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posted by takyon on Tuesday April 26 2016, @01:11AM   Printer-friendly
from the just-my-hundred-million-cents dept.

Current Affairs published an in-depth editorial on recent revelations about a $1 million astroturfng campaign by Correct the Record:

Astroturfing makes me angry. It should make you angry. It should make you fucking well see red. It's marketing evolved into something incredibly scary, sophisticated, and evil. It's essentially thought warfare, or psychological warfare, which takes away much of what was supposed to make the internet a new and beautiful frontier of communication. Worse yet, if you actually identify and approach these operatives, they'll gaslight you and deny that they are such an operative. These are people who are paid to psychologically abuse you. Do you get this? It's an ugly and evil thing, and not only does it take away our ability to take information and fact at face value, but it takes away our ability to take opinions, feelings, and personal stances at face value as sincere and legitimate.

takyon: For some additional context, "Hillary-supporting super PAC invests $1 million to hit back at online Clinton critics":

Correct the Record, a super PAC supporting Hillary Clinton's bid to become US president, has promised to invest more than $1 million to respond to users criticizing its candidate on Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, Instagram, and other social media services. The super PAC says its new "Barrier Breakers digital task force" will to respond "quickly and forcefully to negative attacks and false narratives found online," in addition to thanking major supporters and "committed superdelegates" directly.


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  • (Score: 2) by patella.whack on Tuesday April 26 2016, @06:06AM

    by patella.whack (3848) on Tuesday April 26 2016, @06:06AM (#337336)

    I agree with your simplification. And it reinforces the problem (which I hope is coming to the forefront) that we're constantly forced to choose between a duopoly that have few distinctions in terms of policy. Lesser of two evils is an "accepted choice," but what happens when both evils steer father every year toward big-E Evil?

    IMO read Chomsky, Nader, and look at Bernie for some illumination and inspiration.

    As a personal aside, I'd like to hear from anyone who can enlighten me on why Millenials support Bernie so overwhelmingly when my pet theory is that they should all be drones of modern advertising techniques.

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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday April 26 2016, @01:51PM

    by Phoenix666 (552) on Tuesday April 26 2016, @01:51PM (#337477) Journal

    As a personal aside, I'd like to hear from anyone who can enlighten me on why Millenials support Bernie so overwhelmingly when my pet theory is that they should all be drones of modern advertising techniques.

    I'm not a Millenial, but Gen-X, but I'll take a stab at it.

    Emotionally, young voters are moved by hope, aspiration. They like leaders who paint bright pictures of a boundless future because that is what they yearn for themselves. They're in college or newly-entered into the workforce, they are gunning for that internship or job or chance to prove themselves. Hillary is that hateful old hag who screeches at them that they're childish and that the shit sandwich they were forced to eat yesterday was much better than the shit-without-the-bread meal she's gonna give them tomorrow.

    As rational actors, Millenials are talking to their slightly older friends who graduate a couple years ago who can't find work, and are struggling with student loan payments coming due. Other friends and relatives who opted to join the military are coming home with horror stories (this is particularly salient in the West where I grew up, or in rural places), and the romanticism of military adventure that prevailed in the 80's has beyond lost its luster. The effects of climate change are everywhere, and they see nothing significant being done about it on a policy level and they're wondering if their kids will have a world to grow up in. So, naturally, the candidates that speak to them on those bread-and-butter issues are going to win their votes.

    --
    Washington DC delenda est.
    • (Score: 2) by patella.whack on Thursday April 28 2016, @05:20AM

      by patella.whack (3848) on Thursday April 28 2016, @05:20AM (#338289)

      Personally, I think you're spot on in many ways. You cite what are the most important movements in our current politics. Hey: boomers are old. Millenials have a different outlook. Who could have predicted that they dislike some of the faults of capitalism? Where did they learn it from? It certainly wasn't from our educational system. It comes from some innate thought re: equitability.

  • (Score: 2, Interesting) by Dogeball on Tuesday April 26 2016, @02:14PM

    by Dogeball (814) on Tuesday April 26 2016, @02:14PM (#337497)

    My pet theory? Psychological manipulation works most effectively on the training set. The current generation.

    The next gen builds an immunity to existing manipulation techniques, at the cost of becoming more susceptible to something new - currently blind acceptance of plausible-sounding counter-narratives.

    Sanders is popular with millennials because he is calling out established-but-self-evidently-wrong orthodoxy; Trump is similarly popular because he is similarly calling out orthodoxy. What many millennials fail to distinguish is that Sanders has a history of standing up for other people and fighting the establishment helps him to continue doing so, whereas Trump has a history of screwing people over for personal gain, and fighting the establishment helps him do continue to do so.

    TL;DR: Older generation - everyone is saying it (astroturfing), so it must be true; younger generation - it contradicts 'the establishment', so it must be true.

    • (Score: 2) by patella.whack on Thursday April 28 2016, @06:19AM

      by patella.whack (3848) on Thursday April 28 2016, @06:19AM (#338301)

      Awww, shit man, you are perceptive up to a point, but you should channel your awareness into something more accurate.
      Take your analysis and sophisticate it.