The Story of Evil Marketing - A Conspiracy Theory for 2020

Ok folks, it's Conspiracy theory time.  

Long ago, Soros, The Koch Brothers, Davos, Qanon, the Knights Templar, whoever.... hired a company

EVILMARKETING .COM

This group was very very good at marketing. They had a process, evolved over time, that worked well, delivering quality product with a minimum of work on the client's part.  They made the person who hired them look good.

The process is simple... the customer supplies a few pieces of very important information, and then they go to work, show a version for approval, and then the product is given to the client for use.

Item #1 - Who do you want to listen to your message  - The Target Market
  Client:  The 99%, those who want to take our wealth and power

Item #2 - What are the top 3 messages you want them to remember
  Client:

Their neighbors are not like them

Their neighbors are stupid

Their neighbors are evil

Item #3 - What are signs we did our job so you can prove it to your boss? - Metrics
  Client:

Increased division

Increased violence

Ignoring us completely

Item #4 - What are your goals for this campaign? - Goals
  Client:

Divide the 99%
Divert attention from us
Social Media Profit

The team went away... and came up with a brilliant strategy to accomplish the goal.

They came up with a few simple phrases that sounded a bit odd, but contained different meanings, depending on the audience. Turns out, you can test this.... tell the phrase to a sample from each target market, and see how they interpret it. If the answers diverge, you're on the right track.... if the answers oppose, you've hit the mother load.

But that wasn't enough for Evil Marketing... they had a better idea, and had to explain it to the client.

In this campaign there are 2 phases, in phase 1 we'll spread specially crafted phrases. "Received Words" - These are phrases that have an obviously evil meaning, and a plausible good meaning. To help explain it, we'll use Alice, Bob, Carol, and Dave as examples.

Alice is a well meaning person who will first use the phrase when talking with her friend Bob, who has heard it before and agrees. Alice and Bob now recognize each other as allies.

Alice them talks to Carol, who is unfamiliar with the phrase, and asks a few questions because it sounds a bit strange. Alice and Carol invest time so that Carol now understands the phrase in the same way as Alice.

Carol later talks to Dave, who also asks questions, but rejects the phrase because the evil meaning is too much for him to swallow. The seeds of resentment are sewn between Carol ad Dave.

Dave later talks to Elaine, who decides she agrees with the Good meaning.

Later Dave is talking to Fred, who agrees with Dave on the Evil Meaning

The client understood how little effort it would take to spread, and nodded in understanding

Phase 2 begins when a critical mass of people are reliably using the phrases we supplied.

Now that Alice, Bob, Carol, and Elaine have invested energy in the phrase, they are strongly oppose to changing it. The phrase practically defends itself from change and dilution.  Dave and Fred also share an understanding that the others are allies, with an easy to recognize flag.

You, and your associates now begin to use the Evil intent of the phrase to accomplish your goals.  Alice, Bob, Carol and Elaine now feel forced to support this new (to them) meaning. They are trapped.

Dave and Fred now think that the others support the Evil intent of the phrase. They are fooled.

So, as you can see... this campaign will be highly effective, dividing and distracting your target market with almost no cost.

The clients loved it, and would be happy to use Evil Marketing again. The Metrics are off the chart!

So that's the story, and here we are... in an country about to rip itself apart, where nobody at the top dares actually lead because admitting mistakes is political suicide, throwing these phrases at each other over and over and over, and expecting that eventually we'll get different results if we try hard enough.

It's as if the phrases all have a good message in them, trapped in an evil spell... if you change the words, you break the spell.

We all have to admit our mistakes because our leaders wont.

I'm just a cranky old white guy with both liberal and conservative views.... actually their neither... they are MY views of the world.
I am more than ready to change my views and admit fault while doing so, publicly. Our "leaders" can't do that.

Please stop using the phrases as given... change a word or two, eliminate the double meaning. Please also be willing to lead us out of this mess by admitting the mistakes of our side as you see them.

Let's all be adults, and snuff this conflict out before it destroys our country.

E Pluribus Unum - One of Many - United We Stand, Divided We Fall.

On the need for real internet connections

Most of us don't have a real internet connection, and it limits our freedom in a subtle, but increasingly important way. We are NOT free to use the internet as it was originally intended... to allow anyone to make a program on their server freely available to others. We've slowly been migrated into a "consumer" version, where we are merely free to choose from selections handed down to us by others who know what's good for us.

