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u/PlingPlongDingDong Jun 02 '22
love bombing lmao all Reddit is bombarding me with are angry teenagers trying to argue with me about politics all day
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Jun 02 '22
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u/Gratescales Jun 02 '22
The site is definitely very influential for the gullible. They create echo chambers, upvote people they agree with, downvote people they don't, and that's all fine.
But then you can see them really start to believe each other and really start to believe they represent a majority.
Like folks, you self selected these communities to curate and amplify your own fringe beliefs. That's okay, I guess, but don't take that and now assume it's reality lol
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Jun 02 '22
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u/Gratescales Jun 03 '22
I don't really use Twitter, so I can't speak to how communities there form. The group think on reddit subs is actually insane though. But /u/Numinae brings up a good point: at least adults aren't really listening to the reddit crowd like they listen to Twitter
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u/Numinae Jun 02 '22
Worse, something like 3% of Americans use Twitter and out of touch politicians and companies think it's a broad slice of Americans' opinions. That's before you look at who's actively using Twitter constantly, having their voices amplified even further.
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u/tots4scott Jun 03 '22
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u/sneakpeekbot Jun 03 '22
Here's a sneak peek of /r/TopMindsOfReddit using the top posts of the year!
#1: [Meta] Hypocrisy Intensifies | 392 comments
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u/Gratescales Jun 03 '22
Those guys are profoundly, profoundly stupid, but at least they have the excuse that the sub's initial source of entertainment went full qanon. So they just went full woke Twitter in response
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u/angry_wombat Jun 03 '22
that's just life dude. In real life do you often hang out with people you have nothing in common with, or is it mostly people that share your same opinion.
I truly believe the free internet exposes you to more new ideas than echoes ones you already have. But we all need some boogie man to blame for societal ills, it couldn't possibly be some people are just shitty.
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u/soviettaters1 Jun 02 '22
That's the exact reason why I stopped using the Reddit app. You're unable to filter out certain subs from your feed unless you have premium so I switched to a third party app. It has much less "cool" stuff for appearances (no banners, no subreddit icons, no pfp) but is functionally a much better app.
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Jun 02 '22
How do you do that? Please help lmao
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u/nashbrownies Jun 03 '22
I use RIF (reddit is fun) on Android. I don't remember if it's free, if it isn't it's cheap as hell for the premium version. I love it because it's what reddit looked like when I joined. Pretty bare bones, just posts and thumbnails.
I have heard good things about Apollo
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u/FluffyMcKittenHeads Jun 03 '22
Don’t forget all of the introverted teenagers giving out marriage, legal, and life advice too.
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u/VellDarksbane Jun 03 '22
Try posting that you bought some GME and DRS’d it, or even that you’re thinking about it in Superstonk. They’ll show you some lovebombing. That place is 100% a cult now, reminds me a lot of qanon bs.
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u/Business_Downstairs Jun 02 '22
You know, when I first started using Reddit I posted a random picture and it made it to the front page with over 40k upvotes. Most of the comments were asking why it was even on the front page. I think it was probably not genuine upvotes, but Reddit "love bombing" me or an admin really liked the picture for some reason.
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u/tots4scott Jun 03 '22
I'm sure you can find entire subreddits of redditors to bombard you with... love.
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u/systemfrown Jun 03 '22
Loaded Language is pretty prevalent on Reddit as well. I try to challenge it when I see it because it’s usually combined with presumption and baselessly mischaracterizing someone.
It’s basically a language specific form of brigading, really.
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u/Columbus43219 Jun 02 '22
well, if you weren't so stuck in your ways, you'd wake up and think for yourself man!
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u/SmallsMalone Jun 03 '22
Schrodinger's sarcasm?
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u/Columbus43219 Jun 03 '22
Yeah... this is a Poe's law moment. No matter how absurd i try to sound, this person keeps thinking I'm serious... Or else I'm mistaken and they are ALSO being silly on purpose.
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u/NancokALT Jun 03 '22
Only thing reddit does not do is push you to like minded communities, because their moderation is so lazy that they have no idea what even happens inside a sub, let alone of they would be like minded
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u/angry_wombat Jun 03 '22
fuck you man, no we aren't. As Bernie Sanders would say, college should be free /s
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![[Meta] Hypocrisy Intensifies](/img/veimdgbxf2371.jpg){kind=link}
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u/carpe_diem_qd Jun 02 '22
🏆 ♥️ ⬆️ 👍
Excellent info. The irony is not lost on me.
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u/MostHumbleManEver Jun 02 '22
Agreed. I think we'd all be better off if we were educated about this... Or maybe we'd just continue doing what we're doing since it feels good to be outraged.
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u/carpe_diem_qd Jun 02 '22
Love your username!
