4 ms·

This is reminding me a scary amount of the role of radio in the Rwandan genocide.

anigbrowl 9y ago
Absolutely. And it is weaponized to that end in numerous jurisdictions. Turns out that all the work done on sales, growth hacking, virality and so on deployed in the service of commerce is even more effective in the political domain which is completely emotion-driven. A fascinating example of an ongoing campaign is the "Qanon" conspiracy theory which has been running since late last year. The mysterious 'Q', who supposedly holds a top-level security clearance within the executive branch of the US government, issues (via the 8chan imageboard) frequent brief and cryptic clues, exhortations, and warnings about the 'gathering storm;, postulating that most political news is misleading and that the administration is secretly investigating a vast conspiracy of pedophilia that reaches to The Highest Levels of society. If you remember the 'Comet ping-pong' CT where a guy went to a DC Pizzeria and fired shots into a ceiling attempting to free abused children imprisoned in the basement (the building didn't have a basement), think that but on a national scale and with all sorts of other, darker implications. There's a large and extremely active community devoted to interpretation of these clues and crowdsourced information gathering on a grand scale.
- ibidibi 9y ago
  On the one hand sure, Q is just a LARP'er engaging in baiting a lot of foolish, gullible conspiracy theorists. But, then again .. what if there really is a secret cabal that aims to bring down governments all over the world by way of establishing pedophilia networks among the members of the states being targetted? That is just as nefarious and evil an infiltration/propaganda campaign as the idea that "Q is a LARP". Using sex as a means of usurping ones enemies has been common trade craft in intelligence agencies for centuries. It shouldn't come as any shock to any reasonably well-informed student of history that the potential for corruption through sexual deviancy has always been there, and there is nothing at all particularly resilient about our modern governments which lends them being immune to this factor. Pedophiles do conspire to establish networks of power; coverups of government complicity in such crimes is proven to have occurred, even recently - and there is really no general way for the public to govern the government over this issue, considering it is absolutely heinous, usually means that there are national security issues involved, and thus it all gets wrapped up under government security blankets. What if Q is correct, and that there really is a perverted, evil, pedophile network, hell-bent on corrupting our governments and bringing them down through coercion? The likelihood is very high that this is occurring. It would explain the large and cavernous disconnect between establishment politics and general culture.
  - zaphod4prez 9y ago
    "The likelihood is very high that this is occurring." ...uhhhh, where are you getting that? I mean you've made absolutely massive and bizarre claims here and made no attempt to substantiate them. The likelihood is high that this whole extremely specific and strange scenario is true and that none of us have any idea about it??? How do you figure?
    - ibidibi 9y ago
      Well, its a rabbithole, but you asked for it. Here are a few strings for you to pull: 1. Westminster dossier: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westminster_paedophile_dossier 2. The Franklin coverup: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4AFrMpQxbmk 3. Sir Edward Heath WAS a pedophile: http://www.dw.com/en/edward-heath-pedophile-investigation-former-uk-prime-minister-would-have-faced-questioning/a-40815152 4. IICSA: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independent_Inquiry_into_Child_Sexual_Abuse 5. The Lolita Express is a REAL THING, and the Clintons WERE INVOLVED: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Epstein >>>"The likelihood is high that this whole extremely specific and strange scenario is true and that none of us have any idea about it??? How do you figure?" NONE of us has the power to audit our governments. They can keep whatever they want, under wraps, as national security/state secrets - almost indefinitely. And if you think they don't abuse/misuse their powers in this way - well, you've got some rabbit holes to follow. I suggest you buckle up. Where there is smoke, there is fire.
