Rat in a Cage by dreamtrove

REAL WORLD EVENT DISCUSSIONS

Rat in a Cage

POSTED BY: DREAMTROVE
UPDATED: Saturday, December 4, 2010 14:27
SHORT URL:
VIEWED: 1827
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Thursday, December 2, 2010 7:19 AM

Okay, this has been bothering me for a while, and I thought maybe I could get some commentary from folks more psychologically astute than myself:

There's a growing design on the internet for sites that are constructed with a psychological trick:

First, there's an item that you linked to or searched on, a video, a story, how to, humor piece, stuff to buy, etc.

Second, there's a column of "more things you might like" that are related to the first. Usually there are half a dozen to a dozen options.

Third, the selections are randomly chosen from similar items, so if you reload the page, your suggestions change like they do on ebay or amazon.

Fourth, the small selection of items is large enough that there is always one or two items you would be interested in, depending on the size of the list and the accuracy of the targeting, but it appears to be designed so the each item would generate, on average, two new items of interest.

Fifth, the random items are drawn from a near infinite pool, the size of say, the total list of wikipedia entries, so it would be impossible for you to search them all.

So, as a rat, I walk into this cage, and I see there's a piece of cheese, that's how I got here. Now I'm in. I could easily walk out again, but I see another piece of cheese in each of the two adjoining cages/pages.

If I open the two pages, I can close the first. But there there's just more cheese to be had. I can't come back tomorrow, that cheese will be gone. So I have to get that cheese now. So, Now I have four windows open.

Before I know it, I have been there for a couple hours and have forty windows open.

Now this has happened to me maybe three times, and each time I think "won't go back to that site again" but then it will recur in some other format. I think "Surely you're not this stupid... but hey, look! Cheese! Yummy...."

What is going on and how does one defend oneself against the random multi-cheese manipulation?

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Thursday, December 2, 2010 7:58 AM

FREMDFIRMA

Simple - they can't pull a trigger they can't reach.

BLOCK that shit, Go Mozilla with AdBlock, Scriptblock and FlashBlock - and start cutting that shit off, Iframes, Banners, Overlays, all of it, especially since a hefty percentage of it is Malware-feeders anyways.

As for sites that offer a postage stamps worth of content surrounded by fifty million ads (lookin at YOU, Cracked) on each page, and twenty pages when if they had the decency to offer it in straight text it'd be only one - block the SITE entire.

Mostly when I am on the net, I want text information, and only begrudgingly use PDF for the obvious reasons that most legal documents are - and an open-source reader cause Adobe bloatware just plain sucks and is a massive security risk.

I will tolerate video only if video is fundamentally necessary to convey the information.

It's YOUR computer, it's YOUR hardware, you have every right to determine what is run on it, and the idea that some giggling malware-associated advertiser, or the site playing footsie with em, has some kinda divine right to chew up ten times the bandwidth their site should use, when that is YOUR bandwidth that YOU paid for, that they got some kinda right to run THEIR scripts on YOUR hardware, which YOU pair for...

Fuck em, IMHO that's trespassing, and technically under many updated law codes, it's a Felony Crime besides - not that anyone would ever take em to task for it since there's so much money involved.

You wanna drop the hammer good though ?
Outlaw pay-per-click.
99% of that bullshit will stop almost instantly.

-Frem

I do not serve the Blind God.

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Thursday, December 2, 2010 3:55 PM

DREAMTROVE

Frem,

Thanks, but I think I need to restate the question. I'm not particularly concerned about my usage of my machine, I use the mac right now because it's a little more convenient than linux, or should I say, than other linux machines, because really snow leopard is linux. I know because I've looked under the hood, and apple is hiding this more than Google is hiding that android is also just a linux distro.

But I've been caught by the mechanism a few times myself, so it seems pretty clear to me that this is a well designed psych trap.

If we can track back to intellectual self defense, there has to be some sort of way to prepare the viewer for control over the manipulative system above, and others like it, such as WoW, etc. I'm thinking that millions of people will spend much of their lives clicking...

Obviously a straight site would provide its information in some permalink collapsable hierarchy and allow you an internal bookmarking system for the site. Some sites do that to some extent, though no one is really doing it well. They're falling back on subliminal manipulation because all they're looking at is hit counts, and they aren't noticing how much I hate the site. It's just like game players today hate their addictive games.

Every piece of the puzzle above is necessary for the trap. Wikipedia doesn't do it, because, even though it's not an ideal straight design, it doesn't have the randomization factor.

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Thursday, December 2, 2010 5:00 PM

DREAMTROVE

Actually, pay per impression. If the model is to keep you churning entries on the same site, then it's the impression ads that are feeding that mechanism.

But I think more this is coming from the bread and circuses crowd that is creating incentives for video games to be addictive. Figure that until we make our own microstates we won't be able to set the rules of payment, and maybe not even then, for the internet, we need a form of self defense or two. I was sort of fishing for some psychological analysis of the design, and maybe things we could to make ourselves more aware of this sort of manipulation before hoards of lemmings spend all day clicking on cracked.com or whatever.

In terms of a technological solution, one could build spiders that crawled websites filled with randomized infinite content, like youtube, and make an indexed form that sane people could access.

