Artificially generated

Artificially generated | Daily Tribune

Last week’s notable political incidents were no different. Inaccuracy, in fact, pervaded the incidents.

Take, for instance, the resurfaced 18 men at the Cayetano-bloc’s “blue ribbon comedy,” repeating claims that they delivered suitcases of cash to various personalities in and out of politics.

Their various backers and spin doctors boisterously hail them as heroic “ex-Marines.” But the military establishment disagrees, insisting it was “misleading” to label them as such since they weren’t in the active military service, some were never even in the Navy, or if they were, were dishonorably discharged.

Various observers and the personalities they alleged received maletas patronizingly labeled them “ex-bodyguards” or “bagmen” of fugitive solon Zaldy Co.

Who then exactly are these 18 porters?

Amid all the swirling tribal, emotional narratives of “them versus us” accurately describing them can’t be fairly done in a word or two. But no worries.

In fact, accurately describing them is best done by describing what their exact roles are in our current politics of squid tactics and demolition jobs, not who they are.

So, what are they?

To cut to the chase, they’re the “willing foot soldiers” of mercenary amoral political tacticians manufacturing and maneuvering towards false outrage and consensus.

“Willing” may not even be accurate. The National Bureau of Investigation says it is investigating claims the 18 received handsome stipends to the tune allegedly of some P5 million each.

At any rate, manufactured outrage and consensus were definitely the two fundamental goals in the nearly unstoppable digital manipulation of the controversy.

Manufactured outrage, says a website specializing in disinformation/misinformation tactics, is where “instead of stimulating agreement, it stimulates anger.”

“An operation (typically) identifies a potentially divisive issue, amplifies the most extreme positions, and creates the impression that ‘everyone is furious about this.’ The goal is not to inform but to activate — to convert passive observers into participants in a conflict that may be largely artificial.”

Translated handily to the spirited maleta brouhaha and the flood control corruption mess, suitcases of cash from corrupted flood control projects delivered to various personalities does provoke unbridled public outrage.

But outrage can be artificially generated. Take, for instance, the videos of maletas being hauled into planes and vans. The videos showed nothing of what the maletas actually contained, not even conclusive pictures of an accidentally dropped heavy maleta spilling cash.

This was a suspension of the obvious which skeptical impeachment prosecutor Terry Ridon raised with an open maleta containing wigs and mangoes, an obvious satirical dig at two prominent senators.

Anyway, the maleta hauling exercises are otherwise a good example of manufactured outrage turned into manufactured consensus that has since confused the public, including even intelligent but “useful idiots” of political camps, into strongly believing the maletas contained cash.

As to how the public, now spending most of their time on social media, got to where they are now, take note of what communication experts call the uninhibited “brigading” phenomenon invading our digital spaces.

Brigading is the coordinated invasion of online spaces by a group, like mercenary trolls, with the intent to disrupt, overwhelm, or manipulate.

Brigading, however, is only one of the many manipulation tactics out there, which only means that we now watch out for the phenomenon that when the less people think, the more they talk or livestream on social media.