Social and Virtual Warfare

In the modern era, one of the biggest issues we see is truth and lies being weaponize. Why, the truth is it’s much easier and cheaper to do than most people would think. However, we live in a time where we have quicker access to information, compared to previous generations, while also at the same time, manipulative and conniver have taken it to their advantage as well. The average person is blessed in a way, that they can reach out to multiple people through social media to share ideas, while at the same time it’s being used against them. The interesting thing about manipulation through media is that truth does have power, and while we might be up against people with greater infrastructure, their techniques and how they use media manipulation are few. A liar’s biggest weakness is what happens when they get caught. Most people who lie do it for manipulative reasons primarily and rely on genuine trust to do so. However once caught, the liar or the manipulator will fail to convey their message, which usually results in their distress. If someone has enough knowledge on subject matter, as well as personal communication skills, it’s easy to thwart one of these manipulators. Now more than ever we can reach out to a larger crowd, and bring truth to the people, which has always been pivotal for a people’s success.

The world we live in is an ever-changing place, especially when technology is involved. The internal combustion engine was 30 years old when the first tanks rolled onto the battle fields of World War One. The first airplane was powered by a small 4-cylinder engine a decade and half before. Whether it’s communications or transportation, the world is always changing. Whoever is the best at adapting to new times and the use of new technologies is mostly the victors. No problem in this world is completely understood, and therefore solved permanently, it’s just solved until a new problem arises. The rate at which the discovery of problems and solutions occurs is more vindictive on the overall success of a field’s evolvement. This is mostly done through scientific processes, as well as social and statical studies. However, it should also be noted that once something discovered becomes common knowledge to any adversary or some sort of competition, the new problem of how to beat old techniques will occur. Usually, it’s solved with new technology being invented, or new strategies being deployed.

The craziest part about all of this is how anyone can do it. The first step is identifying what you want to do, and what your goals are. Everyone has something they feel a calling for or something they believe they should share information about. After that test out sharing your ideas online, using multiple different platforms and methods. Some people are better at using other platforms, compared to others. While this might seem obvious, the type of content you create, and styling will dictate success as well. Your best bet is to try different post styles, ideas, and platforms, and see which on works the best. Once you have found what works best, for whatever idea you’re trying to convey, look at the scalability of your operation, mostly done by raising your follower account, but there are ways people can pay, for more views.

One of the simplest ways to convince someone is through the use of questions rather than the use of just stating facts. It’s very easy to disregard what someone says, but when they are forced to state an answer, they are forced to acknowledge the situation, even though it can be sometimes unpleasant and most of the time, is met back usually with a lie. But even if a public question and answer session doesn’t convince the person in question, it still helps convince other bystanders of the more honest standpoint. A lot of times, people who are attached to a lie will usually use emotion to overcome tough questions and continue their lies. If someone is getting overly emotional, bringing this to light is usually a great way to draw in bystanders to your cause. Sometime knowing what a person is emotional about is also a good way to know what questions to ask a person. Most manipulators will use Hegel’s dialect, to convince a person of a problem that doesn’t exist, for them to provide a solution to something that doesn’t exist, while the solution presented in Hegel’s is usually some sort of scam. Sometimes the way a person in question is acting in their defensive is more counter intuitive, than most people think.

When it comes to questioning something positive, ask them stuff about what they enjoyed, so it invokes a feeling of positivity. Most car dealers use this technique. After someone is done test driving a car, the first thing a car salesman usually ask what the person liked about the ride, or what their favorite part of the car is. This is so they can invoke happiness with the product and use emotions to attach the sale of a vehicle to a person’s enjoyment.

To invoke a negative thought about something, just bring up the negative side about stuff. Bring up questions that relate to negative aspects of something. If your crush ever has a date, and you have a small chance to talk to them. First studying their partner and learning their negative traits, after that if you get a chance, bring the learned negative traits about their partner up in question. You’ll have a much better chance, rather than trying to sell yourself to someone who already has prior commitments.

