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The Military Advertising

The US Army's Unsettling New Recruitment Video for Psychological Warfare (taskandpurpose.com) 189

Posted by EditorDavid from the all-you-can-be dept.
Task and Purpose reports on "a new and somewhat unnerving recruiting pitch from the U.S. Army's 4th Psychological Operations Group" that asks viewers one simple question: "Have you ever wondered who's pulling the strings?" The three-and-a-half minute, movie trailer-esque video was released by the 4th PSYOP Group on Youtube on May 2. Since then it's brought in 329,396 views, and it's not hard to see why: This is not your father's recruiting commercial. Complete with eerie whistling in the background and suspenseful music, the video is far from the sometimes-cheesy Army recruiting commercials we often see on television. It's dark and palpably tense, the clips of old cartoons and radio segments from world events combining perfectly to create something that is both intriguing and unsettling.

It accomplishes exactly what psychological operations soldiers set out to do: Influence an audience. As one commenter on Youtube pointed out: "Everything is a weapon. Even this video." Col. Chris Stangle, commander of 4th PSYOP Group, told Task & Purpose on Friday that the video was created in-house, both as a recruitment effort but also to literally show people what they can do — part of psychological operations is creating persuasive media.... Throughout the world, Stangle said, psychological operations are occurring "literally everywhere, every day, in every component of our lives." We're seeing it play out in real-time in eastern Europe, where Ukraine is proving much more successful in the information war than the Russians.

That's no coincidence. Stangle said after the annexation of Crimea in 2014, the U.S. PSYOP community, along with other NATO allies and special operations communities around the world, got to work helping Ukraine build their own abilities.... "We've helped through [military-to-military] partnerships, us as well as more than 12 allies and partners. And what we've been able to do is just sit and watch how amazing their arguments are ... Ukraine has done a masterful job, they've taken the training and the work we've done with them, as well as their own inherent skill, and have just really blown it up...."

U.S. Army PSYOP soldiers are working daily with over 40 countries around the globe, according to Stangle. And those partnerships will be critical to success both in preventing future conflicts, and in future conflicts as they unfold.

As the video says: "Warfare is evolving, and all the world's a stage."
Thanks to Slashdot reader schwit1 for sharing the link!
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The US Army's Unsettling New Recruitment Video for Psychological Warfare More

The US Army's Unsettling New Recruitment Video for Psychological Warfare

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  • Easiest way to destabilize a nation (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Matt321 ( 9371829 ) on Monday May 16, 2022 @06:39AM (#62538292)
    Destabilizing a group is quite easy. Just convince the women of the group that they need men the way a fish needs a bicycle and then the men will stop fighting because what is there to fight for?

    • Re:Easiest way to destabilize a nation (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Archtech ( 159117 ) on Monday May 16, 2022 @06:57AM (#62538330)

      Destabilizing a group is quite easy. Just convince the women of the group that they need men the way a fish needs a bicycle and then the men will stop fighting because what is there to fight for?

      Money and power: the main things men have always fought for, and always will as long as they are human. Possession of women, or impressing them for those who are less ruthless, is one minor form of power.

      Orwell explained this quite clearly.

      "The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power. Not wealth or luxury or long life or happiness; only power, pure power. What pure power means you will understand presently. We are different from all the oligarchies of the past in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites. The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives. They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just round the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal. We are not like that. We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?"

      - George Orwell (O’Brien to Winston Smith, “1984”)

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Kokuyo ( 549451 )

        Only most men do not work that way in everyday life.

        What you are describing is reserved for those with the means to actually "keep" a woman instead of having a partner to face the catastrophe that is life with.

        IMO, the whole "patriarchy bad" is nothing more than looking for a scapegoat for "elites will be elites and we're just too cowardly to band together and do something about that".

        It is the same concept as Adolf blaming jewish Tycoons for the woes of the world (he may or may not have had a point there)

      • Re: Easiest way to destabilize a nation (Score:5, Insightful)

        by e3m4n ( 947977 ) on Monday May 16, 2022 @07:18AM (#62538362)
        The people doing the fighting have neither money not power. Much like the avg confederate soldier owned no slaves and very little land. TBH, this is exactly why the founding fathers set out with the 2nd Amendment as well as a constitutional decree that no army shall stand longer than 2yrs. They wanted the people to think hard about going to war because it would be they that picked up a rifle (as a member of the unorganized militia) and went to war. Now its war by proxy.

