I’ve started a series on instagram called “From The Conspiracy Theorist’s Bookshelf.” That’s Apophenia in a nutshell – you’ve got a lot of books on conspiracy theories, and aim to synthesize the patterns into digestible bites.
Propaganda: “information, ideas, opinions, or images, often only giving one part of an argument, that are broadcast, published, or in some other way spread with the intention of influencing people’s opinions.” – Cambridge Dictionary
Propaganda is the tool that makes hiding true conspiracies possible. It’s often noted that the phrase “conspiracy theory” was popularized as a pejorative to imply someone wasn’t skeptical enough, was easily bamboozled, or otherwise generally gullible. But conspiracy has meaning in law, and it’s ridiculous to think that conspiracies don’t happen. A lot.
The phrase conspiracy theory often means: when the government makes it legal, through loopholes or other means, to act in a morally wrong way and against the will of its general populous.
The continuum: One of my projects this year is a deep dive into marketing and messaging. Useful to know, and because effective messaging is a core component of propaganda.
Advertising: “the business of trying to persuade people to buy products or services.” – Cambridge Dictionary
Marketing: “the work of advertising and offering goods or services for sale.” – Cambridge Dictionary
A theme of Apophenia Gold is the inability of many to recognize propaganda. Apophenia smells it as lies, and sees it as dirty colors, and works to explain the mechanism through The Journal for Apophenic Research.
Recognizing propaganda techniques makes one less susceptible to their charms.
Additional New Things
Successfully re-recorded the Prelude and Chapter 1 as a 45 minute audio file. It’s on the front page and here. Enjoy.
Determined it was possible to export a good looking kindle book from Scrivener. (Writers, Scrivener is literally the best writing program I could hope for. No more need to go into Indesign or heavier programs for publish-ready output. It’s a dream!)
Prelude and Chapter 1 as a PDF are here. (Soon, I’ll be adding the entire book to Amazon, but in the interim…)
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