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Thursday, December 2, 2010 5:17 PM

CANTTAKESKY

Quote:
Originally posted by dreamtrove:
I was sort of fishing for some psychological analysis of the design, and maybe things we could to make ourselves more aware of this sort of manipulation before hoards of lemmings spend all day clicking on cracked.com or whatever.

Sorry, dude. I got nothing useful to say on this front.

I like clicking on Cracked.com. If I have the time, I'll click and read for hours. I don't ever have 40 windows open though. I finish the first article, then click on the next. One window at a time.

If I don't enjoy it, I stop clicking. Same thing with Amazon and other similar sites. I don't seem to experience it the same way you do, I guess.

--Can't Take (my gorram) Sky

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Thursday, December 2, 2010 5:29 PM

FREMDFIRMA

I dunno, I guess I gotta think about that one a bit...

I *will* tell you it don't work on me, and you know what ?
I'd lay good money they don't work on Mikey neither, seems in some folk there's this natural level of suspicion and contrary which causes them to instantly question motive at a level below conscious reflex, and causes actual anger at attempted double-speak like "Clean Air Act" and "Healthy Forests Initiative"...

So whenever some psych-manipulation advert comes our way, there's this reflex backlash and if it's annoying enough, a mental post-note to blacklist or boycott the product as well.

Still, cutting off the scripting, flash, and I-frames and what not is a good idea nonetheless, cause that shit eats bandwidth and puts a drag on your machine, and is bloody annoying anyhow.

ETA: Although we all have our weaknesses, Mikey could be baited with Car-porn and honda configurations, and me... wellllll...
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TVTropesWillRuinYourLife
*laughs*

-Frem

I do not serve the Blind God.

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Thursday, December 2, 2010 5:51 PM

DREAMTROVE

Quote:
CTS: If I have the time, I'll click and read for hours.

Then its working. Think harder ;)

Frem

Quote:

So whenever some psych-manipulation advert comes our way, there's this reflex backlash and if it's annoying enough, a mental post-note to blacklist or boycott the product as well.

Oh yes, no doubt about that. But remember in psych-self defense they said "The players don't even enjoy the games, in fact, they may come to hate the games."

It's just like the legality if a disposable shell corporation: Who cares, the corporation is disposable, but the *tactic* is reusable.

Same here. I didn't recognize the tactic when it reappeared on another site in another form.

I felt pretty smart that I could extract it and distill it here, 'cause this is a trick that I just know some group of behavioral psychologists came up with, and it was in some industry journal or whatever, and then it just showed up all over the place, 'cause otherwise? Youtube would be all hierarchical collapsed thread sorted by post date or something, not a list of random recommendation links. Netflix is another one. But it's not as advanced. If you keep searching the web you'll find more advanced models of this one, but too advanced, and yeah, you shut down and leave the site.

It's a crack monkey trick, and the smart sites are the ones that have just a little crack money, enough to get you from one page to one other page on average.

My point on 40 windows is if they have "Two other pages" linked of interest. See, now they should be scaling back on their number of recommendations, because you hit too many, and if that leads to 40 windows open, then it's a sure thing you're not going back to the site.

But this is happening on a lower level, subtly, tracking us into consuming a new kind of "content push." Instead of literal push, we are being lured in. But it doesn't go full crack monkey until the recommendations are both
a) randomized
and
b) drawing from an infinite pool

But yes, a car site, or a weapons site or any site could be designed with this mechanism.

It's not a type of site. It's a type of tactic, and it can be morphed so you don't automatically recognize it unless someone has spelled it out as I just did.

I'm sure I have as much of an orwellian doublespeak detector as the next guy, but this is a trick, and I'm guessing it's just one subliminal tool in an arsenal that is building of how to lock in your audience... forever.

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Friday, December 3, 2010 2:04 AM

CANTTAKESKY

Quote:
Originally posted by dreamtrove:
Then its working. Think harder ;)

Sure it's working. The thing is, I see it as a convenient service, I want it to work.

Take a look at this article. Yes, it's from Cracked.

Five ways to trick you into buying crap:
http://www.cracked.com/article_18805_5-ways-stores-use-science-to-tric
k-you-into-buying-crap.html

What do they all have in common? They identify two things:

1. What most people want
2. Where most people are weak and vulnerable

And then they exploit the hell out of it.

When I go to the store, I like walking in a counter clockwise path and end up with something shiny priced $1.99, that comes with a dopamine rush. Yeah, it works. But I don't mind. It's an entertaining experience worth $1.99. :)

When I click the links I like, I want it to lead to something I enjoy. Most of the time, on Cracked, I am not disappointed. So no complaints from me.

--Can't Take (my gorram) Sky

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Friday, December 3, 2010 3:26 AM

DREAMTROVE

CTS

Nah, I think you're still missing it. All of these components above are necessary for this trick.

1. The entertaining content.

2. Links to targeted related links.

3. Randomizing suggestions so that it is impossible to return to the same set of suggestions again if you don't click now

4. Drawing suggestions from an infinite pool that has no easy browsing mechanism which would allow you to get to those items in an easy accessible way.

3 and 4 can't possibly be valuable services.

Randomizing suggestions is clearly a manipulation. This is straight from the skinner box.

