A Very Public Clearing Up
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The Internet space – even before it came into existence – had been glorified as a universal knowledge vault and an instrument of instantaneous communication by the best science-fiction writers of the last century but recently it has been showing us its darker side.
Probably because the primary nucleus of intellectually and spiritually more advanced pioneers is being eroded by a more down-to-earth audience. Definitely because the scale of its development has made it possible not only to inform but to misinform the public. And likely because the general standards of morality have been lowered globally because of various crisis phenomena – political, religious, worldview and, finally, civilizational.
There is far too much information, it spreads far too quickly, its reliability is checked (if ever) far too carelessly. Thus, there arises a great temptation to attribute a background, words or actions to a person which are far from reality, like in a good old Odessa joke:
- Have you heard they say that Rabinovich’s daughter is a whore?
- Sorry, but he only has two sons and no daughter!
- So what of it?! Let him now try and clear himself for all the honest folk to see and hear.
This is the principle according to which all fake attacks are carried out on the Internet. To throw the “fakal matter” onto a big fan, to oil not very scrupulous shit-jets of a smaller caliber with hard cash and to enjoy looking at “Rabinovich” getting surprised (upset, angry, furious).
This kind of thing can also be done by pranksters for the love of it (in this case, hard cash is not included into the scheme) and by revenging spitters for their personal reasons and by quite particular professionals who make good money on “nothing personal, it’s just business”.
Fake-masters usually try to smear the object of their attack:
in the eyes of target audiences (wife, boss, partners, authorities) important (in the masters’ opinion) for this object;
by imputing discrediting (in the fake-masters’ opinion) words/actions to the object.
The key moment here is “in the fake-masters’ opinion” because one wrong hypothesis is enough for the whistle to take all the steam.
So when planning a fake attack it is necessary to know the object to the finest details. To have a pretty good idea of the real motivation and the real information level of the referent audiences important for this object. And of his/her resources that can neutralize/adjust the flow of “fakal matter”. And only then to think twice whether it is worth doing in terms of expending resources. And, on second thoughts, to decide that the folk wisdom about “don’t waste your efforts, my good man” is just to the point here.
Tags: Career; Reputation; Work