial integration. A nation undermined by crypto-communists and children led astray by rock and roll (not to mention sex and drugs). Stories of threats to our families and our homes seem to spread like proverbial wildfires. As scholars Angela McRobbie and Sarah L. Thornton noted more than two decades ago, this breathless state depends on, or even springs from, media engagement with these alleged dangers. Moral panics “guarantee the kind of emotional involvement that keeps up the interest of, not just tabloid, but broadsheet newspaper readers, as well as the ratings of news and true crime television, [and] even the media themselves are willing to take some of the blame.” Once an unintentional outcome of broadcasting the daily news, moral panics now seem to be the point of the news cycle. If McRobbie and Thornton’s assessment is accurate, how can we as media consumers sort the danger from the drama?

The stories below focus on a variety of moral panics, adding historical context and scholarly analysis into the mix. These previously published stories show how moral panics begin and spread, analyzing motivations, mechanisms, and outcomes. The scholarship featured here highlights lessons from the past to help us detect patterns and language in the present. As always, the stories and the underlying scholarship are free to everyone.

The articles are divided into

Inventing the Moral Panic
Women, Sexuality, and Stigma
Racism and Xenophobia
The Danger of Drugs and Drink
Policing Language

If odd that they left out the MeToo movement and Woke culture in general in the Policing Language section seeing how a shift took place where lots of people nowadays believe words are more fact than facts.

But that's just a minor gripe.

 

I hope you enjoy this as much as I do.

I intend to read every one of these articles, maybe read each twice or more.

Every damn one.

 

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

What a great example of doing a story war agenda in a different manner, short, sweet and sexy.

And it's on our side, to boot.

Fan-friggin'-tastic.

 

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Dayaamm!

I didn't even look at that thread to the "All American" tweet.

They knew and they know.

And...

Michael

 

 

[ThatGuy]

(Cross-posted from the "Elon Musk and Twitter" thread)

A fellow who briefly posted here for a bit, anarchist Billy Beck, has been arm-chair quarterbacking the release of this story in drips via "tweets", ripping apart Elon Musk as a fool who is "blowing it" and Matt Taibi as unnecessary to it. Saying that it should have been in an "adult written long format", say on Substack, instead of 280-character tweets, and all at once, not broken up ("I don't want a 'can of worms' opened up, I want 'a barrel of snakes'"...Basically, everyone is stupid in this but him.
 

And so on, etc, etc, etc...make of his manner what you will, but that is not the point in posting those. That said, in those tweets, he does bring up an interesting question about form and function: In response to Ian Miles Chong's praise for all this, he replied:

 

He then makes the comparison between this and the release of The Pentagon Papers:

(For reference:)

Pentagon Papers - Wikipedia

EN.WIKIPEDIA.ORG

I'm personally not fond of Beck's hubris in his responses, and it's a hell of a thing to criticize from the sidelines in his way without the benefit of knowing at least WHY they are doing it this way (and expecting everyone to listen to HIM as he insults them as incompetent clowns and such; talk about someone who doesn't get the ideas that MSK talks about re persuasion and "Story wars". But the "form and function" aspect of it, I think, is a good question to look at. I don't know if outsiders can accurately assess what the best way to do this without that benefit of what's going on behind-the-scenes, but perhaps there is substance to Beck's criticisms. That said, in regards to comparison to The Pentagon Papers being published by the NYT's and Washington Post: Would that have worked, today, with the Twitter story? Would they have even published it?  Or would they just "shoot the messenger"? (Figuratively, or literally, even?) Aren't they part of the problem, in this, with the government being involved in censorship? Beck may be breaking one of the "33 Strategies of War": "Do not fight the  the last war":

 

Do Not Fight the Last War: The Guerrilla-War-of-the-Mind Strategy

• What most often weighs you down and brings you misery is the past, in the form of unnecessary attachments, repetitions of tired formulas, and the memory of old victories and defeats. You must consciously wage war against the past and force yourself to react to the present moment.
• Never take it for granted that your past successes will continue into the future.

The 33 Strategies of War by Robert Greene - Summary & Notes

WWW.GRAHAMMANN.NET

---

Detailed notes and summary of The 33 Strategies of War by Robert Greene. An in-depth look at timeless strategies from war that can be...

