How often do you think you've been exposed to psy-ops?

I've never bought into a conspiracy theory in my life. Fuck the JFK nuts, the moon landing nuts, flat earthers, etc.

Over the past few years or so, as I surf reddit, the chons, and the rest of the internet, I've noticed a dramatic shift in content and presentation.

10 years ago, the internet was a lot like our little message board here - content filtered out of the ether, there were memes here and there, but, mostly, viral things didn't seem to have any semblance of a unified message.

Now, with /r/politics, /t/the_donald, /pol/ pushing such unified narratives, it has provided a platform for places like Breitbart, HuffPo, etc. to just feed message back and forth.

What really kills me is that you used to be able to go through subs on Reddit or the chans and get an idea of what Average Joe was thinking. Now it feels way too streamlined - either the various algorithms have changed things dramatically or certain folks have really invested effort into getting a message out.

I'm huge on internet anonymity. I think it is critical to have an open forum where everyone can express opinions without fear. However, governments/large organizations using that anonymity to engage in post flooding, message spam, or manufactured content has really made the larger internet a real pile of shit.

It really makes me value boards like this one, where I feel much less sunburned by the words on my screen.

tl'dr I'm butthurt about how quick the whole internet became fucking Facebook.

I go to /r/the_donald to get an idea of what Average Joe is thinking. Doesn't everyone?

but have you met BobStackFan4Life?

Top three threads on the_donald right now:

1. Meme laughing at Hollywood elite liberals
2. Link to Breitbart article about conservatives urging Mitch to resign.
3. Whatever this thread is about, I'll just copy and paste the title: "Hi, I'm Jack Dorsey, CEO of Twitter. When I'm not actively boosting BLM or virtue signalling, I can be found drinking peyote in Central America or silencing victims of Harvey Weiner on Twitter by banning their accounts after they go public."

Wakeforest22890 said:

Top three threads on the_donald right now:

1. Meme laughing at Hollywood elite liberals
2. Link to Breitbart article about conservatives urging Mitch to resign.
3. Whatever this thread is about, I'll just copy and paste the title: "Hi, I'm Jack Dorsey, CEO of Twitter. When I'm not actively boosting BLM or virtue signalling, I can be found drinking peyote in Central America or silencing victims of Harvey Weiner on Twitter by banning their accounts after they go public."

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/r/the_donald pre-election was a totally different place.

You're agreeing that things are more groomed now?

Look at the top 3 from /r/politics

22.4k

1. Trump threatens to pull FEMA from Puerto Rico (abc15.com)

2. Former Republican member of congress: 'Trump is unhinged. We are waiting to get tax bill through before impeachment' (independent.co.uk)

3. Kimmel: Trump threat to NBC is ‘what dictators do’ (thehill.com)

The two at the top are "fake news" (really starting to hate that term) in that the first is a headline that is sensationalized into the ground, and the second is from a guy who did the same thing 3 months ago that was made up. The third is Jimmy Kimmel.

What the 3 threads you quoted and the 3 threads that I quoted have in common is that they are 100% designed to cultivate a narrative. We have no real idea of (1) who actually posted the article, (2) what their motivation for posting the article was, or (3) what the motivations of the person who generated the content are. ETA: (4) how/why the links were pushed to the top

All 6 are totally worthless, and the comments sections for all six threads are (probably? I'm not going to check) equally ridiculous.

Here's the problem with that - millions of actual Americans (like Numbers and I) digest mountains of this content on a day-to-day basis. I would be a fool if I told myself that it didn't impact my worldview.

I'll propose another example - the Ukrainian Invasion. That was in 2014, and I think it was before Russia had firmly established a rapid-response internet presence. Early in that conflict, twitter and other direct-from-Ukraine sources were giving great boots-on-the-ground information that gave content viewers the ability to form an opinion of what was actually happening.

Now, it's almost impossible to know what is happening there at any given time, because Russia is so good at content flooding and message spam.

I can't read Russian, but I have to assume that the American internet-ops counterpart is doing the same thing in Russia - but fuck if I actually know that.

People just need to do a better job of reading objectively. Of course this doesn't happen because, as you point out, people can use these offered narratives to entrench their view.

I think what you are seeing isn't always an active measure to put that information out, maybe things in the comments or the pushing of crazy ass articles that are someone's blog or clearly Russian shit. I think what you are seeing is "news" organization which were dying find the ultimate revenue stream. They put out what the people want to make money off something they know will get clicked and read. Trump is fucking awful, people like hearing how awful, no matter how sensationalized.

Also like to add that the Donald subreddit was not better before the election, it was a pretty big cesspool just not as bad as it is now.

It was horrible before the election. It was Facebook's issue on steroids. Any meme or story remotely about Hillary was included as further evidence of conspiracy and Hillary literally being Satan.

The whole Pizzagate thing doesn't happen without the_donald. It's just right-wing propaganda.

Wakeforest22890 said:

It was horrible before the election. It was Facebook's issue on steroids. Any meme or story remotely about Hillary was included as further evidence of conspiracy and Hillary literally being Satan.

The whole Pizzagate thing doesn't happen without the_donald. It's just right-wing propaganda.

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Before the election? We have people complaining about Hillary on this board now.

Wakeforest22890 said:

People just need to do a better job of reading objectively. Of course this doesn't happen because, as you point out, people can use these offered narratives to entrench their view.

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This is literally impossible with the level of curated content that I'm seeing.