Limiting your navigational options by not giving you a straight down accessible hierarchy and removing the track back possibilities is geared to prevent you from leaving.

This is the same sort of thing as the video games designed to make you not want to quit. I recognized this when I was enjoying the content on sites while beginning to feel a deep down hatred of the site because it was keeping me from my work. The first site I noticed this sort of structure on was youtube, but I've seen it several times since then, and in various degrees of advancement.

Notice they carefully balance the ratio of suggestions. And my first post, I think I said 2 for 1, but no, 1 for 1 is the goal, 2 successful links for 1 is a mistake, then you're trapped and end up hating the site. 0.5 for one and you leave the site. 1 for 1 and you're a happy little crackmonkey.

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Friday, December 3, 2010 4:18 AM

DREAMTROVE

Separate post for the link. And thanks. I like this stuff. If there were a site where...

Okay, seriously.

#5.

Yes, and no. It's curious to me that psychologists can get fairly obvious things wrong. If the produce were on the right in 70% of the stores where people were testing, they'd find the same thing.

I've actually studied this one a lot myself. There are basically three migration patterns:

a) The straight line. If nothing distracts humans, they move in a straight line. If the store expands in both directions, this will be an inefficient means of browsing, but they'll do it anyway. If they do anything else, it's because they've *thought* about it.

b) healthy people move towards the produce. There's probably some influence on people that they see all the pretty people headed for the good food, but not a lot. Trailer cows still migrate towards the junk. I think that this comes from a recognition of "Food." If you're used to eating actual food, the produce section looks like food. If you're used to food coming pre-prepared in boxes, then junk looks like food. About 1/4 of stores have produce on the left, and healthy people start left in these cases, so I'm not sure that this is some sort of right handed default, they might just be selecting produce first. I know I do, and I know it was a conscious decision to do so. If I don't, I end up with a cart full of junk.

c) it's possible I'm wrong about this, but I think that most stores I go to I see food laid out in a reliable random access format, and people go whichever way the produce is, and not sheeplike. Sure, they spend more time at checkout, because there's a line there. The only flaw is that food is not in a completely predictable location, and sometimes they move stuff, probably because of studies like this one, and you have to read the signs, or more likely, ask the staff.

So, okay, people may move in predictable patterns, but I'm not sure they nailed this one.

#4

People like shiny things. Okay. I think this one works better in the city, where there are more shiny things. I have to say, if someone engineered Walmart to be shiny, they blew it.

Interesting though. Actually, we need water to survive. And it's shiny. So it the sun.

We also see red much easier, that probably makes us not bleed to death.

Interesting psychological effect: I'm feeling argumentative towards this article because I didn't buy the premise of his first point, that we shop to the right. Some stores here have produce on the left, and people go left. Very readily too, not really any kind of will to head right.

#3

I noticed also, a long time ago, horny people buy more. If you're not horny, you're not really inclined to buy.

#2

lol. I do it myself. You can undercut a competitor at $32 by going with $29, and people it much more than they bought the thing at $32 over the $35 one.

Humans, like rabbits, can count up to four or five.

#1

"Even the Apple fanboys"

lol. Jobs should go into advertising.

I remember in the early days of Apple all of these stories were circulated by Apple to show how grass rootsy down home they were. It didn't take long to see that it was all a myth and they were nasty corporate predators, perhaps the nastiest in the industry (He types on his mac) But they do make a good product. The thing is, windows make a sucky product, which creates anti-brand. You look at a new windows machine and you don't think "Hey, this machine will run more free software than anything else out there!" You think "Oh, these are the guys who deleted all my data and made me spend three days getting rid of spyware!"

This study paid for by Pepsi? My mom always buys Pepsi. I think there's a trick here that people missed:

Okay, Pepsi is a cheap rip off of Coke c. 1890, about 4 years after Coke, and is a lot more evil, being always on the list of companies supporting anything NWO like the CFR, and Coke is probably really the Mormon Church in spite of what they claim.

But there's another trick here:

So which are you a Mets person, or a Yankees person?

What am I implying? That you like New York Baselball. Some people who back out of this one with the Dodgers, or even a non-NY related team like the Red Sox will still be falling for the assumption that they like the rather boring sport of baseball, and even outside that, that they like American sport, or sports at all. I've found people to fall for this on in layers: If they really *do* like sports, they're more likely to fall for the assumption that they like NY Baseball, even if they're not a big baseball fan, and if they don't like sports, they'll still fall for the outer layer assumptions that they like sports.

The Pepsi Challenge assumes that you like Cola, which is pretty remarkable if you've ever actually tasted cola berries. There's so much damn sweetener in the stuff because it's inedible.

This is probably part of why it works: It's a way to get you to consume more sugar than you would normally be able to tolerate. But I'll bet if they went back to the old cocaine-based Coca Cola, that it would win that dopamine contest.

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Friday, December 3, 2010 4:25 AM

AURAPTOR

America loves a winner!

Quote:
Originally posted by dreamtrove:

What is going on and how does one defend oneself against the random multi-cheese manipulation?

What's going on here is that advertisers and web designers are trying to figure out the best way to make more $$ of the internet.

No dark, sinister plan here. Just evolution on the web.

