In 1938, Orson Welles read War of the Worlds on air and created somewhat of a panic as the reading was interjected with fake news reports that fooled people to believe that aliens were indeed attacking. Following the broadcast, there was outrage expressed due to the format used, especially as it leveraged the importance of news as part of the ruse. There are a couple of takeaways from this story.
- Firstly, very few people were fooled during the reading
- Secondly, many people still believe that many were fooled
Yesterday, I posted a fiction story that I wrote a couple years ago with some updates included for Showcase Sunday and just like the first time, the only major clue I left that to it not being real was the tag #fiction. And just like the first time, some people did believe it was real.
This is the way we are programmed.
The story was about Facebook acquisitions and what they could mean for the direction of the company, and the world. While fiction, the companies mentioned are real acquisitions and I added the links for them and they are rather disturbing, which prompted me to write the story in the first place.
The thing is that we are already primed to believe the story as we are (especially on Steem) quite negative toward Facebook and have witnessed them multiple times over the last years abusing their data, power and reach. While fiction, the story is believable enough that it would raise some questions in the audience and lead them to consider the possibility.
I am pretty sure with some time spent crafting the support material it would be believable enough that it could get some traction in various circles and once it had some traction, it would be able to collect more. Just like the reading of War of the Worlds and the subsequent outcomes, a story can be engineered to become a cultural meme, even if it has zero truth to it.
This is the area of conspiracy and propaganda.
With the support of the internet, it is relatively easy to create an environment where ideas can be interjected and grow as all kinds of groups with all kinds of predilections and beliefs can be collected by their data and targeted. Once the ball is rolling, an idea can splinter and serve a spectrum of people and gain the supportive mass to drive it into the psyche of many more through shares.
Don't buy the hype.
The internet is all hype, isn't it? News services are monetized by clicks and what gets clicks is what captures the mind of the consumer, the irrelevant, the outrageous, the unbelievable. It works because we want to believe in the extremes of the world and because it gets support, the extremes will get broadcast and snowball as if the frequency of event s much higher than it actually is, or the chance of failure much lower.
Just think how uncertain the future of Steem is as a currency and community and how many people are relatively negative on it. Then consider that there are 2300+ cryptocurrencies currently trading and Steem is one of the most utilized among them and, boasts one of the largest and most active communities with a host of applications that overshadow nearly all others in usage.
The thing is that everyone wants to believe that they are buying the next bitcoin, the penny token that will move 100,000% in the next decade, or two years. Because people want to believe, it is easy enough for pretty much anyone to build an idea, falsify or skew the results and sell the hype.
How many people bought into Bitconnect?
All that is needed is a story with enough points of reality to get it considered, to make it seem as if there is the chance that it is real and then, get a few people with some credibility onboard to shill it, and there will be many who will buy-in, some heavily. While few believe in the Nigerian Prince email these days, there are still some people who fall for these kinds of scams because they are greedy and human nature will always provide the question, what if...?
It is much like the "Don't think of an elephant" conflict.
There was outrage in the US (of course) at the recent Joker movie, because people felt they had been "tricked" into feeling empathy for a psychopath. They are right, they had been tricked, but not to feel empathy, that is on them. What is ridiculous in the outrage is that everyone goes to the movie to be tricked, the entire concept is to sell the unreal - tricked into believing in fantastical creatures, that two actors love each other or that light-speed space travel is a reality. We are primed to be made the fool and we go into the experience knowingly.
But, as most people would likely agree, the easiest to believe and the hardest to shake are the movies that are close to the reality we know or believe, the stories that could happen under the right circumstances. Tell a true story and the Blair witch project is not a low budget horror, it happened.
We are driven by the stories we hold and once true stories are interjected with increasingly gritty lies in an environment like the news, a tech forum or your favorite crypto source, the narrative is controlled. It is called Native advertising, advertising cloaked through matching the look and feel of the expected reality. We buy in because we have already bought into the source earlier, already said yes many times before - and as any salesman knows, once primed to say yes, the sale is made.
On the internet propaganda is supercharged by the ability to segment and target as well as firehose information to mass audiences simultaneously and instantly. Some will latch on and spread it further through their own networks who are already more likely to believe and, now they are getting it linked by a "trusted" source, even if that source never did any duty of care, or read the story at all. It is easy to click share and there is very little personal cost for most people to do so, nor for being wrong.
We see this in financial advice all the time where on very limited information people make recommendations and then on even less information, people will make a purchase or a sell. When done at a global level through the mainstream media, massive populations can be swayed to behave predictably. And when proven wrong in time, those same advisers will backflip and provide a new perspective that people will support because they want to believe.
Bitcoin is dead.
Is it? Who is your source and what is their agenda? How many people were turned off crypto because some fool on the whatever news they watch said it was going to fail? How many didn't invest into computing, mobile phones or internet services for the same reasons? How many jumped on the bandwagon at the height of the hype?
Control the narrative.
However we look at our behaviors, we act according to our belief system and support the content that supports it. While my story is fiction, I have very little doubt in my mind that it is closer to the truth than what is purported by the MSM. The stories that are reported upon are designed to create support for against something, to dictate our behavior, to get shares and clicks, to cluster us, separate us, polarize us, turn us against us.
When we spend our time eating what we are being served, it means we do not spend our time developing, growing, collaborating, evolving and taking responsibility for the world in which we live. We are caged by the information we have chosen to consume.
We want to believe we can win. We want to believe we are smart. We want to believe that we can spot a fake. We want to be deceived.
We just don't want to find out we were.
War of the Words.
Taraz
[ a Steem original ]
