Jessica Misfire
A Reiteration Red Herring
Jessica, the successful[1] influencer’s influencer[2] who has made covid interested people her target audience at least since 2022[3], tells her readers about the reiteration effect[4] — but she never seems to repeat or promote effective action herself while claiming to have the solution.[5] Clearly she knows about the mere exposure effect, but if she mentions political action or civic engagement at all, it’s often only to crap all over it.[6] In this piece on the illusory truth effect, she weaves a tale where “masters of deceit” hoodwink everyone with this secret knowledge. It’s all hiding in plain sight though, all you need to know is that companies spend tons on advertising — if advertising didn’t work, they wouldn’t invest in it so much.
So let’s logic this out. If the baddies can pay endless money to promote influencers to repeat lies with massive botnets & troll farms. How well can regular folks compete on that landscape? The answer isn’t to stay on social media shouting repeatedly into the void. A more effective instruction would maybe be to have people write elected reps who actually make the laws, regulations, and have to at least somewhat listen to the people who vote for them, or don’t. She mentions how politicians use the mere exposure effect in advertising. But somehow doesn’t mention how civic engagement can change the rules, and sway those same politicians.
Instead Jessica suggests you try to beat the billionaires and fossil fuel companies by out-shouting their legions of organized paid operatives on social media[7] to your echo chamber silos mingling superficially with strangers, when we know this hasn’t worked,[8] and actually just won’t work — it’s long been known that: “Leafletting, radio announcements,or other methods could insure that everyone was aware of some nascent organization; but studies of diffusion and mass communication have shown that people rarely act on mass-media information unless it is also transmitted through personal ties.”[9]
Jessica also tells you: “We need as many people as possible” supposedly.[10] That’s actually not how progress is made or change works in society at all. Historically, change has actually come driven by a small portion of people dedicated to action who are the first to speak up and push things along. And then later after the fact there’s more broad support.
If her piece was just about how the mere exposure effect works, I’d consider it fine that she wasn’t pushing for political action. Nothing wrong with promoting ideas with explanatory blog posts, and not everyone has to promote civic engagement at every moment. But she’s not just not promoting political action, she’s actively promoting more social media engagement instead of civic engagement!
Social media success is built on rage, which for the influencer must be prioritized over truth and effective action, because that’s how social media works as a business model sadly.[11] And Jessica is telling you to consume more of her content at best, and worse, providing enabling encouragement to voluminously unhealthy levels of social media use.[12] She’s encouraging people to try to outshout the paid bots, troll farms, and billionaire funded PR. That level of social media engagement probably isn’t healthy for the people who actually get paid to do it as their job, never mind spending so much of your personal free time on social media. Only to still be outnumbered by the endless money of big money.
Of course part of this is that we all want to be told our social media habits are okay, or even beneficial actually. But wishing it doesn’t make it true. And even if it was just encouraging people to waste their time instead of doing any number of things that would be more useful allocation of time and energy, I’d find it offensive frankly.
Politics may be downstream from culture[13], but those right-wing peeps aren’t ignoring political engagement, that’s for damn sure. Just take a look at Project 2025.[14] From right-wing housewives of the 1950s[15] to Moms for Liberty[16] to Mike Flynn’s religious agenda[17] — they’re out there promoting ways to implement their will all over — on hospital boards[18] and in school boards, from anti-trans plans[19], to real world book shadowbanning corruption.[20] They aren’t just tweeting. And that anger you see online, that’s for your benefit, behind the scenes they’re organizing a community of support and relationships[21] which they take to political action getting out the vote and running candidates for offices and boards — not just rando follows and interactions that mainly benefit the tech companies that own social media platforms, and provide temporary dopamine hits.
What’s even more interesting is that the culture that Jessica often promotes is right-wing, from boosting Jordan Peterson, luxuriating in ableist revenge fantasies, doing Russian prowess PR spin[22], or to pointing to Trump’s CDC Director[23] who has a dubious history as if he’s legitimate infectious disease prognosticator when he says that bird flu is the next “plandemic” basically — that he’s not so much concerned about, you know, climate change and infectious disease spillovers, he’s just concerned about deliberate bioengineered pandemics caused by scientists in biolabs, and invokes all the buzzwords and concepts from unsubstantiated right-wing lab leak internet content.
And a few days after I noted that repeating what Robert Redfield says is advancing right-wing lab leak theories, Jessica came right out as lab leak believer with a tweet thread.
Lab leak conspiracy theories are part of climate denial. The stories are pushed by the same people who push climate denial. And the lab leak theory distracts from climate change as an agitator for infectious disease by giving people something else to blame in the form of biolabs. It’s perhaps not a coincidence that most of the same people who strongly promote lab leak theories are the same people who say do nothing to mitigate these diseases.
These are things to consider before you listen to, or refer others to, a broken clock — which is wrong most of the day.
