Keyword Hijacking Smackdown! Challenge for HMW (and poll)

[professorpan]

Okay, let's have at it, shall we?

My challenge to Hugh:

Post your best example of what you call a "keyword hijacking." Right here. In this thread.

Take your time -- and give it all you got. Nacho Libre, Gilligan, Borat, Captain Kirk -- let it fly. Show us the money.

I think it's only fair that you get your own thread.

[Jeff]

[American Dream]

The biggest problem I have with the theory is the thoroughly arbitrary nature of the proof, i.e., that finding a "coincidence" is itself proof of the conspiracy!

That said, it does sound a little nutty too...

[Et in Arcadia ego]

No Cthulhu option?

[brownzeroed]

I wish it was more dynamic, like Time Cube.
KW-high-jacking seems more like a war of attrition.

If folks here lived and worked with the so-called "movers and shakers" in the film industry, they'd see them as they actually were: on-the-whole greedy, short-sighted and intellectually lazy recovering nerds. Not much more. That's bad enough. Does enough damage, in itself..

[barracuda]

When Joe Kennedy, the baseball pitcher, died on November 23rd this year, and was the top headline on Google News, my doubts about KH and HMW were largely assuaged. The pervasive public manipulation of cultural reference within the private sphere goes far beyond spin. As Madge the Manicurist would say, you're soaking in it.

[Et in Arcadia ego]

When Joe Kennedy, the baseball pitcher, died on November 23rd this year

Question is, did he take one for the team?

OOHH!!

[Jeff]

When Joe Kennedy, the baseball pitcher, died on November 23rd this year, and was the top headline on Google News, my doubts about KH and HMW were largely assuaged.

But Kennedy - John Kennedy - died November 22. So what exactly is this supposed to mean?

Synchronicities are real, and are everywhere. Hugh waves this away as woo-woo, and sees instead the hand of the CIA in the most bizarre and pointless minutiae.

Hugh is unreal.

[Seamus OBlimey]

Good bad Music for bad, bad Times!

[streeb]

This poll needs another option still: All his examples are nuts, but he's on to something.

As much as Hugh shows apparent disdain for art and literature, his grand unifying theory of psyops has a poetry to it, and the language he uses is fascinating. It's like Bill Burroughs without the Burroughs; quasi-scientific technical jargon that has this weird, seductive syntax. It's his own (ideologically sound) twilight language.

Hugh drives me nuts because he's frequently so right on about things not related to KH, and then he'll snatch defeat from the jaws of victory by concluding with a 'Nell', or a 'Nacho Libre', or a 'Mr. Limpet'.

But there's also a truth - somewhere - in his 'psyops as humidity, not douche' notion (I think).

[Jeff]

Hugh drives me nuts because he's frequently so right on about things not related to KH, and then he'll snatch defeat from the jaws of victory by concluding with a 'Nell', or a 'Nacho Libre', or a 'Mr. Limpet'.

And perversely, that's a hallmark of successful disinformation.

"The most perfidious way of harming a cause consists of defending it deliberately with faulty arguments." - Nietzsche

[professorpan]

Synchronicities are real, and are everywhere. Hugh waves this away as woo-woo, and sees instead the hand of the CIA in the most bizarre and pointless minutiae.

It's not even just odd synchronicities he latches onto, but plain old, run-of-the-mill coincidences. A movie with a guy named "Oswalt" comes out -- and in the very same year that happens to be the 44th anniversary of the Kennedy assassination! OH MY GOD, we are being PLAYED!

[streeb]

And perversely, that's a hallmark of successful disinformation.

Well, yeah... but I didn't want to say that.

[IanEye]

And perversely, that's a hallmark of successful disinformation.

Well, yeah... but I didn't want to say that.

but it needs to be said, over and over.....

[populistindependent]

I voted for the second choice.

By the way, how is this about "proving" anything? Who cares about that? He is just pointing out things he sees for our consideration. No harm done there IMHO.

I was involved in an extensive Internet marketing project for a client that analyzed keywords and keyword hijacking - although we didn't call it that. It is remarkably easy to steer people through word substitution - so much so that we had intense discussions about the ethical questions involved. The results were objective, measurable and consistent. Thousands and thousands of examples were analyzed in this project. I am certain that the techniques we discovered are being used by marketers and propagandists - why would they not be?

Also, it took us a while to understand the data we were looking at - the concept is somewhat elusive and the results were unexpected - so it does not surprise me that Hugh struggles to communicate it to everyone's satisfaction.

The meaning of words is shifting continually, but more importantly the associations of words is shifting, and words are very effective at steering people. So much so, that you need to be careful not to use certain trigger words in these conversations because they drag along with them a lot of baggage - emotionalized associations and implied contexts - and once used the listener's mind will shut down or head off in strange directions and communication breaks down.

Words have become thought clusters - weighted with elaborate unspoken and unacknowledged associations, entire "stories" with all sorts of unexamined premises and assumptions. One word is now more powerful than a logical and well expressed treatise. This is so common and pervasive and has such a destructive effect on daily communications, that it surprises me that people would doubt that this is happening.