" I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend. "

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Friday, December 3, 2010 8:08 AM

DREAMTROVE

Rap

I get that. Not looking for a conspiracy theory here. The point here was psychoanalysis. The nature of addictive websites. Earlier there was a thread on the nature of addictive video games. I don't recall anyone saying that they were about MKULTRA mind control for the new sleeper agent cell of Manchurian Candidates. Okay, maybe one guy

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Friday, December 3, 2010 8:12 AM

CANTTAKESKY

Quote:
Originally posted by dreamtrove:
Nah, I think you're still missing it.

Apparently.

I don't have a problem walking away from Amazon or YouTube or Cracked or whatever. I don't feel I am going to miss some wonderful link I'll never see again unless I click now. I don't have walking-away-remorse. So I don't end up hating the site for sucking up my time and feeling a staying-too-long remorse.

Sorry I don't know how to help here.

--Can't Take (my gorram) Sky

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Friday, December 3, 2010 8:14 AM

CANTTAKESKY

Quote:
Originally posted by dreamtrove:
The nature of addictive websites.

I would imagine the mechanism is very similar to shopping addiction and gambling addiction. They are exploiting the fear of missed opportunities.

Apparently, I don't have that fear.

--Can't Take (my gorram) Sky

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Friday, December 3, 2010 12:07 PM

DREAMTROVE

Quote:
They are exploiting the fear of missed opportunities.

Yes, that's part of the puzzle. I think we all have that fear, it's just the opportunities have to be the right ones to trigger it.

False sense of security of the existence of opportunities has led me astray many a time as well. Some sort of realism about what opportunities are, and how stable they are is probably part of the defense.

Did you watch the video on intellectual self defense? Did you post it? I don't remember who posted it. I think this is a similar sort of thing to the video game one. It's more complex than this one piece, but this is a piece of it.

I think we can expect to see more psychological snare tactics on websites...

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Friday, December 3, 2010 8:02 PM

ANTHONYT

Freedom is Important because People are Important

Hello,

I have not been caught in this trap. Either my interests must be too narrow, or I must have an aversion to advertising.

Or both.

As a shopper, I generally know what I'm looking for. I don't loiter unless I'm waiting for someone else to finish up. It's in and out as quick as I can. I almost never make an 'impulse' buy. I think that must carry over to online advertisements.

--Anthony

Assured by friends that the signal-to-noise ratio has improved on this forum, I have disabled web filtering.

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Friday, December 3, 2010 10:37 PM

HKCAVALIER

Hylas and the Water Nymphs

by J. W. Waterhouse

Purpose is the only cure. Stay true to your purpose and the nymphs cannot drag you under. Fill your water jug and be on your way, young man!

I don't go looking for truth on the internet. I come here mainly to confirm or debunk information I've acquired by other means. Get a different perspective, like looking in the mirror. If you always keep in mind that a mirror is just a mirror, you won't be tempted to step into it, will you?

The only conscious protection from what you're talking about is mindfulness, self-knowledge, meditative calm, renunciation of the ego, grounding, the acceptance of grief and the acknowledgement of sorrow--you know, the usual.

I don't think there's any trick you can play here, DT. You just need to get serious and stop fuckin' around with shit you know you shouldn't, no?

Or are you just a sucker for mystery...?

HKCavalier

Hey, hey, hey, don't be mean. We don't have to be mean, because, remember, no matter where you go, there you are.

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Friday, December 3, 2010 11:17 PM

FREMDFIRMA

My ass would get so drowned...

But then again, maybe not - I do tend to be both ruthless and relentless in my purpose, and if it happens to be extracting information, it's like a bull in a china shop it is.

-F

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Saturday, December 4, 2010 1:28 AM

DREAMTROVE

HK is getting closer, but this isn't about me. I don't feel that I particularly waste time online. I think the TV Tropes ref was also pretty on target.

But seriously, no one here has ever gone to ebay to spend 5 min. finding an item only to find that they have spent 2 hours and bought useless stuff? Maybe not recently, but ebay is pretty primitive in this regards. The new new sites will always have the latest rat traps to keep you clicking.

Okay, we're here, in this mind rat trap, because we're not off playing World of Warcraft or whatever is 10 times as addictive as WoW.

The collective defense needs to be aware, and I think that I'm pointing out something real, thta all of y'all have been trapped by at least as muc as I, and there's just a little lack of awareness. 'tsokay, I was right there with you a moment ago, and then I realized "Hey, I'm being manipulated to spend more time on this site" and sure, some sites clearly put it on too thick and this tipped me off.

So, really, no one has ever spend those two hours on ebay or some other site, perhaps to the point where they were resenting the site?

This is the very close to same thing that we were just discussing in another thread on videogames that keep you playing long after you're done having fun (I had this experience much younger, when those techniques were much less advanced)

This internet manipulation thing is in its infancy. Soon you will have Tv-style addicts of the internet. And no, we're not there yet.

Here's the real test:

The TV addict does not get up from his seat to embark on his normal life routine because he has to stay and watch the television.

"Coming up next, we'll see some raccoons who actually know your neighborhood, and can drive your car"

Really? I want to see raccoons drive a car... I can't get up now.

or

Oh, ad break! I can get up, but only for a minute, because Autumn was trapped in the meat locker and I can't leave her there!

