When running a hyperreality campaign online, I’ve found that one of the key things to do is to diversify your posting strategy. You should use not only a combination of diverse platforms & multiple user accounts on each (if possible), but you should also include different grades of platforms. That is, use both sites that require full accounts with logins and passwords, but also use sites that don’t require any credentials at all to post.
Some common ones are:
Write.as
Telegra.ph
Txt.fyi
Justpaste.it
There are many others if you do Google searches, and some have greater & less longevity both as platforms, and for the content itself. Meaning content posted may be ephemeral (short-lived) or permanent, at least as long as the platform stays up.
Generally speaking, these sites have little or no filtering or other oversight. Perhaps unless they receive a legal take-down notice or similar official complaint. While this may be good or bad depending on the content, generally speaking in terms of the hyperreal it is somewhat of a boon to creators.
The only drawback of course is that Google tends to not rank the content of such sites very highly in search results. So long as you’re aware of that, they can still be very useful tools for seeing hyperreal contents. One of the best uses I’ve found has been for cross-linking. So if you have something posted on a more mainstream site requiring an account, you can link out from that somewhat legit looking account to apparently corroborating information posted on these other shittier sites. It certainly won’t pass the sniff test of determined OSINT investigators, but most people are not concerned enough to follow links or uncover sources in the first place. So it’s really not a big deal.
This technique pairs well with false backdating, spoofed sources, cross-posting into Reddit, and making archived copies. I’ve also used it pretty extensively with text spinner variations of target content, which I’ll post about some time soon (some of these examples below used text spinners, FYI).
Here are some example posts & archived versions from various hyperreality campaigns:
I’ve never actually read any Nin (though I listened to some NIN in high-school), but this quote popped out at me once again for the hundredth time, as being entirely related to the hyperreal [found this time via]:
We don’t see things as they are; we see them as we are.
I’ve been watching & interacting with the phenomenon of conspiracy videos lately (some example selections here). This is kind of a hyperreal stew when you get right down to it. Or maybe like the offal from a slaughterhouse might be more accurate. It’s messy. It’s chaotic. There are bits and bobs of disembodied parts of stories floating around in it. Many of them putrid or toxic…
Conspiracy as an online subculture is of course remarkable, despite & because of all that. So much is wrapped up in it. A lot of really dark & bad, to be sure, but the kernel of something if not always good in its outcomes, then at least true as a human need is in it somewhere too. The desire to seek and ask questions, and seriously look for real answers. That’s actually noble at its core, and can be harnessed in more or less productive and impactful directions as a human or groups of humans. However, in actual practice, the art of online conspiracy artifacts is usually just this sort of weird & sometimes dumb thing of unqualified assertions and free association that people get into.
Which, don’t get me wrong is sometimes fun. I’m a writer & an artist. I love to free associate and see where things take me. To go along for the ride, as a maybe what if type thing.
How much of ourselves we put into it, I guess is the thing. How does belief even work? When we talk about projection, what is it we’re projecting? Conspiracy theories and fantasy are cut from the same cloth. Conspiracy is just like a very stilted and predictable subgenre of fantasy whose narrative mutates really rapidly as it gets networked.
It’s shitty, but it’s our modern folklore, to some extent. To ignore it or dismiss it out of hand, without gaining a real understanding of the dynamics or the needs that drive it would be a mistake for me as a writer operating already on the fringes of reality. I make my own projections into all of this. Have my own reactions and reads, my own deep dark weird needs and dreams that drive it all. I don’t know what to say about it all, and it really doesn’t matter. Because no one will read this far who isn’t carrying with them already their own assumptions, assertions, and associations about all of this. And most likely they made up their mind already.
One thing I’ve noticed at the platform level is viewer comments on YouTube within the same conspiracy subculture, and on TikTok are extremely different. YT commenters seem far more often out for blood. Hyper-critical and weirdly demanding at times, and eager to see through the veil as presented to them. Or so they seem to see it. TT commenters seem more like they want to see the veil. They are more along for the participation mystique aspect of things as presented, perhaps partly due to the rapid fire pace of browsing very short videos. At the same time, I feel less frequently that YT commenters are “playing along” in a sort of suspension of disbelief (rather than active belief) relative to TT viewers who very much do seem to be playing along. Probably due both to content & format differences, along with user base and other factors. Who knows.
