4 ms·

Is it just me, or does it seem like only one end of the political spectrum has perfected information virality? What is it about these messages that is making t

Is it just me, or does it seem like only one end of the political spectrum has perfected information virality? What is it about these messages that is making them so sticky? Is it volume, medium, semantic construction, social proof? I'm hoping this link's threads manage to remain intellectually directed because I'm really curious what people here think.

tonyedgecombe 5y ago
>I'm really curious what people here think HN has its fringes just like anywhere else. And just like anywhere else they tend to be noisy. Anything with a hint of politics attached to it is best ignored (which I'm obviously failing at).
- nefitty 5y ago
  I guess the clunky efforts people go to here to give the appearance of being neutral and objective console me. Maybe people with different beliefs really can communicate in a dignified way...
redis_mlc 5y ago
> only one end of the political spectrum has perfected information virality? The MSM (cnn.com, msnbc.com and abc.com) have all been captured by the left/Marxists. Virtually every major story they're reported since early 2020 has been retracted. msnbc even has an openly racist host, Joy Reid - to her every white person is a white supremacist. What's interesting is that the only channel with a wide audience now is fox, which has the combined audience reach of both cnn and msnbc. cnn has time slots with no viewers, so show hosts are frequently cancelled. It's fascinating to study. The theory is that nobody believes the MSM any more - no journalistic integrity. To see how blind the MSM is at following their "racial justice" narrative, watch this local news segment on record homocides in Chicago in 2021, with 96% of the 1009 deaths due to minority-on-minority violence: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uTLDc6VQJwk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uTLDc6VQJwk Why isn't that reported on national MSM media outlets, since 1,009 homocides is equivalent to 30 years of police killings of blacks? Every time the MSM says "white supremacy", ask why they don't talk about the failure of black families or black education. (The reason is that they don't care about blacks, but they do care about attacking the existing societal power structure - so ethno-Marxism.)
jansan 5y ago
There is a huge PR asymmetry. There are actually parties involved with huge financial interest who want to sell masks, vaccines, PCR tests, etc.. If they are successful in convincing the people that their offered products are a solution for the pandemic, they can make a huge profit, so it pays for them to financially support their narrative. For the sceptics there is not much money to be made if they succeed. So for masks, vaccines, tests, etc you have the opinion of people who sincerely think this is the right solution PLUS the marketing budget of companies with financial interest. On the opposite side you only have the opinion of people who are sincerely sceptical. In Germany we had some politicians suddenly became very active in the mask business. In Bavaria there was even an FFP2 mandate (which didn't achieve shit) to support their mask industry.
- ceejayoz 5y ago
  > For the sceptics there is not much money to be made if they succeed. Some of the skeptics have been selling supplements and miracle cures for autism, cancer, and anything else you can think of for years. Others are leveraging anti-masking for political gain. There’s plenty of budget on the anti-mask/anti-vax side of things.
  - jokethrowaway 5y ago
    That's not a good answer. Political gain is the same for the mask wearing side. Political characters can have side gigs on both sides. For the sceptics, the money to be made is coming from tourism / small businesses. Small businesses are probably incapable to organise themselves, so that leaves big companies in tourism. If I were Booking.com or a flight company, for example, I would support the anti-vax side of things. On the mask / vaccine side, you have big pharma / big tech / the government.
    - ceejayoz 5y ago
      > Political gain is the same for the mask wearing side. Not really, no. It's pretty clear Republican politicians have been able to seize on the issue in a way Democrats have not. That may be a bit on the Democrats' tendency towards disarray in general, but if you want to be a prominent Republican right now, you're probably not gonna talk about being pro-vaccination too much. > If I were Booking.com or a flight company, for example, I would support the anti-vax side of things. That seems unlikely, given the damage to their businesses low vaccination rates cause. I recently traveled to French Polynesia; vaccination was all but required. Ten day quarantine if you aren't. They know what "people are dying there" headlines do to tourism. > On the mask / vaccine side, you have big pharma / big tech / the government. Big tech has been significantly responsible for the spread of anti-vax and anti-mask beliefs.
paulcole 5y ago
Which end of the political spectrum has perfected information virality?
- nefitty 5y ago
  The far right. I'm on the opposite end and I still find it easier to conjure their talking points better than the ones I subscribe to. The right has more uniformity in terms of messaging. They seem to be able to more succinctly distill their messages. They leverage emotional affect. They target a wider swath of values, as opposed to the monotone drone of "fairness". Besides the technical aspects of propaganda, what really fascinates me is how well they've transmitted the meta techniques of effective messaging. I can name dozens of right wing intellectuals, but I falter with the left. Does Zizek count? Lex Fridman? Sam Harris? Does AOC write books or have a podcast?
SuoDuanDao 5y ago
I've definitely noticed that my amateurish attempts to learn what biohackers do has given me unexpected insights into memetic warfare. As in biology, memes often have both a vector and a payload - the vector convinces a cell to allow in a foreign body, and the payload tells the cell what to use its resources for once it's being treated as friendly. These two are fairly independent, in biology for example one can remove all genetic information from a viral body (the vector) and replace it with one's own instructions (the payload). I think Dawkins' analogy of memes to genes has turned out to be much richer and predictive than it would have seemed at first, replicating information seems to follow similar dynamics no matter the medium. To your question, I'm not sure I know the full story but I have a theory. If you're at all familiar with the public intellectual Jordan Peterson, you probably know of his polemics against 'Postmodern Neomarxism'[1]. Given that Peterson is a self-described american pragmatist, which defines truth more similarly to postmodernism than most schools of though, I wondered why he would hold such animosity to a philosophy so similar to his own. Someone did in fact ask him about this a while back. His answer was unfortunately rushed, but if I understood it correctly he believes pragmatism describes truth as 'what is most beneficial to believe' while postmodernism describes truth as 'the winner of a Darwinian conflict against other versions of truth'. If that is an accurate description, then I think it's quite obvious: messages informed by a postmodern tradition are more 'sticky' because they have been selected for maximum sticky-ness, which is related to the wellbeing of the host but not identical. Competing messages have been selected for maximum benefit to the host, which is related to the ease with which they stick but is not identical. [1]As an aside: a lot of readers would have had the mental equivalent of an immune response the moment the saw 'Jordan Peterson'. The use of the unflattering descriptor 'polemics' to describe him immediately thereafter is a deliberate attempt to modify the vector so as to convince those readers in particular to allow the message through regardless. Fans of Peterson would of course read on despite this, as they tend to engage in discussions involving him with friendly or unfriendly parties. Note that this use of language only affects the vector with which I delivered my idea, the payload relates to variance in memetic selection and is independent of how it is packaged. This is a very simple example of how I understand memetic warfare working - I hope our memetic immune systems are strengthened by this demonstration.
- nefitty 5y ago
ldehaan 5y ago
It's Followers following bro. It's like that Peter pan song. We're following the leader, the leader, the leader, we're following the leader wherever he may go. Do dum, do dee. Anyways. It's a hierarchy of following, I like to imagine a tree list moving together towards the memory collection function and your leader, just an item further up the hierarchy, and your leader is like: Don't worry. Just follow. I won't collect your memory, unless you disagree. Nobody knows though, this mofo can't collect your memory, that's a process, but dude thinks he can tell you the process isn't real, and he's actually the one who controls the garbage process. Everyone gets collected, nobody knows its them until it is. The thing your group is running from is still coming, it's catching the slow ones first, but it will catch you all, and you're being sold the idea that it can be staved off, but really, You just never see it coming.