So, for now, we might not be able to assess how this should have been done, given that most of us are not privy to behind-the-scenes info that might have necessitated this. Musk has been compared to a "trickster", sometimes favorable, other times, as with Beck, disparagingly. But maybe it's a good thing, since the Deep State has learned from their defeats and adapted new tactics, necessitating that its opponents do the same. And the Twitter forum itself plays into the question of form-vs.-function. If the major outlets are in bed with the government, Twitter, now owned by the whistle-blowers, would seem the obvious choice, and the 280-character limitation is just the price to be paid for that. (One can make the case for a more "adult long form format" all they want, but what good is it if the platforms to host it are under control of the Deep State? Whose to say that SubStack wouldn't have censored the story at the behest of the Biden adminstration-OH, wait:
 

Journalists Start Demanding Substack Censor its Writers: to Bar Critiques of Journalists

GREENWALD.SUBSTACK.COM

---

This new political battle does not break down along left v. right lines. This is an information war waged by corporate media to silence any...

(Well, then; maybe Beck should check his own strategies before condemning everyone else as the "stoopid people"...)

But still...once the smoke clears, we can probably assess these questions about strategy better, especially from a persuasion/"Story wars" perspective. For now, "A is A", and we get what we get, and we'll have to make due with what we got...

(And, of course, the BIG QUESTION: What will we get, after the smoke clears? The information is out there, regardless. So, if nothing of substance comes out of this, will it even matter what platform/form was used?)

Edited December 3, 2022 by ThatGuy

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Part of the Story Wars is making colorful characters that catch on in the public eye and get people talking. This kind of name is almost impossible to fight on a Story Wars level.

But an interesting case came up recently. 

Does anyone remember the phrase and image, "release the kraken," by Sidney Powell?

And do you remember how quickly that spread, then hooted down in the public square? The impression people had back then was that, after the hooting campaign, Sidney Powell was so inept and foolish, she slithered off in shame from meme-making. The justice warriors won due to their superior everything.

 

Well, over on a different thread, Elon Musk released the private communications of Twitter administrators during that time. Twitter specifically targeted that term "kraken" for deletion every time it came up (see here). And here is an image from that very thread.

The dorks at Twitter openly talked about blacklisting "kraken" to each other and proceeded to blacklist it left and right.

But then they had to backtrack a little because Kraken was also the name of a large cryptocurrency exchange. That was a headache for them, but even so, they kept doing the best they could to keep the name "kraken" off of Twitter in a political context.

 

What does that mean?

Easy. That name "kraken" was unstoppable at the Story Wars level. So the Predator Class cheated and censored the mention of it from establishment communications.

The hooters and Superior Ones (the followers) will not believe this. They are convinced of their own intellectual and rhetorical power. But the administrators of Twitter (and, even though it's not proven yet, of Facebook, Google, YouTube, the fake news media, etc. etc. etc.) knew they were outgunned propaganda-wise. 

They also knew there was only one way to win that particular Story War. 

Cheat.

So they cheated.

 

From a Story Wars angle, this shows the reality that propaganda needs to be communicated to be effective. It's super-important to have a superior message and images, but controlled narratives only work when they get to people's eyes and ears. There is a critical physical component to fighting the Story Wars. And the bad guys had control of the mainstream physical outlets. That's why alt media became so important.

But the kraken will not be denied.

It took time, but a kraken crack in the dam exploded.

Elon Musk bought Twitter and opened the rotted core to let everyone see inside.

We thought that the courts would be the kraken back when Sidney Powell (and Rudy & Co.) accumulated all that evidence. But Elon Musk, or at least Twitter under Elon Musk, is turning out to be the kraken.

And, from what I can tell so far, the kraken is hungry.

 

 

Now let's see if the Predator Class can control the Story Wars without being able to control all of the physical components of the mainstream fake news media and social media. Without being able to censor.

Just think about it. You normally think the censors go after specific people or ideologies, not the name of a fictional monster. What were they afraid of? A real kraken?  

Hell no.

They were terrified of the Story Wars kraken.

I think the term "kraken" will make a comeback. I'm rooting for this to happen because I luvs me some poetic justice and comeuppance. I bet the general public feels the same...

Michael

[william.scherk]

On 12/11/2022 at 10:28 AM, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Predator Class can control the Story Wars

https://chat.openai.com/chat can do better than that. No matter who owns it.

Eg, this news shocked me, and I thank Michael for bringing it up for research. 