- noonespecial 9y ago
  The interesting thing about Qanon isn't Qanon itself. The account just spews out vague randomness continuously. It could just be a markov chain generator connected to the text of news sites. Its the first derivative of the feed that's scary. There's a whole bunch of "cloud-spotters" convinced that they are seeing patterns in the madness and recompiling bits of it into a conspiracy theory narrative. If all the downstream see is this derivative output, you end up with a collection of "Q is real!" believers. Its just a fascinating emergent phenomenon, if not for its very real political consequences.
  - ibidibi 9y ago
    >very real political consequences What if there really were a conspiracy to entrap politicians in pedophilia/ritual-sexual-abuse? How do you think the governments of the world would deal with it, once enough evidence is discovered to present to their citizens? If the network is deeply entrenched, how do you expect justice to play out? For the victims, I mean.
  - anigbrowl 9y ago
    I don't know whether it's random or not. It could be a Markov chain generator, and much of the 'content' is just recycling obvious contemporary events to give it a veneer of veracity, but it does seem to drop some genuine leaks from time to time. A journalist friend of mine monitors the feed and the surrounding community and I'm sure glad that I don't have to keep up with it myself. I check in on it once every week or 10 days and frequently wish I hadn't.
Spooky23 9y ago
It’s also something to consider from a business perspective. Every first world country locked down broadcast media with licensing. I suspect the same thing is coming for the internet.
dredmorbius 9y ago
The power of media is hugely underappreciated. Marshall McLuhan, Noam Chomsky, Elizabeth Eisenstein, Walter Lippmann, and others, have been writing and warning of this for over a century. ...I want to argue that the parallels between the printing press era and today are sufficiently compelling to suggest: Changes in the information age will be as dramatic as those in the Middle Ages in Europe. The printing press has been implicated in the Reformation, the Renaissance and the Scientific Revolution, all of which had profound effects on their eras; similarly profound changes may already be underway in the information age. The future of the information age will be dominated by unintended consequences. The Protestant Reformation and the shift from an earth-centered to a sun-centered universe were unintended consequences in the printing press era. We are already seeing unintended consequences in the information age that are dominating intended ones and there are good reasons to expect more in the future. Thus, the technologists are unlikely to be accurate and the inventors may neither have their intended effects nor be the most important determinants of information age progress. It will be decades before we see the full effects of the information age. The important effects of the printing press era were not seen clearly for more than 100 years. While things happen more quickly these days, it could be decades before the winners and losers of the information age are apparent. Even today, significant (and permanent) cultural change does not happen quickly.... Renato Rosaldo, The Cultural Impact of the Printed Word, A Review Article, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 1981, Vol. 23, No. 3. p. 508. https://ubiquity.acm.org/article.cfm?id=348784 https://ubiquity.acm.org/article.cfm?id=348784
afarrell 9y ago
And the role of the movable-type printing press in the religious violence that raged across Europe in the 1600s

