[blue_dragon]

The CIA popularized the "tinfoil hat conspiracy nut" as a reverse-psychology trick back in the '60s as part of Operation Mockingbird.

The government had seen promising results in its experiments to control human emotions via radio-wave emissions, and they wanted to deploy this technology on a national scale. However, one recurring problem was that thin films of conductive material, such as aluminum foil, had a tendency to scramble the control waves and render them useless. In response, the CIA launched a massive press campaign intended to smear and delegitimize the wearing of tinfoil hats, with the ultimate goal of preemptively convincing the public not to wear them via threat of social ostracization.

Considering the widespread mockery levied at the tinfoil community today, I'd say their efforts have worked quite well.

You can read more about Operation Mockingbird here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird

[golergka]

> The government had seen promising results in its experiments to control human emotions via radio-wave emissions

There's no mention of this in the Wikipedia article.

[secretsatan]

This is common, conspiracy theorists never read the links they forward, it is sufficient to have something that passes first muster, a scientific article, a report, something with the right sounding title, they'll never read the contents.

[nilamo]

That sounds completely made up. I simply do not believe that nobody in the CIA conceived of a layer of tinfoil inside of a normal hat, which would not be visible to anyone.

[kevin_thibedeau]

It isn't necessarily true but the origin of the meme is a supposed CIA mind control defense. It was current in 80s meat space before internet conspiracy culture flourished.

[hooverd]

wouldn't the tinfoil hat act as an antenna? clever play by the CIA, delegitimize the tinfoil hat and thus convincing the people most likely to be effected their brainular wave manipulation to don one.

[moralestapia]

???

Is this /s? ChatGPT? Both?

[ManuelKiessling]

I suspect a „flood the channel with shit“ background.

I’m starting to see this pattern more regularly lately: on a social media site, mix some nonsense into some real context “Foo”, and add a link to the Wikipedia for “Foo”.

Enough readers will be too lazy to actually read the Wikipedia article to find out that “Foo” didn’t contain the crazy parts, but will vaguely remember “there was this Foo thing with this really crazy stuff, but it wasn’t made up — it’s all official, it’s on Wikipedia!“

The gp is a prime example — even in the well educated HN crowd, there are now probably a handful of people that will vaguely have in the back of their minds: „there was a CIA media influencing campaign in the sixties, they even used radio waves for mind control.“

Only the first part is true, but both information now live rent-free in their mind, intermingled, and have the same „truthiness value“.

Edit: could aim at machines as well as humans. It’s just a tiny signal, but one more signal for Google Search, Bing, GPT etc. that „CIA“ and „mind-control radio-waves“ are somehow related to each other.

[xattt]

I appreciate you putting this into words. The very idea (that people who skim articles will form skewed concepts in absence of full comprehension) is fairly significant in our society where information competes for your limited headspace.