        • Re: Easiest way to destabilize a nation (Score:5, Interesting)

          by Brain-Fu ( 1274756 ) on Monday May 16, 2022 @08:52AM (#62538644) Homepage Journal

          Precisely, you nailed it. The combatants are not fighting to attain power, they are fighting because someone who has power over them is directing them to fight. And, most of the time, there is no promised reward of power in return for this fighting. You get a medical plan and a few other government benefits, and are expected to return to the working world once the fighting is done.

          This is why conscription is morally wrong and no civilized government should be allowed to practice it. It is represented as "you have an obligation to defend the country that provides for you" but that is a malicious misrepresentation of the grim reality: a group of people who have power over you have just enslaved you in order to use you as a tool to protect THEIR power over you. If the government is a good government (and the country a good country), then there will be NO SHORTAGE of volunteers who step up to fight when a threat emerges. Governments resort to conscription precisely because they have already failed their people so badly that said people would rather flee or surrender, because to them the enemy government is just the new boss (same as the old boss). Or, in worse cases, governments resort to conscription because they want to expand their power to a foreign region, and they have no inhibitions about forcing their people to go die for that purpose, even though their people have no interest in this expansion.

          Lastly I wanted to point out that all pack animals have a hierarchy of power. Forming such hierarchies is a pack instinct because such hierarchies are necessary for the survival of any pack species. Humans have that instinct too, and like any instinct, some people have an over-expression of it. It will never go away, but we can and should use wisdom to moderate it in the same way that we must moderate things like appetite and sexual activity in order to avoid chaos. And that means perpetually fighting (politically) to prevent too much power from accumulating at the top.

      • "Money and power: the main things men have always fought for..."

        Except the fundamental reason men have fought for those things are to get women.
        Ok, at least one part of women.

        Seriously, if you told most men (who, despite 2022 propaganda, are vastly more interested in women): "you can have unlimited pussy" that would be the end of the discussion. They would accept the most minimal income, the worst jobs, a shitty standard of living. I'm not sure they'd even bathe more than minimally.

        There are also going to

      • It's literally all an attempt to get laid. Psychopaths who want power for the sake of people are literally just miswired into being incapable of seeing why. They have the evolutionary drive to impress the opposite sex in order to spread their genes, but they lack the insight to see that's why that reflex ever even evolved. Orwell didn't "explain" that, he made a parody of that.
      • The entirety of modern civilization was built on the backs of beta male worker bees given some assurance that they could have a home and family. Rich and powerful men's fortunes depend on this.

      • "We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it."

        It's a nice quote, but it happened a few times during the Roman republic. Arguably King Juan Carlos 1 of Spain did the same thing. And George Washington is another notable example.

    • FAR too early to be quoting U2 on the internet. Auchtung Baby no less . . .

    • Destabilizing a group is quite easy. Just convince the women of the group that they need men the way a fish needs a bicycle and then the men will stop fighting because what is there to fight for?

      Don't you have a supermarket or mall to shoot up?

    • Convincing women that they don't need men? You call that "easy"?

      Has anyone ever accomplished that? I don't think so.

      Hint: You need both a man and a woman to make a baby. "Convincing" doesn't change that.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by hey! ( 33014 )

      I look around and I do not see some kind of mass movement of women to cut out all the male persons in their lives.

      It's not that there is some kind of conspiracy to change women's attitudes, it's that nobody time for that stuff anymore. Families are expected to be two earner, so women need careers, leading to a rise in average marriage age for women from 20 in 1950 to 27. The age for men has gone up too, from 27 to 28. The number of hours Americans workers labor has gone up since 1960 while work hours have

  • Once everything becomes a weapon (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jd ( 1658 ) <<moc.oohay> <ta> <kapimi>> on Monday May 16, 2022 @06:42AM (#62538304) Homepage Journal

    There is no value in living. Life exists only within a cooperative system. As soon as the system ceases to function and devours itself, there is nothing to live for. Nobody exists as an island unto themselves, there are no individuals, and the mind itself is merely an artefact jointly created by the brain and environment. No environment, no mind, as experiments have shown.

    Either not everything is a weapon, and mutual trust in a cooperative society is possible, or the only worthwhile act is to bow out.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by The Real Dr John ( 716876 )

      The US empire is setting itself on a death spiral, like all overextended empires. Psyops against your own people become necessary to keep everyone on board with the ensuing disaster.

