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> “Unfortunately, a lot of the internet is manipulation … Everything on the internet is fake. One thing that we always say is all opinions are formed in the Tik

> “Unfortunately, a lot of the internet is manipulation … Everything on the internet is fake. One thing that we always say is all opinions are formed in the TikTok comments,” Chaotic Good co-founder Jesse Coren noted. Why is this guy talking like this? YOU are literally co-making internet full of fake! It's worse if you read the context[0]: Interviewer: What would you say to someone who’s freaked out by these ideas that we are talking about — who feels like they’re being manipulated by artists and marketers online? Coren: Unfortunately, a lot of the internet is manipulation. Andrew(Chaotic Good co-founder) would always say everything on the internet is fake. All opinions are formed in the TikTok comments — which is a reminder to us of what we can help with. I don’t know if this will make anyone feel better, but a lot of what we do on the narrative side is controlling the discourse. Most people see a video or something about an album that came out, and that first comment they see becomes their opinion, even when they haven’t heard the whole album. It’s really important for us to make sure we’re ahead of it and controlling that narrative in the direction we want. [0] https://www.billboard.com/pro/digital-marketers-secret-tactics-viral-songs/ https://www.billboard.com/pro/digital-marketers-secret-tacti...

TeMPOraL 5mo ago
Makes me think of a 20-something old running a popular YouTube channel interviewing people for business advice, and in one episode, stressing the important message of their interviewee, that was literally "don't trust advice from people who have never actually done the thing you're trying to do". That's multiple levels of "you're not the traffic, you are the traffic" right there.
- fasterik 5mo ago
  > don't trust advice from people who have never actually done the thing you're trying to do Probably one of the most important heuristics to have in the age of self-help gurus and influencers. 99.999% of them haven't accomplished anything other than profiting off of desperate and gullible people.
r-w 5mo ago
It's so weird to see empathy-speak be regularly co-opted by habitual mass manipulators. "I don't know if this will make you feel better... but we're concerned with manipulating the reactions to the reactions as well! See how much we care?" It makes me do a double-take every time someone shows actual empathy, because it's used so often as a manipulative tactic to shield oneself against critiques of soullessness.
- thinkingemote 5mo ago
  Manipulation is emotional more than it is logical, about feelings than ideas, more in women than in men, and therefore for the majority of the audience of tiktok etc
  - plastic-enjoyer 5mo ago
    > Manipulation is emotional more than it is logical, about feelings than ideas, more in women than in men, and therefore for the majority of the audience of tiktok etc I don't think this is necessarily true that manipulation is more emotional than it is logical. On the contrary, I believe that academics and well-educated people are very susceptible to it, especially the STEM crowd. All it takes to be manipulated is someone you trust and who is like you, who is in the same peer group and who speaks the same language as you. It makes no difference whether language is “emotional” or “logical”; enough scientists have reasoned themselves into the most ridiculous bullshit and it were mostly men.
  - nathan_compton 5mo ago
    "more in women than in men" This is not true, in my experience. Men are just as, if not more, emotional and impulsive. Most women I know think way further ahead than the men I know, and improvise much less often. The idea that men are the rational ones is just a silly fantasy to make men feel better, I would argue. Rationality is much more correlated with socio-economic status than gender, I would bet.
    - jmcqk6 5mo ago
      I think many men don't even understand what emotional regulation looks like. They tend to spend much of their time disassociated and thinking that it's normal. I tried speaking to my father about emotional health and he thinks it's about being happy, while simultaneously being unable to consider the possibility that he got it wrong, thus demonstrating the point. There is a lack of emotional health across genders, but on average, I think women are further along than men, simply because they're able to recognize that they are emotional beings much more often than men are.
almostdeadguy 5mo ago
The implicit rationalization here is "this is a problem that pre-dates our involvement, everyone is already doing this". Classic dodge for bad actors.

TeMPOraL 5mo ago

Makes me think of a 20-something old running a popular YouTube channel interviewing people for business advice, and in one episode, stressing the important message of their interviewee, that was literally "don't trust advice from people who have never actually done the thing you're trying to do". That's multiple levels of "you're not the traffic, you are the traffic" right there.

fasterik 5mo ago
> don't trust advice from people who have never actually done the thing you're trying to do Probably one of the most important heuristics to have in the age of self-help gurus and influencers. 99.999% of them haven't accomplished anything other than profiting off of desperate and gullible people.

r-w 5mo ago

It's so weird to see empathy-speak be regularly co-opted by habitual mass manipulators. "I don't know if this will make you feel better... but we're concerned with manipulating the reactions to the reactions as well! See how much we care?" It makes me do a double-take every time someone shows actual empathy, because it's used so often as a manipulative tactic to shield oneself against critiques of soullessness.

thinkingemote 5mo ago
Manipulation is emotional more than it is logical, about feelings than ideas, more in women than in men, and therefore for the majority of the audience of tiktok etc
- plastic-enjoyer 5mo ago
  > Manipulation is emotional more than it is logical, about feelings than ideas, more in women than in men, and therefore for the majority of the audience of tiktok etc I don't think this is necessarily true that manipulation is more emotional than it is logical. On the contrary, I believe that academics and well-educated people are very susceptible to it, especially the STEM crowd. All it takes to be manipulated is someone you trust and who is like you, who is in the same peer group and who speaks the same language as you. It makes no difference whether language is “emotional” or “logical”; enough scientists have reasoned themselves into the most ridiculous bullshit and it were mostly men.
- nathan_compton 5mo ago
  "more in women than in men" This is not true, in my experience. Men are just as, if not more, emotional and impulsive. Most women I know think way further ahead than the men I know, and improvise much less often. The idea that men are the rational ones is just a silly fantasy to make men feel better, I would argue. Rationality is much more correlated with socio-economic status than gender, I would bet.
  - jmcqk6 5mo ago
    I think many men don't even understand what emotional regulation looks like. They tend to spend much of their time disassociated and thinking that it's normal. I tried speaking to my father about emotional health and he thinks it's about being happy, while simultaneously being unable to consider the possibility that he got it wrong, thus demonstrating the point. There is a lack of emotional health across genders, but on average, I think women are further along than men, simply because they're able to recognize that they are emotional beings much more often than men are.

almostdeadguy 5mo ago

The implicit rationalization here is "this is a problem that pre-dates our involvement, everyone is already doing this". Classic dodge for bad actors.