The Red Friday Viral

[Larry Dixon]

This is as political as I will ever get on a message board, just so you all know. This is the upper limit.

I received this in email today:

> Just in case this actually takes off, I thought I'd break my rule and send this one around.
>
> RED FRIDAYS ----- Very soon, you will see a great many people wearing Red every Friday. The reason? Americans who support our troops used to be called the "silent majority". We are no longer silent, and are voicing our love for God, country and home in record breaking numbers. We are not organized, boisterous or over-bearing. We get no liberal media coverage on TV, to reflect our message or our opinions.
>
> Many Americans, like you, me and all our friends, simply want to recognize that the vast majority of America supports our troops.
>
> Our idea of showing solidarity and support for our troops with dignity and respect starts this Friday -and continues each and every Friday until the troops all come home, sending a deafening message that.. Every red-blooded American who supports our men and women afar will wear something red.
>
> By word of mouth, press, TV -- let's make the United States on every Friday a sea of red much like a homecoming football game in the bleachers.
>
> If every one of us who loves this country will share this with acquaintances, co-workers, friends, and family. It will not be long before the USA is covered in RED and it will let our troops know the once "silent" majority is on their side more than ever, certainly more than the media lets on.
>
> The first thing a soldier says when asked "What can we do to make things better for you?"
> is...We need your support and your prayers.
> Let's get the word out and lead with class and dignity, by example; and wear something red every Friday.
>
> We live in the Land of the Free, only because of the Brave.


What follows is my reply.

[Larry Dixon]

These things seem to get churned out from some, I don't know, central propaganda office somewhere and I get some variation on the "We Love The USA, Damn Those ____, let's show how we won't be ignored!" message every couple of weeks. They always include generic flag-waving, God-loving, Anti-Kitten-Eating, etc. bits to easily get people to agree with them, then they slip in the hate and divisiveness between the heart-thumping rah-rah lines.

The Red Friday Viral one's a masterwork, and that's why it sucks. Here's the breakdown on it.

Is this just people wanting to show they love the USA? At some level this is true. Viral manipulations are mostly advanced by people who really do mean well. Manipulation is manipulation, and the most brilliant kinds of behavioral programming look cheerful and innocuous. Dirty work gets done by people who genuinely want to do good things.

"If every one of us who loves this country will share this with" is a gem of manipulation because it combines the advertising standard "if you're like me, you use Brand X" team-building trick with "do my advertising for me, to show you really love your country." That's the viral part, like a chain letter self-replicates based upon who forwards it. This one's full of the All-Hit Play List for puppeteering large groups of people. There's even football and homecoming mentioned---can you believe they left out NASCAR(tm), Elvis(tm), '57 Chevys and Route 66 on the Americana play list? It even works in the equivalent of a secret handshake---if you see someone wearing that color on a Friday, they must be someone who agrees with you!

"Like you, me and all our friends"---that was a hell of an assumption from a total stranger, right? Now you've subtly been fed the concept that you already agree with the whole thing. I just about laughed myself off the chair with the fake humility of the "we are not organized, boisterous or over-bearing" line coming in an uninvited, unsolicited viral email. They're practically the definition of organized, boisterous and overbearing, like any other form of spam.

(and you know what? I am a hypocrite for saying all this by using a Reply All. Damn you, Logic!)

This particular viral email is neurolinguistic programming at its best (and worst). In terms of its psychological manipulation structure, it hits bullet point keyphrases at just the right beat to hammer in assumptive concepts for its agenda, while enhancing divisiveness under the guise of building unity. In this case, and honestly who knows if it's intentional or not, "Red" is chosen, the representative color for the Republican party in political diagrams, and like any modern political action statement, it stays on-message with precisely-timed knee-jerk manipulative catch-phrases: "liberal media" (like, say, conservative-angled media juggernaut/America's Pravda Fox News?), jingoistic gems like "God, country and home" (yeah, somehow we're all so oppressed, we who... are you kidding me?), "silent majority" (again, you've gotta be kidding me---if that somehow means Republicans, who in PR spin seem to claim exclusive rights to loving the USA and God and Guns and Babies---in itself a coup of media legerdemain---The House, Senate, White House, and the overwhelming majority of hearing, budget and policy committees are controlled by Republicans, and what's so silent about that?), "loves this country," and more.