Absolutely. And it is weaponized to that end in numerous jurisdictions. Turns out that all the work done on sales, growth hacking, virality and so on deployed in the service of commerce is even more effective in the political domain which is completely emotion-driven. A fascinating example of an ongoing campaign is the "Qanon" conspiracy theory which has been running since late last year. The mysterious 'Q', who supposedly holds a top-level security clearance within the executive branch of the US government, issues (via the 8chan imageboard) frequent brief and cryptic clues, exhortations, and warnings about the 'gathering storm;, postulating that most political news is misleading and that the administration is secretly investigating a vast conspiracy of pedophilia that reaches to The Highest Levels of society. If you remember the 'Comet ping-pong' CT where a guy went to a DC Pizzeria and fired shots into a ceiling attempting to free abused children imprisoned in the basement (the building didn't have a basement), think that but on a national scale and with all sorts of other, darker implications. There's a large and extremely active community devoted to interpretation of these clues and crowdsourced information gathering on a grand scale.

ibidibi 9y ago
On the one hand sure, Q is just a LARP'er engaging in baiting a lot of foolish, gullible conspiracy theorists. But, then again .. what if there really is a secret cabal that aims to bring down governments all over the world by way of establishing pedophilia networks among the members of the states being targetted? That is just as nefarious and evil an infiltration/propaganda campaign as the idea that "Q is a LARP". Using sex as a means of usurping ones enemies has been common trade craft in intelligence agencies for centuries. It shouldn't come as any shock to any reasonably well-informed student of history that the potential for corruption through sexual deviancy has always been there, and there is nothing at all particularly resilient about our modern governments which lends them being immune to this factor. Pedophiles do conspire to establish networks of power; coverups of government complicity in such crimes is proven to have occurred, even recently - and there is really no general way for the public to govern the government over this issue, considering it is absolutely heinous, usually means that there are national security issues involved, and thus it all gets wrapped up under government security blankets. What if Q is correct, and that there really is a perverted, evil, pedophile network, hell-bent on corrupting our governments and bringing them down through coercion? The likelihood is very high that this is occurring. It would explain the large and cavernous disconnect between establishment politics and general culture.
- zaphod4prez 9y ago
  "The likelihood is very high that this is occurring." ...uhhhh, where are you getting that? I mean you've made absolutely massive and bizarre claims here and made no attempt to substantiate them. The likelihood is high that this whole extremely specific and strange scenario is true and that none of us have any idea about it??? How do you figure?
  - ibidibi 9y ago
    Well, its a rabbithole, but you asked for it. Here are a few strings for you to pull: 1. Westminster dossier: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westminster_paedophile_dossier 2. The Franklin coverup: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4AFrMpQxbmk 3. Sir Edward Heath WAS a pedophile: http://www.dw.com/en/edward-heath-pedophile-investigation-former-uk-prime-minister-would-have-faced-questioning/a-40815152 4. IICSA: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independent_Inquiry_into_Child_Sexual_Abuse 5. The Lolita Express is a REAL THING, and the Clintons WERE INVOLVED: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Epstein >>>"The likelihood is high that this whole extremely specific and strange scenario is true and that none of us have any idea about it??? How do you figure?" NONE of us has the power to audit our governments. They can keep whatever they want, under wraps, as national security/state secrets - almost indefinitely. And if you think they don't abuse/misuse their powers in this way - well, you've got some rabbit holes to follow. I suggest you buckle up. Where there is smoke, there is fire.
noonespecial 9y ago
The interesting thing about Qanon isn't Qanon itself. The account just spews out vague randomness continuously. It could just be a markov chain generator connected to the text of news sites. Its the first derivative of the feed that's scary. There's a whole bunch of "cloud-spotters" convinced that they are seeing patterns in the madness and recompiling bits of it into a conspiracy theory narrative. If all the downstream see is this derivative output, you end up with a collection of "Q is real!" believers. Its just a fascinating emergent phenomenon, if not for its very real political consequences.
- ibidibi 9y ago
  >very real political consequences What if there really were a conspiracy to entrap politicians in pedophilia/ritual-sexual-abuse? How do you think the governments of the world would deal with it, once enough evidence is discovered to present to their citizens? If the network is deeply entrenched, how do you expect justice to play out? For the victims, I mean.
- anigbrowl 9y ago
  I don't know whether it's random or not. It could be a Markov chain generator, and much of the 'content' is just recycling obvious contemporary events to give it a veneer of veracity, but it does seem to drop some genuine leaks from time to time. A journalist friend of mine monitors the feed and the surrounding community and I'm sure glad that I don't have to keep up with it myself. I check in on it once every week or 10 days and frequently wish I hadn't.

Spooky23 9y ago

It’s also something to consider from a business perspective. Every first world country locked down broadcast media with licensing. I suspect the same thing is coming for the internet.

dredmorbius 9y ago

The power of media is hugely underappreciated. Marshall McLuhan, Noam Chomsky, Elizabeth Eisenstein, Walter Lippmann, and others, have been writing and warning of this for over a century. ...I want to argue that the parallels between the printing press era and today are sufficiently compelling to suggest: Changes in the information age will be as dramatic as those in the Middle Ages in Europe. The printing press has been implicated in the Reformation, the Renaissance and the Scientific Revolution, all of which had profound effects on their eras; similarly profound changes may already be underway in the information age. The future of the information age will be dominated by unintended consequences. The Protestant Reformation and the shift from an earth-centered to a sun-centered universe were unintended consequences in the printing press era. We are already seeing unintended consequences in the information age that are dominating intended ones and there are good reasons to expect more in the future. Thus, the technologists are unlikely to be accurate and the inventors may neither have their intended effects nor be the most important determinants of information age progress. It will be decades before we see the full effects of the information age. The important effects of the printing press era were not seen clearly for more than 100 years. While things happen more quickly these days, it could be decades before the winners and losers of the information age are apparent. Even today, significant (and permanent) cultural change does not happen quickly.... Renato Rosaldo, The Cultural Impact of the Printed Word, A Review Article, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 1981, Vol. 23, No. 3. p. 508. https://ubiquity.acm.org/article.cfm?id=348784 https://ubiquity.acm.org/article.cfm?id=348784

afarrell 9y ago

And the role of the movable-type printing press in the religious violence that raged across Europe in the 1600s