tonyedgecombe 5y ago

>I'm really curious what people here think HN has its fringes just like anywhere else. And just like anywhere else they tend to be noisy. Anything with a hint of politics attached to it is best ignored (which I'm obviously failing at).

nefitty 5y ago
I guess the clunky efforts people go to here to give the appearance of being neutral and objective console me. Maybe people with different beliefs really can communicate in a dignified way...

redis_mlc 5y ago

> only one end of the political spectrum has perfected information virality? The MSM (cnn.com, msnbc.com and abc.com) have all been captured by the left/Marxists. Virtually every major story they're reported since early 2020 has been retracted. msnbc even has an openly racist host, Joy Reid - to her every white person is a white supremacist. What's interesting is that the only channel with a wide audience now is fox, which has the combined audience reach of both cnn and msnbc. cnn has time slots with no viewers, so show hosts are frequently cancelled. It's fascinating to study. The theory is that nobody believes the MSM any more - no journalistic integrity. To see how blind the MSM is at following their "racial justice" narrative, watch this local news segment on record homocides in Chicago in 2021, with 96% of the 1009 deaths due to minority-on-minority violence: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uTLDc6VQJwk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uTLDc6VQJwk Why isn't that reported on national MSM media outlets, since 1,009 homocides is equivalent to 30 years of police killings of blacks? Every time the MSM says "white supremacy", ask why they don't talk about the failure of black families or black education. (The reason is that they don't care about blacks, but they do care about attacking the existing societal power structure - so ethno-Marxism.)

jansan 5y ago

There is a huge PR asymmetry. There are actually parties involved with huge financial interest who want to sell masks, vaccines, PCR tests, etc.. If they are successful in convincing the people that their offered products are a solution for the pandemic, they can make a huge profit, so it pays for them to financially support their narrative. For the sceptics there is not much money to be made if they succeed. So for masks, vaccines, tests, etc you have the opinion of people who sincerely think this is the right solution PLUS the marketing budget of companies with financial interest. On the opposite side you only have the opinion of people who are sincerely sceptical. In Germany we had some politicians suddenly became very active in the mask business. In Bavaria there was even an FFP2 mandate (which didn't achieve shit) to support their mask industry.