And just the same, before you think I'm harping anti-Republican, I was a registered Republican for 20+ years, and if it was "let's all wear Blue!" I'd be questioning what the hell the Democrats were up to in all this. Ultimately, the point isn't what color it is at all. The point is what gets slipped in while you're agreeing with the easy stuff.

There's nothing uniting about this at all---under the thin layer of All-American Yay We Love Us, it's about generating yet another isolated, dumbed-down, divided-over group.

Go along with this kind of crap from ANYONE, whether it's right wing, left wing, church, cult or corporation, and you're getting played. It plays on your fears of rejection and victimization. It lays out that, hey, you are opposing an Unseen Enemy, Those Who Do Not Believe As You Believe. It manages to imply that if you DON'T do (insert this month's basically effortless activity), you must be siding with the Oppressors, and you DON'T love your country, your God, your troops, or whatever the feelgood buttons are this time around.

And then it gives you a supremely easy, packaged solution after it's played on your fear and selfconscious victimization. You get to both show you're Special AND Conform! It's a branding/logo ad-economy-driven specialty: Now we have shown you how UNIQUE you are by being just like... all these... other people... doing the same thing you are... uhhh. But it has to be an easy thing. A sticker, a color, a flag, turn on your headlights, forward an email with a click. Generally speaking, once someone does a small task associated with a complex subject matter, they dismiss further thought about that subject matter. Mentally, it gets put in the "Finished" pile. Get voters/viewers/consumers to hot-key on a single item and you can slip past twenty other important things while they're spun up on that one. Get people to slap a ribbon on their lapel and they won't feel obliged to do much more than that.

Literally the only thing that surprised me about the Red Shirt viral was that there wasn't a URL for an "Official Red Unity" website to sell you some red clothes. Then again, that may be on the way next.

Screw these chain-letter emotional and political manipulations. Let them work on the stupid people. Then again, what if that IS the target audience? And these get sent to all of us. What does that tell you about what those who originally wrote this thing think of you and me?

Me, I'm wearing Red, White and Blue as often as I already do, when I feel like it. I give the finger to those who want to use these cut-rate Jedi Mind Tricks on me, and I keep right on loving my country and whose who defend it, same as I always have. I will keep on sending packages to troops abroad and giving my love and support to every GI I meet.

Damned right we live in the land of the free, only because of the brave. I will cut apart media manipulation and corporate spin with the razor of education. I will continuously question authority because any authority worth having can give solid and reasoned answers, and if they can't, I'll continue to work to get rid of them for incompetence. I'll laugh at crap like million-tax-dollar "Mission Accomplished" carrier landing photo ops and I'll continue to follow the money when something smells fishy. I'll expose the corruption I hunt up, and I'll keep on putting in the work to make the USA a smart, healthy and reasoned country because that's what a responsible citizen does. It's a lot more work than slapping on a bumper sticker or waving a little flag or lockstepping in whatever candy-ass "do ___ if you love America" scheme comes along to make me stop thinking deeply. That's just how much I dig the country, so I do the hard work. You may not want to, and that's your life. I don't assume I'm oppressed or victimized or anyone is out to get me. I take a critical look, and I don't Conform, Consume and Obey.

[Cam63]

That's a nice book you wrote, Larry.

I second the sentiment.

[Gilda Dent]

So, um, are you wearing red today?

I was going to wear a peach blazer with my black skirt to my job interview today, but if it's red Friday, does that mean I'd be better off in a red one? The closest I have is burgundy. Will that score me some points with the interviewer? If so, is there some secret signal I need to know?

I am so confused.

Gilda

[the4thpip]

I'm wearing burgundy briefs. Does that count? Or is there too much blue in burgundy?

[Gilda Dent]

Pip owes me a Coke! Which comes in a RED can!