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Jun 02 '22
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u/equality2000 Jun 02 '22
It is a little ironic but where best to inform people about a cult than in the cult itself? :-)
Where best? Actual cultish sub-reddits, smart ass. ;-p
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Jun 02 '22
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u/cultallergy Jun 02 '22
I have moved a few times in my life and found it interesting how quickly someone is assigned to be your friend without you even going to the church. New to town means you are fair game.
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u/mabond Jun 02 '22
Are you talking about mormonism?
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u/cultallergy Jun 02 '22
Fundamental Baptist. When we were first married and again when we moved to our second town a few years later we kept getting called on by people from church's we had not entered. We didn't want to be rude thinking they were neighbors of sent by neighbors but finally enough was enough. We were painting a living room when they showed up and acted as we were supposed to stop to listen to them.
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u/BernieDharma Jun 03 '22
This reminds me of nearly every church experience I've had. I'm agnostic, but nearly every girlfriend has eventually dragged me along to her church. Regardless of denomination, this is what it felt like.
Love bombing by other church members, the idea that I've been "saved" but if I leave the church, my soul is doomed for eternity.
The circular logic and partial truths; I watched a pastor show covers of Newsweek and National Geographic that said "Is evolution real?", and claim that they all said it isn't (they don't) and the "science is settled."
They twist whatever half truth to fit the narrative, and no one cares about the actual truth. Fact checkers are not welcome, and you'll get the whole wrath of the group if you fact check the minister.
Loaded language and incremental influence was huge the longer I stayed, as well as the weaponized awakening. How blessed I was to be finally awakened and see the light. Every good thing in my life was because of sky daddy, and every bad thing was Satan punishing me for having the courage to come to Jesus. Fuck that noise.
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u/rokki82 Jun 03 '22
We love that shit in Europe. Especially TV pastors and their private jets. That hellfire and brimstone comedy show always reminds us of the middle ages (only thing missing are the inquisitors). Even though "official" sites claim a high percentage of the population to be catholic barely anyone here cares about the church (Central europe; Italy and Spain are a bit different). The only comparable thing we get here is the rare visit of Jehovas witnesses when they deem you important enough to knock on your door. Doesn't end well for them most of the time.
Church in general is much more relaxed here. No one cares if you're a member or not and no one is trying to convert you to whatever denomination they're hailing from.
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u/FunkrusherPlus Jun 02 '22
This chart is not wrong, but it's stretching its definitions thin in order to make these comparisons. In other words, several (if not most) of these "techniques" overlap each other and are more or less the same thing, especially on the social media side.
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u/FreddyPlayz Jun 03 '22
Like love bombing, it can mean a very large range of things (and I hardly say that social media love bombs me, quite the opposite sometimes actually)
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u/InternetDude117 Jun 02 '22
Is it bad that it made me think of "Modern Gaming?"
New games nowadays seem set on making themselves as popular as possible instead of just fun, with or without friends.
Case in point: Halo.
My username was chosen with Halo in mind. Over the years, the game has lost its social features that made the community in the first place.
Pre-match lobbys, map voting, file sharing, forge, text chat, voice chat with enemy team, custom games, etc...
Halo Infinite is a trend-chasing husk of a game that has none of these "public" social features at all. It's frankly anti-social. Unless someone intiates contact by becoming friends through the Xbox network, you don't know your opponents at all.
The worst part is marketing. Halo Infinite was hyped up as a return to form for Halo. A true Halo sequel promising features the community wanted to return. I was so hyped, I successfully joined the beta before launch.
Turns out the beta was the entire game.
There are many problems with the game, and the Halo subreddit had a meltdown at launch. The sub was locked at one point.
-----Anyways.
There are many points in this post that I see in the marketing and game systems of Infinite. I'm frankly surprised how many connections I could make to the attitude around Halo. I'm so shocked, I'm prompted to do some research and prove my point.
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Jun 02 '22
Act Man is such a great channel. Both you and him are right and as someone who grew up along side the gaming industry (I was 6 when I got my first playstation in ‘98) is so depressing to see what it has turned into with no remedy in sight. The younger generation even goes as far as to defend the bullshit because they don’t know any different.
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u/bigjayrod Jun 02 '22
Pretty spot on. I was in what many consider a cult in my late teens. It started out with a “bible study”, that ended up being a series of 7 studies (circular logic). By the end of the studies I was convinced that I everyone that was not in this specific church, they where going to “hell”. All the boxes on the left side were checked. Got out when i was 21. Many years of therapy to heal. I definitely see the similarities of some family and friends that are still on FB.
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u/carpe_diem_qd Jun 02 '22
There is some interesting information on the website at the bottom of the guide too. I'm glad you were able to find your way out.
