The Phishing Principle

Patience… you want to communicate that you are yourself patient. Most of us fail on this front a million times a day. So it’s an aspiration. But if you see in the message… some of us in work will have done these courses on how to avoid being trolled or phished online. And they’ll always say one of the triggers for this is someone putting you in a pressure cooker situation — are they saying you have to use five seconds to press this button, respond to this email immediately otherwise your bank accounts will be… So a political campaign like Donald’s campaign will say, vote for me to save America. And you’ve got five days to save America.

Source: Swifty Decoding Interview

Everyone who has done phishing training knows this principle: urgency is the primary manipulation tool. “Respond immediately or your account will be closed.” “Vote for me in five days or America dies.” The Patience test applies the same insight to political Disinfolklore that corporate security applies to phishing emails.

← Previous: The Absence of Patience in Disinfolklore | Back to Tool 10: Patience | Next: Nuclear Disinfolklore: The Urgency Tactic Par Excellence →