manipulate – Observations and Misunderstandings

Another day another pervert ousted in politics. Pervert may be a little strong but you shouldn’t try and seduce sixteen year olds when you’re twenty-two let alone when you’re forty-two. Maybe it is because they’re in the public eye so much and that they work in such a sneaky corrupt industry but politicians seem to get caught out in so many sex scandals. I must also commend Boris, or should I say Dominic Cummings, and Rupert Murdoch for such a perfectly executed political assassination. The night before Derek Mackay, the Scottish finance minister, is about to release the budget proposed by the Scottish Government, one already delayed because of shenanigans between the Scottish Parliament and Westminster, the Scottish Sun release their exclusive about him contacting a schoolboy who he thought was “cute” over a six month period. They’ve done him, they’ve taken him out. No matter what moral beliefs you hold on this it is undeniably a work of art. They have sat on this story and waited for the most opportune moment to release it. A future leader of the SNP apparently. Not anymore.

If anything though it does highlight the lack of neutrality in the press and the influence of people like Rupert Murdoch within our political system. This piece though is not going to be about one of my favourite topics; that of a perennially corrupt media. It is more just about being an acknowledgement of what they’ve done and despite the fact I dislike these people immensely it is important to be able to tip your hat to them when you can see how well they’ve played something. Saying that I also don’t have much time for any forty-two year old who harasses school children so morally this one is all over the place.

Politicians are a remarkable people though and it shows the lure of power that despite the obvious dangers to a free and happy life so many get involved in that murky world. These next five years are going to be incredibly interesting for the objective observers, and a mix of great and terrifying for everyone else. For every person who is horrified that Boris is ripping up a centuries old rulebook of tradition there will be another delighted about it. Change needs to happen and with current events in Britain, as well as around the world, this is clearer now more than ever. People are angry and when emotive responses like that are your main driver you are also easy to manipulate. The fear then is that while everything needs a good shake-up, when it’s this mob doing the shaking we perhaps should be a little concerned. And not only that, but while we can tip our hats to their work, never forget that this and worse is exactly what they’re capable of.

It is very hard in this day and age to know what is true and what isn’t. The internet is arguably the fount of all knowledge, and when we’re not looking at pictures of cats and stalking ex-partners we are quite simply blessed with the opportunity to discover – or to google which is a disturbing example of the evolution of language – the answer to any question we may want to ask. The problem here is that it seems very easy to get a variety of answers to one question. On the one hand that is great, difference of opinion will further debate and understanding within and of society. On the other though you have powerful financial interests manipulating which arguments are most easily accessible, the only inevitability is that debate becomes inaccurate and corrupted. There are few long term positives of such things unless you are the one doing the corrupting.

While this is all seemingly quite obvious, what appears to be the outcome are articles using public opinion to validate the argument, angle or narrative they are attempting to push. For example if you want to push a news story about public perception of an issue, it is very simple to go on the idiots validator – Twitter – select a few tweets – cringe – and post them within your article as proof of your argument. While it may seem obvious that people will dismiss the arguments of morons or people who are clearly not experts in the field – a corruptible concept too – people for one psychological reason or another seem unconsciously more likely to agree with the article if they believe it to be the majority opinion.

I saw an article recently describing how the left have disowned George Orwell because it had come out that he gave the names of suspected communists to the British government in 1949. The article was backed up by a few angry tweets criticising and disavowing him from people who clearly missed the point and didn’t understand the background to why he may have done that. This was in The Independent too which is a left wing British newspaper but it was total bullshit being validated by total bullshit.

The same could be done on the news. When a segment presents interviews with three people in the street for example, we often see two or three with one opinion that supports the overall message and one who doesn’t, how do we know that they only ever interviewed them and not ten others. The point is the media is as corrupt and untrustworthy as the politicians have always been yet we take what they say at face value. With eighty-three percent of mainstream media in the UK owned by three corporations, they can pretty much convince anybody of anything with enough coverage. They can be corrupt and it doesn’t matter. We have vaults of information online but who really looks beyond supposedly trustworthy news sources such as the BBC, or their equivalent in other countries and cultures.

Ultimately we’re as much a pack animal as dogs and if we believe the majority think something we’re more likely to go with it to remain part of the group. If you have such an array of opinions all appearing to validate something it has never been so easy to convince people even when it is in your interests and actively against theirs. The internet is arguable the greatest invention since the printing press, and with such knowledge comes the opportunity for rebellion and sedition live never before. Unfortunately it also seems to bring rise to the polarising and manipulating of peoples the world over. It is though early days, the internet is but a baby in the long history of information. There is still time yet.

Tag: manipulate

Another Political Pervert

A Manipulated Mass