[consider this an introduction, or continuation of this post]
Advertisers, marketing professionals, and influencers/sopkesmen are paid to communicate anything and everything under the sun that’s for sale, including people—sometimes through PR firms or agents or ‘campaign advisors’… but it’s not enough to simply communicate something, they pretty much have to ‘sell’ it too, ‘let me tell you a zillion reasons why you ‘NEED’ this revolutionary new colorful micro-fiber towel’, or, shop at our store, or attend our school, or vote for a candidate, or support a cause… at it’s core it’s simply manipulating human behavior. When you ‘sell something’ (including emotional triggering ideas and propaganda) you highlight the positive aspects of Subject-A, and make sure to withhold it’s/their negative aspects; and if/when you are very competitive you might even communicate the negative aspects of Rival-B, and withhold the communication of their positive aspects. It’s self-evident that there are some VERY competitive folks that use many forms of media to promote Greatness-A while criticizing Nastyman-B, causing/influencing the person that’s consuming/reading/watching/listening to make some A OR B decision based on limited and possibly faulty information that might be very, Very, VERY biased, you know, basically persuading us to make some crude calculation like A = ‘Good’ OR ‘Bad’, AND ‘Why’ sort of process (sorry, i’m NOT a mathy-guy), while also calculating the same judgement for B, and possibly not even knowing that there is a third option to consider, Normal-C. And then we might be influenced to do something that we may OR may NOT have any intention of doing, based on faulty AND/OR incomplete input, and possibly equating to a faulty/false ‘What’ we should do, and ‘Why’ we should do it, and never understanding full ramifications/consequences of our actions. We are influenced to do things based on faulty/false/fictitious pretenses all of the time, sometimes we realize that before we react, and sometimes it takes a lifetime to realize that we were fooled. I’m sure you’ve been subjected to some ‘cheezy’ commercial that made you yell ‘bull-shit’ maybe once or twice, because you could discern/tell that they were communicating faulty/limited/inaccurate/false information… that’s almost a daily occurrence when you live deep in society in an early-voting state (NH) and a registered voter, some of these political knuckleheads spend an awful-lot of time and money trying to communicate how they will respond to the hot-topics/issues of the day… i’m old and boring enough where i enjoy following politics, so it’s an easy example for me… we get peppered with phone surveys, mailings, and tv/radio/internet advertisements for months on end.
So that long-winded introduction was an exceedingly crude/elementary primer in advertising, math, sales, and manipulation… since i’m not a subject-specialist* on any of those topics i’ll move right along… but, we already know that many people LIE for a living, and other people lie about themselves and their strengths and weaknesses, and lie about other people and their strengths and weaknesses, or what they have done, or ‘used to do’ or practice, or ‘never-ever-ever did’ themselves… it doesn’t take a subject-matter specialist to point out the obvious/self-evident things that we all understand by the time that we graduate elementary-school, or have regular social interaction.
Some people are paid very well to influence other people (others do if for free) to get them to buy something, or vote for something, or to help a cause, or to get people to react in a number of various ways according to their bosses OR organization’s OR customer’s desires. And the various techniques that are used to manipulate us sometimes use K-6 school-ground banter and gossip, especially in politics. There are politicians and their ‘spokesmen/woman’ that routinely use the old ‘no i didn’t’ (denial), OR, ‘no we didn’t, you did!’, and then there’s the ‘i’m not doing that, you’re crazy and mean for even suggesting that’ (as they are doing right in front of your face)… remeber the old ‘why are you hitting yourself’ thing… anyways, you probably get the point. But professionals that study human-nature/behavior/psychology/neuro-mechanics understand how to use more advanced/technical methods of persuasion, but the most common techniques are pretty simple, like lying, deflecting, distracting, intimidation; and they can be in-your-face obvious, or much more subtle and suggestive.
Some suggestion could be as simple as someone telling you what they ‘really want’ for their birthday, and the not-so-subtly is amplified by the number of ‘please’ that follows—maybe a red-rider B B gun with a compass in the stock and this thing which tells time… or, it can be more dubious when combined with audio/visual methods, and special-effects that can literally capture our attention, and then stimulate glands, which in turn release hormones and leave people ‘feeling’ many different ways, and imprinting the desired ‘suggestion’ in our mind/memory… consider audio/visual.
People routinely use audio to willfully make ourselves feel different, it’s almost routine for some people to play music that they appreciate to help with chores, and it’s not uncommon for today’s power-lifters to use high-energy, loud, violent music to stimulate a channeled explosive attempt to move heavy things… and it’s not uncommon for people to listen to soft pleasant music to help calm and their minds and relax/ease tension (in my case, to help sleep)… and it’s not uncommon for night-clubs to play sensual/rhythmic music to entice close dancing, grinding, twerking; or hyped music that invites insane raging people to behave like a pack of mindless zombies. Those are just a few examples of how music is used to stimulate various hormones to yield certain effects and responses… music plus environment can equate to an efficient day, torn or strained soft-tissue, relaxation, peace, sex, riots, etc.