ChatGPT Michael rewrote: 

Here is a revised version of the two paragraphs, with corrections made to the grammar and sentence structure:

"The employees at Twitter openly discussed blacklisting the term "kraken" among themselves and proceeded to do so extensively. However, they soon realized that "kraken" was also the name of a popular cryptocurrency exchange, which caused them some difficulty. Despite this setback, they continued to do their best to prevent the use of the term "kraken" in a political context on Twitter."

I made several changes to the original text to improve the grammar and clarity of the sentences. In the first sentence, I changed the word "dorks" to "employees" to make the language more professional and respectful. In the second sentence, I changed the word "left" to "extensively" to provide more information about the extent of the blacklisting, and I added the word "However" at the beginning of the sentence to indicate a contrast with the previous sentence. In the third sentence, I changed the phrase "That was" to "which caused" to better connect the clause to the rest of the sentence, and I added the word "popular" before "cryptocurrency exchange" to provide more information about the exchange. I also changed the word "even so" to "despite" to create a smoother transition between the third and fourth sentences. These changes should make the text more grammatically correct and easier to understand. Let me know if you have any other questions or if you need further assistance.

I will be down the TwitterFiles rabbithole for hours, days and weeks. It's intensely interesting to me how exactly "kraken" was used to suppress and/or extinguish discussion of the Kraken lawsuits -- and not just the lawsuits. What was pushed out of the the light at the top of our 'trending' and push notifications on Twitter?

Thanks for the boom!

For those who wonder what Sidney Powell herself is up to, you will know that she was sanctioned something like 175 billion dollars for her bar crimes. 

But she ain't having none of it. She does admit to a kind of partial mistake, but not really. 

This is the audio-only version of the tribunal that fixed its all seeing eye on her and L Lin Wood. It is an 'appeals' court, but we know what that means, given Judge Cannon's collusion. It's a circuit court, for Rand's sake. 

Powell begins her spirited defense at around 1:55:00; she appears before a trio named Boggs, Kethledge and White.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hGpT5Z767Gc [The user who surreptitiously copied the otherwise-unavailable stream from the tribunal has made it playable only on YouTube. I've downloaded an MP3 sound file version of the event.]

I don't know whether to comment on this next bit here, or to break it out into a blog post:

Spoiler

 

On 12/11/2022 at 10:28 AM, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

The dorks at Twitter openly talked about blacklisting "kraken" to each other and proceeded to blacklist it left and right.

But then they had to backtrack a little because Kraken was also the name of a large cryptocurrency exchange. That was a headache for them, but even so, they kept doing the best they could to keep the name "kraken" off of Twitter in a political context.

 

What does that mean?

Easy. That name "kraken" was unstoppable at the Story Wars level. So the Predator Class cheated and censored the mention of it from establishment communications.

The hooters and Superior Ones (the followers) will not believe this. They are convinced of their own intellectual and rhetorical power. But the administrators of Twitter (and, even though it's not proven yet, of Facebook, Google, YouTube, the fake news media, etc. etc. etc.) knew they were outgunned propaganda-wise. 

They also knew there was only one way to win that particular Story War. 

Cheat.

So they cheated.

 

From a Story Wars angle, this shows the reality that propaganda needs to be communicated to be effective. It's super-important to have a superior message and images, but controlled narratives only work when they get to people's eyes and ears. There is a critical physical component to fighting the Story Wars. And the bad guys had control of the mainstream physical outlets. That's why alt media became so important.

But the kraken will not be denied.

It took time, but a kraken crack in the dam exploded.

Elon Musk bought Twitter and opened the rotted core to let everyone see inside.

We thought that the courts would be the kraken back when Sidney Powell (and Rudy & Co.) accumulated all that evidence. But Elon Musk, or at least Twitter under Elon Musk, is turning out to be the kraken.

And, from what I can tell so far, the kraken is hungry.

 

 

Now let's see if the Predator Class can control the Story Wars without being able to control all of the physical components of the mainstream fake news media and social media. Without being able to censor.

Just think about it. You normally think the censors go after specific people or ideologies, not the name of a fictional monster. What were they afraid of? A real kraken?  

Hell no.

They were terrified of the Story Wars kraken.

I think the term "kraken" will make a comeback. I'm rooting for this to happen because I luvs me some poetic justice and comeuppance. I bet the general public feels the same...

Michael

 

 

Edited December 14, 2022 by william.scherk
Think is not thank; vindication for Melissa Carone? You'll have to listen to find out