Ok, first of all, for most people that is a generic, plural "you." Some people, however, are being targeted specifically.

The Oldest Tools of Control

Along with violence, manipulation has been a major tool used to get and keep control - from the micro - such as family issues - to the macro - the control of nation(s)! The threat of violence, disaster, exposing unacceptable behavior, and so on is often enough to force compliance but what do you do when you want to manipulate a lot of people and there isn't a common behavior that they've engaged in that would embarrass or get them in trouble if it was made public?

Simple! You prey on their emotions! Triggering the amygdala, a primitive part of the brain that responds to threats (real or not) based on your emotional reactions, is not only fairly easy, it also sets up a condition in people that makes it hard to "deprogram" them, even if the implanted information is false. This is why it's not easy to overcome a phobia. Studies have shown that triggering an emotional response, whether it be about a political figure (good or bad), fear of vaccinations causing autism, or a strong desire to buy or do something, makes it almost impossible to dissuade the affected person(s) using logic - believe me, I've tried! That person has been hooked and reeled in, and the only way to cut the line is to get on their side emotionally so that they'll be open to listening using a gradual acceptance of the truth. And it isn't even necessarily going to be easy!

Who Is "You"?

Some people are being targeted in specific (e.g. there are those who argue that Trump is targeted by Fox, InfoWars and Breitbart), but most people are being targeted because they are in a particular group, which could be anything, really: from a minority group, to consumers, the elderly, those suffering from a specific illness, the poor, those who feel disenfranchised, and even the rich.

Who Are the Puppeteers?

They range from political manipulators to influencers who get you to vote for who and what laws they want you to support (or not),as well as undermining the integrity and unity of a community, area, company, state or even nation by polarizing us and making us hate each other. For example:

• Reagan had made himself famous as an actor before becoming politically active, and his fame made it easy to present himself as the face of the Republican party. At the start of his first term, he took credit for getting the hostages out of Iran, but that was actually the success of outgoing president Jimmy Carter. Taking credit made people love him more. He was also opposed to renewable energy sources, so he and his administration had the solar panels Carter had installed for the White House removed, and had a then-famous hybrid car removed from the market. A manipulative marketing campaign was used to help.
• During the presidency of G.H.W. Bush, the Gulf War was supported by the near-constant broadcasting of the 1984 song "God Bless the USA," sung by Lee Greenwood. I heard it so often at the office I worked at that it just about drove me crazy. Sure, I wanted Iraq out of Kuwait, and our soldiers home, but I also knew that the US wasn't there because they cared about those people - it was all about oil, politics and money.
• President G.W. Bush's administration did this after 9/11, filling us with fear and paranoia, as well as blind patriotism that led to attacks on people perceived to be Muslims in the US - including Sikhs and Hindus - and stoking the anger we felt. I was living overseas 1.5 months after that and I often had to tell people I was Canadian just to avoid a negative reaction about Bush and his empire-building.
• Presidential candidate Obama did this by playing on our hopes of a better future (while Clinton and many others tried to use fear, such as xenophobia and Islamophobia to undermine and discredit him).
• In 2015, presidential candidate Trump played with both our hopes and our fears, and used any reports on him as a launching point for further attention, while both combating attacks by his many opponents and making other candidates look bad (not that other politicians don't do the same thing!).
• Behind the scenes, Clinton and the president of the DNC worked secretly to prevent Bernie Sanders from getting the Democratic nod, and the Russians worked hard to influence the 2016 elections, too. Clinton was also under the media's thumb because of her private email, the debacle in the Middle East with the US embassy in Libya, and other things, although some of the most important news about her criminal connections around the world was buried.

There are a LOT of examples in politics, but manipulation isn't limited to that area.

In this article, I am not going to just focus on the manipulations by advertisers and marketers, political or otherwise, although these are major issues, too. I'm talking about those who seek to either unify for a negative purpose, or those who seek to divide us to the point that we attack each other.

During war, enemy armies will use radio and TV to spread transmissions that cause fear and doubt in the civilians and military - even leaflets have been dropped from planes to do that! The truth is that both foreign and domestic bad actors (which is to say people, companies, organizations and governments with ill intentions) have been manipulating us for many, many years via all the media available but now the majority of it happens online. These bad actors pump false information out to manipulate us, and they succeed by playing with our emotions. Foreign powers engaging in destabilizing the US through information campaigns that trigger us emotionally include China, Iran, North Korea and Russia. To be fair, America has done the same thing through various methods for far longer than I've been alive (53 years at the time of this article), and the US has done far worse than just informational attacks.

Breitbart, InfoWars, the Star, National Enquirer, SputnikNews, RT and even Rush Limbaugh are manipulators and, quite frankly, many mainstream news media outlets on the left and right are, too, but they are not necessarily as bad, depending on the issues. Even advocacy groups and non-profits working to fix certain problems engage in manipulation. I used to support several environmental advocacy groups but, because of manipulative bias and the exclusive promotion of CO2 over all other greenhouse gases, I had to stop. Recently, I saw that both the BLM organization and Color of Change were doing this by presenting false information about police shootings, such as using specific, divisive statements that implied things that were not true, such as that the person who was shot was a innocent victim, or that the police involved were racists and/or had engaged in police brutality, or they were making blanket statements that are divisive and specific, such as "Black Lives Matter" when what's needed is " Black Lives Matter, Too," (which would've allowed many more people to be supportive and stopped the "All Lives Matter" response). Some examples of the specific claims included: racism even when the shooting was by a black police officer, and claiming brutality even when it was totally justified, such as in the case of Hakim Littleton.