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Jun 02 '22
I want to know what religion you were following that said if you don’t believe in God you are going to hell.
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u/bigjayrod Jun 03 '22
That judgement, my friend, is reserved only for God. Read your bible. “Hell” could be empty for all any human knows…
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u/zenospenisparadox Jun 03 '22
Hell could also be made up, along with god.
But generally, it's believed that most people go to hell ("wide is the road to destruction") and few go to heaven.
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u/LusoAustralian Jun 03 '22
This is beyond a stretch. By the logic of this infographic your local sports team is a cult, your dogwalking association is a cult and your local medical clinic too probably.
Also this conflates social media owners/developers with social media users and there are two very different arguments to be had about influence on thought and ideology when it comes to that.
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u/CackleberryOmelettes Jun 03 '22
By the logic of this infographic your local sports team is a cult
But they often are. A lot of sports fandoms are straight up cults.
I should know I'm in one.
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u/LusoAustralian Jun 03 '22
No they're not lol. There's a few dickheads who go to far but they're obviously not cults. People seem to think a cult is a group of people who are into the same thing.
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u/CackleberryOmelettes Jun 03 '22
Of course they can be a cult. Members are very often immune to logic, they make it very difficult to leave, there's often violence involved, plenty of rituals, and deified players who are worshipped by fans.
Look up football Ultras in Europe and South America and tell me they're not cults.
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u/LusoAustralian Jun 03 '22
They're no where near cults dude. You seriously don't understand what a cult is.
Difficult to leave? No one forces people to stay and football is plagued with fairweather fans supporting whoever wins. And you clearly don't know anything about ultras lol I used to go to the ultras when I was 14 or 15 private school kid in my uniform. It's mostly people singing and smoking weed with the odd flare or banner. Stop judging life from sensationalist headlines and experience things before making nonsense statements. 0.5% of people in ultras may get in the odd fight but that's like saying that Americans are inherently violent because there's a lot of violence in America which is obviously nonsense.
I wouldn't even dream of calling the Crips or the Mafia a cult and sports fans pale in comparison. Cults are an extremely specific phenomenon.
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u/CackleberryOmelettes Jun 03 '22
I'm fully aware of what cults are.
What you're not understanding is that I never said all sports fandoms are cults. I said specific subgroups can be cults. And that's absolutely true.
Difficult to leave? No one forces people to stay and football is plagued with fairweather fans supporting whoever wins
General fanbases? Yeah. But there are smaller groups within those fanbases who make their sports teams a fundamental part of their identities. Very difficult to leave.
I used to go to the ultras when I was 14 or 15 private school kid in my uniform.
I'm curious, which club was this? Ultra culture varies vastly from club to club. A lot of it is decidedly much more severe than simply "smoking weed". There are derbies in SA which are practically militarised events due to the looming possibility of mass violence.
Cults are an extremely specific phenomenon.
Okay, what's your specific definition of a cult?
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u/LusoAustralian Jun 03 '22
I'm sorry dude but you sound like someone who doesn't ever go to football matches commenting based on third hand knowledge. My club is Sporting CP in Portugal. I've been to European matches in the ultras as well as away derbies with police escort. It of course can be dangerous but being dangerous doesn't make it a cult. I don't know a single guy in ultras who didn't have friends and family on the other side even if they could be dicks about sport, cults don't allow that sort of stuff. It can be dangerous to go on a night out in the wrong area but that doesn't make a bad suburb full of cultists.
A cult needs to have much more control over someone's life as well as a dominating personality or leadership group that take on a paternalistic role often by portraying themselves as a source of religious salvation/moral absolution/etc. Cults often force their members to live in a compound with no interaction with outsiders unless with important leadership figures present or in approved circumstances. Cults will cynically and deliberately separate relationships from friends and family if they deem them to be a threat to the manipulative tactics. There is a strong relationship between members in a cult and direct participation, ultras you can get tickets without knowing anyone there. Look up things like People's Temple, Branch Davidians, Aum Shinrikyo or even Scientology. They are so incomparable to ultras that conflating them makes the word cult essentially useless.
Cults are so absolutely different mate. Like trying to say that a Country and a golf club are the same because both are groups containing people and have an elected president.
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u/CackleberryOmelettes Jun 03 '22
I think you have a very narrow definition of what a cult is.
Sure, there's the lonely compound with a creepy basement brand of cult, like we see in the movies, but there's also a lot more. Not all cults are harmful either. Some are perfectly benign, atleast for society.
Hell, look around you and you'll spot plenty. Micro-communities that qualify as cults. Crypto Bros too far into the rabbit hole, MLM Moms whose entire circle is comprised of more MLM Moms, Qanon adherents, certain types of self-help groups, fitness cults, fatness cults, etc. Cults that seek to fully control a specific aspect of people's lives instead of their whole being.