But recording devices and the internet have killed that trap. Now you can pause Autumn, and come back to her later. Unfortunately, far more sophisticated tricks are on the way.

Back to HK's image, cute.

But then I get the feeling you're talking about actual porn, which isn't a snag. Porn is very easily replaced by other porn. Your web of sticky clicky stuff has to be irreplaceable. If you can substitute your content with other content elsewhere, it's relatively easy to get out of.

Art sites are stickier, but I haven't been on one that's this evil in design yet. They tend to be designed by people trying to assemble artists, and so have a straight forward easily navigable structure, so you can browse castles and dragons and then later come back to the same place with no problem.

I've been looking around at how people waste time online. News sites are some of the worst. Those who get trapped in the news web or random story chasing end up reading intense amounts about subjects they're not interested in. Like everyone says "Oh, screw partisan politics, it's just a trick" but if they get caught in a web, they'll spend far more time on gay marriage and Sarah Palin, and I know that there is nothing there that they want to learn, so it's pulling little dopamine triggers in the brain.

Really. People I know will go to news sites to learn about the latest wikileak or something that's actually news of interest. Then they will click through recommendations and read more and more of what I call "pseudo-base content."

Sex is base, like hunger or violence or anything strictly instinctive. Pseudo-base is designed to never actually satisfy any base desires, like television. If you had actual porn, then you would never watch baywatch, which is why I always figured that TV really got rid of porn: They'd figured this one out.

But once you get down to just "cute people" and the "semi-dangerous situations" in TV shows, you get more of the addictive element of TV. You add an adventure plotline you can get rapped up in, and then if you get up, you miss it, then you start to get trapped.

But this is primitive, and it was easily defeated by the VCR. Now the videogames are all over the pseudo-base attack in every manner they can, and they trick you with some rather complicated mechanisms to keep you playing.

Here's the video PN posted, it's long, but a definite to-see for the psychologically inclined

I'm still looking for a video that was posted here recently, something that was about an hour, and I said could use an infodensity upgrade. I don't think it was Derrick Jensen...

Here's a thread from a year ago on the topic of infopollution, which is a valid point re:news.

http://beta.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?bid=18&tid=41161&p=1

If people in fact spend five minutes reading about wikileaks and then two hours clicking through on their anger to Sarah Palin as several people I've known have done, they become only minimally informed on wikileaks, and meaninglessly informed about Sarah. It's then easier for them to be dissuaded by the idea that Assange is a traitor, because they're not really all that informed, and it's easy for them to branch any convo into a rant about Palin.

This is just side damage to the main time wasting damage, but John brought it up before so I thought I'd mention it.

But back to the topic at hand.

Chris' video here

http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.asp?b=18&t=46450

I think there was one other one hour video in between the two. *(oh, if only posts that started with a video had a video icon next them) And then we could exclude those threads that had a hair metal music video at the head

I can't find the video now. I had the feeling there was a third one. Anyway, scanning through the posts here, the corruption of the infostream is clearly effecting us. The number of posts that are on topics that the media wishes us to talk about that none of us are really interested in is really quite astounding, and it's not PN. It's all of us. We post threads about Sarah Palin out of proportion with our interest level, and the same for every media driven football that comes up.

I know I'm on to something here. We're being manipulated to waste time, and that time wasting is affecting the total info proportions in our brains, which is misdirecting our debate and efforts. And we're all falling for it, whether we can see it or not.

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Saturday, December 4, 2010 2:31 AM

CANTTAKESKY

Quote:
Originally posted by dreamtrove:
But seriously, no one here has ever gone to ebay to spend 5 min. finding an item only to find that they have spent 2 hours and bought useless stuff?

Not me, anyway.

Quote:
I know I'm on to something here. We're being manipulated to waste time, and that time wasting is affecting the total info proportions in our brains, which is misdirecting our debate and efforts. And we're all falling for it, whether we can see it or not.

This may be. I do waste time, mostly here on FFF, if you must know. But I don't see this waste of time as a result of manipulation. I waste time because 1) I am not healthy and can't do very much of anything else, and 2) the real problem is so freaking hard to solve, it feels so much easier to spend my time doing something else.

--Can't Take (my gorram) Sky

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Saturday, December 4, 2010 3:54 AM

ANTHONYT

Freedom is Important because People are Important

Hello,

The only trap I am reliably sucked into online is this here forum. The only things I'm missing that keeps me tuning in are the edifying conversations with folks I admire.

Even with video games, it is the social experience, and not the game, that keeps me subscribed for any length of time. Otherwise I'd play for a month or two and unsubscribe once all the variables had been explored.

The ad trap hasn't nailed me. I must work on different frequencies than you do. My wife says I hate shopping. Maybe that's it.

--Anthony

Assured by friends that the signal-to-noise ratio has improved on this forum, I have disabled web filtering.

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Saturday, December 4, 2010 6:46 AM

DREAMTROVE

Lol. FFF *is* a waste of time.

The psych trap that gnabs you, if it's too strong, gnabs you only once, and then you have some reaction to it. But milder forms can lure larger populations to perpetual time wasting.

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Saturday, December 4, 2010 9:14 AM

HKCAVALIER

Quote:
Originally posted by dreamtrove:
...but this isn't about me.

