Are You Being Manipulated?

I’m a firm believer that real life is lived in your immediate community, as in the people living around you that you interact with regularly. This includes family, friends and close groups like your church or work. This community is your reality. It is where you personally have the greatest potential to have a positive or negative impact on people’s lives. I’ve written about this on and off over the years, and it was the theme of the second book I released, The Danger of Being Alone Together.

For the most part, we tend to give people we know the benefit of the doubt. We’re more likely to try to understand their positions before we condemn them. Or, at least this used to be true. 2020 isolated us from much of our community and it seems like people have had a difficult time rebuilding it. In recent years, people in power have done their best to polarize around the issues they like to talk about. We’re pushed to have an opinion about everything in the headlines by those serving their own agendas.

No one likes to be manipulated. Whether it’s your friend, spouse, or someone at work, when you find out someone was using you, it’s demoralizing. In personal relationships, we want people to act fairly towards us and treat us with respect. Hopefully, you do your best to treat others that way as well.

Unfortunately, the further we get away from the situation, the easier it is to manipulate us. Limited information means that people can flip our emotions with a timely anecdote or sentimental story. Advertisers know this and politicians know this. Anyone wanting to separate us from our money knows this. I read a quote recently that epitomizes one of the ways people are frequently manipulated:

Injustice makes you angry
Anger makes you stupid
Stupid means you’re easy to manipulate

I would add the following line to this quote, “Shame means you can’t admit when you were wrong“.

This is who we are as people in a nutshell. These statements represent the frailty of humanity. We’re emotional creatures and our emotions can lead us to behave in rash or irrational ways. The internet is the gasoline on every fire because of its reach and pervasiveness and it’s no different in this case.

But the internet didn’t invent this. History shows how common it is for monarchs, presidents and sultans to manipulate the will of the people to gain their support. When wars happen, they want people volunteering to send their sons off to die. Sometimes this involves promoting of real injustices and other times it means exaggerating or manipulating the facts to create maximum impact.

This used to mean the extreme use of words, as most people received their information via speeches and later newspapers. The “worst” something in history happened. The “greatest atrocity” happened. They gave a rousing speech to call us to arms.

Television meant that people could see the images of the injustice in their own homes, often carefully curated by the editors for the desired outcome. Now, everyone with a cellphone has the power to create a narrative and many are always ready. The right footage can then be shown around the world, stirring the hearts and minds of the populace in a desired direction. AI and deep fakes make manipulation even more possible.

Now, with the right footage and software, I can make any public figure say anything I want. Is it true? If you already disliked the figure, you probably aren’t waiting around to find out, as you’ve already reposted and forwarded something that supports your preconceived notions.

In the last few years, the social justice profiteering movement has grown by leaps and bounds. It is not unusual for national non-profits to report donations in the millions after an event draws viral social media attention to their cause. Good meaning people with big hearts make large donations to shady organizations with no or low accountability.

The most tragic recent example was a large movement that raked in over $90 million in a short period of time. Only about 1/3 of those funds were passed on to organizations engaged in trying to help with the problem. Most of the rest of the money was paid out to the founders and their relatives or to buy houses for the people running the organization. They were able to successfully use injustice to become multi-millionaires in a very short time. Not exactly what the donors thought they were giving to.

Everyone can be manipulated in the moment with the right issue that appeals to them. When we see something so awful that makes us feel immediately enraged, we’re in danger of being manipulated. Knowing this about ourselves is important. It’s okay not to immediately react, repost or respond. Taking the time to think about our emotions and how they might use them against us is an important step.

What is the solution? Coming back to where we began, real life is in your local community with people you know and can learn to trust. When you have a beef with your neighbor, at least it is based on actual experience and not just what someone told you to think. We should care about what is going on in the world, but we should also realize that there are many who will attempt to profit from world events, even the ones they might have caused.

Another consequence of this manipulation is the impact it has on our daily morale. People in power want you to think they are the answer to all of your problems. They want you living moment by moment, sucked into their realm of influence so you’ll believe every area of your life is tied into their control. If they succeed in this influence, then they succeed in making you believe that who is at the top of the power pyramid will either guarantee your misery or happiness.

That just isn’t true. If you find yourself feeling miserable after reading about what is going on in the headlines, I would encourage you to give them a pass the next time. All of my adult life, I’ve seen people of every political persuasion complaining about those in power. It has flipped back and forth with every election, but the people who live in this daily stream are rarely happy and the majority of things they’ve been told to fear never come true.

I’d encourage everyone to take a daily step back from the insanity of the online world. Take a deep look at the people around you. Get to know them better. Spend time together. Live life and laugh together. There is joy to be found in community. We tend to have a lot in common with the people in our towns and in our neighborhoods.

If you’re angry about something you’ve seen online. Take a moment. Stop and think. Make sure you understand the issue. Ask yourself, “what does the person showing this to me have to gain?” If you’ve realized you’ve been manipulated, admit you’re wrong and be careful not to trust that source again. Fakenews isn’t just a tool of the right or the left, but anyone who wants to use you for their benefit.

“Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.”