References:
[1] The Secrets Behind Jessica Wildfire’s Medium Success — Finding Tom — Jul 16, 2018 — Youtube
[4] Mere Exposure Effect, by Katja Falkenbach, Gleb Schaab, Oliver Pfau, Magdalena Ryfa, Bahadir Birkan The mere exposure effect is a psychological phenomenon by which people tend to develop a preference for things or people that are more familiar to them than others. Repeated exposure increases familiarity. This effect is therefore also known as the familiarity effect. The earliest known research on the effect was conducted by Gustav Fechner in 1876. The effect was also documented by Edward Titchener and described as the glow of warmth one feels in the presence of something familiar.
[5] It’s All About Repetition, Repetition, Repetition: How Lies Work And how to fight back. January 01 2024 7:43 AM There’s only one way to fight big lies. We have to repeat the truth just as often, just as loudly, with just as much conviction. We have to make the truth appealing, even funny. We have to do it every single day, even on the days when everything feels hopeless. In fact, those are the days that matter most. We need as many people as possible speaking the truth in every kind of way. We need protests. We need articles. We need podcasts. We need tweets. We need art. We need music. We need memes. We need the truth presented politely over the dinner table, and we need it shouted in the streets. We need it with a smile, and we need it dripping with sarcasm. We need it on t-shirts. We need it on billboards. We need it all.
[6] Jessica Burn Notice by Chloe Humbert — Jan 22, 2023
[7] The Internet of Fakes — PR Tactics, Troll Farms, Sock Puppets, Botnets, Influencers, Operatives, & Chaos Agents Persuasion, advertising, sales, target marketing, propaganda, agent provocateurs, and cognitive warfare, is the true reality of the media landscape. CHLOE HUMBERT SEP 14, 2023 Disinformation (or malinformation) is pushed out by business interests, multinational corporate interests, ideological interests, political interests, and geopolitical interests, with advertising and PR placements, and they take advantage of the social media platforms which are designed to keep people wanting to engage on the platform, and as a result the influence campaigns can manipulate platforms to promote ordinary people also spreading and sharing this stuff, in a feedback loop. Influencers and content creators and various clout chasers pick up on what gets the attention, and what content is going to generate money in the form of views, likes, follows, and paid subscriptions. A business ecosystem of sock puppet troll farms and botnets help boost the content — wherever it is, no matter who posts it.
[8] Hypernormalisation Documentary, 2016, by Adam Curtis. ”The liberals were outraged at Trump. But they expressed their outrage in cyberspace so it had no effect. Because the algorithms made sure that they only spoke to people who already agreed with them. Instead ironically their waves of angry messages and tweets benefitted the large corporations who ran the social media platforms. one online analyst put it simply — angry people click. It meant that the radical fury that came like waves across the internet no longer had the power to change the world. Instead it became a fuel that fed the systems of power making them ever more powerful.”
[9] Granovetter, M. S. (1973). The Strength of Weak Ties. American Journal of Sociology, 78(6), 1360–1380. doi:10.1086/225469 Imagine, to begin with, a community completely partitioned into cliques, such that each person is tied to every other in his clique and to none outside. Community organization would be severely inhibited. Leafletting, radio announcements,or other methods could insure that everyone was aware of some nascent organization; but studies of diffusion and mass communication have shown that people rarely act on mass-media information unless it is also transmitted through personal ties (Katz and Lazarsfeld 1955; Rogers 1962)
[10] It’s All About Repetition, Repetition, Repetition: How Lies Work And how to fight back. January 01 2024 7:43 AM There’s only one way to fight big lies. We have to repeat the truth just as often, just as loudly, with just as much conviction. We have to make the truth appealing, even funny. We have to do it every single day, even on the days when everything feels hopeless. In fact, those are the days that matter most. We need as many people as possible speaking the truth in every kind of way. We need protests. We need articles. We need podcasts. We need tweets. We need art. We need music. We need memes. We need the truth presented politely over the dinner table, and we need it shouted in the streets. We need it with a smile, and we need it dripping with sarcasm. We need it on t-shirts. We need it on billboards. We need it all.
[12] TIME: How Addictive Social Media Algorithms Could Finally Face a Reckoning in 2022 By Megan McCluskey JANUARY 4, 2022 Often compared to Big Tobacco for the ways in which their products are addictive and profitable but ultimately unhealthy for users, social media’s biggest players are facing growing calls for both accountability and regulatory action. In order to make money, these platforms’ algorithms effectively function to keep users engaged and scrolling through content, and by extension advertisements, for as long as possible.
[13] David Troy: Disinformation and its effects on social capital networks, 2023 Culture (i.e. the network) is upstream of politics. The Italian political theorist Antonio Gramsci noted that “culture is upstream of politics,” a quote since co-opted by Andrew Breitbart and Steve Bannon. These political technologists understand that they are working at the network level on altering culture, while many people are focused on politics, which is a losing strategy.