      • Re:Once everything becomes a weapon (Score:5, Interesting)

        by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) <drink@hyperlogos.org> on Monday May 16, 2022 @07:50AM (#62538434) Homepage Journal

        Overextension is really not the problem here at all. Our military failures have all been in other lands, and so none of them have harmed our nation directly. PTSD and spousal abuse are real but they're not destroying the republic.

        The problem we're facing is twofold, one is the usual battle of the oligarchs vs. the people, where the corporatist scum are running off with all the money and not leaving enough for the plebes to survive. The other is the battle of the people with privilege vs. the people without. The corporatists have tricked us into fighting over stupid shit through the usual triggers like racism and religion, when they're the real problem. It usually works.

        • Probably not a coincidence then, that the same people who championed social justice issues at the top of their lungs, now also rush in to defend corporatists right to operate freely in building massive engines of censorship and surveillance that they themselves control.

      • The US empire is setting itself on a death spiral, like all overextended empires. Psyops against your own people become necessary to keep everyone on board with the ensuing disaster.

        Psyops have been at play since America's founding. In fact, psyops have been a factor since sentient life evolved. You only need to watch social animals with an analytical eye - think apes, dogs, human children - to understand that we are all wired for psyops.

        The only distinction between what animals and humans do as a matter of course, and what armies and corporations do, is that the latter turn it into a discipline and do scientific research on it. It doesn't even require a collective effort. Some individ

    • Re:Once everything becomes a weapon (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Zak3056 ( 69287 ) on Monday May 16, 2022 @07:55AM (#62538450) Journal

      There is no value in living.

      It beats the everloving fuck out of the alternative.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by jd ( 1658 )

        By the time I'd reached 21, I was in two minds about that. Now, at 52, I'm still not convinced. I run very close to the line, not crossing it more by habit than anything else at this point. Social media, as much as anything, has convinced me that life is really all about how much abuse people can give before anyone else notices and beats the carp out of them. The advert, in that respect, mirrors very much how people behave towards each other - even those who purport to be opposed to abuse often dish out not

    • Re:Once everything becomes a weapon (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 16, 2022 @08:29AM (#62538562)

      I briefly worked with USA psy-ops and I must say they were the most evil sociopaths I have ever encountered in my life. I'm not even sure I am glad they are on my side.

      I know they were not good for the grunts they commanded; especially the probable sex slaves. They even bragged about how quickly they covered up such disclosures.... this was many years before all the leaks and investigations revealed that was a bigger problem. (Still not likely as big as reported; although, I would guess that problem has diminished but the history is probably far worse than people imagine.)

      Anon, because I don't need to draw their attention.

      • I know they were not good for the grunts they commanded; especially the probable sex slaves.

        What?

        • I served under a commander that was eventually found to have been abusing his position to obtain sex from from people in his command. He had been there for a few years or less and the investigators were able to find more than forty victims that were willing to testify. Who knows how many more there were that were too afraid or embarrassed to go on record as having been victimized. With those kinds of numbers you'd think it would have made national headlines or something. Nope, it was just a little blurb in

      • Re:Once everything becomes a weapon (Score:4, Interesting)

        by jd ( 1658 ) <<moc.oohay> <ta> <kapimi>> on Monday May 16, 2022 @11:44AM (#62539486) Homepage Journal

        I'd point to the reports of honeypots used in Britain by the British police against protestors and the honeypots used by the Chinese against the British government. All in recent times, and all with desperate efforts to cover it all up.

        In short, I am not convinced the problem has diminished. Quite the opposite. That the British police have gone from simply having drinks with paid informants (see John Stalker) to infiltrating groups through the use of sexual exploitation (and quite probably sex slaves as well, the police have access to plenty of desperate women in deportation cells who would do anything to avoid being deported directly into war zones in countries they're not from). Police officers on active duty are now being picked up on rape charges, where they've been using their status to terrorise the victims into silence, which shows they've absolutely no objection to the concept. The last chief constable was kicked out of office by London's mayor for ignoring the problem.

