CHARACTER ASSASSINATION as a business has become an agricultural pursuit with its dependence on troll farms. (There are also “click farms” that artificially raise the “clicks” or “likes” of websites or internet programs to make them more attractive buys for ads.) These non-agricultural farms are fertilized by mud that is then systematically slung at designated targets. Mixing metaphors, such mud-slinging vegetation is then burned and turned into smoke belching fuel.
Concerted efforts at negative publicity rest on the belief that where there’s smoke, there’s fire. Smoke is a tool for negative perception — creating a thick haze of innuendoes and hearsay, meant to deprive a target of oxygen as he flails and gasps for his reputational wellbeing.
It is not important that what the scandalmonger puts out on social media posts, interviews, column feeds, and congressional hearings may not stand up in court. The objective is to push out the smoke relentlessly and create in the public mind sufficient suspicion and dismay. This negative perception arises from the simple presumption that with all the brouhaha, there must be some real basis for guilt by asphyxiation.
Repeated denials do not clear the smoke and may even prolong the foggy situation, as denunciations keep the story on the social radar. It can even be argued that merely ignoring the attacks may be a good alternative — I will answer these baseless allegations in the right forum. (Next question, please.)
Here are some smoke-belching techniques employed by the trolls:
Inflate the numbers. If smoke works, ashfall from volcanic eruptions are even better. Scandals are rated by their monetary value. Amounts equivalent to a small country’s GDP and described as the mother of all scams, even if too incredible to be real, is made part of the narrative. Without numbers, scandals are too ordinary to be noticed and won’t accomplish their discrediting job. A bag snatching incident is not even newsworthy — but I lost my phone with online banking apps.
Imply a conspiracy. Cover-ups, implication of political connections, and previous legal entanglements support a conspiracy theory. Blind items with unique descriptions like initials add to the enveloping smoke. Attempts of bribery will presume the involvement of even the foot soldiers and messengers just doing their jobs.
Accompany stories with unflattering photographs. Scandals are not complete without a photo of abject defeat, a mid-yawn demonstration of contempt for the proceedings, or a sarcastic grin. These posted shots could have been taken years back and involved an unrelated incident, like the wedding reception for an aging governor and his very young bride. Still, pictures contribute to the portrait of a disorganized person — just look at that smirk.
Add irony and ridicule. It’s good to post vlogs or short clips of the target, maybe a deep fake dance number with a pole. The satirical dig puts a bizarre spin to any denunciations and denials that are expected reactions to the sham video.
Of course, smear campaigns are not always meant to induce social or political change. More often now, a social attack can be launched by emerging tabloid-types of online media. These “journalists” employ innuendo and rhetorical questions (Is he about to be thrown under the bus?) to increase their readership. They can focus on business personalities who panic at the mere mention of their names in connection with a possible scandal. Can requests for ads from the target be far behind? (Yes sir, we will stop these foolish attacks on you.)
Some targets of calumny are hitting back with cyber libel suits. Still, only gossip mongers with their own programs can be subjected to legal suits. Just the public filing of a case is enough to slow down if not stop the diatribes of these self-anointed “influencers.”
Smoke wizards succeed only with the attention of the public. Magicians, after all, need an audience to gasp with awe at the sleight of hand. In the end the victim of troll attacks is saved by the indifference of the target audience.
The attention span of even the most avid news gobblers can be very short. To sustain it, new revelations or new objects of hate need to be exposed. And even then, the whole business of smoke belching can get tiresome and lose its appeal… much like having too much pork rind with beer.
Tony Samson is chairman and CEO of TOUCH xda
