The US Military's Latest Psyop? Advertising on Tinder (techcrunch.com) 54
An anonymous reader shares a report: The U.S. military is using ads to warn people across Lebanon not to attack the United States or its allies amid rising tensions across the Middle East. Some of those ads have turned up in an unlikely place: the dating app Tinder. Freelance reporter Seamus Malekafzali posted on X screenshots of the ads seen in the Tinder app, warning residents of Lebanon to "not take up arms."
The ads, written in Arabic, say that the U.S. will "protect its partners in the face of threats from the Iranian regime and its proxies," which operate across the region, referring to groups like Hezbollah located in Lebanon. The ads, which are not clandestine in nature, display the logo of U.S. Central Command and link to a tweet featuring F-16 and A10 fighter jets. These kinds of military psychological operations (or psyops), aimed at influencing the views of a target audience or population, are not new, even if their placement on a dating app is raising eyebrows in the military community, the Washington Post reported Tuesday.
The ads, written in Arabic, say that the U.S. will "protect its partners in the face of threats from the Iranian regime and its proxies," which operate across the region, referring to groups like Hezbollah located in Lebanon. The ads, which are not clandestine in nature, display the logo of U.S. Central Command and link to a tweet featuring F-16 and A10 fighter jets. These kinds of military psychological operations (or psyops), aimed at influencing the views of a target audience or population, are not new, even if their placement on a dating app is raising eyebrows in the military community, the Washington Post reported Tuesday.
Grindr? (Score:2)
Re: Grindr? (Score:3)
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Re: Grindr? (Score:4, Funny)
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Love bombing (Score:2)
Bomb. Captain Bomb. (Score:2)
So no one there on Tinder can be da bomb?
Are..are you suggesting somebody set us up the bomb?
I fear if you do that, you have no chance to survive. Best make your time.
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If you're going to meme, at least get it right - it's, "Somebody set up us the bomb."
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In Soviet Russia, us the bomb somebody set up you!
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Sending the wrong message (Score:2, Informative)
Rather than intimidating people, it seems to make the US seem like the bigger threat to the world. I wouldn't be surprised if this would have the opposite effect.
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The US comes across as a narcissist. "No one is allowed to assert themselves without our permission. Now get back to making cheap stuff for us."
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If asserting yourself involves bombing maritime trade through international waters then we will put you down and then sleep soundly.
Re: Sending the wrong message (Score:3)
They don't really make much of anything for us.
https://tradingeconomics.com/u... [tradingeconomics.com]
Compare them to Russia:
https://tradingeconomics.com/u... [tradingeconomics.com]
* Russians MIA in Ukraine night make up for the bulk of that top line item, so "cheap stuff" could be accurate here.
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Indeed. My first thought as well.
Re: Sending the wrong message (Score:2)
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They really appeal to people who picture themselves being too morally strong to fall for them but their opponents being inferior and thus likely to know their place.
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The U.S. will "protect its partners in the face of threats from the Iranian regime and its proxies,"
Its a warning, and an entirely reasonable one.
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If you quote a tiny portion of it and ignore the imagery and the placement of it, it doesn't seem so bad. Why ignore that?
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Its a warning, and an entirely reasonable one
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Bear in mind, if they actually attack the US military, we don't need psy-ops to solve that problem. The US military can handle that, because standard rules of engageme
'Psyop'? (Score:2)
That's conspiracist language. Only the other guys use propaganda, we have The Truth, Peace, Freedom, *and* Democracy on our side.
s/conspiracist/perjorative and provocative (Score:2)
SO . . . this is propaganda complaining about propaganda. Used this way, military recruiting activities could readily be characterized as 'propaganda'. Just sayin', is all.
FTFY
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On my next visit, another woman nearly ran me over in the parking lot as I was exiting my vehicle, as she threaded the needle going between parking spaces to one on the far side of the parking lot of the grocery store (as opposed to actually using the lanes and fol
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Israel govt's justification for land-theft and aggression have more twists than an orgy between spaghetti and snakes. And they have 10x the lobbying funds that Palestinians have.
"A10 fighter jets"? (Score:2)
The A-10 is not a fighter.
It's a ground attack and support plane.
Wow. Good catch. (Score:2)
Totally offtopic - I was a soldier once. (Score:2)
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"Support plane" sounds like a non-combat aircraft, and they probably think "attacker" and "fighter" are synonymous. The line between the two roles isn't always clear, many planes can serve as both, although the A10 definitely leans more towards ground attack roles.
Same stuff, new tech (Score:3)
People who are pissed at you (Score:1)
...do the opposite. If you say "Don't do X", your enemies will double down on X.
They got the $$$$ (Score:5, Informative)
Not many are aware that the Pentagon "PR" budget is $6B, larger than the budget of all of Hollywood.
23 years laters (Score:2)
23 years the US Army discovers all it really took to defeat the Taliban was to start catphishing them!
"Psyops". Love that perjorative description. (Score:2)
Well, I WAS being a bit sardonic. (Score:2)
Now, your response has left me confused. Not sure what you're on about there . . . pretty sure it has nothing to do with what I said. And - no, I don't want our Army to stop trying to get civilians off the battlefield by any means necessary.
Seriously - could you explain yourself more fully, please? I honestly can't tell how what you've posted relates to what I've posted in any way (other than we are both discussing something that involves the Middle East).
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The US has no business outside its borders (Score:2, Insightful)
what lunacy to think that it can support a genociding regime and not pay a price?
what lunacy to think they can dictate to those opposing such evil with threats of violence?
if this was China you can imagine the news headlines.
I couldn't have said it better - the U.S. has gotten 'Too big for its britches' and nobody in the rest of the world benefits from collaborating with this lunacy than despots, dictators and thieves on the take.
It never used to be that way, but the last 20 years has been a huge escalatio
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More like the last 60 years, although it's definitely been a downward slide over that timeframe.
Finnish temps (Score:2)
Appear to have risen 1C in the last 150 years. Recently by 0.0474ÂC per year.
Does anyone really think this is enough to kill pine forests? Of course it isn't, they have survived much larger fluctuations over the centuries.
Ads (Score:2)
Do the ads read something like "Do not fuck with us, or we'll pound you, long and hard. We'll bring our friends along to join the action. We'll end up on top in the end."