...and I think that I'm pointing out something real, thta all of y'all have been trapped by at least as muc as I, and there's just a little lack of awareness. 'tsokay, I was right there with you a moment ago, and then I realized "Hey, I'm being manipulated to spend more time on this site" and sure, some sites clearly put it on too thick and this tipped me off.

If I didn't know better, I'd think you were attempting a little mind control of your own here, Dream.

You're playing both sides of the street on this one. You make big fat claims about "us" all based on your personal problems. And yeah, they are your personal problems, first and foremost. "I don't think I have the problem nearly as badly as the rest of you!" What is that other than insulting?

It's your premise. Own it.

This is my problem with a lot of your theories of causation. Your understanding of agency is all out of whack. You're a brilliant analyst of the situation, and you have a proven gift for prediction, but your understanding of agency and responsibility seem purely back-engineered from extremely inhospitable premises.

Me, I believe that people, far more often than not, do exactly what they want to do. I have found this to be the case with myself and I have seen it born out in the behavior of others. If I find myself doing something, repeatedly--quite repeatedly--that I do not believe I want to do, I call that lack of self-knowledge. Because I do want to do it. I get something very important, important to my identity, out of doing whatever it is--it's so bloody important that I feel the need to keep the reason from my conscious self! We all do such things, from time to time. I posted the Waterhouse, not to trip your pornographic switch but to suggest that what you're talking about has been around as long as human cognition.

But what looks like a simple lack of self-knowledge from where I sit, you conflate into some monstrous impersonal force bearing down upon you, over which all of us--even you, but to a lesser extent, of course--are powerless.

It sucks as a conversation starter, dude.

You know Eric Maisel? He's written several extraordinary books on the creative process, both theory and praxis. One of his premises: there are only two kinds of people in the world--artists and blocked artists.

Obsession is an integral part of the creative mind. The proper direction of obsession is toward our creativity, even if that just means sex. But when we're blocked, when we're avoiding our creative work, our obsessive nature loses focus, and can end up just about anywhere.

Now, o' course, in an integrated creative process, down time, recreation, zoning out, distracting are as important as putting nose to the grindstone. Crop rotation and such.

I'm talking about the positive reframe. What you get going, Dream, when you get going on these epic, bullet pointed, link filled posts of yours is a negative reframe. You take something relatively benign, or ordinary, as common as shitting, and turn it into something monstrous and predatory, and yourself--or I mean, the rest of us--into its chosen prey.

Honestly, Dream, I don't tend to read your epic posts (I read this one, didn't watch the vid, or click the links). I feel like I'm eavesdropping when I read these things. They seem too private, too pregnant with information you're not even talking about. You know what I mean?

I keep coming back to why you entitled this thread "Rat in a Cage" instead of "Rat in a Maze." It sounds like you're talking about the maze with the endless searching and the cheese. But you call it a "cage." The proverbial rat in a cage, is really many rats in a cage and refers to the unnatural violence that occurs when too many rats are forced to exist in too confined a space. But it's just one rat in your cage, Dream. It's a striking detail. And this rat isn't even you, because "this isn't about" you. I wonder who your rat is. And see, I'm way too far inside your experience and I haven't even gotten past the subject line.

HKCavalier

Hey, hey, hey, don't be mean. We don't have to be mean, because, remember, no matter where you go, there you are.

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Saturday, December 4, 2010 12:19 PM

DREAMTROVE

Quote:
If I didn't know better, I'd think you were attempting a little mind control of your own here, Dream.

You're playing both sides of the street on this one. You make big fat claims about "us" all based on your personal problems. And yeah, they are your personal problems, first and foremost. "I don't think I have the problem nearly as badly as the rest of you!" What is that other than insulting?

HK

That was rather offensive. Also I think it came out of nowhere. I was trying to analyze the psychology of new web tactics. This is the third thread on the topic, posted by three different people, so why attack me?

Quote:
This is my problem with a lot of your theories of causation. Your understanding of agency is all out of whack. You're a brilliant analyst of the situation, and you have a proven gift for prediction, but your understanding of agency and responsibility seem purely back-engineered from extremely inhospitable premises.

Thanks, but I wasn't aware that this was about me. The engineering of subliminal advertising techniques is hardly a new and shocking premise. It's about a century old.

Quote:
Me, I believe that people, far more often than not, do exactly what they want to do. I have found this to be the case with myself and I have seen it born out in the behavior of others. If I find myself doing something, repeatedly--quite repeatedly--that I do not believe I want to do, I call that lack of self-knowledge. Because I do want to do it. I get something very important, important to my identity, out of doing whatever it is--it's so bloody important that I feel the need to keep the reason from my conscious self! We all do such things, from time to time. I posted the Waterhouse, not to trip your pornographic switch but to suggest that what you're talking about has been around as long as human cognition.

Are you dismissing psychology as a whole? To what end? If all people were complete conscious masters of their own destiny as you state, I feel fairly certain that field of psychology would not exist.

Quote:
But what looks like a simple lack of self-knowledge from where I sit, you conflate into some monstrous impersonal force bearing down upon you, over which all of us--even you, but to a lesser extent, of course--are powerless.

