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Rikard's avatar

I imagine it went like this:

With the internet becoming public, data on how information/reaction-patterns were collected and collated, culminating in the project that gave birth to Facebook (the initial project was an intelligence agency one after all).

But somewhen around 2010-215 "they" realised something they missed in the initial planning.

If left alone, the patterns forming and dissolving are spontaneous, but clustered around nodes sending information out: anyone with a large enough audience will impact the pattern and set up reverberations throughout it all.

If you imagine a still pond with people dropping stones in it all the time and the waves interacting and intersecting, that's a good image of the process.

Now, in the years mentioned "they" suddenly realised that there are only two way to actually control the wave-patterns:

Either restrict access to only vetted sources (basically how radio and TV was set up in most european nations), an impossibility for many reasons - or:

Try to control the rythm and size of the stones dropped (i.e. "trusted news initiatices", bluechecks, factcheckers, et c, under agency control/working together).

What they did was the worst possible choice: both of the above, plus introducing baffles into the pond, limiting the motion and reach of the waves.

This is bad no matter how you look at it for a very simple reason: the patterns you depend upon for analysis in order to pre-empt action and movement you don't want are no longer reliable, thanks to your own meddling.

Meaning that now, after having ocllated all the data on how various spread-out individuals managed to counter the signal about "Covid is the killer" and "mRNA-vaccines are safe and efficient", they are in a panic.

They will inenvitably make the same mistake again: more control, more directed messaging meaning they continue to create error-sources which means they will act on erroneous information all the time, becoming more and more frantic in their flailing efforts to control.

I guess none of them built dams in streams as children: you don't control, dam up and fight the force. You guide it, gently and discreetly and with a minimum of effort so it runs where you want it and enables you to exploit its power.

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epimetheus's avatar

This is just about the best summary of what I think it is correct assessment of what (and how) things 'went wrong' with respect to (social) media in the internet age.

I also expect them to double and then quadruple down on these stupid efforts, if only this is literally a case of people knowing but one tool (the proverbial hammer). It will make things worse before too long, for now a lot of people will go: 'oh, sure I saw this news item (about whatever), but I don't believe them'.

There's no reasoning necessary, with perhaps the current bout of Israel-Hamas flare-up of violence being the best (current) example. Facts stopped mattering long ago, and if you look at the stuff that's 'reported' about it, one can, to a certain extent, the proverbial 'wave of the future': pick a side, make sure everyone else in your circles will approve of your 'opinion', and block out everyone and anything that disagrees with you, your circles, or whatever.

Of course, this will drastically increase cognitive dissonance, social fractures, and re-shuffle/create affiliations akin to 'tribalism'. In all, it's therefore 'better' for the Globalists because a very much divided (former) society is much easier to dominate than unified opposition.

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Rikard's avatar

Running with this theme (and thank you by the way), the first historical precedence that popped up was the rage against the catholic church in France during, under and following the years of the French revolution.

The church went from being second to the monarchy/the state in power, to priests being publicy assaulted, humiliated and spat upon by the people.

I do think it fits with media and "information merchants" - the status and stature from the days of Hemingway up until around 2005-2010-ish was nothing but sacrosanct, whether true or false. Especially in nations with state media, and even more so where state media initially acted as a neutral party among a plethora of party-affiliated papers.

What I fear is, we will have to endure the powers in power trying to go "full China" before relenting or collapsing.

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epimetheus's avatar

Oh, eugyppius wrote something interesting (see https://www.eugyppius.com/p/the-managerial-menace) about organisational principles behind this change you allude to.

My 'only' beef is this: if eugyppius is correct (i.e., an abundance of resources is driving this), it will end once resources dry up. In other words, this can be described using social science-economics ideas, esp. those explored by Joe Tainter more than 30 years ago in his The Collapse of Complex Civilizations (Cambridge, 1989).

What, then, happens once 'collapse' sets in? 'Collapse', Tainter argued, would be the rapid simplification of structures and organisations, which in our example would mean the termination of tabloid-esque 'content', such as 'lifestyle', 'sports', 'fashion', and the like. Those outlets that provide 'good' information will survive and eventually may even return to growing; others won't.

C'est la vie, and this insight can, I'd argue, be replicated for all other industries, too, incl. 'public health' (which, by the way, didn't exist as such a mere couple of decades ago--and this is also where I think many of these institutions are headed).

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Rikard's avatar

As any farmer would tell them: mono-culture is bad. As is all measures which seeks to force plants or animals to grow in specific ways.

Nurture and guide so it on its own chooses the path desired is better, but slower, so for an idealist, an empire-builder and a utopian - fast acquires a supreme quality on its own.

WHO becoming a supra-national legal authority on all things health-related is the test. After that will follow judiciary, police, military, financial/economical and social.

And then it will collapse, because it will spend dollars to save cents, so to speak.

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epimetheus's avatar

Of course they will follow suit with these centralising moves, and then, as much as day follows night, it will crumble. Perhaps this will finally split 'the global community' into warring/hostile blocs, much like in '1984', for I could imagine that should, say, Russia elect to not participate in this ('climate change') or that ('Covid') schemes, we'll learn about the validity of this or that scheme.

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Sophia's avatar

It seems that the Gallup poll was created to be skewed from the start as "none" was not included among the options.

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epimetheus's avatar

Of course it is skewed, for, as I mentioned above, these results are damning, to say nothing about their massive implications for an informed body politic. Also, it's the polling businesses' MO.

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ExcessDeathsAU's avatar

Just testing a comment here. I had some crazy issues with Substack recently!

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epimetheus's avatar

Hmmmm, strange--did you manage to resolve these issues?

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ExcessDeathsAU's avatar

I did, thank you, and thank you for your commitment to the clown climate situation!

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epimetheus's avatar

Excellent, at least someone on the internet is doing some work…

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ExcessDeathsAU's avatar

I am just hoping for you to post cat photos :(

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epimetheus's avatar

Just wait for it, my friend, give it some time ^_^

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