Misinformation and lies like that can and do lead to protests that turn violent: Louisville, Kenosha, Minneapolis, Portland, Washington DC, etc. Bizarrely, Kyle Rittenhouse was declared a white supremacist because he loved the emergency services, yet Kyle was partially Latino and shot 3 white men who were attacking him. These false statements were made by many groups and news media outlets, and even politicians, such as WI Gov. Evers and Lt. Gov. Barnes, and helped to trigger the riots.

Here are the names of several other fake news sites (see image below, left circle).

The left circle shows the fake news sites' influence on social media, and the right shows social media's influence on mainstream media, resulting in false news leaked by fake sites being treated as legitimate news. From Smarter Every Day #232

What Do They Want?

If you study history, you'll see a wide range of motivations, but it often boils down to one of these: money, power, economic dominance, compliance or control, revenge, unification or division, diversion of attention, polarization, change of opinion, civil unrest and even war (including a military coup or civil war). I cannot tell you for certain why Russia interfered in the 2016 Presidential elections in the US other than to get a certain person elected, but I can tell you why China interfered in the elections in Taiwan - because it wanted to bring Taiwan fully under Beijing's control.

Internal (domestic) bad actors are generally going to try to keep groups divided because they stand to gain somehow. If a particular issue has been mostly resolved and there are persons who were financially and politically benefiting from the division, for example, they will try to stir things up so that they don't lose that money and leverage. Some of them want money and power. Others want to be rich, such as fake religious leaders. This can even be true in instances where the need for a particular type of advocacy has waned due to improvements for those affected, but certain advocates don't want to move on, lose their power, and fame, or lose that source of income because that's what really drove their involvement or became the reason they continued.

Foreign bad actors (including those who are living in the country) are working to destabilize a country, region or market for reasons such as economic dominance, to destabilize a rival nation, to influence elections to get someone under their influence (or friendly to them) into office, to gain control in that area, and so on.

Another reason that manipulation occurs is to distract you from something really important that has been revealed to the public. This can be done through entertainment, the shocking death of a person, focusing on other issues while sidelining the critical one, creating a new issue that grabs the attention of the public even if it's trivial, and other tactics.

This is happening ALL OF THE TIME. Social media, along with disinformation websites, is a major way this occurs. Bad websites that get a high ranking on search engines help to reinforce a false meme and spread lies. The fake accounts created on social media (which can number in the millions PER DAY), help channel falsehoods from hate websites and fake news websites, and work to manipulate algorithms that determine what is shown to people. Once there is enough human engagement through likes and shares, the false news gains enough momentum to trick the media, actors and even influential leaders to believe it.

The sad fact of the matter is that, with the advancement of technology, we will be less and less able to trust that what we see online is real. If you don't see it in person, then faked articles, photos and even video and audio clips can be made to make us believe all sorts of things. With the advent of artificial intelligences (AI), high-fidelity audio and video productions that are indiscernable from real-life and even hired actors, we are more and more at the mercy of the bad actors. Think about it - computers, tablets and phones have cameras that can record audio and video, which can be used by hackers, corporations and governments to secretly record you. They can then use that data to create digital representations of you that look and talk like you and, eventually, will be so advanced that you won't know the difference. Every time you talk to Google, Siri, Alexa, Cortana, etc., you're giving them tons of audio data that not only allows them to improve the speech-to-text algorithm, but gives them a massive database all about the way you speak. All those photos and videos you share provide the same. In the wrong hands, terrible things could be started.

Now, just to show that I have a sense of humor, however muted it is on my blog:
A group of conspiracy theorists goes on a cruise. Then their theories come true. | Conspiracy Cruise

Things to Consider

Destin's a really smart, sincere engineer and almost all his videos are worth watching, as opposed to some of the other "sciency" channels on YouTube, such as Backyard Scientist and The King of Random, which seem to pump out a bunch of crap just to keep their viewers' attention, interspersed with good stuff. I prefer quality over quantity, so I even follow channels that rarely publish anything because what they DO make is usually worthwhile, such as CGP Grey. Another really good science- and engineering-oriented channel is Mark Rober. But I digress. Below are links to Destin's research on the topic of social media manipulation.

Why Your Newsfeed Sucks - Smarter Every Day 212

Manipulating the YouTube Algorithm - (Part 1/3) Smarter Every Day 213

Who is Manipulating Facebook? - Smarter Every Day 215

30,000 FB employees working to fight manipulation. >1,000,000 fake accounts deleted per day

The Twitter Bot Battle (Who is Attacking Twitter?) - Smarter Every Day 214

8-10 accounts (possible bots) were challenged per week at the time of this video, and 3/4 were automatically removed

Disinformation on Reddit & How We Beat It Together - Smarter Every Day 232

Do your own research - there's a lot out there about how the Internet is being abused to manipulate us all.

Thoughts? Comments? Please share - but be constructive, not rude!

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