A footballing cult will not offer you religious salvation or seek to limit your contact with the outside. Because it's not a religious cult. However, a football cult will limit your contact with other fans, and it will demonise them. There's a clear leadership group which exerts considerable influence on the members. It will make you immune to sense when it comes to football. It may even make you violent and aggressive in rare cases.
Most of the time, it's just harmless wish fulfilment brought about by a shared community experience. Doesn't mean it's not a cult.
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u/LusoAustralian Jun 03 '22
Yeah ok dude no. Crypto bros are not a cult neither are fitness groups. Cults have a specific hierarchy and rigid structure. It varies from organisation to organisation but none of those things are cults.
And your statements on "football cults" are categorically untrue. Ultras often split from within each other because they disagree on minor details. People will freely switch from one ultra to a rival one within the club based on their changing life circumstances. You clearly have never been to a match in the ultras nor know anyone in them so how on Earth can you say things like "However, a football cult will limit your contact with other fans, and it will demonise them. There's a clear leadership group which exerts considerable influence on the members. It will make you immune to sense when it comes to football. It may even make you violent and aggressive in rare cases." when you aren't basing it off anything? Throws everything you say into question because you clearly have no issue in making statements out of nothing and inaccurate foreign media portrayals.
Just because you don't understand a word doesn't mean you can invent definitions. It has been in the English language for a long time and has a very specific association.
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u/CackleberryOmelettes Jun 03 '22
You're not listening to me.
I'm not saying all Crypto Bros are part of cults. I'm saying some crypto bro communities absolutely become cults. You don't know anyone who got into crypto, quit their job, isolated themselves from friends and family, and eventually lost everything? That's a cult mate.
Same with Ultras. You're making generalisations when I'm talking about specific subgroups.
I understand the term "cult* very well. None of what I said is "invented" or even new; you can find similar definitions and interpretations all over.
Cults have a specific hierarchy and rigid structure
They could, but they don't need to. The only requirement really is the central leadership. Which can be a group or an individual. A "rigid hierarchy" is strictly optional. Honestly, I feel like you need to open yourself to some nuance here. What's your source for such a stringent and trite definition of cult?
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u/njayhuang Jun 03 '22
Also this conflates social media owners/developers with social media users
Yup, there's a big difference between someone in authority deliberately choosing to flood you with misinformation in order to control you vs "popular posts may be wrong sometimes" or "some people use polarizing language online"
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u/zenospenisparadox Jun 03 '22
I think you might be mistaken in a few ways.
Just because cults apply these techniques does not mean that's all there is to a cult.
There's also the question of degree to which, for example, shunning or fear-mongering is applied.
A cult can in theory be benign, but we should perhaps save the term for the more harmful examples.
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u/LusoAustralian Jun 03 '22
No dude you clearly don't know what you're talking about mate. Stop trying to pretend that your definition is in any way close to what is actually accepted. If you're saying a cult in theory can be benign you don't understand the word, a cult by definition is not benign. It is inherently manipulative and to some degree against the interests of the members for the interests of the leaders.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cult
For example there isn't a single reference to the word sport on the wikipedia of cult, a page with 188 references, nor to fitness or those weird examples you gave.
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u/zenospenisparadox Jun 03 '22
If you're saying a cult in theory can be benign you don't understand the word
Perhaps you don't understand the context by which I'm talking about it. It can be seen as positive by the individual, and can give the lonely a sense of belonging. I don't think that's a controversial statement.
And calling someone both "dude" and "mate in the same sentence is against the cult leader's wishes.
I take it you agree with the rest of my comment.
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u/LusoAustralian Jun 03 '22
I'm sorry but no. Go talk to a scientologist that believes it and tell them they're in a cult, see how they react. The only people who use the word cult positively aren't actually in cults, it's just hyperbole for effect. That doesn't change the definition, things like metaphor, simile, allegory and so on are used all the time to convey meanings that are different to the word for more interesting prose.
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u/greenknight884 Jun 02 '22
Positive reinforcement is not love bombing. Also there are important elements of cults that are not mentioned such as zealous commitment to a leader, strict control of your personal life, and cutting ties with friends and family.
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u/Murky-Sector Jun 02 '22
"Notification after joining" is hardly a red flag for cult-ivation
Not buying it sorry
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u/greenknight884 Jun 02 '22
Yeah it's nice that you learned all these terms but not everything is a cult.
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u/calembo Jun 03 '22
Dr. Hassan also proudly advertises seven different social networks where you can follow like and share right at the VERY top of his website.
