Good Ol' Bamboozlement

[Al Qədic]

Thinking about it, the "Fake Facts" videos by Jacksfilms could be a neat thing to try out for ourselves. A social media jake to befuddle the digital masses. I'm sure someone has thought to do/has done this before, but when has a lack of originality stopped anyone? 

https://youtu.be/FcQeeutP8yo
https://youtu.be/iN8iA-rue2k
https://youtu.be/I1CuQTEJijM

[Doktor Howl]

Thinking about it, the "Fake Facts" videos by Jacksfilms could be a neat thing to try out for ourselves. A social media jake to befuddle the digital masses. I'm sure someone has thought to do/has done this before, but when has a lack of originality stopped anyone? 

https://youtu.be/FcQeeutP8yo
https://youtu.be/iN8iA-rue2k
https://youtu.be/I1CuQTEJijM

Professor Cramulus and his felonious partner Cainad mastered this. 

Myself, I just blend in at the office, and propagate error just as fast as I can.

[Cramulus]

LET ME SPRINKLE YOU WITH FAIRY DUST

The title of this story is "All Discordians join the Illuminatti"




I called it the Adam Weishaupt Society.

We made this big alternate reality game around creating and propagating fake news stories. We had a secret website and a secret forum.

We taught ourselves to talk in the authority-voice, the man-on-the-scene voice.

We learned what kinds of stories would make people tweak out and rage, or beat their friends over the head, going "See?? I told yoU!!"

We even had a scoring system -- when you found a forum or blog that mentioned your story, you earned points. When non-players commented, it earned points. The bigger the reaction, the bigger the score.

We were organized into cells - all the players were spread out over 4 teams. Each team had an photoshop-wizard, a text-wrangler, and a web monkey. We used code names, and had cool avatars. It felt like this secret operation 

The game was divided into 2-week rounds, and every team was trying to get the biggest score during that time. Of course, the misinformation game didn't stop at the public, it was also not-unheard-of to fake screenshots and stage outrage as a launching platform for an even louder screech.


Honestly, it was super fun, while it lasted.



Before the wave, it felt like we were actually doing this public service. Like, maybe this would teach some people to read more critically. Kinda like the Discordian vibe - that we are a religion that's so absurd it couldn't be a religion, it begs to be rejected -- but to reject us, you need rigor. You need a system for sorting out "true" from "false", and that lens is very difficult to hold up against Religion and Spirituality. You cannot toss out Discordians without tossing out some of the authentic, so it feels like our absurdity is also a service to the greater lunatic fringe... and back in the late 2000s, our little fake news games felt the same way--like we are trying to break the machine in a way that would (in some small way) ultimately contribute to our health.

Then Facebook happened. 2014, 2015, 2016 happened. Fake news changed. We all became more tightly plugged into the infosphere, and it started to make us all a little stupid. It became impossible for me to see it as this fun game, this playful joke that the knowing are playing on the ignorant. Now it's about hacking the human biocomputer, positioning fnords for dopamine hits, affecting political outcomes through misinformation and disenfranchisement. It's a part of warfare. And it's making us fucking stupid.

I quit the fake news game. I quit trolling, too. Now I play Sincerity (or fake it  ).


It's hard for me to process disinformation as humor these days. What's the point, when there are flat earthers? Creating more flat earthers is not a victory condition, the whole thing is a disease and if you cultivate it, you're doing harm.


Goddess save us all from Adam Weishaupt.

[LMNO]

I feel like there's a lesson there.  Perhaps it's something like, "Just as there are no absolutes, ever, there can not exist a piece of single way to jolt any given user out of their headspace."

Just like the idea of My Discordia.  I may have had my Damascus moment while reading the Sermon on Ethics and Love; another may have found it in Starbuck's Pebbles.  A group can't easily create a piece of (dis)information so universal that everyone is affected by it in the same way.

Mass Production of enlightenment, historically, has been an abject failure.


Maybe it's time for Artisanal Fuckery?  Hand-crafted, slow-roasted, individually tailored marvels fit for one individual at a time.

As some on this board would say, "I consider myself an artist."

[Con-troll]

I had just forgotten my paranomia!

[Cramulus]

Relevant Article: https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2018/11/28/the-digital-maginot-line/?fbclid=IwAR06Lc12k2L355mU0yO0_Wvcy5E_t9mdLmacgWQzeNdUKSRHw8QD8RC32HM

"World War III is a guerrilla information war with no division between military and civilian participation."

[Doktor Howl]

I feel like there's a lesson there.  Perhaps it's something like, "Just as there are no absolutes, ever, there can not exist a piece of single way to jolt any given user out of their headspace."

Just like the idea of My Discordia.  I may have had my Damascus moment while reading the Sermon on Ethics and Love; another may have found it in Starbuck's Pebbles.  A group can't easily create a piece of (dis)information so universal that everyone is affected by it in the same way.

Mass Production of enlightenment, historically, has been an abject failure.


Maybe it's time for Artisanal Fuckery?  Hand-crafted, slow-roasted, individually tailored marvels fit for one individual at a time.

As some on this board would say, "I consider myself an artist."

The world is an adventure.

Most people don't want to go.

[Doktor Howl]

It's hard for me to process disinformation as humor these days. What's the point, when there are flat earthers? Creating more flat earthers is not a victory condition, the whole thing is a disease and if you cultivate it, you're doing harm.

Thing is, you have humanity's best interests at heart, and you have consistently done things (at least since 2006) with that in mind. 

That's not really my Discoridia.  And if I can't arrange a great big goddamn meteor, I can get people to believe that the Earth is carrot-shaped and that the Cram/Cainad syndicate is why trickle down doesn't work.