[bikamonki]

I am immune. The trick is to become conscious of the process. Put another way: the immune mind operates on a higher level of abstraction and can objectively see lower levels - you allow the memes to run in brain cycles but you are su and kill them. It's like when you are watching a movie and at some point you realize (feel) it is fake reality, then you learn to do it on purpose everytime: you watch the movie layer from above, it does kill the idea of the movie to fool you but it is a great mind workout to 'learn to be immune'.

[mirimir]

Unix meme aside, that's what I do.

Awareness of manipulation reduces its effectiveness.

Bringing in another meme, "I see the fnords!" ;)

Hofstadter's stuff has also been instructive.

[logfromblammo]

But once you see the fnords, you can't un-see them.

The paid content masquerading as journalism is particularly irritating. You can also see similar bias in the regular news stories. There are lots of tricks you can use to color the facts of a story to get the audience to respond in a particular way.

Lighting, framing, background, ambient sounds, subject placement--all these things can be employed for rhetorical effect. For instance, authority figures might be filmed at a slight upward angle from below the eye line, to make them appear slightly taller than anyone viewing the image. Fat people will be filmed from shoulders up if favored, from the waist up if unfavored, and from the neck down for vaguely defamatory stories. Pay attention to whose faces are shown with police mugshots, and whose faces are shown with license photos, military photos, school photos, or photos intended for other purposes. Watch out for different wording in captions and infobars. Listen for odd euphemisms that suddenly pop up in several places at once, or for different people who mysteriously say almost exactly the same things, as though they read from the same script.

It's almost harder to see anything that isn't a fnord.

[mirimir]

I beg to differ.

It's the tricks that you describe that are the "fnords". And once you see them explicitly as tricks, they lose their power over you.

[logfromblammo]

They lose their power, but they never stop being annoying.

They constantly remind you that other people see you as an object to be manipulated, rather than as a person with its own individual motivations, thoughts, and opinions. And then you can also look at other people around you, and see that the same tricks still have power over them.

[mirimir]

I find them amusing, like the tricks that children play to manipulate, rather than annoying :)

[bikamonki]

Indeed! GEB has been a bible in this regard (pun intended).

[mirimir]

:)

Maybe it's better to start with I Am a Strange Loop.[0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Am_a_Strange_Loop

[splawn]

Whoops, it looks like you forgot to su and kill the Unix memes you are infected with.

[bikamonki]

Nothing wrong with such memes, they are like good bacteria. We are talking about memes that want you to take actions (coercive memes) like spending your money on one product/service, or join a religion and then bomb the temple of another religion.

[splawn]

I guess my point is no one is truly immune from meme infection as its a side effect of having a brain, its not something you can control.... "Enjoy." "I'm lovin it."

[mirimir]

Some memes immunize us against other memes. As a scientist, I'm immunized against all sorts of religious memes. But of course, carriers of religious memes are typically immunized (at least partially) against scientific memes.

[splawn]

I do not disagree with your point. However, if a meme works on the unconscious as many ad campaigns supposedly do, then it seems to me like anyone that makes the claim that they are "immune" should viewed skeptically. No one wants to think that advertising affects their choices, yet advertising seems to work.

[bikamonki]

True, it was a bold claim on my end. In lack of complete information we will be tricked by subtle clues, like the first time you visit a town you'll be driven to one restaurant and not others bases on such clues triggering your already hard-wired bias. But for the most part I can tell, and ignore, ads/coercive memes. They don't annoy me at all, I truly just ignore them.

[mirimir]

Advertising works because most people are not consciously present most of the time. But one can learn to distinguish oneself from ones default thoughts, which are just recordings that get cued up by triggers. And be present.