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#658: The Nudge Unit (clip) · Macroaggressions

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  I was trying to understand the psychological operations
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  of getting like an entire generation of people
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  to believe something without it being so obvious
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  that you're trying to convince them of it, right?
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  The best propaganda works
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  when you don't know it's propaganda, of course.
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  And I was looking at how that had been done
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  over the years and I came across of all things a tweet
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  and I'm gonna, I'll get into,
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  it'll be the kind of the second half of the show.
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  And it might seem a little disjointed,
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  but I promise you I'll connect the dots here pretty well.
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  But it has to do with a 90s sitcom
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  that everybody in the world knows of
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  and how it might've been a show about nothing,
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  but there was a dark thread that was running through it
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  that now once I look back on it in retrospect
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  was so obvious, but I missed it.
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  So hang around for that one
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  because I'm gonna attempt to intertwine these together.
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  You know, there is a mission that these people have
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  to convince us to feel a certain way about society.
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  If they can convince you to feel the way
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  they want you to feel, then they can manage you.
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  They can make it easy for you
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  to internalize this and spin you off into a direction
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  you might not have been intending to go down.
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  And initially, you know, with regard to manipulation,
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  we're always manipulating.
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  I have an advertising degree.
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  I have a degree in marketing.
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  That's manipulation, right?
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  I didn't recognize it as such until a little bit later
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  and then kind of got disgusted with the idea of it,
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  but you're always trying to sell a narrative
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  if you're a guy trying to meet a girl
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  or you're trying to sell a narrative
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  that you're a viable person for them.
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  Like you're a good guy or if you're a bad guy
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  or whatever she wants you to be, right?
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  You're trying to figure out what it is.
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  What do you want?
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  And then am I that or am I close enough to that
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  or could I pretend to be that
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  if you're some guy who doesn't really care
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  about being authentic or something, you know?
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  But it's not to say that selling a narrative
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  is inherently nefarious, right?
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  It could be and it definitely is
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  and where I'm gonna go with things,
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  but it doesn't necessarily have to be.
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  I mean, you can, part of advertising
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  is getting you to feel a certain way about a product.
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  Maybe this product will make you feel better
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  about yourself and you want somebody to feel,
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  maybe it'll make you feel bad about yourself.
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  We're gonna shame you into buying it.
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  So there's a lot of tactics
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  and of course, these tactics were on front street
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  when it came to COVID because then you got a chance
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  to see some of the real dark psychological maneuvers
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  that were being unfoiled onto the people.
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  So those of you in the UK,
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  you already know about the behavioral insights team, BIT,
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  known unofficially as the Nudge Unit.
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  This is a, it's a British organization
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  tasked with quote,
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  dreaming up psychological tricks to alter our behavior.
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  That's basically like what it is.
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  And there are tricks and they're not,
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  they want you to feel differently about something.
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  They want you to behave differently.
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  And so they're going to lie to you about it,
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  about the reality of the situation.
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  Maybe they'll scare you.
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  They'll tell you there's a boogeyman out there
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  when there isn't or that there's a virus
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  that's gonna kill you when it's not
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  or whatever, insert catastrophe here.
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  But this group, to say that they partnered
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  with the government would be sort of a misnomer.
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  They are the government.
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  Hey, thanks for watching that clip.
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  If you want to watch the entire video,
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  it is available as well,
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  or you can check it out as an audio podcast,
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  wherever podcasts are served.
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  Thanks a lot.