Gilda

[Cam63]

My blood is red.

Well, amber actually...

[Larry Dixon]

Cam has too much iron in his lagerglobin!!!

[WhiteRose]

Or is it too much lager in his ironglobin?

No, wait, you were right the first time.

[Larry Dixon]

That's a nice book you wrote, Larry.

Thank you Cam :) Hey I do write essays, speeches and columns sometimes. It's not all novels and short stories. Though in these cases, they just FEEL like novels. :)

I'm usually just popping on threads to zing one-liners. Who da heck knew?

[the4thpip]

Pip owes me a Coke! Which comes in a RED can!

Gilda
What if I make it a blue Pepsi? Or a diet vannilla cherry doctor pepper? The latter is probably the equivalent of supporting Nader.

[Cam63]

Thank you Cam :) Hey I do write essays, speeches and columns sometimes. It's not all novels and short stories. Though in these cases, they just FEEL like novels. :)

I'm usually just popping on threads to zing one-liners. Who da heck knew?

That makes thee a man of letters.

[Cam63]

What if I make it a blue Pepsi? Or a diet vannilla cherry doctor pepper? The latter is probably the equivalent of supporting Nader.

Argh ! My beer bottle has a red label !

I better switch back to the VB.

[DarkOra]

I will keep on sending packages to troops abroad and giving my love and support to every GI I meet.
*applause*

[PatrickG]

If we support millitarism unquestioningly, we'll all be wearing red.

[the4thpip]

When did red stop being the colour of commies and socialism anyway?
Silly Americans. :p

http://www.neumarkt-dresden.de/image1/rote-fahne.jpg

[Noah Johnson]

When did red stop being the colour of commies and socialism anyway?
Silly Americans. :p

2000.

For a long time, they've switched back and forth in election years between Democratic states and Republican states being represented as either red or blue. In 1996, it was Democrats red, Republicans blue, which meant that in 2000, it was the other way around. That was the year that Americans suddenly actually had to pay attention to the election and learn what electoral votes are, and the media knows that Americans are lazy, easily confused, and only marginally literate, so they decided to keep the colors the way they had them, Democrats blue, Republicans red.

Within a couple years, Republicans had started to say that this was the liberal media deliberately trying not to associate the Democratic party with the color of communism, so as to slip their commie agenda past otherwise-alert Americans. This is kind of proof of how desperate and pathetic right-wingers will get in their hunt for evidence of their imaginary liberal media.

[Weetomuncher]

I was confused with the red and blue thing in the US because blue is the colour of the Conservative party and red is the Labour party colour here in the UK.

I'm a pretty staunch supporter of the Conservative party and wear a lot of blue but my favourite football team wear blue and the national colours of Scotland are also blue so it isn't really political.

[Spackling Compound]

http://www.splashcomics.de/images/portraits/charaktere/whoiswho_arsenal2.gif
Oh..what until Pixies Chick hears about this!

[Francis]

Just thought I'd fix the circular.

RED FRIDAYS ----- Very soon, you will see a great many people wearing Red every Friday. The reason? Americans who support our troops used to be called the "silent majority". We are no longer silent, and are voicing our love for the fatherland and our President and Party in record breaking numbers. We are not organized, boisterous or over-bearing. We get no liberal media coverage on TV, to reflect our message or our opinions.

Many Americans, like you, me and all our friends, simply want to recognize that the vast majority of America supports our troops.

Our idea of solidarity with our troops starts this Friday -and continues each and every Friday until the troops all come home, sending a deafening message that.. Every red-blooded American who supports our men and women afar will wear something red. In addition, to symbolise the two foundations for the military - the manufacturing of the fatherland and the might of our soldiers, we shall wear a crossed gold hammer and gold sickle on our red clothing.

By word of mouth, press, TV -- let's make the United States on every Friday a sea of red flags much like a homecoming football game in the bleachers.

If every one of us who loves this country will share this with acquaintances, co-workers, friends, and family. It will not be long before the USA is flying the red flag and it will let our troops know the once "silent" majority is on their side more than ever, certainly more than the media lets on.

