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<img src="/icons/book_gray.svg" alt="/icons/book_gray.svg" width="40px" /> On this page we collect general information that could help community members navigate the info space and identify psychological manipulations. We add more resources on an ongoing basis.
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<img src="/icons/book-closed_gray.svg" alt="/icons/book-closed_gray.svg" width="40px" /> “Universal literacy was supposed to educate the common man to control his environment. “Once he could read and write he would have a mind fit to rule”. Or so ran the democratic doctrine. Instead, it gave them propaganda. And an easier way for the masters to control him.
- “Propaganda” by Edward Bernays, 1928
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📚 Recommended reading:
How to Speak about Ukraine
Character Assassination
The russian “Firehose of Falsehood” propaganda model
Parallels between info attacks @GicAriana x @cryptodrftng -
“Wedging” on social media
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How Healthy Discussions Work
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💡 Awareness of manipulations methods gives you more control of your thoughts and reaction.
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Common manipulative tactics
- DARVO: “Deny, Attack, and Reverse Victim and Offender”. Deception around who is at the center of attack, hijacking the target’s response, is a staple of psychological abuse.
- Reactive abuse: staged defamation in which people see only the response to abuse, and not the abuse. The target appears to irrationally shadowbox what the onlookers are unaware of.
- “Double binds”: mutually exclusive demands, intentionally set up so that it’s impossible to meet one or both, guaranteeing that the target gets smeared on at least one count. They are usually highly inconsistent, having only the intent to abuse in common. The intent is both scapegoating and exhausting the target.
- Slanders based on missing-middle fallacies. The relationships between A and B and then B and C are omitted or distorted to falsely equate A and C.
- Deceptive re-framing: moving goalposts by redefining words and concepts, and losing sense of proportions.
- Deflecting or sidestepping: as soon as an argument fails to go well, they deflect to another unrelated argument. Particularly toxic operators may even return to previously abandoned arguments as if from scratch.
- Reverse social engineering: people can be manipulated by the above methods to give away information or attack a target without fully understanding what they collude in.
Strategies