This Stupid (Anti-)Social Media

Before reading the text below the line break, which is just a mirror of the “missing page” from CIA’s Simple Sabotage Field Manual¹, we highly recommend that you read the unabridged “facts” from Institute for the Advancement of Popular Automatisms, at http://www.ifapa.me/STUPIDITY.

Interpret the emphasized facts however you want. We think that it’s a testament to how leaders purposefully generate confusion to divide us.

The missing page, transcribed from the image, is as follows:

Update — March 2010

GUIDELINES FOR SABOTAGING SOCIAL NETWORKS THROUGH PURPOSEFUL SYSTEMATIC STUPIDITY

There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don’t know we don’t know.
– Donald Rumsfeld

Back in the day when people didn’t know that they didn’t know, life was good. However, with the onset of the Internet, and more recently the so-called social networks, people are increasingly coming to know what they didn’t know. Hence, the potential for widespread public outrage and upheaval is quickly and perilously growing. Thus, in the interest of security and stability, it is essential to sabotage social networks. The following guidelines provide all the necessary strategies to induce chaos and confusion among the population, with the double purpose of neutralizing dissent and furthering the automatization of citizenship. Furthermore, the contemporary leader must bear in mind that confusion generates data. And data, when owned and properly mined and managed, is a source of power and control.

1. Every leader should have a social network profile, at least Twitter and Facebook. A smiling face is essential. The more you fuck shit up, the wider the smile.
2. A mix of truth, lies, and bullshit generates chaos. Chaos gives way to confusion, and confusion always brings a renewed opportunity for stupidization and control.
3. Don’t hate te media: be the media. And remember to forget about truth: the only thing that counts is popularity.
4. Insult everybody. Thanks to social networks, the only possible response to insult is powerlessness, submission and fear. Attach random people.
5. Praise random people. Even those you hate.
6. Ignore everybody. Even those you previously insulted or praised.
7. Lie and be honest about it. Keep bullshit real.
8. Excess is success: drown everybody with an endless deluge of tweets and posts. Use useless data. Useless data, when accompanied with the proper insults and disqualifications to those who disrupt business as usual, become useful.
9. Contact a trusted hacker. Hack the fuck out of everybody, even yourself. Then jail the hacker and contact another, more sophisticated one.
10. Punish leaks of classified information with death. Encourage leaks.
11. Present those who use social networks to stand against power as heroes. Then, when they come out into the light, be sure to smash them properly.

TNU