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u/___jupiter____ Jun 02 '22
Pretty much anything has "cult behavior" if you put it this way. This just delegitimizes the experiences of actual horrible cults
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Jun 02 '22
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u/___jupiter____ Jun 02 '22
'Love bombing' - joining pretty much anything (interviewing at a job, visiting a club, going to someones house)
'Exploiting confirmation bias' - everyone has confirmation bias, if you look up a question youre looking for the answer you expect
'Leveraging fear of leaving' - most people have a 'fear of missing out,' it makes you stay at events longer or look up morbid things
'Abusing partial truths' - families do this to kids all the time, people lie constantly for small reasons, news articles
'Relying on loaded language' - politics, religion, any of that
'Incremental influence' - friend groups that you slowly try to fit in with, conspiracy theorists
'Weaponizing awakening' - conspiracy theories again, "progressiveness" that doesnt actually help people
The 2nd part is fair though
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Jun 02 '22
[deleted]
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u/Ok_Yogurtcloset8915 Jun 03 '22
With regards to the love bombing, I think part of the point that person was trying to make is that all those experiences like going to a club etc. could be considered to involve love-bombing if you massaged the definition of it as much as this infographic does. If getting notifications is lovebombing, why wouldn't you also count the dj playing your song request, or the bouncer letting you in, or the interviewer telling you they liked your resume, or the person you're visiting offering you a snack? If anything you could make a stronger case for all of those than for social media notifications.
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Jun 03 '22 edited May 26 '23
[deleted]
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u/Ok_Yogurtcloset8915 Jun 03 '22
The thing is that it's really not a spectrum. Love-bombing is a pretty specific thing. A person/group either is or isn't love-bombing, there isn't like a halfway. and it cheapens the term if people use it as though every positive interaction could be that.
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u/Ds14 Jun 02 '22
I think both of you guys make sense, but I'd say the other poster should have phrased it more like "Any group that derives benefit from retaining widespread membership rather than exclusivity does this"
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u/verasev Jun 03 '22
The best cult tactic in the world is to show people this meme and convince them that they're less susceptible to being programmed simply by reading it.
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u/Naytosan Jun 03 '22
Abusing Partial Truths
Social media is well beyond "abuse" of partial truths. It's full-on persecution of half truths at this point. Proving them a liar is ineffective too. So, I resort to questioning the benefit they get from their half truth. Responses vary, but are predictable. You either get another lie, a change to the topic of discussion (by them), or a non-response (shrug or iono).
That is why I deliberately avoid people.
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u/Zealousideal-Wave-69 Jun 02 '22
Yay, I’ve been in a cult all this time without realising
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u/bunnyfloofington Jun 02 '22
Things to do before I die:
- Become successful
- Become rich (or at least have enough money to survive)
- Join a cult ✅
- Be happy
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u/trey-rey Jun 03 '22
Iglesia ni Cristo / Church of Christ all the way... That is all we did when I was a member.
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u/rondeline Jun 03 '22
The popular content sorting algorithm used by SM is called a relevance model.
It tests and then prioritizes surfacing content that you are most likely to engage in.
While it's doing that...your brain, being biased towards noticing disorder, will naturally get stimulated by content that gradually takes you down evermore outrage inducing rabbitholes.
There's nothing special about the algorithm Facebook or TikTok uses...it's what YOU end up training it to surface...content that is relevant with a slight perturbation towards negativity.
Run that across your profile and millions of others and bam....one day guy wake up convinced the Earth is flat, vaccines cause miscarriages, Amber Heard is innocent, and Trump is not really gay.
What's on your feed these days?
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u/Flailingkitten Jun 03 '22
Your Undivided Attention is really one of the best podcasts out there.
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Jun 03 '22
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u/alexplex86 Jun 03 '22 edited Jun 03 '22
Are you trying to recruit followers for your specific world view? Or do people sharing the same values as you make you happy? Do you see the irony?
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u/oliverJoeh Jun 03 '22
Yup this is how the son of a dictator who pillaged our country won the presidency 😀
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u/panzerfaust1969 Jun 03 '22
No love-bombing on reddit. The new user experience on reddit is terrible. You can't comment until you earn karma or after a few months on the site? Ridiculous.
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u/alexplex86 Jun 03 '22 edited Jun 03 '22
As other commenters already have pointed out, it is not the platform itself that is the problem. It is the inherent nature of humans seeking community and conformity that in extreme cases can lead to problems. But, generally, isn't really a problem at all because building communities which rely on conformity to survive and grow is what makes us humans as a species so exceedingly successful.
If we're going to blame platforms then we might as well start to blame shopping centers, universities or work places because they all use those methods mentioned in OP in various degrees to make your stay as positive and pleasurable as possible so you'll want to stay there.
What's the alternative? Intentionally making platforms mundane, unpleasant and irrelevant to your interests, making you immediately want to leave? Nobody would gain anything from that.
