Open Source Psyop
We consider it an “open source psyop” if every link in the chain can become known by the subjects it affects, AND this does not destroy the operation (may in fact increase its odds of success).
How do I define “a psyop”?
Short for “psychological operation” - I define it as: exposing a mind to information with the intent of altering its action, and successfully doing so.
A marketing campaign is a psyop, to get you to buy something
A political campaign is a psyop, to get you to vote
The CEO all hands email is a psyop, to get employees to work on the product
A pitch is a psyop, to get money from the investor
Nerd sniping your friend is a psyop, if it’s done with conscious purpose
The key pieces are:
(1) target minds
(2) the desired action/behavior change
(3) the engineered information payload
What is NOT a psyop?
Any information CAN lead to behavior change, but not all information is engineered with the intent of a specific behavior change. It’s a psyop when you work BACKWARDS from the desired behavior change, and reverse engineer it - seeking the information that will lead to that change.
For example: applying for a job with what skills you are good at is NOT a psyop if you are simply signaling what skills you are good at. The choice of whether you are a good fit is made by the other party. It WOULD be a psyop if you understood HOW they are making this decision, and changed what information you signal to get the desired decision.
It’s a psyop if you understand the other mind’s decision calculus, and have the ability to override their decision purely via careful selection of input information.
How can an OPEN SOURCE psyop ever be successful?
If I manipulate information, I may get hired instead of better candidates. But if the employer finds out I did so, they reverse this decision. Revealing how a “bad psyop” works neutralizes it1.
A successful example of a “clean psyop” is the Lima Beans & Butter Beans story:
“Lima beans” sounds gross to me. I tried it once, a small bite, blegh! 🤮
“Butter beans” sounds delicious. I bought a can from TJ’s, prepared it all nice, creamy, smooth, delicious! 😋👌
Later I discover: they are the same thing?? 😱
Have I been manipulated?? Was this all just a marketing trick, a rebrand?? Must I now revert to the truth, where I hate the thing that I now love?
In this case the answer is NO - the subject does NOT reverse their decision even after the trick is revealed. The “reframe” here did in fact override their decision calculus, and lead them to making a decision that they would NOT have otherwise made. But the subject does not regret the decision.
Another example would be applying for a job with a masculine name to an employer who is biased against women, and for them to realize they actually are really impressed once they gave the candidate a chance.
This is what I call:
“social engineering, but for good”, or
“ethical manipulation”, or
“clean / open source psyops”
The information you give them DOES coerce them into making a different decision, but if it’s a BETTER decision for THEM than they would have made naturally, they may be (1) grateful, and (2) end up updating their decision calculus to make this kind of choice for themselves in the future2.
Thanks for reading!
This post is part of the Psyops Hackathon (https://lastpsyop.com/) I’m hosting in September. A frequent question we’ve been getting is “is it really a psyop if it’s open?” so I wanted to clarify this.
I did a recent (fairly long, 2 hours!) interview about this with Matthew Fisher that you can watch here. You can read this announcement post by Defender for a gist.
Coming up next:
I want to introduce this concept of “preregistering your psyops” before you do them. There are a couple I am running in Ithaca NY, and there has not existed a council or committee for me to pre-register with, but one is forming now (a mix of community members & local professors). This is kind of like an IRB for anyone who wants to do “clean/ethical information manipulation”.
One such example is the “Gimme Coffee Backdoor” case, which has completed and I need to document (this is a marketing campaign I did with the express intent of triggering a solution to a problem in a common space)
Another “live” one is the “Ithaca Jungle reddit post”, which I preregistered in the Ithaca Social Circle discord to explain the behind the scenes of my intention & expected outcome, so that is documented in case it triggers undesirable outcomes, we can post mortem it.
I expect that after the September event, as we get people from as many information networks as we can who are “psyop aware”, we’ll develop some standard cultural method for how to document & pre-register these things. A “lighthouse” / ambassador in every network.
This is not true in all cases. Worth a follow up essay/chapter, but just to give you a couple pointers for now (1) knowing that information was manipulated doesn’t “undo” the (emotional) effect it had on your mind. A lawyer asking a bad faith question in court, and getting “objection” “sustained” gets his question stricken from the record, but it lingers in the jury’s mind (2) emotional effects aside, knowing that something was manipulated doesn’t tell you what the correct version is supposed to be.
It’s almost like you found a bug in their epistemology, and you are fixing it “from the outside”. You engineer an information payload that will trigger the bug, or use the bug towards a good outcome for them & for you (mutual positive sum).