[15] JSTOR Daily — The Radical Right-Wing Housewives of 1950s California. The mobilization of housewives in 1950s California echoes through US national politics in the twenty-first century. By: Livia Gershon, April 4, 2022 Between COVID-19 mandates and arguments about critical race theory, conservative activists are making education central to their political arguments, activating a particular group of women voters. This isn’t the first wave of such activists. As historian Michelle Nickerson writes, women were a central, if often little-noticed, part of the highly influential southern California conservative movement of the 1950s and ’60s. Some of these activists had high profiles, like Marion Miller. After marrying her husband she discovered that he was involved in counterespionage work. The couple moved to Los Angeles, and Miller eventually joined him as a volunteer spy for the FBI. She became the secretary at the Los Angeles Committee for the Protection of the Foreign Born, which had ties to the Communist Party. She later published her story in Reader’s Digest, and then as a memoir. But many of the women Nickerson profiles operated in a quieter way. Most of the groups she looks at weren’t explicitly for women only, but they met during the day and focused on areas like children, education, and spirituality that were understood as women’s business. They organized letter-writing campaigns, promoted right-wing literature, and threw their support behind conservative candidates. Before the 1952 election, they organized babysitter groups to make sure women had time to vote. And, by the 1960s, they helped open more than 35 conservative bookstores in the Los Angeles area.
[16] Inside Moms for Liberty’s summit: Big money and even bigger conspiracy theories. Manufacturing terror to mobilize parents and take over your kids’ school. Written by Olivia Little. Research contributions from Madeline Peltz. Published 07/07/23 Adams presented audience members with a how-to guide on destabilizing school districts within the first 100 days of taking office, including a worksheet that he encouraged participants to fill out listing a timeline of tangible steps meant to overwhelm the opposition (the image includes my notes for his suggested actions based on the presentation). The reverse side of the handout encouraged attendees to familiarize themselves with and counter common talking points from adversaries. In order to pass controversial policies without backlash, Adams suggests that school boards bombard the district with an array of demands and changes so that the opposition can’t keep up. “These [school] boards, these majorities, they need to be meeting on multiple fronts, multiple issues,” he said. “They need to keep moving, and the idea is that the other side, the powers that be, they cannot keep up with all of it. Right? Oftentimes there will be one small thing, one thing at a time. And they can rally people around that. They can’t counter everything.” Some of the first steps include putting school administrators “on notice that they need to cooperate with all of this” and advertising “the values” the new board is implementing when posting job ads for new teachers. The second month is defined by policies: “Start introducing policies on CRT [critical race theory], eliminating DEI [diversity, equity, and inclusion] offices, reviewing contracts and initiatives, eliminate student surveys.” He also suggested putting a “moratorium on new technology.”
[17] Michael Flynn’s Holy War (full documentary) | FRONTLINE — PBS Oct 18, 2022
[18] Becker’s Hospital Review — Florida health system board race attracts ‘medical freedom’ candidates Kelly Gooch — Thursday, April 25th, 2024 For the At-Large Seat 2, one Democrat and three Republicans have filed as candidates. This includes “medical freedom” candidate Kendra Becker-Musante, RN, and outspoken hospital critic Stephen Guffanti, MD, both Republicans, according to the Herald-Tribune. Republican Kevin Cooper and Democrat John Lutz have also filed for the seat. Candidates for the At-Large Seat 3 include one Democrat and two Republicans. This includes Republican Mary Flynn O’Neill, a “medical freedom” candidate and sister of former President Donald Trump’s first national security advisor Michael Flynn, according to the Herald-Tribune. Republican Pam Beitlich and Democrat George Davis have also filed for the seat.
[19] February 22, 2024 | 2:11 PM Another York County school retains Christian law firm known for suing other districts Independence Law Center will consult with Dover School District on policies and “provide legal representation for student records, athletics, and privacy policies” — Jordan Wilkie/WITF The Dover Area School District is retaining the Independence Law Center, which has advised other districts on policies related to transgender students and educational materials. The ACLU has opposed ILC-backed policies as discriminatory against transgender students. The Harrisburg-based firm is offering its services free of charge to the district. The contract allows ILC to advise the district on policy, including those on student athletics, records and privacy, and to act as the district’s legal representative. Board chair David Conley read a prepared statement before the board voted 7–2 on Tuesday to approve the contract. He read a similar statement about the group at the previous week’s planning meeting. “The main objective in creating this agreement is to seek the wisest counsel possible to assist us in the evaluation and formulation of district policies,” Conley said. There was no board discussion at either meeting. The district is already represented by Benjamin Pratt of Saxton and Stump. Two district parents spoke against retaining ILC during public comments and said the process lacked transparency.
[20] Ep 37 — PA Dad Takes On Moms For Liberty (feat. Joy Ramsingh and Darren Laustsen) Law and Chaos Pennsylvania dad Darren Laustsen saw books disappearing from his daughter’s school — books which just so happened to be on the Moms for Liberty hit list. And he did something about it! Andrew and Liz talk to Darren and his lawyer Joy Ramsingh about their open records case that revealed a school board plot to shadowban books.
[22] Jessica Wildfire: Vladimir Putin Has Weaponized Food, His Secret Failsafe, June 9 2022. “They cheered when Russian tanks blew up. They treated war like a football game, because that’s all Americans understand anymore. Well, the fun’s over.”
[23] Jessica Wildfire 8:34 PM · Jun 15, 2024 New Question: Given that a former CDC director has just predicted a bird flu pandemic with 25–50 percent mortality, and given the current situation, would you plan a party in early August, even outdoors?