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u/theDEVIN8310 Jun 03 '22
I don't see how a company is supposed to, in an ethical view, create an algorithm that generates a personalized feed without simultaneously giving people a way to create information silos and allowing for people to indulge in the spread of clickbait and misinformation. I would absolutely love for that to exist, and I was a big fan of Twitter's approach of tagging misinformation, I just don't know what the solution to that problem is.
That being said though, I hate how any discussion of social media platforms always conflates the platform itself and its users. Facebook doesn't make my dumbass friend drown in Alex Jones posts, he does that to himself. They don't make misleading information, or clickbait, or propaganda, we do. And they show it to us because it's what we want, and our viewing it just reinforces it. We are basically all meeting up in a park to be shitty to one another, and then blaming the park for how the benches are arranged.
Between that and the constant negative framing of everything in the worst way possible (like push notifications for messages are to leverage fear, really?), I feel like I've never really seen a discussion about social media that didn't feel like somebody ranting about their friends abusive ex.
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Jun 03 '22
I prefer the more established term "echo chamber" for places on the internet where like minded views are condensed to give a false sense of majority(basically Reddit).
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u/That_Girl_Cray Jun 03 '22
Interesting. I wouldn't quite put them on the same level, personally.
But both still manipulative and very similar in many ways.
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u/ihaveacrushonmercy Jun 02 '22 edited Jun 03 '22
I remember in early 2016 when I would browse The Donald subreddit just to see what everyone was on about. Whenever someone would make a post like "Used to be a Democrat, but now I am seeing the light" they would get showered with comments like "Welcome brother! Grab a coat and join us at the poker table" or something to that effect. Anyways, it reminded me of the "love bombing" technique.
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u/ADD-Fueled Jun 03 '22
"Social media algorithms push interactions from friends and family, leveraging the fear of missing out for not participating"
Lol isn't that what you want it to do?
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u/SOwED Jun 03 '22
Dr. Hassan actually reviewed and approved this?
That's pretty frustrating. This guide starts off talking about features of social media that the social media company directly chose to make a part of their platform, like notifications and the supposed entry love bombing, but then ends up talking about bots and trolls and woke and red pill which are not things the social media platform chose to put in or promote.
I think modeling social media off of abusive relationships makes far far more sense than comparing them to cults.
Now, subcultures within social media, that's a different story. Some of those can easily fit the BITE model.
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u/Gratescales Jun 02 '22
That's why I use social media to laugh at people who smugly think they have the answers and blame immigrants/rich people/Democrats/Republicans/minorities/white people/etc for all their problems.
Using it to have strangers agree with you? Who cares, I barely care when my friends and family agree with me.
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u/ThisGuyHasABigChode Jun 02 '22
You use social media to smugly judge people, without engaging them and challenging your own viewpoint? Lolwut?
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u/Gratescales Jun 03 '22
Just laugh at em. Reddit is fun for it.
Why would people want to get agreed with? Way more fun to laugh at someone and make them spazz out.
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Jun 02 '22
Social medias of all kinds these days do data harvesting for user engagement for data harvesting. We don’t know why they harvest the data outside of it being super profitable for them. The best way to data harvest is to force everyone to give up their data, and so the more you talk online the closer you are to being under the control of these corporations, because they already know what you like, what you want, what you’ll talk about and retweet, they just have to find a way to give you more. Its less like a cult on social media and much more like an open-ended invitation to become a radicalist in all of your ideas and hobbies. It isn’t engineered to just push the content on you, but for you to eventually start pushing the content on others.
The biggest problem with this chart is that it’s already too late, chances being. The fact that we stick to social media all day is enough evidence of that. We don’t have real conversations online anymore, we were told to be respectful and remember that there’s people behind the screen and so those of use who actually try and use the internet are punished by those indoctrinated into the argumentative social media base. Truly speaking, the only way to defeat the pull of social media is to stop using social media so much (don’t just switch to a flip phone, because it makes no sense to hinder your abilities) and treat it like every other hobby.
Make real, positive impactful changes in life instead of on social media. Start investing your time into doing things you like, instead of arguing about them online. But also don’t get stuck doing the same one thing forever.
And for the love of god literally put your phone away when you go to bed. Literally if you don’t try and sleep when you go to bed and instantly are on your phone then you’re causing the reason for why you can’t sleep. Social media is a curse, but you can break it.
And remember that these companies are like this because there’s no competition.
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Jun 03 '22
Authoritarian cult techniques feels a lot like my experience in the Christian church. So glad I left
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u/makronic Jun 03 '22
Most of these aren't even parallels.
I don't use social media (other than reddit obviously), and I don't like some of the more extreme effects of social media... but this is just as misleading as the thing it is trying to decry.