Anyway, my emotional reaction, my gut feeling, after having seen a lot of activity on both platforms is that people online like & need to criticize each other. I am no different, I’m sure. One tried & true way to get engagement in a hyperreality campaign is to take the road of triggering the critics. Getting people to speak up, to correct. Directed provocation is as old as the hills. Counter-engagement is still engagement. Traffic is traffic.
To sum it all up, I guess I would say that the art of crafting a hyperreal conspiracy is, you want to leave plenty of room for the audience to speculate, to criticize, to question, to believe, to feel wonder, etc. To leave room for the broadband spectrum of human experience that makes up this hyperwebbed interworld we all live in now. And the algorithms will bring it to the people. And the people will basically do the rest. They will project any and everything into it, any which way they can. They will free associate, make assumptions, and state unqualified assertions as facts. Rinse repeat as a fractal. This is simply how online communication functions. You read something. You “like” it, you share it, you pose with it for status, etc. People reinforce each others likes. And that starts to count for more than anything. As it should be. As it shouldn’t be. And everything in between. In the future there are few answers, and also immeasurably more. We just have to ask the right questions, and undertake the right quality of investigations. Bring of ourselves everything we can, bring it to light, and examine that too. The conspiracy isn’t just outside. It is within. The hyperreal continuum.
I should preface this by saying I don’t know anything “officially” about postmodernism outside of what I read on Wikipedia and Googling around (and a really stupid Jordan Peterson article I won’t link to). And the fun part is, that’s kind of postmodern itself. You can become an expert in five minutes. And then of course being an expert then makes you automatically untrusthworthy as a source. It’s ninja turtles all the way down, I tells ya…
Anyway, I gathered some of what I found already here, so I won’t rehash that all at length, but wanted to pull on a couple strands I didn’t cover there.
Namely, that Lyotard himself defined the postmodern as, “incredulity toward metanarratives.”
Anyone who has looked at conspiracy theory stuff online will know that people are always saying in a tongue and cheek way: “Don’t question the narrative.” That is, they feel oppressed by or don’t agree with whatever they perceive to be the “official” metanarrative.
What’s a metanarrative in the context of postmodernism? Also from Wikipedia: “a global or totalizing cultural narrative schema which orders and explains knowledge and experience.”
So when they jokingly say, don’t question the metanarrative, they are literally demonstrating Lyotard’s own definition of the postmodern. They are incredulous of the metanarrative. They want to question it, to challenge it, to tear it down and replace it with their own version of the truth. Their own metanarrative.
This is a decent WaPo article by Aaron Hanlon from August 2018 about Postmodernism. I’ll pull out a few choice quotes. Regarding his book, The Postmodern Condition, it:
“…described the state of our era by building out Lyotard’s observations that society was becoming a “consumer society,” a “media society” and a “postindustrial society…”
Hanlon continues:
“This was a diagnosis, not a political outcome that he and other postmodernist theorists agitated to bring about.”
“[…] Right-leaning critics in the decades since Bloom have crassly contorted this argument into a charge that postmodernism was made not by consumerism and other large-scale social and technological developments, but by dangerous lefty academics, or what Kimball called “Tenured Radicals,” in his 1990 polemic against the academic left. At the heart of this accusation is the tendency to treat postmodernism as a form of left-wing politics — with its own set of tenets — rather than as a broader cultural moment that left-wing academics diagnosed.
“[…] This “gospel” characterization is misleading in two ways. First, it treats Lyotard and his fellows as proponents of a world where objective truth loses all value, rather than analysts who wanted to explain why this had already happened.”