Another aspect of social engineering that people don’t realize, what being subtle and humble can do. Anyone who is overly flashy or egotistical is always called out, while people who seem homely are looked at as more honest. Not only is this viewed as more polite, much it’s more relatable on a deeper level. This is why the Streisand Effect exist, and celebrities are always getting called out, while campaigning politicians always talk about how they come from humble backgrounds, and usually film them selves in setting familiar to the people of the area they are campaign, such as coffee shops or local businesses. However, don’t take this advice too far to the point of being unkept. Always consider trying to emulate the style and manner of person that you’re trying to social engineer.

As humans, we are only capable of having so many conversations, and even with the advent of public speaking, there is always a bandwidth involved in how many people actually pay attention and listen. Even paid marketing only has so much reach and can become very costly. The best idea is to produce an idea or thought that can be shared naturally. Find a way to convey your message on in away where it gets shared naturally. This is why when it comes to memes, the most popular memes are always shared, and become popular, while others don’t. Comedy is one of the strongest tools for this. If you’re doing something more educational, production value can be just as important, if you can’t factor in comedy. Some people are better at controlling this than others. A lot of times, people will share something embarrassing against themselves, without even knowing it. These are usually the videos online that losers post, that get the most views, even though it’s for negative reasoning.

A common resort that mass manipulators use are bots, and the use of organized trolling. Usually, they are organized and attack in swarms, whether it be raiding accounts, or pushing fake information. This usually requires a lot of accounts, since it uses the use of numbers to make it look like their opinion or idea is popular when it really isn’t. This technique is very effective on a large scale since it has been studied, how people are manipulated with superficial comments and concerns. This is especially true when a large amount of these bots are able to sway opinions based on emotions, to the point of having a larger populous support someone or something benevolent. Even if they can’t sway ideas in a favor, they’ll use emotion to make who’s ever debating or producing an idea, that their motive is futile, or they are just over emotional in some sense. A good way to cover a lie sometimes, is to stop people digging into the truth to begin with. They know that the less informed people are, the easier they become to deal with. Sometime keeping people off topic, is the easiest thing someone actively manipulating can do.

Another thing trolls will do is entrapment. This is something done commonly by intel operative to try and get people to confess if they do anything illegal, but what most other people don’t know is there are other forms of entrapment that can happen online. Even if someone can’t get you to admit to doing something illegal, sometimes they’ll try to get you to embarrass your self through answering questions. Most of the time they’ll use flattery or confess to do something scandalous too, just to gain trust in talking to them. If information is not being given up easily, to be used to embarrass you, they’ll also try and attempt to tap into your emotions, in attempt to get you to try and use an over reaction to exploit a person. While these techniques were potent back in the mid 2010’s they have lost their edge, and are easily spotted, by most experienced internet users.

Someone who is more intelligent, will usually try to gain control in a community, either by taken over a forum, chatroom, or any type of web page. This usually takes time and dedication, while exploiting someone through a chat conversation takes anywhere from a few days to weeks. The process of subverting a group from the top down might take consider preparation. The cheapest way to do this is to become a mod and delete people from a chat once you have the power. Most people with money can even afford to buy URLs for web pages and take over a community.

Even the use of a honey pot is a form of manipulation that has been around for millennium, used as the oldest form of exploitation, through a so-called chat. Even though there was always something physical involved. The modern era has led to the rise of honey pots, in the form of picture online, with virtual conversation. However, most women, who have this skill, and low desire, can find ways to make money online with nothing, but a camera.

The most important thing one of the people want to control is a trend. That is why there is such a large online movement for gun control, while at the same time gun ownership is on the rise. It’s because it’s the political norm for policies to be pushed in such a way. The goal of most of these bots is to push, a trend or an idea, rather than just go after individuals like most people online fear. People who are unaware of this technique are most likely to fall for it, especially when the bots or trolls are pushing information that is new to the receptor. However, this can become easy for someone to track if they know what they are doing.