This is not about me, and it's not about the other people of the forum either. It's about psychology and the mass behavior of humans, and how that behavior is manipulated by designers of systems.

Quote:
It sucks as a conversation starter, dude.

That may be, but people's denial of psychology or subliminal manipulation does not make it cease to exist.

Quote:
You know Eric Maisel?

Nah, I don't really know anything about the field, I'm just shooting in the dark. I thought someone could help out. I trust my hunch though

Quote:
something monstrous and predatory, and yourself--or I mean, the rest of us--into its chosen prey.

Your inability to see it does not equate to its non-existence. Sorry.

Quote:
Honestly, Dream, I don't tend to read your epic posts (I read this one, didn't watch the vid, or click the links). I feel like I'm eavesdropping when I read these things. They seem too private, too pregnant with information you're not even talking about. You know what I mean?

No, I don't. This thread is a response to previous threads on the topic. It was very much not about me. There's really nothing here that has much to do with me, I don't think my behavior getting trapped on sites is due to my own obsessive compulsive nature. I mean, maybe I'm more prone to this sort of trick than other people, but somehow I suspect it's more likely that people are just not recognizing it. It's just that this is a world that they don't want to believe in.

The video is very telling, particularly the parts on video games, but it's about an hour long.

> I keep coming back to why you entitled this thread "Rat in a Cage" instead of "Rat in a Maze."

It was a reference to Skinner Boxes.

> I wonder who your rat is. And see, I'm way too far inside your experience and I haven't even gotten past the subject line.

Nah, you're reading too much into it. Me saying it's not about me is me saying that I wanted to talk about the subject. I don't want to talk about me, I'm not a very interesting subject. People's psychoanalysis of me would be a waste of everyone's time anyway. That's what I have a shrink for. But there had been a few threads on this sort of thing, and maybe you weren't on them. CTS posted one on experiments like Milgram et al and Skinner Boxes came up, then PN posted something about Skinner boxes, and I think there was one more along these lines. Hence the thread title, it was not in fact a reference to my deep inner problems or my vision of someone else, it was a reference to the subject. It wasn't even a reference to Marilyn Manson.

To take a page from River6213's book, I'm not the topic of the thread. I'm not interested in discussing me anymore than you are interested in discussing you. I don't think you would react well if someone were to post that you were psychologically flawed and then to start analyzing why.

Auraptor was reasonably close, I don't discredit that analysis, except that I think it's oversimplifying. Just because the motive is simple doesn't mean that nothing untoward has transpired.

One thing I am sure of is that people are not the masters of their own will and actions, and that if they are under the illusion that they are under complete control the chances that they are controlling their destiny is undoubtedly much less than if they are riddled with self doubt.

What I find curious is that people can talk freely about the manipulation of World of Warcraft and the like, because no one really plays this style of game. There have been more than a dozen threads on this specific topic. A couple of people have said "I play a little but..." but that was the end of it.

However, when I move it into a realm where we, here, collectively, are in the group which is being manipulated, there is suddenly a rejection of the idea, even of the overarching idea even being possible, and idea endorsed already in multiple threads by almost everyone who has posted here. I think this is psychologically telling about people collectively, that we all believe that psychological manipulation is something that happens to other people, but not to us.

But this is no more about anyone else here than it is about me. If there is psychological manipulation, than it does not just affect losers in basements we've never met who cannot get up from their MMORPGs... it affects all of us.

I don't wake up in the morning and say "I'm going to have an argument with Hero today" so clearly I'm not the complete master of my own destiny. There are other people in the world, as it turns out, and this affects our choices of actions. Because of this, we can be manipulated by people who know more than we do about the way the mind works.

The only thing that has anything to do with me is that I was pretty happy that I spotted this one, and was able to break it down and post it at the top of this thread.

The best analysis here so far is

Quote:
Originally posted by canttakesky:
Quote:
Originally posted by dreamtrove:
The nature of addictive websites.
I would imagine the mechanism is very similar to shopping addiction and gambling addiction. They are exploiting the fear of missed opportunities.

Apparently, I don't have that fear.

--Can't Take (my gorram) Sky

But I don't this is the complete story. I suspect
a) there's more going on
b) CTS has undoubtedly been lured into this as in:

Quote:

I like clicking on Cracked.com. If I have the time, I'll click and read for hours. I don't ever have 40 windows open though. I finish the first article, then click on the next. One window at a time.

Sorry CTS, I'm just trying to make the point:

We end up consuming content that we didn't intend. That by itself is a manipulation.

Also, Frem makes an excellent point about wiki-editing with TV Tropes, but that's a different trick, so I was dodging it. I think that trick is part of what draws us to waste time here. Not to visit here, but to do what Mike and Rap have done at times, and Me and Citizen, and various other pairs of users, which is to get deadlocked in absolutely pointless debate.

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Saturday, December 4, 2010 12:31 PM

CANTTAKESKY

Quote:
Originally posted by dreamtrove:
Sorry CTS, I'm just trying to make the point:

No need to apologize. I don't take your remarks personally. If I disagree with you, I disagree. No big deal.

Quote:
We end up consuming content that we didn't intend. That by itself is a manipulation.

But when I read Cracked, I DO intend to do it.

