PsyOp gone viral

If you want to learn about PsyOps, some contemporary event offers a splendid opportunity. Anyone still exposing themselves on a regular basis to the mind numbing mass media has been exposed to the latest talking point the dominator society threw into the global memepool: The anti-muslim movie.

Although I spend too much time on the internet, I didn't came across the source of all this hodge-podge of events until now. Many demonstration in front of embassies happened, even with some death casualties. The Sydney demonstration against the anti-islam movie made a headline in the Sunday Herald Sun: "Why police was FORCED to use violence against protestors".

Within 4 days, the cause of the latest global media storm had gone viral, with more 4 million views. It appeared in my youtube suggestion (without a user profile), so I watched it.

My first reaction was similar to reading Hitler's Mein Kampf - I didn't really fancy going through all the abysmal bs. However, 13 minutes of watching a video are easier to cope with than reading a  book filled with racist slur, so I persisted.

Although the video suggest very amateurish origins, it bears rather the hallmarks of some professional production. There's quite a large cast involved, about 10 different actors, with some good props (swords, tents) and lots of bluescreen technology. Most movie production methods have become much more affordable with Open Software, nevertheless the lighting, costumes and bluescreen suggest at least a semi-professional studio and a decent amount of money went into this movie.

Most surprising for me, having a youtube channel myself, was the speed in which it was recognised, in parts of the world which seem to be less internet-hooked than the western world. The uploader, DarkF3TT. had done some game captures of First-person shooter games, showing his abilities to do head shots.

I can't really tell how much of gamer's culture exists in the places where US embassies were torched, but somehow the idea of being a devout and radical muslim and playing video games heroising US based kill missions seems odd. The gamers I met in Australia were certainly impregnated with unconditional nationalism, extended to the big brother US.

As video games allow one to identify with the game character, I wonder how many people living in places that ostensibly have to hate the US would spend their free time impersonating US heroes liberating the world from evil Nazis and communists.

So how on earth did the people taking it to the street find out that this despicable peace of religious smear existed in first place? And how did they find out, before the global mass media picked up on the reactions?

Of course, it fits much better into the discourse that has been started to talk about religion, extremism, or any other topic suggested the main stream media than asking more obvious questions. The people I talked to about this had, like me by then, not seen or noticed the 'offending' video.

The obvious questions, however, make it look like a psyop. Nothing on the internet gets viral until its gets promoted to sufficient multipliers. Without someone embedded in a group sufficiently radicalised to push their noses into this pile of racist bullshit this video would have had the same fate as youtube video on a fairly unpopular/unknown youtube channel - not even getting more than 100 views.

Once people started protesting, the promotion worked out, and more than 4 million views happened. And as long as people don't care about how it kicked off, the media discourse fosters the divide and conquer meme.