How would it help an individual understand the world to digest the 6 articles we linked above? Let's assume that a reader actually clicked the links and tried to digest the content "objectively" (nevermind that the 6 links we linked aren't going to provide value because they are narrative pieces and not actual news).

1. The Kermit Meme here: https://www.reddit.com/r/The_Donald/comments/75wcis/watching_hollywood_elite_actors/
Text" "Watching Hollywood Elite Actors Pretending They Didn't Know About Harvey Weinstein's Conduct"
"Is Some of the Best Acting I've Seen Come out of that town in Ages, but that's none of my business."

It's a great meme for meme's sake, it checks all the boxes: uses a picture that flags content to the user to digest more easily, feeds into stereotypes of the Hollywood elite, and uses familiar "best acting" language. This post will appear on just about every meaningful site on the internet in the next week if it hasn't already.

The thing is - it's utter fucking trash - it provides no information or otherwise digestable content. It's a political opinion piece that's pushed by a 9 month old reddit account with almost 2 million karma.

2. I can't find the article, because it has fallen off the front page. Which is really just more evidence of how narrative pushing is fucking destroying meaningful content - that Kermit Meme will stay at the top for two days because it's fucking candy.

3. The post is made by user "JohnSmithShitPost" so we know we've got some quality coming. Again, 11 month old reddit account, but only 52k karma. The account posts almost solely on The_Donald. User has Australian flag flair. Content is straight up just a picture of Jack Dorsey.

Nothing of value above.

Nearly the same analysis applies to the /r/politics threads.

1. The headline is an actual lie. The article is slightly less lie-filled. Apparently, Trump made a twitter statement that mainland aid can't be in Puerto Rico forever.

2. As in my post above.

3. A famous person known for pushing a narrative said something that pushes the narrative. A writer for the Hill that is paid to generate ludicrous amounts of content that pushes the narrative. http://thehill.com/author/mallory-shelbourne 3-5 articles a day.

Those 6 posts are enough to scare me, but head into the comments section and "reading objectively" seriously looks like paid-posters/government actors are deliberately trying to pit everyday Americans against one another by taking the most extreme view possible, and attributing it to either the left or the right so that the other side can "other" the other side.

I don't really believe in conspiracy theories at all.

Then you find out things like operations Northwoods was 100% real, so shit maybe it's not all crazy.

I mean nobody is going to the Donald for new factual knowledge. Like pick a random sports message board, say the Dallas stars. You going to visit there today, no. Same concept with the Donald unless you are already apart of that shitty world.

Louis Gossett Jr said:

I mean nobody is going to the Donald for new factual knowledge. Like pick a random sports message board, say the Dallas stars. You going to visit there today, no. Same concept with the Donald unless you are already apart of that shitty world.

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uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

WFcatamount22 said:

I don't really believe in conspiracy theories at all.

Then you find out things like operations Northwoods was 100% real, so shit maybe it's not all crazy.

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I dunno, there are lots of wackado war plans in the filing cabinet, I'm sure.

Louis Gossett Jr said:

I mean nobody is going to the Donald for new factual knowledge. Like pick a random sports message board, say the Dallas stars. You going to visit there today, no. Same concept with the Donald unless you are already apart of that shitty world.

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ImTheCaptain said:

uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

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This is the problem that you're missing - just like you dumb liberals go to /r/politics for "new factual knowledge," you dumb conservatives go to /r/the_donald for "new factual knowledge."

Which in and of itself demonstrates that (A) my OP point is entirely valid, and (B) you've missed it. I'm saying this: the *vast* majority of people who use the English-speaking internet on a day-to-day basis are being fed curated content. And it isn't just to sell a new washing machine.

Facebook is the 3rd most popular site on the internet. Reddit is the 8th most popular site on the internet (1, 4 and 7 are search engines). Twitter is the 13th.

You have to go down to 104th, BBC.co.uk, to get to a news site - so content aggregation is where it's at. It doesn't matter if you're cnn.com or foxnews.com - you're pushing your wares on Facebook and Reddit. When that content is curated, it impacts 2.01 billion hits a month on Facebook, and the like on Reddit and Twitter.

I think the answer is easy: don't go to politics or the_donald expecting to get objective information.

Wakeforest22890 said:

I think the answer is easy: don't go to politics or the_donald expecting to get objective information.

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I'm stating with statistical backup that (conservatively) millions (probably billions) of people do this on a day to day basis.

Yeah and millions of Americans voted for Donald. I feel you, but people are dumb. That's the answer.

Grabs Turds Bare said:

This is the problem that you're missing - just like you dumb liberals go to /r/politics for "new factual knowledge," you dumb conservatives go to /r/the_donald for "new factual knowledge."

Which in and of itself demonstrates that (A) my OP point is entirely valid, and (B) you've missed it. I'm saying this: the *vast* majority of people who use the English-speaking internet on a day-to-day basis are being fed curated content. And it isn't just to sell a new washing machine.

Facebook is the 3rd most popular site on the internet. Reddit is the 8th most popular site on the internet (1, 4 and 7 are search engines). Twitter is the 13th.

You have to go down to 104th, BBC.co.uk, to get to a news site - so content aggregation is where it's at. It doesn't matter if you're cnn.com or foxnews.com - you're pushing your wares on Facebook and Reddit. When that content is curated, it impacts 2.01 billion hits a month on Facebook, and the like on Reddit and Twitter.

Click to expand...

i mean, content is curated on BBC, CNN, FoxNews, ESPN and literally every other media source. there's no such thing as an un-curated information source. sources by their very definition are curated for audience