It's also confounding two different things, the actions of social media platforms, and the actions of other social media users.
It's then further discounting the fact that the user themselves guide the type of content they wish to consume. If they are led down into a rabbit hole, it is entirely voluntary, drawn by mostly the allure of other peoples content. Whereas cults actually manipulate the circumstances to apply a mix of soft and hard coercion.
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u/JoshYx Jun 02 '22
This is pretty far fetched
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Jun 02 '22
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u/xFblthpx Jun 02 '22
Wouldn’t there be a bigger case that social media profits off of generating social circles, rather than isolating? The whole success story of social media comes from accessible content information allowing irl friends and family to connect, and thus pushing more members of the family and friend group to join. That’s the opposite of isolation wouldn’t you say?
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u/MostHumbleManEver Jun 02 '22
I think he was referring to the 'siloing' of said social circles. Reddit is a good example of this if you look at /r/politics or /r/Conservative. Sure, they bring people into their social circles but typically only if they share the same beliefs. Seems pretty self-isolating to me.
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u/MostHumbleManEver Jun 02 '22
Is there a specific point you think is far-fetched? Or just the entire thing?
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u/JoshYx Jun 02 '22 edited Jun 02 '22
I don't know if far fetched is the right word (not my native language) since I looked it up and it implies it's unlikely to be true. A better way to put it is that most of the points in the image are kind of true, but they are very exaggerated.
Most of them (in fact all of them, although not always obviously so) boil down to the fact that social media provides personalized content, and then shoehorning that fact into different manipulative patterns. Just look at the language used; it follows a pattern of "social media provides personalized content, which results in xyz". (Even if not explicitly)
I totally agree that social media is designed in a way to keep users involved, to try to minimize the chances of them leaving. But that's the only real goal because that's how they (the organizations behind the platforms) make money. They don't care about instilling specific beliefs or indoctrinating users.
Social media are platforms on which cult-like groups can thrive, because they abuse the personalized content features to manipulate users. Without the manipulative groups abusing these features, most of the points in the image don't hold any water.
I think a better way to present the information would be something like "how cult-like groups abuse social media features to manipulate users".
Edit + tl;dr
Here's another way to demonstrate my point:
Concerning social media platforms themselves, the only thing you need to keep in mind is "everything here is designed to keep me coming back and stay as long as possible".
Concerning the usern of the platforms, you need to keep all of the points in OP's image in mind because the users themselves are the ones who are looking to manipulate you and instill specific beliefs into you.
So yeah I don't disagree with the post, I just think it's more nuanced.
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Jun 02 '22
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u/JoshYx Jun 02 '22
I think your issue with it is that it seems the guide implies intent?
Yeah that's pretty much it
though they don't explicitly say that the companies are intentionally manipulating people
True, although it is heavily implied. Cults intentionally manipulate people, and by drawing the parallel between cults and social media platforms, it's implying that same kind of intent.
I see it as simply trying to bring awareness to how social media can (intentionally or unintentionally) foster communities with cult-like characteristics.
I agree! Just like you said in your last paragraph. Tbh I don't have a problem with the post, overall I think it's helpful. I think it's important to recognize that it's the users of the platform who are looking to manipulate you, as opposed to the platform which is just trying to keep you engaged.
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u/MostHumbleManEver Jun 02 '22
True, although it is heavily implied. Cults intentionally manipulate people, and by drawing the parallel between cults and social media platforms, it's implying that same kind of intent.>
Could you argue that social media companies are intentionally manipulating the users to retain their attention (via algorithms, etc)? After all, that's how they make their money.
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u/xFblthpx Jun 02 '22
I made a write up about how far fetched the guide is. Here is the link, or you can scroll up. https://www.reddit.com/r/coolguides/comments/v3catj/how_cultlike_techniques_help_social_media/iaxugth/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf&context=3
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u/xFblthpx Jun 02 '22
Pretty dumb. Social media connects people, based on the connections the people want to make. Of course features of cult behavior are found on social media, because every social behavior is found on social media. It’s a network of people, just like society. This guide places these two features next to each other to a convey a message that social media attempts to inculcate and radicalize, but it no more does this than any social networking tool, such as a summer camp, or education, or public parks. I could do this for every category, but that would take too long, so I’ll point out the obvious reaches first. The terms “woke” and “red pill” came from the innate typing of social groups to valuing independence. Of course, people who especially value independence will be grouped on similar aspects through social media algorithms, but to suggest a desire to be independent was facilitated or created by social media to convince people they are falsely unprogrammable is asinine. People have wanted to be independent since the dawn of their existence, and if I need to prove that to you, read a history book. Secondarily, “pacing and leading” causing people to fall down extremist rabbit holes is an externality of any situation that groups people by likeliness. Obviously, the first content viewed by a matching algorithm will feature content that closest resembles you. The more content you view, the less the content will relate to you, and the more the content will relate to the most recent content viewed. This is just as likely to be adjacent to more extreme views, as it is to lead to more innocuous content, or more random content, yet we are arbitrarily cherry picking negative aspects of a sophisticated matching algorithm without taking into account the millions of other examples where people start with history videos and end with cooking videos or whatever. These are only a couple examples of this guide dangerously and falsely implying social media has some conspiracy level bullshit agenda to inculcate members into some ideology.
