okay i just had a bad epiphany but corporate interest’s influence on the internet is going to become so much stronger now that generations that are internet naturalized have grown up and starting working as “social media consultants”. advertising is going to become so much more subtle, manipulate your behavior to a greater extent, and completely pervade every aspect of our lives the more we rely on the internet for everything from entertainment to social validation.
what im saying is its scary that corporate twitter accounts are getting good at twitter. to have the same avenue a human would to express themself. its like, an extreme anthromorphism of a brand, and that brand representing a corporate interest, and successfully passing itself off as a sentient entity on twitter, thats really weird to me.
like this is so fucked up. it doesnt immediately read as an advertisement, conceptually it executes the levels of irony and deconstruction that usually make for successful memes in this genre or whatever. its almost subverting itself, but ultimately it still succeeds as an advertisement. it makes me sick. for every misfire of corporations trying to relate (pepsi protest commercial), theres another company getting better at it
okay but like my thing about this is… who is actually eating at these places because shit like this? yeah it’s funny but i never go to wendy’s because a meme, if i go to wendy’s it’s because i want a gross burger and a frosty, same with taco bell and mcdonald’s and wherever the fuck.
i really think that you’re blowing this out of proportion and having very little faith in people’s ability to decide what they want for themselves. it’s just not that deep.
It’s not about the effectiveness of the ads in question, but their complete omnipresence in every aspect and moment of life, and how bizarre and sophisticated the mechanations of advertising have become. If people don’t call attention to these things, they become normal.
The effectiveness of marketing isnt one-to-one, like, “ad says burger is good, I think burger is good, I eat burger.” That was 50 years ago. Y’all, since then these multi-million dollar corporations have been hiring psychologists and sociologists and anthropologists to study how best to get under consumer skin and theyve figured out it’s not about making you WANT a burger,
It’s about creating a Brand Identity – an anthropomorphized personality that your brain fits into an established schema (system of thought) so it’s easier to just drop into the background of your everyday life. It’s not about making you want a burger, it’s about making it so, when you DO want a burger, the first place you think of is Wendy’s, because their ads have made you think about them five time already that day. And most importantly, it’s about making sure you dont realize how often they make you think about them, so you don’t resent how pervasive they’ve become. They do that by tricking your brain into thinking of them as just another human-like personality. Your Funny Meme Friend Wendy’s. Wine Aunt World Market. Woke Jock Nike. Even your Endearingly Unhip Uncle Geico.
(hey also if you want dozens of terrifying examples of what I mean, just type ‘brand identity schema’ into Google like I just did and take a gander at all those scholarly articles discussing how best to acquire consumers, like we’re a fucking commodity)
one time i said i didn’t like the wendys twitter and got called classist for hating retail employees
this shit works. it makes people like Brands. gets under their skin and in to their minds. when i said i didnt like the wendys twitter i personally offended people that viewed wendys as a friend, that viewed the wendys social media manager as a friendly individual that they respected.
the wendys social media manager is not your friend. they don’t even really exist. there’s no one person that writes the tweets for wendys. there’s a team of 20 something year olds that casually observe the latest meme trends and crank out mspaint memes because they know they’ll get retweeted if the memes are relevant.
they trick you in to thinking that Wendys is a hip friendly young person, and they manipulate you in to thinking that disliking marketing is somehow a “problematic” “un-woke” thing to do.
and it works.
install ublock origin. on mobile, block every promoted tweet you see. don’t let them convince you that this shit is normal.
This is one of those things that I already knew was true, but seeing it so blatantly displayed makes me feel like like I am finding out about it for the first time.
CIA is getting lazy
O.o
It is really creepy how they all have the same freaking script
What the fuck
this isn’t random or the cia this is the sinclair broadcasting group which pushes right-wing news stories after buying local news stations across the united states. Scripts for stories like the one in this video are sent to their local news stations and it is mandatory for them to be broadcast.
I personally know journalists and local broadcasters who have quit their jobs or retired after being bought out by sinclair because they know they’ll be forced to do this shit
This does a pretty good job explaining why news outlets are like that. Really worth the watch!