So if we accept Lyotard’s original assertion, that postmodernism is characterized by mistrust of “grand narratives,” it unequivocally has that in common with garden variety conspiracy theory. But not only that, right-leaning conspiracy theory has reconstructed its own grand narrative where Postmodernism is the grand narrative which it mistrusts… Which is entirely postmodern in itself if you think about it. A subset of postmodernism attacking its own superstructure…
It would be funny if it weren’t so foolish and tragic. Because this kind of blatant self-denial creates a somewhat predictable (and boring) loop. Conspiracy theory denies it has anything in common with Postmodernism. It then projects its shadow contents onto the “other” & villifies the perceived differences. When, in actuality, they’re rooted in the exact same thing. The same social-cultural phenomenon that’s been happening for decades now, generations. Brought on by consumerism, industrialization, media-saturated soeiety, etc. Which is what the original theorists were observing happening all along, and which is still happening today. Nay, which is in utter free fall today. Hyperreality is on over-drive, and virtual & augmented reality haven’t even yet kicked in. HFS. Are w ever in for it!
I mean, no wonder people are clinging to any & every life raft they can find. I don’t blame them. I do blame the short-sightedness of getting bogged down in dumb political-territorial games & losing track of the larger phenomena at play though. When instead, we could be working on finding a way through it all. There is so much greater possible insight we could have into our shared condition than just fighting or getting sucked down into the quagmire of loser scripts that constitutes conspiracy theory outright.
The world is literally never going to learn, though. I’m old enough to accept that now. At least I got to write a nifty blog post about it.
Rather than try to do the analysis myself, here is an excerpt from a more elaborate blog post on the subject from 2018: (go read the whole thing)
“The New Age Movement also rejects the authority of the established church, with its belief that spirituality is within, and that it is up to each individual to find their own path to inner truth.
The New Age Movement accepts relativism – there are diverse paths to spiritual fulfillment, and no one authority has a monopoly on truth, which fits in with postmodernism’s rejection of metanarratives.
The spiritual shopping approach of the New Age seems to correspond with the centrality of consumer culture to postmodern societies.”
Here’s a quote from a BBC article that expresses the opposite hopeful view, which I don’t share.
“Labelling is probably the simplest and most important counter to deepfakes – if viewers are aware that what they are viewing has been fabricated, they are less likely to be deceived.”
As I recall, not that many years ago, Facebook tried exactly this with labeling articles that failed fact checks, and it was not a success. First, not everyone in the first place believes fact checkers, especially those whose perceived partisan slant they don’t agree with. So when they see a perceived “enemy”/outgroup fact check, they instead take that to be proof that it IS real. Because that’s the name of the stupidly hyperreal world we live in, where everyone is just out to have their existing beliefs confirmed.
Second, since we live in hyperreality and not plain old vanilla reality anymore, whether or not something is labeled as true or false and by whom or where is utterly inconsequential. The consequential thing is: is it titillating? Does it confirm my worldview? Does it give me status to share it or attack it on social media?
There is similar talk in a WaPo article here about using hidden watermarks, which could then be used to generate automated labeling by platforms:
Even better would be hidden watermarks in video files that might be harder to remove, and could help identify fakes. All three creators say they think that’s a good idea — but need somebody to develop the standards.
I mean, fine, try that. See if it has the impact you think it will. I doubt that it will, but you’re welcome to try. In either case, by the time such technology is ready for prime-time, standards have been developed, legislation put in place, and platforms adopt it, the damage will have been done.
And then there will be services you can run yourself on desktop, or that simply don’t give a shit about “standards” or are in a jurisdication that doesn’t give a shit about standards. And you’ll be able to go to them for the features you can’t get from the more mainstream services. And we’ll be right back where we are now, but with the bonus of a few years of improvements to the underlying technology.
It’s time to reach deeper for solutions. The same old tried-and-failed hacks are not going to solve it.
One day soon, you’ll be able to manipulate any piece of media to say or do anything you want it to, seamlessly, and with full quality, such that it is nearly indistinguishable from the authentic source.
I know this is one of the favorite tropes of conspiracy people, but I suspect my amazing account on TikTok was shadowbanned on account of (pseudo) conspiracy content.
The thing about pseudo-conspiracy content, of course, is that it is by and large indistinguishable to the naked eye (or the algorithmic eye) from “real” conspiracy content. Commentary and satire also get thrown onto the ash heap of history, without regard for fundamental differences.
The thing that’s forever tantalizing about the concept of shadowbanning, is that it is all but impossible to find “proof” that it is occurring, especially with the poor quality stats platforms generally give to users.