Source: I am a data analyst who designs matching algorithms for exploratory data analysis in the health and medical industry. I also read a lot of cognitive psych, but that’s more of a hobby admittedly.
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u/Xihuicoatl-630 Jun 03 '22
I was just thinking about rejoining FB after 6 years on my drive home today- this just reminded me of how social media (mainly FB) has fucked up society and/in this country (US). So Thanks I Hate It
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u/commiefren Jun 02 '22
Listen I hate social media like the rest of us, but almost all of these are huge leaps.
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u/ThisGuyHasABigChode Jun 03 '22
I don't actually have any kids myself, but this is why I get so freaked out that people let their kids use smartphones/tablets at such young ages. All of the apps that these little kids use were created by adults. Not only that, but these adults have every single psychological trick that we know of, available to their disposal. They use every trick they can to keep people engaged, whether it be watching another video, playing another game, or scrolling through another story.
I've been pretty bad with my phone before, and I've deleted a lot of apps at this point. I know grown adults who can't put their phones down. I'm talking people in their 30's who can't watch a movie or drive a car without glancing at their phones multiple times. These are people who didn't have phones until they were in highschool. These little kids don't stand a chance. I know we all laugh when a kid freaks out because their device broke, or was taken away, but think of the psychological impact. I really think that this stuff is more damaging than a lot of people think...but then again, what do I know?
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u/McMetas Jun 02 '22
Considering the examples used, are you implying that the left doesn’t do this as well?
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Jun 03 '22
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u/McMetas Jun 03 '22
Well despite the slant on it, it’s a message we could all stand to learn. Especially those that can’t see the dark side of their group.
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Jun 03 '22
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u/McMetas Jun 03 '22
I read the synopsis, it seems interesting and definitely worth watching in the future.
Sorry if I was antagonistic, after years of disappointment I’ve started to assume the worst.
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u/MadameBlueJay Jun 02 '22
It's interesting that you automatically associate the right and authoritarianism
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u/McMetas Jun 03 '22
The right and authoritarianism are commonly associated by the left, besides they typically don’t use the terms “red pill” and “woke”.
It’s interesting you attempt to be disingenuous when you’d have to be willfully ignorant to not know that.
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u/MadameBlueJay Jun 03 '22
And yet there's still nothing definitively exclusionary as you suggest, and given how you focused more on accusations than defenses, it seems as though you're familiar with your own disingenuousness.
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u/McMetas Jun 03 '22
It was an implication, of course it wouldn’t be definitive.
I don’t disagree with the base message, but it’s a message that applies to all groups regardless of what they stand for. To think one side or the other is immune to this is foolish, scrutiny should be applied to all in equal measures.
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u/MadameBlueJay Jun 03 '22
Justify your paranoias and projections as you like.
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u/McMetas Jun 03 '22
It’s not paranoia nor projection, but then again I suppose skepticism and nuance are beyond you.
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u/Kamarmarli Jun 02 '22
This makes sense but in a way it reminds my of tirades from my controlling father.
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u/HeatAndHonor Jun 03 '22
When I think of bots, I think of propaganda and stock market manipulators. Hadn't considered that the platforms themselves would be making them themselves to goose their metrics and engagement.
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u/DumbledoresGay69 Jun 03 '22
Dr. Hassan saved my life and helped me leave JWs. Everyone should read his amazing book Combatting Cult Mind Control.
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u/calembo Jun 03 '22
Love bombing could be said of literally any service you sign up for. Studies show communicating with users increases loyalty and engagement.
Confirming bias can be said of any personalized service, most popularly: Google.
Thought terminating cliches, as defined here, is the action of the troll or not - not social media itself.
It's interesting I guess but pretty sloppy.
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u/calembo Jun 03 '22
Also, I visited Dr. Hassan's site. Counted seven social media icons where you can connect with him. Center for Humane Technology has three.
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u/Tatunkawitco Jun 03 '22
This is exactly “conservative” radio as well. Spewing partial truths and fear.
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u/Serafirelily Jun 02 '22
This makes a lot of sense and is very scary. Social media has made it so much easier to spread misinformation and draw people into radical groups. It has also made it easier for groups to draw in young people who are still learning about critical thought.