The first thing a soldier says when asked "What can we do to make things better for you?" is...We need your support and your prayers.

Let's get the word out and lead with class and dignity, by example; and wear red and gold every Friday.

We live in the Land of the Free, only because of the Brave.

[Larry Dixon]

Bwahhh hah hah hah hahhh! Oh that is priceless. :)

Hey you know, I did leave out:

"RED?! You want us to wear RED?! Haven't you ever SEEN Star Trek?!"

[Michael P]

These things seem to get churned out from some, I don't know, central propaganda office somewhere and I get some variation on the "We Love The USA, Damn Those ____, let's show how we won't be ignored!" message every couple of weeks. They always include generic flag-waving, God-loving, Anti-Kitten-Eating, etc. bits to easily get people to agree with them, then they slip in the hate and divisiveness between the heart-thumping rah-rah lines.

The Red Friday Viral one's a masterwork, and that's why it sucks. Here's the breakdown on it.

Is this just people wanting to show they love the USA? At some level this is true. Viral manipulations are mostly advanced by people who really do mean well. Manipulation is manipulation, and the most brilliant kinds of behavioral programming look cheerful and innocuous. Dirty work gets done by people who genuinely want to do good things.

"If every one of us who loves this country will share this with" is a gem of manipulation because it combines the advertising standard "if you're like me, you use Brand X" team-building trick with "do my advertising for me, to show you really love your country." That's the viral part, like a chain letter self-replicates based upon who forwards it. This one's full of the All-Hit Play List for puppeteering large groups of people. There's even football and homecoming mentioned---can you believe they left out NASCAR(tm), Elvis(tm), '57 Chevys and Route 66 on the Americana play list? It even works in the equivalent of a secret handshake---if you see someone wearing that color on a Friday, they must be someone who agrees with you!

"Like you, me and all our friends"---that was a hell of an assumption from a total stranger, right? Now you've subtly been fed the concept that you already agree with the whole thing. I just about laughed myself off the chair with the fake humility of the "we are not organized, boisterous or over-bearing" line coming in an uninvited, unsolicited viral email. They're practically the definition of organized, boisterous and overbearing, like any other form of spam.

(and you know what? I am a hypocrite for saying all this by using a Reply All. Damn you, Logic!)

This particular viral email is neurolinguistic programming at its best (and worst). In terms of its psychological manipulation structure, it hits bullet point keyphrases at just the right beat to hammer in assumptive concepts for its agenda, while enhancing divisiveness under the guise of building unity. In this case, and honestly who knows if it's intentional or not, "Red" is chosen, the representative color for the Republican party in political diagrams, and like any modern political action statement, it stays on-message with precisely-timed knee-jerk manipulative catch-phrases: "liberal media" (like, say, conservative-angled media juggernaut/America's Pravda Fox News?), jingoistic gems like "God, country and home" (yeah, somehow we're all so oppressed, we who... are you kidding me?), "silent majority" (again, you've gotta be kidding me---if that somehow means Republicans, who in PR spin seem to claim exclusive rights to loving the USA and God and Guns and Babies---in itself a coup of media legerdemain---The House, Senate, White House, and the overwhelming majority of hearing, budget and policy committees are controlled by Republicans, and what's so silent about that?), "loves this country," and more.

And just the same, before you think I'm harping anti-Republican, I was a registered Republican for 20+ years, and if it was "let's all wear Blue!" I'd be questioning what the hell the Democrats were up to in all this. Ultimately, the point isn't what color it is at all. The point is what gets slipped in while you're agreeing with the easy stuff.

There's nothing uniting about this at all---under the thin layer of All-American Yay We Love Us, it's about generating yet another isolated, dumbed-down, divided-over group.

Go along with this kind of crap from ANYONE, whether it's right wing, left wing, church, cult or corporation, and you're getting played. It plays on your fears of rejection and victimization. It lays out that, hey, you are opposing an Unseen Enemy, Those Who Do Not Believe As You Believe. It manages to imply that if you DON'T do (insert this month's basically effortless activity), you must be siding with the Oppressors, and you DON'T love your country, your God, your troops, or whatever the feelgood buttons are this time around.