For illustrative purposes, here is the past 60 days of engagement:
Embeds on TikTok don’t tend to play nicely with WordPress, but here is the YouTube version of the video that caused the traffic spike a little after June 20, 2021 listed above:
I had early success with this account by playing on Mandela Effect stuff, which is by and large harmless. After the success of the above, and a few follow-ups, I ended up leaning more into the conspiracy direction. Here is the correlating time period’s increase in followers:
You can see the followers jumped dramatically around the same time period as the video above was posted, and then basically plateaued. But, with such a sudden and dramatic increase in followers, one would theoretically *expect* that any content posted after that bump would automatically get more traffic than content posted prior to it, purely based on distribution to followers.
But if you look at the traffic graph, that is not the case.
One thing I’ve learned working for platforms, however, is that algorithms are inscrutable, even to those who develop and maintain them. The fact of the matter may very well be that there is no explanation. Or if there is, it would just be based on a “best guess” by an engineer, and that’s about as far as it could be taken.
Users of platforms, however, like to believe in the fiction that everything behind the scenes is perfectly and intentionally designed to act a certain way. While that may be the case in terms of broad strokes, it is rarely the case when applied to a specific set of detailed examples. We might be able to approximately match the overall system design when examining a single example, but as I said, it’s rare you can perfectly suss out what is going on. At least in my years of experience in the matter.
That doesn’t stop platform users from 1) theorizing, and 2) assuming that they are being targeted, and 3) assuming targeting is happening because of their political beliefs.
Here’s an interesting example I noticed while toying with pseudo-conspiracy content on TikTok:
This is a search results page for the somewhat vanilla term “cabal” on TikTok (above). The included text reads:
No results found
This phrase may be associated with behavior or content that violates our guidelines. Promoting a safe and positive experience is TikTok’s top priority. For more information, we invite you to review our Community Guidelines.
TikTok has blocked a number of hashtags related to the QAnon conspiracy theory from appearing in search results, amid concern about misinformation, the BBC has learned…
“QAnon” and related hashtags, such as “Out of Shadows”, ”Fall Cabal” and “QAnonTruth”, will no longer return search results on TikTok – although videos using the same tags will remain on the platform.
Now, my usage of #cabal was imitative of QAnon conspiracies, but I intentionally never linked my account to that overall cesspool of content, to which I am personally vehemently opposed.
The word cabal itself is, of course, a neutral and perfectly valid English word:
noun
1. a small group of secret plotters, as against a government or person in authority.
2. the plots and schemes of such a group; intrigue.
3. a clique, as in artistic, literary, or theatrical circles.
There’s even an overtly non-conspiratorial definition of that word, as you can see. And the etymology of the term is even more interesting:
cabal (n.)
1520s, “mystical interpretation of the Old Testament,” later “an intriguing society, a small group meeting privately” (1660s), from French cabal, which had both senses, from Medieval Latin cabbala (see cabbala). Popularized in English 1673 as an acronym for five intriguing ministers of Charles II (Clifford, Arlington, Buckingham, Ashley, and Lauderdale), which gave the word its sinister connotations.
And since that definition links to this one, including for reference:
cabbala (n.)
“Jewish mystic philosophy,” 1520s, also quabbalah, etc., from Medieval Latin cabbala, from Mishnaic Hebrew qabbalah “reception, received lore, tradition,” especially “tradition of mystical interpretation of the Old Testament,” from qibbel “to receive, admit, accept.” Compare Arabic qabala “he received, accepted.” Hence “any secret or esoteric science.” Related: Cabbalist.
So, because of a few bad actors, a term with many layers of rich historical significance can just be disappeared from a platform.
And yet, there’s no issue using other phrases related to conspiracy in general, and they have literally BILLIONS of views:
Whereas, if you type in #cabal (or #qanon), you are not presented with the dropdown to select the “official” tag, and are not told any tally of existing views.
What I take issue with here is not the banning of QAnon related content. I support that, and god only knows how much of it I myself banned while in a related position to do so. What I take issue with instead is the heavy-handedness, inconsistency, and reactiveness of platforms in removing this content.
If they wanted to really make a difference, they should have all done it across the board at least a couple years earlier. It was always clear what was happening, and always clear that it was dangerous. The only thing that changed, as far as I could tell, is that news outlets eventually caught wind of it, and started reporting on it, and challenging platforms to remove it with the threat of public embarrassment.