The whole night-club scene never uses loud music alone to stimulate and trigger certain behaviors, they give you the strobe-lights/light-shows, lasers, and who can forget the good old ‘disco ball’ of the 1970’s. Audio PLUS video EQUALS very powerful tools for manipulating human behavior whether it be at over-stimulating night-clubs, or addictive video-games where otherwise normal people will devote hours of a stimulating simulation OR fantasy of something that can only happen in a crude or advanced pixelated and false/virtual sense of reality. One of the reasons that video games are so addictive for so many people are because they capture our attention long enough to stimulate glands to produce a number of different hormones, and spend time in a virtual/fake reality, they can also include suggestive messaging, and insidious methods of ‘grooming’, and triggering. Most folks my age remember back when sneaky folks would include a few frames/pictures of soda smack-dab in the middle of a movie or televised event/show that planted enough suggestion as to hypnotize/manipulate people to seek-out that very beverage… advertisers aren’t supposed to do that anymore because it proved to be an effective way to exploit people’s minds to trigger their behavior, but don’t think for a second that people don’t still do that today, the images just display for slightly longer periods of time… the more senses that are involved in the entertainment/manipulation, the more effective and powerful the manipulation becomes… be thankful that we don’t have ‘smell-ivisions’ or there would be plenty more obese folks.
There are other sneaky ways that advertisers manipulate human behavior too… ‘repetition.’ Since i’m a heavy consumer of news and politics i’ll keep using that ‘industry’ as an example. Political strategists (advertisers) come-up with controlled language/messaging that some folks call ‘narrative’, or, ‘propaganda’. Sometimes political propaganda is based on feedback from focus-groups/polls, where they ask participants how they feel about certain topics, and ‘what best describes your opinion’ of [fill in the blank], focus groups and opinion surveys help strategists hone/sharpen propaganda. I implore the reader to consider how many times they have heard something to this effect ‘ultra-MAGA are the biggest threat to democracy’, and from how many different sources of media did they read/watch/listen to such nonsense? Probably a LOT by now… under a Satanic and Stalin-like backdrop including US military personnel, this rhetoric was recently delivered by a compromised politician that hired many communists to populate his administration, and weaponized the intelligence and justice departments (and recently hired 87,000 IRS agents) to spy-on and punish political opponents (very Stalin-like), his propaganda-projection has been parroted by several media outlets (Orwellian black-whites). This is just a simple example that should help the reader understand simple concepts that’s been accurately described as ‘skull-fvckery, or, brain-rape’… now consider how ubiquitous internet/media-linked ‘screens’ are, even grammar-school kids have such devices, and are subjected to ‘state-media’ from phones/tablets/computers and even teachers, grooming begins at very early ages now.
When propaganda is repetitiously/mass-repeated from influencers including politicians, educators and their institutions, TV/Radio/published news outlets, music/TV/acting entertainers, professional athletes, street-thugs/enforcers protesters/activists, Union officials, Human Resource policies, and advertisers you can see how the concepts of Mass-Formation, Peer-Pressure, Ostracizing/Dividing, and to a degree ‘brainwashing’ is so prevalent in American society today. Impressionable people are exploited by a manipulation/distortion of reality as a regular practice, and from pathological liars and sociopaths who celebrate each other’s methods and successes. Constant bombardment and repetition from multiple sources plants suggestive propaganda to the media consumer, and shapes/aids in the formation of a ‘preferred’ society and governing methodology, ‘America 2.0’ if you will. However, when you consider quasi-global governments, or ‘non-government organizations, and unions’ propaganda is no longer isolated to individual countries, it’s easy to see similar propaganda messaging and methodology from the prime minster of Canada, and leaders of the European countries/union (including the entire British ‘Commonwealth’) you can see how easy it is to control messaging and policies to shape the lives and societies of many people from many nations. Consider government enforced home confinement, forced closure of certain businesses and religious institutions, and demands to receive experimental and minimally tested drugs as examples of how easy it is to shape and form society to a more ‘obedient’, and ‘preferred’ type of society, it’s proven to be pretty easy by means of a laboratory contrived ‘crisis’, or ‘emergencies’ by utilizing human nature, and typical reactions to fear.
Look, i’m not a professional anything, i’m simply pointing-out a few things that most people already know. If anything written above interests you then please use the same tools that you used to find this post so you can try to educate yourself on such matter. But i’ll simply close with this… my advice to the reader, guard your hearts and minds against ‘fear-porn’, and over-doses of media/propaganda, as they combine to effectively shape our governments, and our future. Maybe instead devote more time to reading your religious texts to understand what our Creator expects and appreciates for all of creation… my understanding is that God didn’t create us to be slaves of fear, and the egocentric/demented folks that want to rule the world by means of consolidated/networked power… we were given free-will to live our lives as free people, not as slaves to those who promote fear-porn. — ct
Additional resources:
“The Psychology of Totalitarianism” by Mattias Desmet
“Battle for the mind” by William Sargent
“The Rape Of The Mind” by Joost Meerloo
“Discourse of Voluntary Servitude” by Étienne de La Boétie
OR, here’s a nice little video
and I like this recent essay:
spot-on: https://rwmalonemd.substack.com/p/the-future-is-now?
Sometimes i look at strange things through the filter of a former military guy, and types of 'warfare'... i understand some concepts of nuclear, BIOLOGICAL, and chemical warfare... i also understand concepts of Psychological operations/warfare (Psy-Ops), and some of it's methodology... psych-ops (manipulation) use tactics such as fear, suggestive propaganda, distracting stimuli, distortion of reality, i.e., black is white, white is black-- right is wrong, wrong is right--that cat is a cow, and that cow is a cat... so what sort's of things are being sold as 'the new normal', and are they actually normal, or a suggestive manipulative distorted 'preferred' reality?
What sorts of things used to be considered ‘abnormal’… and, is either considered—or demanded—to be ‘normal’ now?
How have those new ideas been proven/dis-proven, or spread?
Who, or ‘What’ is selling those ‘new normal’ ideas/concepts, and Why (motives)?