A lie told often enough may not be sufficient to make people believe it is true, but can be if you get enough people to say it, effecting a normalization of the lie until it is “true” for most people. It is an inorganic, and powerful, way of manipulating people that is also known as “reflexive network dynamics” as James Lindsay explains:
One of the ways reflexive propaganda campaigns spread on social media is through what we should call “reflexive network dynamics.” This is a very important concept for understanding not just propaganda today but also the gaming and weaponizing of the algorithms.
Reflexivity
First, a quick review. Reflexivity refers to a propaganda technique in which the same message appears everywhere all at once, reflected from all angles, until it takes off virally.
Ultimately, “reflexivity” in this regard springs from the tools George Soros laid out for doing “social alchemy” in his 1992 book The Alchemy of Finance. In that book, Soros explains that while the natural sciences are actually scientific, the social sciences are actually alchemical. One might say that the point of studying society is not to understand it, but to change it, even.
Soros indicates that the difference between social sciences (or, as he calls it “social alchemy”) and natural sciences is that the participants in social sciences are themselves influenced by participation in the situation. He recognizes that this “reflexive” state of affairs can be arranged inorganically to create social change and refers to reflexivity as a “dialectic” and a theory of “historical change.”
Soros’s point is that reflexivity occurs when changes in perception start to cascade into greater changes in perception, and this only happens when people’s beliefs are out of alignment with reality, with the more the better. He understands that reflexivity can also be manufactured by getting people to start to believe false things, and that belief is largely a social process.
Manufacturing Reflexive Environments
The mechanism for manufacturing a reflexive environment is to make a lot of people say the same thing, or close variations on the same thing, at roughly the same time, usually in similar ways. The goal is usually to make this appear as natural and organic as possible, as though many people are suddenly seizing upon the same observation at the same time.
The old saying in propaganda is that a lie repeated enough times becomes the truth (what people believe and treat as true, including by acting upon it), but with reflexivity it’s a little different. It’s a lie that is repeated by enough voices in a short enough time becomes truth. When everyone is suddenly saying the same thing, it must have something to it, right?
A reflexive environment can therefore be manufactured by getting lots of apparently distinct and independent voices saying roughly the same thing at the same time and letting it pass into common belief. It doesn’t matter if it will get debunked eventually. All that matters is that it takes off for long enough to achieve some operational or strategic end before that happens.
Reflexivity is, in some sense, like a flash bomb of propaganda.
Agency Networks
Here’s the secret sauce of how social media narratives are made: networks, particularly agency networks. An agency network is a network of people who operate in the same talent or promotional agency. That is, while they may not work for anyone in particular, their promotional reach is managed by some hub or node in the network.
Usually, these networks operate rather like country clubs, although they can work like cartels or mafias too. You have to get invited in, and there are club rules.
First, you at least tacitly, but frequently explicitly, agree to cross-promote other members of the network.
Second, you at least tacitly, but frequently explicitly, agree not to criticize other members of the network publicly. All criticism will be handled strictly in private.
Third, you will not disclose the existence of the network or these operational rules.
Think of it like Fight Club for people in media.
The perks for you is that not only do you have the agency itself promoting you and giving you access to things (parties, dinners, meet-and-greets, conferences and backstages, galas, etc.), you gain the weight of the whole network boosting your stuff. They cross-promote you, have you on their shows, come on your shows (if applicable), etc., even if it’s just sharing and resharing social posts.
The way you “pay” for this access and opportunity is through your participation. You will also cross-promote, and you will never criticize anyone else in the network. If you do, you’re out, and your access is gone. More than that, you’re likely going to be marked as ineligible for any other network of the same kind because you’re not trustworthy to be let into any others. You go from top of the world in promotional circles to completely cooked. RIP your opportunities and career. (And these opportunities can be millions a year in income, nevermind exclusive access to important and powerful people.)
That is, talk about Fight Club, and you’re out of Fight Club. Fight outside of Fight Club, and you’re out of Fight Club. Refuse to come to Fight Club, and you’re out of Fight Club.
Of course, these aren’t all untoward or inappropriate, and they’re almost never illegal in their structure or activity. They’re ethically gray with black and white flecks: sometimes perfectly good, sometimes really bad, usually just kind of a little icky in the “that’s just how the world works, baby” kind of way.
They’re very useful not only for cross-promotional behaviors and amplification, etc., but also for monetization. These networks, maybe more than anything else aside from building visibility and portfolios, game monetization schemes and algorithms. That which is popular becomes more popular, thus gets promoted, thus gets paid, and the network exists to make everything from within its network artificially popular.
This means, by the way, that you don’t actually have to have a dark-money Mr. Money Bags paying people for certain messages. You just have to get certain messages into these networks and let their monetization structures make all the money for the participants, who are individually incentivized to participate and never have to take any cash directly from anyone.
Reflexive Network Dynamics
These agency networks are how basically everything big in the promotional universe (thus, on social media) works now. They allow for decentralized mechanisms by which personalities and careers can be “made” or broken. Willing players (the compliant and corrupt) are advanced rapidly into prominence. Everyone else is gatekept. Almost no one breaks the rules.
This makes them perfect for both organized and disorganized reflexive campaigns. The mechanism is simple. The network starts to move, either by direction or because some within it take initiative, and everyone boosts the signal. The cross-promotional mechanism turns into a reflexive amplifier. The prohibition on criticism makes sure no one diverges from the message, contradicts it, or calls anyone out. The prohibition on speaking about Fight Club makes it look natural and organic.
That is, what is actually a highly coordinated messaging apparatus looks like a bunch of individual actors who are, at most, loosely connected. They all say the same things at the same time and never contradict one another or call each other out, but they also don’t have any formal ties to one another at all. They just have the same agencies. And everyone has an agency, or whatever.
These agency networks are therefore perfect in their dynamical structure for creating the reflexive dynamic. Thus, we could call them “reflexive networks.”
A bunch of seemingly (mostly) independent actors all say roughly the same thing at the same time without anyone ever contradicting anyone else or criticizing anyone or any messaging (at worst, staying silent when they don’t agree) until it “becomes true” and a maker of Sorosian “historical change.”
That is, the same lie suddenly comes out of a hundred influential mouths at the same time, all pointing in the same direction, and there’s not even a big, bad man somewhere behind the scenes pulling the strings, at least not necessarily (the biggest of these networks are usually tied to some REALLY BAD SH*T). The same lie hits you from everyone, gets reflected around and amplified by the algorithm the network is designed to game, and they’re all getting paid without getting paid. And the lie becomes “the truth” in the process.
Summary
We’re exposed to this behavior every day on social media, and that’s without the increased amplification and modification by bots and other manipulative forces. Agency networks create something like reflexive echo chambers that make it seem like everyone around us believes the same things at the same time, and that influences us profoundly through the dynamics of social psychology.
Sometimes those inorganically amplified messages are the results of so-called string pullers, sometimes advertisers, sometimes bad actors or infiltrators in the groups, sometimes bids to game the algorithms for bigger social payouts, and sometimes just arise from the demon-core structure of the agency network.
In all cases, for those of us outside of these networks, it’s almost impossible to understand that’s what’s going on, or that the people who would expose such things are systematically gatekept from them, reducing the chances you will ever even hear about them. And for the people in them, they’re easy to rationalize. They’re making money, getting big, taking opportunities, and it’s just the way the world works, anyway, isn’t it?
