Yes, I can give some suggestions even though there’s zero chance anybody will listen to them.
Rule #1.
If you catch a source in a lie, never access it again.
Examples: “police officers were killed on J6”, “children are at the same risk from COVID as elderly people”, “COVID didn’t come from a lab.” Now that we know that these were not mistakes but lies and were spread by people who knew these were lies, there’s no excuse ever to listen to these information outlets again.
Rule #2.
If you hear the same turn of phrase repeated by different people verbatim, it’s propaganda. Avoid anybody who uses these ready-made phrases and never trust them about anything.
Examples: “walking us straight into WWIII”, “Russia wasn’t going to tolerate NATO military bases on its doorstep”, “CIA organized color revolutions”, etc.
These are good, simple rules that people could use to avoid getting duped. But they won’t. Emotional dysregulation feels good. It’s destructive but it’s very enjoyable in the process. These propagandistic lies are like heroin. They soothe and lower anxiety. People will come again and again to get their hit.
This is a completely bipartisan affliction. Self-indulgent, undisciplined behavior is the norm. It’s normalized because people who indulge in it are easy to dupe, deprive, control, lock up, and rob. And it’s hard to argue that they don’t deserve it if they can’t get their emotions under control enough not to repeat every slogan they are fed.
Clarissa's Blog 
OT: Not so much for you, but for others who still harbor illusions about russia….
Surkov gave an interview with a French newspaper. For those who don’t know, he was one of (maybe the) architect of putin’s russia (could say a lot more, but…. I’m still digesting dinner and don’t want to disturb that).
While he does mention ‘western backed coups’ his only mention of NATO is completely neutral and has nothing to do with the motivations for the invasion which are tied to….
People should just read it for themselves.
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Thank you, cliff. A fascinating interview.
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I was going to post this a couple of days ago but I didn’t because normal people already know while the “NATO expansion” crowd is unpersuadable. There’s absolutely no evidence you can adduce to sway them. They are the equivalent of the people who are still getting COVID boosters and wearing masks. I feel bad for them because this is evidence of being confused and terrified by the complexity of modern life.
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“normal people already know”
I really don’t think they do… Even where I am, where no one trusts russia and people think in terms of ‘when’ and not ‘if’ regarding russian military aggression… most people don’t realize there is a kind of consistent world view behind what russia does.
I also didn’t mention (and most people don’t know) that Surkov is also one of the architects of information chaos that characterizes so much online content. A person could say the style was invented independently but he was behind a concerted effort to make truth difficult or impossible to discern for most people.
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Surkov is brilliant and he’s definitely the person who engineered the strategy that bamboozled the Tucker Carlson wing of the GOP. Tucker himself is likely being blackmailed, of course. I’m speaking more about the entire group of “NATO expansion” whisperers.
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oops I forgot the link:
https://www.lexpress.fr/monde/europe/exclusive-vladislav-sourkov-the-kremlins-wizard-russia-will-expand-in-all-directions-as-far-as-god-WWIE5OJMPVHJ5KTTAHNLE4WPME/
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“If you catch a source in a lie, never access it again.“
This is a big one for me. It’s why those Community Notes on X are so useful; it basically outs the liars immediately and make it easy to block them permanently.
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It happened to me several times that I liked something but then received a community note that it was fake. They are really helpful because nobody is so special that they can’t get snagged on a lie. The difference is that some people learn from it while others don’t.
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“why those Community Notes on X are so useful”
I don’t necessarily completely trust those either. Is there some kind of vetting process for them?
It’s a useful idea but I want to know how they get there.
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I admit I’m too much of an information junkie to simply ignore sources that lie. But I’m probably better at most people at maintaining information…. neutrality.
That is, I treat most information…. in a meta style: If a source says Jesse Schmuckface was caught in a sεχ party with zebras I don’t process: Schmuckface was sεχing zebras! I process: Source X says…
There are lots of sources I neither believe nor dis-believe but simply note what they say. If it’s something I care about I try to cross check with different sources. If that’s too hard I discard the information.
And I don’t believe _any_ source is ‘objective’. They all have agendas and I try to know what the agenda is and interpret what they say in light of that.
It’s not for everybody but it works for me.
“Emotional dysregulation”
The way I put it is: There are few, if any, more addictive emotional responses than self-righteous anger. Knowing that makes me sensitive to and skeptical of people trying to push my outrage buttons.
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I still can’t get over how some stupid bimbo that tweets as Peachy Keenan posted a fake about how Obama and Harris called Zelensky on his flight to the US to tell him to be tough during the WH meeting. Like some two-bit broad who wouldn’t fetch a tenner at a truck stop would know about such phone calls.
She immediately confessed that she invented this. But guess what? Last week somebody with a PhD in STEM actually told me this story like it’s true.
I just can’t get over it. Some nobody Twitter anon housewife comes up with something majorly stupid and people repeat it as fact. It’s unbelievable how gullible people are. That’s why they accumulate hundreds of thousands in credit card debt. They are completely stupid.
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“Some nobody Twitter anon housewife comes up with something majorly stupid”
I can’t understand why/how people take such sources seriously… I mean a fair amount of the accounts I follow are personal accounts of private people I find funny or intriguing or insightful but I’d never mistake anything they post as news….
But then I remember the Syrian ‘lesbian’ blogger who ended up being rando American guy or donbass devushka (american former navy person…)
So many people fall for such obvious scams… the information equivalent of Nigerian scam letters….
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Opinions are great. I love reading opinions of regular people. But if somebody lays claims to having heard Obama’s phone calls, then I’m sorry, I need major confirmation that this is somebody who’s in the room when Obama makes phone calls. How do people not ask themselves where such information can possibly come from? I honestly just can’t even.
These people deserve to be eaten alive by neoliberalism.
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I also want people to notice how frequently this kind of propaganda is invented and spread by women who have absolutely nothing to do with their lives. Bored, gossipy women who are treated like information deities by people who screech endlessly about trad lifestyles. It’s pathetic.
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I like this heuristic in principle but in practice, I think this will filter out every news source on the planet. Can you give examples of some sources that pass this test?
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“Surkov is brilliant and he’s definitely the person who engineered the strategy that bamboozled the Tucker Carlson wing of the GOP.“
Russia really does have a long-established tradition of propaganda, going back to well before the Soviet Union.
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In case anybody needed an example of the right-wing social-media version:
https://notthebee.com/article/right-wing-accounts-got-caught-shilling-for-pop-not-soda-companies-over-the-weekend
right or left, if they’re all saying the same thing at once, *they’re getting paid to* and they are shills.
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