This makes itself firmly felt when someone wants to tell the truth, and finds themselves unable to offer them hosting because one Senator (or any other "Elite") makes a subtle threat in a phone call to Amazon. Isn't technology great, you don't have to burn books any more, you can just cut off internet connections! Goebbles would drool at the power exercised by Mr Lieberman in the past week.

Free speech is an important check on the abuse of power by those in Government and other positions of authority. It has now been shown that freedom of speech on the Internet is fundamentally non-existent for most of us.

Net neutrality is important... if you don't understand what it means, find out.

"In Germany they first came for the Communists, 

and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist. 

Then they came for the Jews, 

and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. 

Then they came for the trade unionists, 

and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. 

Then they came for the Catholics, 

and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant. 

Then they came for me — 

and by that time no one was left to speak up."

Pastor Martin Niemöller

Please don't let history repeat itself.

Looks like Twitter has managed to upset some of their vendors to the point of taking action to offsource it.

Imagining the freedom box

I just watched the video of Eben Moglen's presentation Freedom in the Cloud where he discusses a great many things, and has a great number of insights... and he ends with a call to build a "freedom box" which would allow the owner to have their own server, and their own logs, and to move control of privacy back out into the ends of internet.

I think this is a worthwhile endeavor, and I will support it.

I want to make sure one thing is right... security. For if the security is done wrong, the whole enterprise is likely to remain the province of geeks, and the public won't accept it. If the public doesn't accept the idea, then these boxes can eventually be filtered off the net in the long term.

Security for me means that choices about what is to be done need to be fine grained for the user, easily modified and transparent in their effects, and reliably enforced by the system. Cabsec is the only architecture that I believe can meet those goals.

I look forward to this new toolkit to use to promote computers as a safe and effective tool.

Post 9/11 photography on the CTA - Entirely Reasonable

I was taking some photos on the Red Line of the Chicago Transit Authority today, and I was told politely that I would need to get permission. So I put the camera away... and decided to see what's involved in getting permission. The response was one which I'm quite happy with, as a photographer, passenger, and Citizen of the United States.

I rode the Green Line to the LindenClinton stop and walked over to CTA headquarters. Ms Kelley in customer service was very nice and polite in determining who should handle my inquiry. The lobby on the second floor features a nice Neon sculpture I hope to photograph some day.

After a short wait I was greeted by Ron Grazian Jr., who is the Planning Coordinator for Operations Oversight. He explained the situation to me, and gathered information from me about the nature and purpose of my photography. He gave me a copy of the policy document they use for their staff, which will probably prove helpfull at some point in the future. He also made the quite valid point that they have 11,000 employees who may or may not know the fine details of their policy.

The policy itself is quite reasonable, leaving things to the discretion of their employees, which is probably the most sane approach to things they could have possibly done. I'm very impressed with the professionalism and thoughfullness of the CTA.

In discussing why I take photos, and what I do with them, I was surprised that Ron had not heard of Flickr, so told him about the site, and gave him a link to my photostream. We both learned some things, time well spent.

All in all, a 5 Star experience. No hiding behind a set of rules, or anything of that nature, just real 1:1 conversation. 

Thanks Ron!

December 8, 1941

Those who do not remember the past, are doomed to repeat it. Here's how a competent administration responds to attack...

Franklin Delano Roosevelt: Pearl Harbor Address to the Nation

(Yes... I know Pearl Harbor was bombed on the 7th... the speech was on the 8th)

It took hard work and sacrifice from the entire nation, but we had good solid leadership that we could trust to do the right thing back then.

Let's never forget the sacrifices made to win our freedom.

It's my damned computer! How the fuck do I get this damned DRM crap off of Windows XP Home?

I want to be able to watch OUR footage from OUR wedding, and the fucking DRM in Windows Media Player 9 decides that I DON'T HAVE THE RIGHT to take my favorite frame, and save it in Paint Shop Pro... this sucks, and I refuse to let it stand.

If I have to, I'll format this damned machine, and run Fedora Core on it!

Digital Rights Management is EVIL!

RFID Journal - Michelin Embeds RFID Tags in Tires - This scares the heck out of me. I see it being very easy for someone to use the tires on my car to track it, and thus track me. I want an option out. This is a slippery slope, and we need to talk about the implications before it's a done deal.

The trend towards doing everything in favor of Corporations instead of people is alarming, if you stop to think about it. This is just another, of the billions of consequences of this trend.