I learn a lot from that website, as I do when I come to FFF. I like learning. I come to these sites on purpose to find links to click on.

I'm not saying I'm never manipulated. Gosh, it took me a while to get out of the stupid Facebook game addictions. Those, indeed, were addictions. Reading Cracked, not at all.

--Can't Take (my gorram) Sky

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Saturday, December 4, 2010 1:47 PM

HKCAVALIER

DT, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to offend you. You and I, as far as I can tell, simply have extremely different frames of reference.

I meant that it was "your problem" first and foremost, in that anything having to do with the study of psychology starts with our individual experience. I believe a grounded discussion of psychological reality always begins at that point. I didn't mean to suggest that you were defective, or more prone to what you were describing than anyone else. I thought I was pretty clear about that. I did get the sense that you were setting yourself up as being the one sighted man in the land of the blind, and that didn't seem to be helping you make your case. I run into this problem myself, from time to time, and I do best when I stick to my personal experience.

I don't know how you can think I'm dismissing psychology as a whole. If anything, I'm dismissing the level of mind control that you're implying here. I believe that people consent to a lot of what passes for "mind control" and I believe your reading of the situation makes "victims" of such folk, and I disagree. That's all I was trying to say.

I don't believe that there is any mind control that an individual cannot overcome through introspection. Introspection is a long process, and in my case at least, has required some amount of outside involvement (therapy, intimacy, etc.), but the solution is internal.

I think your filter is a little overly sensitive here. I think you're getting a lot of false positives, is all. People not responding well to your concepts does not imply that they are in denial of anything. They may well be. I'm aware of the ongoing discussion. I believe I commented on a WoW thread some time ago.

The bottom line is, I did not intend to antagonize you or make this thread "about you" in some sort of punitive way. I guess it's just an axe I grind: if it's about psychology it's about you, it's about me, it's about all of us, first and foremost. All too often folk talk about human psychology in the third person and it gets to me, because so much of the time people are really just talking about themselves and their experiences. If you don't understand where I'm coming from, I hope at least you understand that I meant no offense.

HKCavalier

Hey, hey, hey, don't be mean. We don't have to be mean, because, remember, no matter where you go, there you are.

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Saturday, December 4, 2010 2:02 PM

MAGONSDAUGHTER

Quote:
Originally posted by HKCavalier:

Hylas and the Water Nymphs

by J. W. Waterhouse

Purpose is the only cure. Stay true to your purpose and the nymphs cannot drag you under. Fill your water jug and be on your way, young man!

I don't go looking for truth on the internet. I come here mainly to confirm or debunk information I've acquired by other means. Get a different perspective, like looking in the mirror. If you always keep in mind that a mirror is just a mirror, you won't be tempted to step into it, will you?

The only conscious protection from what you're talking about is mindfulness, self-knowledge, meditative calm, renunciation of the ego, grounding, the acceptance of grief and the acknowledgement of sorrow--you know, the usual.

Nice post, HKC. Gotta love those crazy Pre-Raphelites as well.

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Saturday, December 4, 2010 2:27 PM

DREAMTROVE

HK

Not at all, I'm a neophyte in this field. I thought I'd try my hand at it, and I noticed this. If it hadn't been for the other threads here on FFF, I never would have noticed the subliminal tricks in website design.

Heck, I've been designing websites for years, and it never occurred to me that the bad design of sites like YouTube was *intentional* until Pirate News pointed the thing about World of Warcraft out. I had to admit that it was true about WoW from the serious players I knew, and if it was happening in games, it might be happening with websites

And I found one! Yay me! Or so I thought.

But others didn't see it the way i did. But still, I don't think I'm wrong on this one, and I think it will come up again.

And yes, the *individual* can overcome it if they are *aware* of it, but the people, collectively, will be hearded.

I think that there is a cascading effect that is creeping here, as I said: The MSM draw to stories about Sarah Palin or Gay Marriage or whatever over the stories about the subjects that are only covered in dark corners of the net like this one, if you watch, over time, increase. With no new news, more and more minor topic threads that fit MSM wedge issues and talking points appear, I think it's because we all go to sites that steer us towards that content, and we track it back here.

If I'm right, and websites *are* being designed in a subliminal manipulative fashion, this is just the dawn of that era, the current work would be amateurish, and it will get far worse in time.

CTS

Quote:

No need to apologize. I don't take your remarks personally. If I disagree with you, I disagree. No big deal.

And I can handle that, because I know I'm right about this

Quote:
I'm not saying I'm never manipulated. Gosh, it took me a while to get out of the stupid Facebook game addictions. Those, indeed, were addictions. Reading Cracked, not at all.

See my comments to HK. I agree, it's definitely not on that level, not yet. I think that I stumbled on a website manipulation though, and I think that it will grow.

I don't think "recommendations" by themselves are a manipulation, I think the manipulative strategy requires all of the pieces outlined at the beginning of this thread.

All

I suspect this will come up again, and I'd like to keep a running tab.

So, if you could, humor me: Keep your eyes open for anything that you might perceive as website psyop manipulation. See if this is happening, and what kind of tricks they might have come up with so far.

I just saw a story about Google manipulating search results (oh what ever happened to Don't be Evil? I guess good isn't profitable Paladins and Rangers.)

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