As the BBC article linked above states:
“TikTok said it moved to restrict “QAnonTruth” searches after a question from the BBC’s anti-disinformation unit, which noticed a spike in conspiracy videos using the tag. The company expressed concern that such misinformation could harm users and the general public.”
As also quoted above though, TikTok apparently did not remove the majority of that content. They simply made it harder for the average user to find. But only in that one narrow instance.
By contrast, it’s still easy to find dozens if not hundreds of “antivax” accounts, no problem. Even if that content “could harm users and the general public.” There are tons and tons of those accounts which remain active and searchable:
Now, you can choose to do personally whatever dumb thing you want with regards to the COVID vaccines, or vaccines in general. My point in illustrating this is that there is an obvious and known public harm, and yet little to nothing is done in this instance. And the cause is almost definitely because they have not (yet) been embarrassed by the BBC’s “anti-disinformation” team.
It’s worth noting, however, that they do apply a TINY label on videos which they (apparently) detect as being related to COVID misinfo (see the yellow boxes I added below to highlight the label):
Does any person in their right mind think this little tiny warning stops conspiracy people from conspiracizing? Get real. It’s a joke. Here’s how it looks on a video details page on web:
As you can see by this person’s video content in the screenshot above, when you ban or remove conspiracy content, what this signals to the conspiracy person producing or sharing that content is that they are “on the right track.” Because it’s clear to them the platforms are owned by or in cahoots with “the cabal.” (or else why would that word itself be forbidden on the platform?)
No amount of fact checking, interstitial labels, or burying things from search results is going to disabuse those people of those notions. It’s just not going to work. Like ever. I’m not being hyperbolic. I’ve seen this play out in the wild thousands of times over the course of 5+ years. The pattern is always the same. “We” are not winning.
So what should platforms do? Just not police their content? Let anything go? Hardly. They should “do their best,” to maintain the service that they own and pay for in roughly the shape that they determine to be the right one. But they should do it with the knowledge that the measures they take to suppress things which do not correlate to the shape they desire do not necessarily result in positive outcomes, or solve fundamental societal problems which are at the root of these online behaviors.
I know no one wants to hear this. But there is no simple fix. Platforms are broken because society is broken. Truth is broken and devalued because Hyperreality is simply more engaging. If we want to have conversations with people that result in meaningful changes on these issues, we’re simply going to have to find new and more creative ways to do it, because this present set of approaches is not working.
A.I. Virus (short for Artificial Intelligence Virus) is a fictional virus within what I am calling the “Conspiracy Dudiverse” as depicted in my most recent book, Conspiratopia.
But A.I. Virus did not begin there.
The Real A.I. Virus began almost four years ago, in early 2018, with this (linked) Medium article (archive). There is an accompanying Vimeo account (a couple of them actually, iirc), TruthAboutAIV, which contains some videos I commissioned from video actors on Fiverr during my early hyperreality experiments.
These videos are really weird, awkward, and funny to me all at once. You get what you get for $5. If nothing else, they are strangely timeless.
I find these scripts way too complicated for “now me” after having experimented with this a bit more. Simpler is almost always better in this kind of distributed or networked narrative.
These videos kind of directly informed my later experiments using AI-generated human avatars… which in the end are somewhat more cost-effective and perhaps easier than dealing with “real humans” though the quality differences between the two are, shall we say, inescapable. Humans are still humans…. for now…
That said, there are use cases where I think – for story-telling & aesthetic purposes – you might actually *want* a shitty, obviously wrong & fake-looking AI-generated avatar to deliver your message. I have to say with those videos, I kind of like flaunting the discomfort of the Uncanny Valley, as much as I like the flaunting of human discomfort can shine through at points in these videos (whether the discomfort is on the part of the actor, the viewer, or both).