And then it gives you a supremely easy, packaged solution after it's played on your fear and selfconscious victimization. You get to both show you're Special AND Conform! It's a branding/logo ad-economy-driven specialty: Now we have shown you how UNIQUE you are by being just like... all these... other people... doing the same thing you are... uhhh. But it has to be an easy thing. A sticker, a color, a flag, turn on your headlights, forward an email with a click. Generally speaking, once someone does a small task associated with a complex subject matter, they dismiss further thought about that subject matter. Mentally, it gets put in the "Finished" pile. Get voters/viewers/consumers to hot-key on a single item and you can slip past twenty other important things while they're spun up on that one. Get people to slap a ribbon on their lapel and they won't feel obliged to do much more than that.

Literally the only thing that surprised me about the Red Shirt viral was that there wasn't a URL for an "Official Red Unity" website to sell you some red clothes. Then again, that may be on the way next.

Screw these chain-letter emotional and political manipulations. Let them work on the stupid people. Then again, what if that IS the target audience? And these get sent to all of us. What does that tell you about what those who originally wrote this thing think of you and me?

Me, I'm wearing Red, White and Blue as often as I already do, when I feel like it. I give the finger to those who want to use these cut-rate Jedi Mind Tricks on me, and I keep right on loving my country and whose who defend it, same as I always have. I will keep on sending packages to troops abroad and giving my love and support to every GI I meet.

Damned right we live in the land of the free, only because of the brave. I will cut apart media manipulation and corporate spin with the razor of education. I will continuously question authority because any authority worth having can give solid and reasoned answers, and if they can't, I'll continue to work to get rid of them for incompetence. I'll laugh at crap like million-tax-dollar "Mission Accomplished" carrier landing photo ops and I'll continue to follow the money when something smells fishy. I'll expose the corruption I hunt up, and I'll keep on putting in the work to make the USA a smart, healthy and reasoned country because that's what a responsible citizen does. It's a lot more work than slapping on a bumper sticker or waving a little flag or lockstepping in whatever candy-ass "do ___ if you love America" scheme comes along to make me stop thinking deeply. That's just how much I dig the country, so I do the hard work. You may not want to, and that's your life. I don't assume I'm oppressed or victimized or anyone is out to get me. I take a critical look, and I don't Conform, Consume and Obey.

http://files.lussumo.com/applause.gif

I'm going to forward this to all my friends.

[Michael P]

Bwahhh hah hah hah hahhh! Oh that is priceless. :)

Hey you know, I did leave out:

"RED?! You want us to wear RED?! Haven't you ever SEEN Star Trek?!"
"Starfleet Security: The Few. The Proud. The Expendable."

[Jeff Brady]

"Starfleet Security: The Few. The Proud. The Expendable."

You know what they say about Redshirts?

They go down first.

[Indivisible]

In Canada we have fun with colours!

The Liberal Party is RED!
The Conservative Party is BLUE!
The Green Party is... well green.
The New Democratic Party is ORANGE!

Our politics are more fun anyway... our Speaker in the House of Commons has a mace nearby in case the politicians get rowdy.

[Paul McEnery]

You know what they say about Redshirts?

They go down first.
Since I'm a gentleman, I shall have to start wearing red.

[Cam63]

I do have a red Star Trek securty officer shirt a friend sent me.

I hope she wasn't sending me a subtle hint !

[Gilda Dent]

Wait minute . . . my rainbow ribbon has red in it. Does that count?

[Jeff Brady]

Since I'm a gentleman, I shall have to start wearing red.

I wore red today! Alas, no one understood the motivation.

Wait minute . . . my rainbow ribbon has red in it. Does that count?

Good enough!

[Cam63]

I don't think so, Gilda.

[Jeff Brady]

I don't think so, Gilda.

That's not what Beer told you!

[Cam63]

Beer tells me many things.