        It may well have diminished from military use (although the Chinese seem to be happy to use these methods), but nationally in the UK and USA it has simply spread into officialdom and the security apparatus at the civilian level.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by zlives ( 2009072 )

      if you believe the "advertisement"
      i mean it is slick
      i wanna play that game too
      but is it reality
      is everything a weapon.
      not in my life and not in of those that surround me. this is a perfect example of a weapon touting everything is a weapon to justify its existence.
      the massive failure of this weapon is highlighted in the references of the video it self. but that would require someone with an inkling towards history.
      people on the walls, but where are the walls of the capitol
      people on the streets, but where ar

  • "Stangle said after the annexation of Crimea in 2014, the U.S. PSYOP community, along with other NATO allies and special operations communities around the world, got to work helping Ukraine build their own abilities..."

    Walking a fine line here: bragging about their and the Ukrainians' "psyops" and "information warfare" abilities without ever quite admitting that it boils down to lying better and more shamelessly than the designated "antagonists".

    To say that Russia is "losing the information war" actually me

    • Re:"Information warfare" is really just lying (Score:4, Insightful)

      by TimothyHollins ( 4720957 ) on Monday May 16, 2022 @07:27AM (#62538382)

      "Stangle said after the annexation of Crimea in 2014, the U.S. PSYOP community, along with other NATO allies and special operations communities around the world, got to work helping Ukraine build their own abilities..."

      Walking a fine line here: bragging about their and the Ukrainians' "psyops" and "information warfare" abilities without ever quite admitting that it boils down to lying better and more shamelessly than the designated "antagonists".

      To say that Russia is "losing the information war" actually means that the Russians mostly tell the truth.

      "Mankind's dishonest; if you think it fair
      Amongst known cheats to play upon the square,
      You'll be undone.
      Nor can weak truth your reputation save:
      The knaves will all agree to call you knave.
      Wronged shall he live, insulted o'er, oppressed,
      Who dares be less a villain than the rest".

      - John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester (1647-1680), “Satire Against Reason and Mankind”.

      It means that Russia is telling less persuasive lies, not that Russia is being more truthful. They've been lying since 1995, and it requires a remarkably naive mind to think that for some reason they decided to be honest about the Ukraine invasion.
      It could also mean that Russian disinformation is being blocked with successfully while Russia is not equally able to block whatever Ukraine is projecting.
      It could also mean that people believe non-Russian sources more than Russian sources - possibly because Russia has such a long and rich established history of lying and murder.
      Also, for being so fond of quoting Orwell, I'd expect you to have a better understanding of information warfare. It does not boil down to lying, even the damn recruitment video in TFA shows you that. It's about convincing and persuading. Short term that can be achieved by lying, but as Russia is experiencing right now, that short term gain comes with a long term cost in credibility. Information warfare as the US (and most of the West) practices it is explicitly attempting to avoid lying as it damages the institution long term and makes it cumulatively harder to successfully follow up.

      • Wasn't it Winston Churchill that said "Truth in war is very precious, so precious it should always be accompanied by a healthy escort of lies." This quip apparently was repeated often by him and reportedly gave Stalin a good laugh when Churchill said it to him.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by fazig ( 2909523 )

      To say that Russia is "losing the information war" actually means that the Russians mostly tell the truth.

      That would be a non sequitur.
      And it's a dangerous one that a lot of people seem to fall victim to where they believe that they're smart enough to extract useful truth from the lies because of the crummy lower quality lies of Kremlin propaganda, eventually leading to a less critical stance towards what they're exposed to through those media channels.


      My personally favoured approach to tackling these

  • It works fabulously (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Kokuyo ( 549451 ) on Monday May 16, 2022 @06:55AM (#62538328) Journal

    The Ukrainian propaganda is so formidable, you get screamed at for pointing out that while we keep getting reports of Russian losses (which we have no way to verify), we still don't have any idea how well the Ukrainians are doing because we have no numbers as to their actual strength and how efficient they are in using them. We may be able to patch together the material they have been given by other countries, but that's about it. Now I'm not saying that this is nefarious. In the situation we perceive they are in, I would do my best too to not make this public.

    If you point this out, you get labelled pro-Russian immediately. I said in one online community in Germany that I am unable to form an actual opinion because I don't know in the slightest what is happening there and they immediately accused me of doubting the war was even happening.

    This is the covid discussion turned to eleven.

    I hereby declare us officially divided... I am just waiting for the conquering to get official.

