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People hate being manipulated. If you feel like you're being manipulated but you don't know by who or precisely what they want of you, then there's something of

• pjc50 11mo ago
  People hate feeling manipulated, but they love propaganda that feeds their prejudices. People voluntarily turn on Fox News - even in public spaces - and get mad if you turn it off. Sufficiently effective propaganda produces its own cults. People want a sense of purpose and belonging. Sometimes even at the expense of their own lives, or (more easily) someone else's lives.
  • FridayoLeary 11mo ago
    [flagged]
    • ceejayoz 11mo ago
      > just smaller maybe This is like peak both-sidesism. You even openly describe the left’s equivalent of MAGA as “fringe”, FFS. One party’s former “fringe” is now in full control of it. And the country’s institutions.
      • FridayoLeary 11mo ago
        I was both siding in an effort to be as objective as possible. The truth is that i'm pretty dismayed at the current state of the Democrat party. Socialists like Mamdani and Sanders and the squad are way too powerful. People who are obsessed with tearing down cultural and social institutions and replacing them with performative identity politics and fabricated narratives are given platforms way bigger then they deserve. The worries of average Americans are dismissed. All those are issues that are tearing up the Democrat party from the inside. I can continue for hours but i don't want to start a flamewar of biblical proportions. So all i did was present the most balanced view i can muster and you still can't acknowledge that there might be truth in what i'm saying. The pendulum swings both ways. MSM has fallen victim to partisan politics. Something which Trump recognised and exploited back in 2015. Fox news is on the right, CNN, ABC et al is on the left.
        • ceejayoz 11mo ago
          If you think “Sanders and the Squad” are powerful you’ve been watching far too much Fox News. > People who are obsessed with tearing down cultural and social institutions and replacing them with performative identity politics and fabricated narratives are given platforms way bigger then they deserve. Like the Kennedy Center, USAID, and the Department of Education? The immigrants eating cats story? Cutting off all refugees except white South Africans? And your next line says this is the problem with Democrats?
        • hn_acc1 11mo ago
          CNN, ABC et al are on the left IN FOX NEWS WORLD only. Objectively, they're center-right, just like most of the democrat party.
    • kelipso 11mo ago
      [flagged]
      • NoGravitas 11mo ago
        And, perhaps ironically, the actual (fringe) left never fell for Russiagate.
    • pjc50 11mo ago
      People close to Trump went to jail for Russian collusion. Courts are not perfect but a significantly better route to truth than the media. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criminal_charges_brought_in_the_Mueller_special_counsel_investigation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criminal_charges_brought_in_th... There is this odd conspiracy to claim that Biden (81 at time of election) was too old and Trump (77) wasn't, when Trump has always been visibly less coherent than Biden. IMO both of them were clearly too old to be sensible candidates, regardless of other considerations. The UK counterpart is happening at the moment: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/c891403eddet https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/c891403eddet
      • FridayoLeary 11mo ago
        >There is this odd conspiracy to claim that Biden (81 at time of election) was too old and Trump (77) wasn't I try to base my opinions on facts as much as possible. Trump is old but he's clearly full of energy, like some old people can be. Biden sadly is not. Look at the videos, it's painful to see. In his defence he was probably much more active then most 80 year olds but in no way was he fit to lead a country. At least in the UK despite the recent lamentable state of our political system our politicians are relatively young. You won't see octogenarians like pelosi and Biden in charge.
        • jcranmer 11mo ago
          From the videos I've seen, Biden reminds me of my grandmother in her later years of life, while Trump reminds me of my other grandmother... the one with dementia. There's just too many videos where Trump doesn't seem to entirely realize where he is or what he is doing for me to be comfortable.
          • blitzar 11mo ago
            Happy thanksgiving this week
        • mx7zysuj4xew 11mo ago
          Hard disagree Biden was slow, made small gaffes, but overall his words and actions were careful and deliberate Aside from trump falling asleep during cabinet meetings on camera, having him freeze up during a medical emergency and his erratic social media posts at later hours of the day (sundowning behavior) Trump literally seems to be decomposing in front of our eyes, I've never felt more physically repulsed by an individual before Trumps behavior is utterly deranged. His lack of inhibition, decency and compassion is disturbing Had he been a non celebrity private citizen he'd most likely be declared mentally incompetent and placed under guardianship in a closed care facility.
    • NoGravitas 11mo ago
      I would point out that what you call "left outlets" are at best center-left. The actual left doesn't believe in Russiagate (it was manufactured to ratfuck Bernie before being turned against Trump), and has zero love for Biden.
      • daveguy 11mo ago
        Given the amount of evidence that Russia and the Trump campaign were working together, it's devoid of reality to claim it's a hoax. I hadn't heard the Bernie angle, but it's not unreasonable to expect they were aiding Bernie. The difference being, I don't think Bernie's campaign was colluding with Russian agents, whereas the Trump campaign definitely was colluding. Seriously, who didn't hear about the massive amounts of evidence the Trump campaign was colluding other than magas drooling over fox and newsmax? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mueller_report https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mueller_report https://www.justice.gov/storage/report.pdf https://www.justice.gov/storage/report.pdf
  • vintermann 11mo ago
    To you too: are you talking about other people here, or do you concede the possibility that you're falling for similar things yourself?
    • pjc50 11mo ago
      I'm certainly aware of the risk. Difficult balance of "being aware of things" versus the fallibility and taintedness of routes to actually hearing about things.