ceejayoz 5y ago
> For the sceptics there is not much money to be made if they succeed. Some of the skeptics have been selling supplements and miracle cures for autism, cancer, and anything else you can think of for years. Others are leveraging anti-masking for political gain. There’s plenty of budget on the anti-mask/anti-vax side of things.
- jokethrowaway 5y ago
  That's not a good answer. Political gain is the same for the mask wearing side. Political characters can have side gigs on both sides. For the sceptics, the money to be made is coming from tourism / small businesses. Small businesses are probably incapable to organise themselves, so that leaves big companies in tourism. If I were Booking.com or a flight company, for example, I would support the anti-vax side of things. On the mask / vaccine side, you have big pharma / big tech / the government.
  - ceejayoz 5y ago
    > Political gain is the same for the mask wearing side. Not really, no. It's pretty clear Republican politicians have been able to seize on the issue in a way Democrats have not. That may be a bit on the Democrats' tendency towards disarray in general, but if you want to be a prominent Republican right now, you're probably not gonna talk about being pro-vaccination too much. > If I were Booking.com or a flight company, for example, I would support the anti-vax side of things. That seems unlikely, given the damage to their businesses low vaccination rates cause. I recently traveled to French Polynesia; vaccination was all but required. Ten day quarantine if you aren't. They know what "people are dying there" headlines do to tourism. > On the mask / vaccine side, you have big pharma / big tech / the government. Big tech has been significantly responsible for the spread of anti-vax and anti-mask beliefs.

paulcole 5y ago

Which end of the political spectrum has perfected information virality?

nefitty 5y ago
The far right. I'm on the opposite end and I still find it easier to conjure their talking points better than the ones I subscribe to. The right has more uniformity in terms of messaging. They seem to be able to more succinctly distill their messages. They leverage emotional affect. They target a wider swath of values, as opposed to the monotone drone of "fairness". Besides the technical aspects of propaganda, what really fascinates me is how well they've transmitted the meta techniques of effective messaging. I can name dozens of right wing intellectuals, but I falter with the left. Does Zizek count? Lex Fridman? Sam Harris? Does AOC write books or have a podcast?

SuoDuanDao 5y ago

I've definitely noticed that my amateurish attempts to learn what biohackers do has given me unexpected insights into memetic warfare. As in biology, memes often have both a vector and a payload - the vector convinces a cell to allow in a foreign body, and the payload tells the cell what to use its resources for once it's being treated as friendly. These two are fairly independent, in biology for example one can remove all genetic information from a viral body (the vector) and replace it with one's own instructions (the payload). I think Dawkins' analogy of memes to genes has turned out to be much richer and predictive than it would have seemed at first, replicating information seems to follow similar dynamics no matter the medium. To your question, I'm not sure I know the full story but I have a theory. If you're at all familiar with the public intellectual Jordan Peterson, you probably know of his polemics against 'Postmodern Neomarxism'[1]. Given that Peterson is a self-described american pragmatist, which defines truth more similarly to postmodernism than most schools of though, I wondered why he would hold such animosity to a philosophy so similar to his own. Someone did in fact ask him about this a while back. His answer was unfortunately rushed, but if I understood it correctly he believes pragmatism describes truth as 'what is most beneficial to believe' while postmodernism describes truth as 'the winner of a Darwinian conflict against other versions of truth'. If that is an accurate description, then I think it's quite obvious: messages informed by a postmodern tradition are more 'sticky' because they have been selected for maximum sticky-ness, which is related to the wellbeing of the host but not identical. Competing messages have been selected for maximum benefit to the host, which is related to the ease with which they stick but is not identical. [1]As an aside: a lot of readers would have had the mental equivalent of an immune response the moment the saw 'Jordan Peterson'. The use of the unflattering descriptor 'polemics' to describe him immediately thereafter is a deliberate attempt to modify the vector so as to convince those readers in particular to allow the message through regardless. Fans of Peterson would of course read on despite this, as they tend to engage in discussions involving him with friendly or unfriendly parties. Note that this use of language only affects the vector with which I delivered my idea, the payload relates to variance in memetic selection and is independent of how it is packaged. This is a very simple example of how I understand memetic warfare working - I hope our memetic immune systems are strengthened by this demonstration.

nefitty 5y ago

ldehaan 5y ago

It's Followers following bro. It's like that Peter pan song. We're following the leader, the leader, the leader, we're following the leader wherever he may go. Do dum, do dee. Anyways. It's a hierarchy of following, I like to imagine a tree list moving together towards the memory collection function and your leader, just an item further up the hierarchy, and your leader is like: Don't worry. Just follow. I won't collect your memory, unless you disagree. Nobody knows though, this mofo can't collect your memory, that's a process, but dude thinks he can tell you the process isn't real, and he's actually the one who controls the garbage process. Everyone gets collected, nobody knows its them until it is. The thing your group is running from is still coming, it's catching the slow ones first, but it will catch you all, and you're being sold the idea that it can be staved off, but really, You just never see it coming.