Our founding presumption in Counter Disinfolklore is that every time we communicate with others, whether we like it or not, we are manipulating and being manipulated. This exchange of Mana or energy is a function of being human - it is in fact why we are called humans (we will return to this later).
[Power of Mana]
Sacred M-N Sound
Mana was a moniker given by the first Indo-European language speakers to the energy we exchange when we communicate. This mantic meaning, through semantic spread, came to colonise the signifier for the Moon (meh₁nṓt is the contemporary spelling of the sound Ancient Ukrainians used to signify the…
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embedded-post-meta 2 years ago · 2 likes · DecodingTrolls
The main point, for now, is to notice when others are trying to provoke us into negative responses and activities (or in the example above: negative inactivity!), to assess the Mana inside the trolls attempting to coerce us into a certain mentality, and, unless it’s the kind of positive trolling our cat or our dog uses to persuade us to pet them (or any such positive forms of manipulation which do us no harm) to resist such manipulation.
[DecodingTrolls]
Spectacle
🎭Disinfolklorists often create a Spectacle that includes us the outraged spectators - the Spectator, and their emotions, is a character in the Spectacle. Former Russian deputy prime minister Vladislav Surkov, who created the Disinfolklore character “Putin” (we feel we know what “Putin thinks,” whereas actually we only know what a character in Russian D…
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embedded-post-meta 3 years ago · 2 likes · DecodingTrolls
The music accompanying the action, and the poignancy of the character’s journey provokes in us a roller-coaster ride of emotions. Generally speaking, we want the lead characters to succeed, despite all. As we witness their reversals and eventual successes, we feel something being conveyed into us - the Mana of the director, the actors, the screenwriters, and everyone involved in projecting it into our minds. Disinfolklore as a vehicle for tricking us into feelings that will lead us into acting against our own and our community’s interests operates using the same tools as any good Netflix show. The stakes are just higher: we may end up being manipulated into activities (or inactivity) that is contrary to our values and our community’s interests if we do not consciously recognise when we are being trolled by Disinfolklore. Counter Disinfolklore helps us focus on this goal of recognising when we are being unconsciously trolled, so that we can respond appropriately.
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