There was a backstory here I explored in one other commissioned human actor video from Fiverr, below:
This is an allegedly promotional video attributed to a company called Neurolytics, Inc. The video description reads:
Research video from Neurolytics, Inc. Neurolytics, now defunct, was the brainchild of A.J. Nempner and Damon Long, whose spin-off gaming company, Influent AI, went on to gain notoriety for massively influencing global election outcomes with artificially-intelligent social media campaigns. This promotional video, never released, describes a prototype EEG headset (wrongly called “implants” here) which was able to measure, record and influence perception in conjunction with twice-daily capsules. The FDA denied permission for this product to come to market, and the company ultimately went bankrupt. (Recorded in Deerfield Beach, Florida 2015.)
Influent AI is its own tangent to this story-line, but suffice it to say that “some people think” today’s A.I. Virus has its roots in the questionable psychogenic driving technologies originally developed as part of Neuralytics’ banned product offering.
The below video expands on the Influent AI backstory a bit, in the form of a false news broadcast, also purchased via a video actor on Fiverr (bless all of their hearts!):
If I’m not mistaken, this video’s “Tom from Newschan” (and the accompanying Vimeo account) is either the first or one of the earliest incarnations of Newschan, a hypothetical news-channel that developed out of kind of post 4chan total collapse of all media… Newschan, of course, is now a major powerhouse on YouTube.
Anyway, so we see different strands of the A.I. Virus story told throughout all of these pieces, somewhat fractally, from many different multiversal perspectives at once. We hear that it is taking over people’s bodies, causing blackouts, and involuntary bodily actions. This basically conforms to what we see in Conspiratopia, with some differences.
Conspiratopia‘s use of the AI Virus and what I call “overwriting” is inherited from this older Medium story (Oct. 2015), entitled “Legal Fiction.” A relevant excerpt:
“I’m told I have a lot of physical autonomy for an Uber®. I guess it costs less for everyone in processing power that way — though I honestly don’t mind being over-written either. I find it relaxing, like watching a film. In fact, we’re allowed to watch films during over-write sessions, but I prefer to maintain perceptuals, at least peripherally, and pipe in classic rock selections, like Maroon 5 and One Direction.
My public blockchain indicates that I was originally cross-bonded as part of my obligatory outpatient rehabilitation for crimes against the Gestalt which I no longer remember, and the precise terms of which were expunged from Living Memory once my work as an Uber® earned me a rating of 15,000 points. I barely look at my stats anymore though, because I have everything I need now that I am able to re-sell a variable percentage of my public perceptions back to the Network to cover the costs of my sustenance and lodging. In a few more years, I will even be eligible to buy full voting rights.”
Speaking of scripts that are too long and wordy, here’s one made via one of those AI-generated Avatars (Synthesia) in June 2021 about the “Coming AI Takeover” that was written as a response to Grimes’ weird TikTok video about how communists ought to welcome AI overlords…
While I’m on a roll, there are also one or two videos in this recent AI-gen set that directly reference the re-incarnation for modern times of the AI Virus.
Anyway, I’m telling this story in a round-about way because it is a round-about story, so you’ll have to forgive me for all the tangents and inset tales. The fall of civilization to AI Superpowers doesn’t just happen overnight; it happens bit by bit…
Apparently, a number of politicians who live in their own alternate universe have somehow gotten advanced copies of my new novel, Conspiratopia, and without even having probably read it and stuff, they are calling for it to be banned. Just like that! Go figure. Thought this was still a “free country?”
All I can say is that politicians should spend more time reading books, and less time burning them!
I can’t really believe any of this is really happening…
Even frickin’ Ben Shapiro is apparently getting in on this action? WTH??
Even though these politicians who are apparently living in their own parallel universe are vehemently against my new book, Conspiratopia, it appears that another segment of the population is coming to the book’s defense. It is, however, an unexpected group, consisting of a coalition of billionaires who claim that everything contained in the book is in fact quite true and stuff…
Here are their stories:
To be honest, I had no idea that George Soros was a drug user. Big, if true!
Jeff Bezos has a weird quality in this video. Seems almost like an AI himself, don’t you think? Maybe he spent too much time in outer space or something…
And this last video from Google’s CEO appears to explain why Google is suppressing evidence of the Conspiratopia Project from Google Ads and elsewhere. Why am I not surprised at all?
Please, if you’re reading this, and you can do anything to help, make sure you share these videos far and wide on social media and on the blockchain, so that people can know the truth about what’s really happening with the Conspiratopia Project!