So, I did it – went through and searched my blog for the posts I’d unknowingly reblogged from any of the Russian troll accounts on the list Tumbler’s sending round. I think the results are interesting for anyone else who’s gotten the same email and may be wondering:
I came up with around 15 reblogs in total. Most of them fell broadly under the umbrella of “legit things posted to build the account’s credibility”: actual news stories with credible sources, or screenshots of twitter conversations (which might be either discussing facts or opinions) or of TV shows. Most actually had a positive tone (probably because of the correct assumption that people are less likely to fact-check “awesome historical figure of colour!”-type posts than “awful thing happened yesterday here!” posts), and covered topics like Black history, modern Black leaders, Muslim positivity, and body positivity. One was a post explaining the procedure for writing in Bernie Sanders in the 2016 election, which I and most of the other people in the chain reblogged expressly to explain what a bad idea it was.
Even some of the positive posts, though, take on a bit of a sinister edge when you know where they’re coming from. “Neglected historical figures” posts, like any “why is no one talking about X” posts, can bolster the sense that news sources outside your online bubble are ignoring or obscuring the truth about the world. A gifset (like one I reblogged) of Jon Stewart giving a blistering takedown on The Late Show, with a caption about how much the poster misses Stewart and how much we need someone like him, but there’s no one on The Daily Show now who’s his equal, uses a genuinely great moment of political satire to denigrate the amazing work currently being done in satire, and chip away at the credibility of voices like Trevor Noah’s and all the other comedians and commentators who are calling politicians to account now.
I want to talk about this post in particular, because I think it’s really telling. It shows just how insidious propaganda can be:
The Fact Check: Like many others, the post presents facts that are broadly correct – India TV and several other sources did say that Tom Holland “wants to play an Indian Spiderman”. However, if you read the coverage, the same articles also quote Holland saying that an Indian actor should take the role of Spiderman if an Indian version of the film is made. It seems more likely that it was a language issue or other mistake than a deliberate attempt to misrepresent the actor.
The Hook: The post creates a sense of urgency by suggesting that misinformation is already being circulated, and that this misinformation is hurting innocent people. I certainly hit reblog because I didn’t want a misleading story to make people think badly of Tom Holland. If you buy that the lie is already out there, then, given how fast information circulates, there’s a sense of time pressure around sharing the “truth” that (ironically) helps real misinformation spread.
The Framing: The whole post is (again, kind of ironically) framed as a fact check, contrasting the headline with dialogue from the actual interview. But the fact check is deliberately incomplete. It demonstrates that what Holland said was different from the headline, but skirts the question of what the original article really claimed he said.
The Spin: And this is the really insidious bit. Why bother painting an Indian news outlet like it’s trying to smear a random actor when it’s not? Look at the caption: I am fed up with the media nowadays
That’s the point – that seed of doubt about the media. Not entertainment media, all media. Don’t trust mainstream journalism. Don’t trust the sources of information that have access, resources, and influence.
Sound familiar? The lying mainstream media? Fake news?
So if you’re wondering how infiltration works and what it tries to accomplish – well, here you go.
^^^THAT
Learn to recognize the pattern. Inciting strife or outrage should be suspicious. Anything that is not constructive. “Fed up” – and then what?
Healthy movements want to BUILD: take care of people, comfort, feed, develop.
I’ve been trying to learn about that stuff, and then warn friends, for the last couple of years. The pattern has been very similar in 2013 and up with Russian meddling in Ukraine. Some of the same people are involved. I freaked out so much when I started to see that sick slag happening in the US.
Currently, they are meddling in the gun issue to incite strife.
All of this. Kudos to DC for actually taking the time to do this. It shows how easy it is for any one of us to assist in spreading misinformation online.
(Also, an interesting little book published like almost 100 years ago that details how a lot of this bullshit works is Bernays’ Propaganda. I read it after the election and was surprised/unsurprised at how relevant it was today).
i'll apple your turnover 