    • Re:It works fabulously (Score:5, Insightful)

      by LatencyKills ( 1213908 ) on Monday May 16, 2022 @07:09AM (#62538348)

      But there are a number of independent sources which we can use to examine how the war is going. We have evidence (video and satellite) of the sinking of the Moskva. Actually satellite and drone footage shows us a great deal of how this war is going including movement of the front lines and large collections of destroyed Russian vehicles and hardware. Also, Russians hang up outside of Mariupol for two weeks and spend that time shelling a steel plant 24/7, we can safely assume there is someone inside they are having some difficultly killing. True, we do not know how many soldiers are really dead on either side (though there have been convoys of vehicles that have moved from Ukrainian territory to field hospitals set up just inside the Russian border, and I'm pretty sure they're not transporting stolen John Deere farm equipment.

      • Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • We know the Moskova sank. As for those large collections of Russian vehicles and hardware - have you actually counted them? None of the visuals I have seen actually show any significant number and you can be certain the picture is framed to make it appear as large as possible. This is how propaganda works. You create a narrative and provide visuals as illustration of that narrative. As for Mariupol, there are a bunch of ultra-nationalist holed up in bomb shelter designed to withstand a direct nuclear stri

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by tragedy ( 27079 )

          As for Mariupol, there are a bunch of ultra-nationalist holed up in bomb shelter designed to withstand a direct nuclear strike.

          Curious, why do you think they're ultra-nationalists?

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by tragedy ( 27079 )

            Curious, why do you think they're ultra-nationalists?

            Scratch that. Not a very well formed questions. It's obvious why people would think that they're ultra-nationalists. Maybe the question should have been: "why do you think they're _all_ ultra-nationalists".
            It's tricky because there very clearly was/is an Azov battalion that was a sort of an umbrella for far-right, ultra-nationalist and white-supremacist types, but the connections between the totality of the current members of the Azov regiment and the political activities of that original organization are a

    • Due to the "special operation", Russia's GDP will probably lose 10-15%.
      Yet, the war in Ukraine basically cut the GDP in half (or more), and large as it is, it's peanuts compared to the reconstruction effort.
      _This_ is Ukraine's war - not to free some land and some people, but to offer them a future afterwards.
      And, this war is fought for the minds, souls, votes, military hardware and wallets of the West.
      As in any war, truth is the first casualty - even though in this case there is probably no dishonesty, just

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      It's a deliberate tactic to avoid giving Russia any information that may be useful to them. If you announce that a particular engagement cost your side 500 men, that's really useful intelligence to the other side.

      If the numbers were published it would probably demoralize a lot of Ukrainian soldiers too. Remember that many of them were drafted and have little to no experience, and only basic training. It takes time to train soldiers to be prepared for losses, and to be willing to kill the enemy, and they don

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Kokuyo ( 549451 )

        Agreed, but then explain to me how the Ukrainians are master tacticians for doing what we label Russians as dictators for.

        Obviously, if this war is an unprovocated act of agression on Russia's part, the differenc eis easily explained. And While I am like 80% sure that it is, there remains those 20% of doubt because for the life of me, I do not know any media outlet I would still trust... and those other 80% all come from those media outlets.

        We are living in a world where "Ukraine is lead by Nazis oppressing

        • 1) This war started in 2014 with the violent overthrow of the elected Ukrainian President because he was "pro-russian" 2) The overthrow was lead by anti-Russian Ukrainian ultra-nationalists who recognize people who joined the Nazi SS during world war II as national heroes - with some help from western intelligence agencies 3) Urkainian ethnic Russians in areas that voted for the pro-Russian rebelled and declared separate Republics. In the Crimea they asked to be annexed to Russia 4) The ethnic Russian rebel

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by tragedy ( 27079 )

      The Ukrainian propaganda is so formidable, you get screamed at for pointing out that while we keep getting reports of Russian losses (which we have no way to verify), we still don't have any idea how well the Ukrainians are doing because we have no numbers as to their actual strength and how efficient they are in using them

      I think you're confusing propaganda with operational security. In most situations, the quantity of enemy troops and equipment you have destroyed is not something you need to keep a secret because your enemy knows already. You're not giving anything away by publicizing that sort of thing. For your own troops and equipment, you don't want to give anything away.

    • There are numbers [imgur.com].

      You can also see that the Russians are getting pushed back on a couple fronts [liveuamap.com]. We're watching to see if their stronghold in Izium is going to fall in the next few days, but they've been pushed back from Kharkiev.

  • A buddy of mine does video and content editing as a consultant. He's solid, and he got his training in US Army psy-ops.

    So yeah, it may be creepy, but it's also excellent job training.

