Using intentional 'mistakes' to increase press coverage

2009-02-03T04:10:00.000-08:00

A vulnerability exists in many critically-minded individuals that allows others to exploit their critical nature to spread propaganda. An attacker who successfully exploited this vulnerability could take partial control of an affected mind.

The mind patch:

The attacker intentionally makes some kind of mistake or gaff while delivering a message they want to be distributed widely. Individuals who exhibit excessive pride in their capacity for critical thought enthusiastically point out the error to one another, laughing at the apparent stupidity of the attacker while inadvertently and uncritically spreading the attacker's desired message as part of the story.

It is difficult to detect when this is done intentionally, but if that was the intention of the Bush administration, it worked rather well to focus criticism on Bush's linguistic quirks rather than substantive issues of policy.

A probably unintentional example from British politics involved the then leader of the Liberal Democrat Party, Charles Kennedy who failed to remember a specific detail of his own party's tax policy at a press conference, a failing he blamed on lack of sleep after the birth of his new baby. His embarrassment was widely reported in the media following the incident along with the details that he failed to remember, thus helping to sell the benefits of his party's tax policy to a wider audience.

The mind patch in bus slogan format:

Compromises from extreme positions

2009-01-29T13:54:00.000-08:00

A vulnerability exists in certain people that allows others to walk all over them by convincing them that they are getting a good deal when they're in fact not. An attacker who successfully exploited this vulnerability could take partial control of an affected mind.

The mind patch:

The patch requires individuals to generalise from their experience of negotiating with street sellers to the way the government negotiates with the public. A street seller will deliberately offer initially inflated prices for their goods only to reduce them so as to give customers the feeling that they are getting a good deal even if the seller never expected to succeed at the initial asking price. A customer may come to believe they are getting a good deal, but the price won't necessarily be any lower than the market value of the goods in question.

The same principle applies when a government is 'selling' what it anticipates will be an unpopular policy. The government can initially present a more extreme version of the policy than the version it intends to implement, then after those who lead opposition to the policy expend a significant amount of effort with protests and other forms of grass roots activism, the government can offer a compromise position, which is secretly the version it intended to implement in the first place. With an offer of compromise, the opposition will feel it has achieved a victory and with an enormous amount of effort expended to get this far, the impetus to fight on for what may be a fairer deal will be weakened beyond what it would have been if the 'compromise' version of the policy had been introduced at the outset.

The mind patch in bus slogan format:

Mind Patches

Using intentional 'mistakes' to increase press coverage

Compromises from extreme positions