#fractalsays

Because see, what we were doing was learning what makes something propaganda. We were looking at historical propaganda campaigns, and we were drawing parallels between them. We were, in short, learning to notice propaganda, and that knowledge is so, so important. So I am going to do a case study here. It’s one I’ve been wanting to do for a while, because the amount of propagandic rhetoric I see bouncing around is rising and rising and I want to explain how to see it.

I was riding a bus recently, late at night, staring vaguely at nothing, but as I looked around a little sticker across the aisle caught my eye. Israel murders children, it said, in big, bold Sharpie. Plastered on the wall of a public bus.

Well, dang, I thought.

This sticker, and every Instagram, Tumblr, or TikTok post that has said that same thing, is propaganda. Even setting aside the specifically antisemitic blood libel vibes (which are a huge part of this conversation), it is, in fact, one of the simplest and most overused propagandic messages in history. It is also incredibly effective. Because one of the things we were taught, in my propaganda class, is that one of the most effective messages for getting people to fall in line behind you is they’re coming for our children. Hands down among the most common and successful propaganda throughout history, right up there with they will destroy our culture and they will dishonor our women.

But, you say, but how can it be propaganda if it’s true? Israel has killed children in this war (as have all sides in all wars ever). How can it be propaganda to advocate for the safety of children? And that’s a hard question, but the assumption that it’s impossible is exactly why the propaganda works. So why is this sticker propaganda?

The main reason I would point to is wording. It is written as a sharp, short, and emotionally aggressive tagline. The word murder is a deeply loaded one, and its use here is designed to shut down any discussion. You read it and you feel sad, scared, angry. Next time you hear someone say Israel you hear this phrase, unbidden, in the back of your mind. It’s an unforgivable accusation. It primes you to believe the worst about the accused, no matter the context. It is made to get you on the side of the writer, and aim you at their enemy. That is propaganda.

It is possible to talk about the death of children in wartime without falling into the trap of propaganda. It’s just unfortunately very difficult to do in a meme, a tiktok, or a sticker on the bus. All these short- form content styles require the quickest, most enthralling version of whatever they are saying, and on topics like this that usually tumbles into propaganda-speak incredibly quickly. So next time you see something like this, consider what it’s trying to make you do. Is it thoughtful, calm language, trying to make you more informed? Or is it sharp, pithy, and feels like it’s trying to convince you to side with it against some dangerous Other? Because if it’s the second, chances are high you are running into propaganda.

So I want to try something. An experiment, if you will, to see how many people actually see a given post. For science. And for the little gremlin in me who likes experiments and numbers and statistics and wants new experiments and numbers and statistics to play with.

But. I almost immediately discovered whole new openings for talking about LLMs with those many people in my life who use them a lot. Who ask ChatGPT questions all the time, have it draft things for them, etc etc. And yeah, I already had reasons to dislike chatgpt before this. But these are people where if I say "it steals people's work", they're like "well but...it's already done so who cares." If I say "I don't want to lose the skills I have at researching/writing/thinking by outsourcing it to AI" they'll often agree, "yeah, i'm worse at writing than I used to be...but it's so fast and I don't wanna go back".

But if I say "yeah I didn't really like using the chatbot for this task, it felt kind of patronizing", they say "yeah it's so obnoxious when it does that!" If I say "it felt like to get good results I had to do all the hard planning stuff and then outsource the fun part" they say "yeah I noticed that when we were working on this too!" If I say "it kept making mistakes but I had to notice them" they're like "yeah you're right!"

my mother does not know. she thinks. for a very long time. i am dying extremely visibly. my brother is laughing at me. he already looked at the answer and he knows. i am chewing on my necklace. my mother thinks. my family can see my pain. i am certain that my reaction will have given away the answer, yet i am physically unable to dial it back. my mother sighs.

"MySpace?"