astroturfing






Dancing Mania and other social contagions

Definition: "Behavioral contagion"
Spontaneous, unsolicited and uncritical imitation of another's behaviour.

Behavioral contagion is a form of social contagion involving the spread of behavior through a group. It refers to the propensity for a person to copy a certain behavior of others who are either in the vicinity, or whom they have been exposed to. The term was originally used by Gustave Le Bon.

Dancing Mania. Medieval social phenomena.

Dancing mania (also known as dancing plague) was a social phenomenon that … involved groups of people dancing erratically, sometimes thousands at a time … until they collapsed from exhaustion and injuries.

The outbreaks of dancing mania varied, and several characteristics of it have been recorded. Generally occurring in times of hardship, up to tens of thousands of people would appear to dance for hours, days, weeks, and even months.

Women have often been portrayed in modern literature as the usual participants in dancing mania, although contemporary sources suggest otherwise.  Whether the dancing was spontaneous, or an organized event, is also debated. What is certain, however, is that dancers seemed to be in a state of unconsciousness and unable to control themselves.

In his research into social phenomena, author Robert Bartholomew notes that contemporary sources record that participants often did not reside where the dancing took place. Such people would travel from place to place, and others would join them along the way. With them they brought customs and behaviour that were strange to the local people.  Bartholomew describes how dancers wore "strange, colorful attire" and "held wooden sticks".

Robert Marks, in his study of hypnotism, notes that some decorated their hair with garlands.[7]: 201  However, not all outbreaks involved foreigners, and not all were particularly calm. Bartholomew notes that some "paraded around naked" and made "obscene gestures". Some even had sexual intercourse. Others acted like animals, and jumped, hopped and leaped about.

They hardly stopped, and some danced until they broke their ribs and subsequently died. Throughout, dancers screamed, laughed, or cried, and some sang. Bartholomew also notes that observers of dancing mania were sometimes treated violently if they refused to join in. Participants demonstrated odd reactions to the color red; in A History of Madness in Sixteenth-Century Germany, Midelfort notes they "could not perceive the color red at all", and Bartholomew reports "it was said that dancers could not stand... the color red, often becoming violent on seeing [it]".

Imagine the spread of dysfunctional social contagions now that social media has burst onto the scene..





How Publicists Manipulate Journalists to Control Wikipedia

Book extract from "Trust Me I'm Lying", written by Ryan Holiday:

"I remember sitting on the couch at Tucker Max's house one January a few years ago when something occurred to me about his then on-and-off-again bestseller. "Hey Tucker, did you notice your book made the New York Times list in 2006, 2007, and 2008?" (Meaning the book had appeared on the list at least once in all three years, not continuously.) So I typed it up, sourced it, and added it to Wikipedia, delineating each year.* Not long after I posted it, a journalist cribbed my "research" and did us the big favor of having poor reading comprehension. He wrote: "Tucker Max's book has spent over 3 years on the New York Times Bestseller List." Then we took this and doubled up our citation on Wikipedia to use this new, more generous interpretation."

Publicists and lobby groups organize their manipulation of Wikipedia very carefully, using it to pump information up the chain, helped along by lazy, willing and/or corrupt journalists.

Book extract from "Trust Me I'm Lying", written by Ryan Holiday:

Wikipedia acts as a certifier of basic information for many people, including reporters. Even a subtle influence over the way that Wikipedia frames an issue—whether criminal charges, a controversial campaign, a lawsuit, or even a critical reception—can have a major impact on the way bloggers write about it. It is the difference between "So-and-so released their second album in 2011" and "So-and-so's first album was followed by the multiplatinum and critically lauded hit ..." You change the descriptors on Wikipedia and reporters and readers change their descriptors down the road. A complete overhaul of one high-profile starlet's Wikipedia page was once followed less than a week later by a six-page spread in a big tabloid that so obviously used our positive and flattering language from Wikipedia that I was almost scared it would be its own scandal. It's why you have to control your page. Or you risk putting yourself in the awkward position a friend found himself in when profiled by a reporter at a national newspaper, who asked: "So, according to Wikipedia you're a failed screenwriter. Is that true?"
"On occasion I have instructed a client to say something in an interview, knowing that once it is covered we can insert it into Wikipedia, and it will become part of the standard media narrative about them. We seek out interviews in order to advance certain "facts," and then we make them doubly real by citing them on Wikipedia."

These extracts are from publicist Ryan Holiday’s book titled ‘Trust Me I’m Lying‘.








Teen Vogue’s Predatory Propaganda

Teen Vogue works hard to brainwash young girls. The owner, Advance Publications, is one of the largest media companies in the world.

They are systematically training young girls to trust propaganda more than they trust their own instincts.

Teen Vogue tweet: "We must accept nothing less than abolition of all law enforcement." 

"The Revolution Will Not Be Co-Opted. They are trying to kill this movement. We cannot let them."

Why would the Teen Vogue propaganda outlet try to convince teenage girls to support abolishing all law enforcement?

How will teenage girls survive in a world where no laws are enforced?

Total and complete lawlessness.. who benefits from such propaganda?

Predators and Criminals.


Canadian Journalist Quits CBC After Admitting the Network Pumps Out Far Left Propaganda and Ignores Real Issues

"Ex-CBC journalist Tara Henley declares on Substack that she quit her job due to the public broadcaster's shifting politics", by Charlie Smith.

A Toronto journalist with deep roots in Vancouver has written an incendiary post explaining why she resigned from the public broadcaster.

Tara Henley opened her piece on the Substack platform by revealing that she's been hearing complaints about the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, where she worked for several years.

"People want to know why, for example, non-binary Filipinos concerned about a lack of LGBT terms in Tagalog is an editorial priority for the CBC, when local issues of broad concern go unreported," she wrote. "Or why our pop culture radio show’s coverage of the Dave Chappelle Netflix special failed to include any of the legions of fans, or comics, that did not find it offensive. Or why, exactly, taxpayers should be funding articles that scold Canadians for using words such as 'brainstorm' and “lame.' "

The answer, according to her, is that working at CBC now "is to accept the idea that race is the most significant thing about a person, and that some races are more relevant to the public conversation than others".

"It is, in my newsroom, to fill out racial profile forms for every guest you book; to actively book more people of some races and less of others," she added.

Henley suggested that the focus on racial issues is resulting in less scrutiny of other issues that affect large numbers of people, such as the housing crisis, lockdowns, vaccine mandates, accumulation of wealth by billionaires and power by bureaucrats, and the rising total of overdose deaths.

She linked the CBC's current approach to "a radical political agenda that originated on Ivy League campuses in the United States and spread through American social media platforms that monetize outrage and stoke societal division".

"It used to be that I was the one furthest to the left in any newsroom, occasionally causing strain in story meetings with my views on issues like the housing crisis," Henley wrote. "I am now easily the most conservative, frequently sparking tension by questioning identity politics. This happened in the span of about 18 months. My own politics did not change."

She says: “In a short period of time, the CBC went from being a trusted source of news to churning out clickbait that reads like a parody of the student press.”

She says working at the CBC is to “abandon journalistic integrity” and to “sign on, enthusiastically, to a radical political agenda”.

You can read her full post here: https://tarahenley.substack.com/p/speaking-freely