Now while spreading information is a big part of manipulating lies into existence, the same could be true for keeping the truth from coming up. If it’s not said, heard, or saw did it ever really happen? This is usually the best position for someone hiding some secret to be in, with a close second being able to discredit anyone questioning them. That is why you see people questioning certain narratives, get name called. Simply because, it stops bringing ugly secrets to life. However, people find ways to take this technique even further, by spreading rumors about question parties, to make them look bad to begin with.

When the questioning become too strong, usually the use of something known as a “straw man” is used this is where the opponent will show off something negative and small, to draw attention away from something else. A lot of people who are familiar with mass media manipulation will be quite familiar with this technique.

As well as distraction, people also use a hit and run technique where they just attack other random non important aspects about their opponent, in hopes, that some minor issue will distract from the original topic. Questioning the motive behind a previously asked unanswered question is a common way for people to directly derail a question without anyone else raising that same question again.

In some case people try to invoke authority, this could be the use of legal channels, administrative channels (like reports on social media), or just by lying about a position of authority, that a manipulator doesn’t really have. However, through entrapment, most people just do minor reports on social media, or simply threaten to make phone calls or emails to other branches of authority.

Now there is another technique that people, even in positions of authority, use to thwart simple questions, and that’s done by playing dumb. Multiple times, on TV interviews and hearings, questions will be asked that people want answers to, are normally responded with some form of “I don’t know.” Many times, they’ll mention that they never heard about it, or just simply forgot. Rarely the same question is brought up more than twice.

Another topic along with straw manning used to be relying on something as old news or being outdated. This doesn’t really work anymore but it is the least to divert attention away from something that was done in the past. If it’s recent enough, someone might mention, something done was a mistake, or rely on a goal being an old norm. “Doing the right thing” might be implied when the manipulative party gets caught in the act. This technique is heavily relied on by people who are in the process of doing something mischievous. They explain how they’re trying to do something moral, while actually doing something nefarious. Even explaining who no solution could be found at all is a way to avoid even touching existing problems.

Sometimes manipulators will say that the problem they are causing is an allusion, or vise versus. Some case a perpetrator of a problem will make the illusion of a much bigger problem, by manipulative processes. Even if they find something small, on isolated, they’ll use media to make the problem seem more relevant than it actually is. Not only does this paint a false target, but it also distracts from real, much more common problems. They’ll go so far as to push for new rules and possibly laws to deal with problems that don’t exist.

Now it is important that evidence is hidden, in these situations. Perps know that any presented evidence brings light to what you are doing. Sometimes facts are presented with stories to verify how something bad happened. It’s almost like an evidence swap in away, false for real. Sometimes online this is done in the process of just changing the subject or blocking people that are pointing out something negative. They can go so far as to create false evidence, to make their ignoble cause seem verified as righteous.

Now the most important influential thing a person can do is manipulating emotions. In the scenes they’ll state a problem, and use whatever else they need to provide, in order to get a person emotionally attached to the cause. Sometimes people will use emotional influence to have a person not even look at evidence given, against their cause. The most common emotion manipulators. Manipulators have gone so far as to use emotion to dismiss evidence, based on emotions only.

While the average person might vary in research skills. Some people are actually pretty talented at it, in regards, to privately posted stuff on the internet. Media manipulators will invoke a bigger sense of authority in a situation where they might not have any to begin with. In the process they might use this false sense of authority to try and invent new truths to help keep them safe. This can be seen done more recently in years, on social media, and in the false news. Sometimes it is not even about providing the masses with a lie, as it is to supply them with a bigger distraction. This way they never seem to notice anything nefarious happening.

There are many ways to silence critics, especially on social media, and other web pages, by simply mass reporting stuff. All they really have to do is make your platform vanish.