  • It certainly explains how the Ukraine has been able to portray itself as "winning" the war with Russia while its infrastructure is being destroyed, millions of people have fled, thousands have been killed, its army is being pounded to dust, its lost the use of all of its seaports and its economy is in total shambles. But they have been brilliant at propaganda .. so they are "winning".

  • a. That taxpayer money was wasted on puerile BS like this (scary clowns, really !)

    b. That there may well be some people that are unnerved by this crap and not simply laugh about it around a beer or openly mock it at parties

    c. That we'll see it inspiring cable news segments when election season gets closer

    d. That 21 pilots will release the soundtrack as a single

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • ...b. That there may well be some people that are unnerved by this crap and not simply laugh about it around a beer or openly mock it at parties...

      The fact that you believe you're beyond or above the effects of such videos makes you even more vulnerable. I bet you're also willing to swear that you are unaffected by advertising in any significant way. Both beliefs are akin to thinking that the quality of the air you breathe has no effect on your lungs or your overall health.

      • How does one avoid getting swept up in this then if not by discussing it with a group of friends that ridicule it and expose it for the claptrap it is ?

        I'd rather do that than sit at home staring at the screen or surround myself with people that amplify the message.

        Or are you saying there's some 5d chess game going on and I'm supposed to be scared of the folks that I assume lap this stuff up ? I don't think it's that sophisticated and, oddly, Q has queered the pitch

  • We're talking about it now because of a short film. That's what they do, they get you all riled up about it. If it hits a nerve, they're successful and have been at it for decades. Never forget that Lt. Col Putin was an on-the-ground operative in East Germany, providing material support and propaganda to radicals who constantly tried to undermine and terrorize the West German gov't and its people.

    He's now risen to power over a somewhat dysfunctional oligarchy that runs Russia. Do you or I believe that the l

  • Reminds me of unrealistic expectations (Score:5, Interesting)

    by AcidFnTonic ( 791034 ) on Monday May 16, 2022 @10:21AM (#62539074) Homepage

    Reminds me of unrealistic expectations. Kind of like when you were a small kid, you probably thought more people were interested in things that they weren't. I recall trying to invite my neighbors to a backyard "carnival" I had setup with some blankets and toys in the backyard. My 3 or 4 year old self actually thought somehow I'd get all these people over to sit and watch my carnival.

    Then after growing up you realize it's kind of way off to expect that to have worked. But I was 4.

    Whats interesting is that these kinds of things still happen though, for instance my favorite that many geeks/nerds/incels seem to not understand is about popularity and how actually important it is in all walks of life.

    I see a lot of grown ups think that as long as they do what is actually right or better, that they can "win" over a popular person doing something wrong/undesirable. This is because in their lives when they are wrong/undesirable everyone tells them so and that their place is due to that. Yet in reality it's just popularity because when popular people do the same things they do NOT get the same massive backlash that you expect.

    It's because they like them, and they dont like you. Almost all other actions/rules/beliefs are around the idea of popularity.

    This is how you get things like communities rallying in support of teenage rapists when they are popular.Things like "He has such a bright future to be ruined by complaints of some girl". But if we really hate someone, the mere idea that they *could* be rapists is enough for us to all rally against them.

    Psychological warfare is basically doing this. Exploiting popularity to directly fight what people perceive as right and wrong to get a desired result. It's easy to fight by simply doubling down on the any action against something popular. I.E. Going against the grain like I always am is *exactly* how you fight these things.

    Psyops sets the grain. Going against it when you see reason is how you win.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by fatalexe ( 845503 )
      My eyes were opened to this world when I read Chomsky's "Manufacturing Consent" and Bernays "Crystalizing Public Opinion". The tactics for controlling what is popular have been a since for a long time now. Setting the narrative through repetition and trusted sources has become almost childs play these days. I'm deeply surprised there isn't more attention paid to deconstructing talking points and automated/paid social media accounts.

    • "I joined the Navy to see the world. What did I see? I saw the sea."

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by qaz123 ( 2841887 )

      Psychological warfare is basically doing this. Exploiting popularity to directly fight what people perceive as right and wrong to get a desired result.

      So this is because Ukrainians are popular and Russians are not popular? And this was like that even before the war

  • I always knew those 4th PSYOP guys were weird. Of course it was strongly suspected those Jane Fonda urinal screens came from them as well way back in The Day :-) I really wanted to keep some of them as souvenirs, but couldn't find any new, unused :-) The new reproductions just aren't the same.

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