The Fake Americans Influencing You Online Have Been Revealed

When I was growing up, I went to church regularly, I was active in the youth group, and a lot of my friends went to my church. However, upon graduating high school, if someone had said to me, “John, how would you feel about going to a foreign country for two years to promote Christianity?” I would have thought that suggestion was BIZARRE. Why? I didn’t have any friends who did that, I didn’t know anyone who did that, and there were no expectations that I would do that. It had just never crossed my mind that I should consider going on a mission.

On the other hand, I have some good friends who are Mormons and ALL THREE OF THEIR KIDS went on missions, which is even more daunting than it sounds to the uninitiated. You don’t get to pick where you go, you pay for a lot of it yourself, it consumes two years of your life, and you may even have to learn a new language to do it.

It is ANYTHING BUT EASY. So, why do so many Mormons go on missions? Well, it’s not mandatory, and they’re adults who can make up their own minds, but their friends do it, their parents did it, and it’s EXPECTED that they’re going to do it. People will notice if they don’t go, and when they arrive back at the airport, when it’s over, there’s a big celebration to welcome them home.

Group norms are a powerful thing.

We like to think of ourselves as these uninfluenceable rocks, standing alone on our principles, making our own way in the world -- but the truth is that we’re heavily influenced by our friends, family, and the groups we consider ourselves to be a part of.

So, what would happen if you could subvert these groups?

For example, what if you grew up seeing McDonald’s posters on your walls, your parents took you to McDonald’s every week to spend quality time with you, and all your friends considered McDonald’s the “cool” place to hang out? Well, you’d probably spend the rest of your life eating a lot more McDonald’s than the average person. You’d also probably die at 55 because that food is toxic, but that’s another story.

Of course, the thing is, it’s very difficult for outside forces to do that in the real world unless you’re, let’s say, part of a cult or in a controlled environment like the military.

On the other hand, it’s VERY EASY for other nations to do this online.

Why? Well, people may feel that “MAGA Republicans” or “left-wing socialists” are like them. That’s “their people.” But did they grow up with them? No. Do they know these people that they’re interacting with online in the real world? Mostly no. Do they really even know who these people are or what they’re like? Again, mostly “no.” The persona someone portrays online may be close to who they are, or it may just be an actor playing a role.

One of the things that I have been saying over and over again…

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…is that there are a tremendous number of foreigners trying to influence Americans in this way. They’re paying Americans to say what they want, promoting it with botnets, and yes, LARPing as Americans to push ideas that they think will cause strife here or hurt Americans.

Well, we finally got some concrete proof of this after X started adding the country to the profiles of people on the website:

So, when we got to see where everyone was from, what did we see? Some big accounts pretending to be American. Some foreigners who are pretending to be on one side or the other as a cash grab, and tons of people who didn’t necessarily explicitly say they were American but left that impression without ever confirming or denying it.

Just to show you a few examples:

Certainly, we could go on from here, but the critical thing to note is that this is barely even the tip of the spear.

Yes, there are big accounts that have now been caught pretending to be Americans. However, since X has chosen not to identify VPN usage yet, there are others still getting away with it. Furthermore, the bad guys don’t need to own big accounts. They can pick accounts saying something divisive or that they want to get out there (they may even pay these accounts to say things), and then they can use bot farms to push them or trash people criticizing them.

The idea is to create the illusion of organic popularity. If you can do that, human nature will take over.

People who are perceived as popular get attention, likes, and follows. Others want to copy what they say in hopes that they will be popular, too. Other media outlets want to have them on solely because they’re thought of as popular. Plus, many people simply want to conform to the group. If “we” believe that now and you perceive yourself to be part of “we,” then you will tend to believe what the rest of the people in “we” believe, whether you fully understand it or not.

If the bad guys are competent enough at what they’re doing, you end up with a mass of people who believe what you want them to believe. Some of them are paid, some are trying to be popular, and others are just following the crowd, but it doesn’t make any difference. McDonald’s doesn’t care WHY you eat their food, just that you do.

At the moment, your only real defense against this is understanding that it’s going on, being careful who you trust, and questioning things that don’t seem to make sense to you. Keep all this in mind, because my friends, as AI gets more advanced, the propaganda is only going to get a lot more sophisticated from here on out.

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