• wiz21c 11mo ago
  People don't know they are being manipulated. Marketing does that all of the time and nobody complain. They complain about "too much advert" but not about "too much manipulation". Example: in my country we often hear "it costs too much to repair, just buy a replacement". That's often not true, but we do pay. Mobile phone subscription are routinely screwing you, many complain but keep buying. Or you hear "it's because of immigration" and many just accept it, etc.
  • vintermann 11mo ago
    > People don't know they are being manipulated. You can see other people falling for manipulation in a handful of specific ways that you aren't (buying new, having a bad cell phone subscription, blaming immigrants). Doesn't it seem likely then, that you're being manipulated in ways which are equally obvious to others?We realize that, that's part of why we get mad.
    • wiz21c 11mo ago
      exactly and that's the scary part :-/
    • intended 11mo ago
      No. This is a form of lazy thinking, because it assumes everyone is equally affected. This is not what we see in reality, and several sections of the population are more prone to being converted by manipulation efforts. Worse, these sections have been under coordinated manipulation since the 60s-70s. That said, the scope and scale of the effort required to achieve this is not small, and requires dedicated effort to keep pushing narratives and owning media power.
      • vintermann 11mo ago
        I assume you think you're not in these sections? And probably a lot of people in those sections say the same about your section, right? I think nobody's immune. And if anyone is especially vulnerable, it's those who can be persuaded that they have access to insider info. Those who are flattered and feel important when invited to closed meetings. It's much easier to fool a few than to fool many, so ,private manipulation - convincing someone of something they should not talk about with regular people because they wouldn't understand, you know - is a lot more powerful than public manipulation.
• exceptione 11mo ago
  > People hate being manipulated. The crux is whether the signal of abnormality will be perceived as such in society. - People are primarily social animals, if they see their peers accept affairs as normal, they conclude it is normal. We don't live in small villages anymore, so we rely on media to "see our peers". We are increasingly disconnected from social reality, but we still need others to form our group values. So modern media have a heavily concentrated power as "towntalk actors", replacing social processing of events and validation of perspectives. - People are easily distracted, you don't have to feed them much. - People have on average an enormous capacity to absorb compliments, even when they know it is flattery. It is known we let ourselves being manipulated if it feels good. Hence, the need for social feedback loops to keep you grounded in reality. TLDR: Citizens in the modern age are very reliant on the few actors that provide a semblance of public discourse, see Fourth Estate. The incentives of those few actors are not aligned with the common man. The autonomous, rational, self-valued citizen is a myth. Undermine the man's groups process => the group destroys the man.
  • vintermann 11mo ago
    You don't count yourself among the people you describe, I assume?
    • exceptione 11mo ago
      I do, why wouldn't I? For example, I know I have to actively spend effort to think rational, at the risk of self-criticism, as it is a universal human trait to respond to stimuli without active thinking. Knowing how we are fallible as humans helps to circumvent our flaws.
  • heliumtera 11mo ago
    About absorbing compliments really well, there is the widely discussed idea that one in a position of power loses the privilege to the truth. There are a few articles focusing on this problem on corporate environment. The concept is that when your peers have the motivation to be flattery (let's say you're in a managerial position), and more importantly, they're are punished for coming to you with problems, the reward mechanism in this environment promotes a disconnect between leader expectations and reality. That matches my experience at least. And I was able to identify this correlates well, the more aware my leadership was of this phenomenon, and the more they valued true knowledge and incremental development, easier it was to make progress, and more we saw them as someone to rely on. Some of those the felt they were prestigious and had the obligation to assert dominance, being abusive etc, were seeing with no respect by basically no one. Everyone will say they seek truth, knowledge, honesty, while wanting desperately to ascend to a position that will take all of those things from us!
• intended 11mo ago
  Knowing one is manipulated, requires having some trusted alternate source to verify against. If all your trusted sources are saying the same thing, then you are safe. If all your untrusted sources are telling you your trusted sources are lying, then it only means your trusted sources are of good character. Most people are wildly unaware of the type of social conditioning they are under.
  • teamonkey 11mo ago
    I get your point, but if all your trusted sources are reinforcing your view and all your untrusted sources are saying your trusted sources are lying, then you may well be right or you may be trusting entirely the wrong people. But lying is a good barometer against reality. Do your trusted sources lie a lot? Do they go against scientific evidence? Do they say things that you know don’t represent reality? Probably time to reevaluate how reliable those sources are, rather than supporting them as you would a football team.
• notabee 11mo ago
  The longstanding existence of religions and the continual birth of new cults, the popularity of extremist political groups of all types, and the ubiquity of fortune-telling across cultures, seem to stand in opposition to your assertion that people hate being manipulated. At least, people enjoy belonging to something far more than they hate being manipulated. Most successful versions of fortune-telling, religious conversion, and cult recruitment do utilize confirmation bias affirmation, love-bombing, and other techniques to increase people's agreeableness before getting to the manipulation part, but they still successfully do that. It's also like saying that advertising is pointless because it's manipulating people into buying things, and while people dislike ads it's also still a very successful part of getting people to buy products or else corporations wouldn't still spend vast amounts of money on marketing.
• Nasrudith 11mo ago
  No they hate feeling manipulated. They not only expect social manipulation they think you are downright rude, unsocialized, and untrustworthy if you don't manipulate them reflexively. Just look at mirroring alone. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirroring https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirroring I hated to come to this conclusion, but the average neurotypical person is fundamentally so batshit insane they think that not manipulating them is a sign you aren't trustworthy and ability to conceal your emotions and put on an appropriate emotional kabuki dance is a sign of trustworthiness.