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I'm glad this troll bait crap is barely working, but it's working a little. Come on guys, don't be a stooge:
“Once we isolate key people, we look for people we know are in their upstream – people that they read posts from, but who themselves are less influential. We then either start flame wars with bots to derail the conversations that are influencing influential people, or else send off specific tasks for sockpuppets (changing this wording of an idea here; cause an ideological split there; etc).”
The goal is to keep opinions we don't want fragmented and from coalescing in to a single voice for long enough that the memes we do want can,...
This is not what's happening here. This isn't about rendering the libs ineffective. This is real people (this one's from Canada) trying to send the message that the standard American lib approach is ineffective. That the approach desperately needs to change for resistance to really work. And by libs, I and whoever made the meme mean most mainstream Democrat politicians and to a lesser extent voters who believe those politicians are doing everything in their power to resist fascism, despite the evidence to the contrary. There are a few good discussions in this thread on what's going on and what could and should be happening instead.
That might be what you are trying to do, but I don't think this meme is trying to accomplish that. All I see is people complaining, but not giving ideas on exactly what they should be doing. Then if the person actually answers or has ideas, it's usually already being done, they just haven't heard about it.
Or perhaps it's a lot more people and perhaps they're trying to shift the default mo to something that could actually work, that they can get behind. Put differently, what you are observing could be the effect of trying to whip people into following an agenda that they see as ineffective or even harmful. I for one am there. For example I cannot buy the calls to frame Booker's performance as heroic while he voted Nay for the CR bill instead of filibustering it. This mo has to change. A lot of people have been foaming about this for years and are just tired at this point and simply resort to snark because that's all the shit they have left to give. I used to interpret that as "trolls" or "Russian bots" splitting the focus. I understand them now.
I agree with the shift needing to happen, I don't think complaining memes are the solution. These memes are just people with sticks and making them more despondent. What are the ideas and solutions? What are the carrots in this situation?
I read the thread you linked. I'm so fucking tired boss.
What do you even do in this situation? The algorithms and propaganda networks are all controlled by fascists and people don't care. Beyond not caring, they refuse to even protect themselves from being targeted in this way - they do not value privacy nor integrity.
So what do you do? We have to figure something out.
The only thing I can think to do is call it out when you see it like I just did. Leave one comment after someone fights with you, they're probably a bot anyway. Did you notice that thread was 10 years old? It's been going on a long time and they're really good at it. I've been getting better at combating it too, but I still am not great. They usually only downvote me now, which I consider a win.