No doubt it's hard to separate organic trend-following from the paid-for shit. But the way Disney trash gets memed is something else. The star wars one especially, that may 4th was a year before they put out any of the new movies, it was cool to hate the prequels and IP as a whole after the third one, and yet all of a sudden a bunch of non-nerds are sharing this shit all over the TL? Slamming :doubt: that it came from organic algo boosting alone.
Like we have so much evidence of the artificial boosting the cryptofash do on social media, it seems entirely consistent that monopolist money spends the same as Koch money with these 'reputation management' firms.
Your comment did remind me of that time the people behind the oCcUpY DEmOCraTs account touted how hard they work on those shitposts, ty for that
Absolutely agree there's astroturfing involved no doubt. Memes are perfect for astroturfing and propaganda because they appear as organic grassroots culture. But it's so easy to just inject any kind of sus shit into memes. For example so many memes about Brendan Frasier, it felt fake (imo)
Keanu too. Which is a shame because some of the stories (ann arbor or wherever in michigan community theater) reflect well on him. An unfortunate casualty of the internet is that I just don't believe a single thing that makes it into the collective consciousness about any public figure or art
No doubt it's hard to separate organic trend-following from the paid-for shit. But the way Disney trash gets memed is something else. The star wars one especially, that may 4th was a year before they put out any of the new movies, it was cool to hate the prequels and IP as a whole after the third one, and yet all of a sudden a bunch of non-nerds are sharing this shit all over the TL? Slamming :doubt: that it came from organic algo boosting alone.
Like we have so much evidence of the artificial boosting the cryptofash do on social media, it seems entirely consistent that monopolist money spends the same as Koch money with these 'reputation management' firms.
Your comment did remind me of that time the people behind the oCcUpY DEmOCraTs account touted how hard they work on those shitposts, ty for that
Absolutely agree there's astroturfing involved no doubt. Memes are perfect for astroturfing and propaganda because they appear as organic grassroots culture. But it's so easy to just inject any kind of sus shit into memes. For example so many memes about Brendan Frasier, it felt fake (imo)
Keanu too. Which is a shame because some of the stories (ann arbor or wherever in michigan community theater) reflect well on him. An unfortunate casualty of the internet is that I just don't believe a single thing that makes it into the collective consciousness about any public figure or art